Jet Set Radio and Jet Set Radio Future.
Both had crazy-ass mashups of electronic, hip-hop, indie and j-pop.
Kind of “Candy Urban”, if you will.
The Metal Gear series are the only games that have soundtracks I still listen to even when not playing the games. Particularly this (from Snake Eater)…
What a thrill…
With darkness and silence through the night
What a thrill…
I’m searching and I’ll melt into you
What a fear in my heart
But you’re so supreme!
Yes. Fantastic stuff.
I will third the mention of the game Chrono Cross.
Watch the video below to get an idea what it’s like.
I haven’t played the game, but I like the music for Skullmonkeys. Klogg is dead!
I have to disagree and say Killer Instinct was the SNES finest musical moment. In terms of sounding good, that is.
I recall really liking the soundtrack for Baldur’s Gate II back in the day.
Seconded.
If you’re into neo-industrial, VTM: Bloodlines licensed a lot of good tracks.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It’s amazing. I actually bought the soundtrack BEFORE I bought the game, based on the experience from renting it. The metal band I was in back in college used to cover Young Nobleman of Sadness, the clock tower theme, and nobody had any idea it was a video game song. There are a couple other Iron Maidensque metal songs throughout the game. It also has great tracks with baroque (library & Final Tocatta), Strauss-esque waltz (Dance of Pales), techno (Rainbow Cemetery), acid jazz (underground lake & Wandering Ghosts–which has the most rocking harpsichord intro I’ve ever heard anywhere), and Lost Painting (reverse library) is a song I would want played at my funeral.
I was never very into the credits theme though.
…The Last Ninja
Gods, Speedball II and Magic Pockets by the Bitmap Brothers.
Final Fantasy 7.
Ocarina of Time.
Goldeneye.
Can anyone guess my age based on my selections?
For me the whole Civilization IV soundtrack is nice, though nifty as Nixon in China I’m partial to Dvorak and I love the version of Slavonic Dance No. 7 they use so I may be biased towards the romantic spectrum.
In a completely different vein, the “Hell March” from Red Alert animates me. I would like it to be part of the soundtrack of my life though I don’t really know what part.
Earth 2150 had nice music, too, I think.
And Psygnosis’s Lemmings games.
At the moment though I’m going to say the soundtrack for Yoshi’s Island would come very close to being my favourite. It’s very listenable, to me.
I’ll vote for Myst as my all time fave. Unfortunately, playing the original is problematic as more recent installs of quicktime make it unable to run.
Civ 4 has some pretty cool music too.
I also like the retro music of the Fallout intros.
RealMyst runs fine for me on a fairly recent Windows Xp machine, by the way. I know it isn’t the original, but it’s a good clone of it(I liked it better than the original, actually).
The ToeJam and Earl game for Sega had a pretty nifty old school hip hop sorta soundtrack. I loved it, you could just turn on the game, and leave it on as background noise…
Here’s the opening in English.
Wow. I didn’t even realize I linked to the Japanese one!
:smack:
I don’t think Psygnosis ever released a game that didn’t have a killer soundtrack (or a bad game, for that matter).
Put me in for dittoes to the Katamari games. I actually bought the OST’s for both Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari.
Close second, the Hitman series. I don’t know why, but the version of Ave Maria for the intro to Hitman: Blood Money is probably my favorite.
I’m going to second all the Yasunori Mitsuda selections: Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and especially Xenogears, which has some of my favorite tracks on it. (In fact, take a listen to Creid, one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard; it’s on the remix soundtrack for Xenogears.)
I’ve also always liked classics like Final Fantasy VI and Symphony of the Night, enough to import their soundtracks before they were readily available on the web.
I’ll add a couple of modern hits to the mix, too: the music of The World Ends With You is an excellent selection of J-rock and electro stuff that fits the stylized world in which it’s set, and manages to sound great on the DS. Also, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 and 4 both have really amazing soundtracks making use of mostly very fresh music and the classic SMT themes.
Only a few years back, there was an amazing streaming radio set called GamingFM which had streams sorted by era (classic, modern, and all games) with an easy registration and hourly request feature - which mostly ended up being abused to play stuff from Jet Grind Radio constantly. Still, it was a great source of soothing chiptunes and RPG music.
Unfortunately, I can’t find evidence that it’s been up any later than 2006.
Deus Ex.