Favorite video game music

In no particular order:

SimCity 2000

Need for Speed II: SE

Network Q RAC Rally Championship 1994

Halo

Frogger: He's Back!

Lego Island

Age of Empires

Frogger: He's Back has an underated overlooked friggin godly soundtrack. :)

This song is what inspired me to start composing orchestral style music, and video game soundtrack music. Its from a free online RPG called Rappelz.

1.

2. Morrowind

3.

4. Warhammer 40,000 (all of them, but especially the Marines Theme)

5.

I put Journey's End at the top, because it inspired me to start composing, and it proved that free samples could make good music :)

Growing up with a gameboy and Ninteno 64, I thought that Mario, Zelda, and Kirby had incredibly catchy/well written tunes. Going back recently, I found that pokemon blue/red had surprisingly intense music and that Earthbound had some cool ambient tracks as well. I've heard really good things about Castlevania and Goldensun but I haven't played these games yet. Alas!

There has been a lot of retro games recently that have some pretty awesome chip tune tracks like

Bear McCreary being awesome wrote an incredible score for

I know Smash Bros. Brawl doesn't count as original compositions, but it does feature a lot of original arrangements made just for the game. It's probably the largest soundtrack ever assembled for a game.

God of War 3's soundtrack just grabs you and doesn't let go. Assassin's Creed II has a cool, heavily processed orchestral soundtrack. I haven't listened to Arkham Asylum but I heard it was really interesting and atonal.

Neat topic!

-John

Has anyone mentioned Shadow of the Colossus by Ko Otani?

I'm not sure. Perhaps earlier.

A game I'm playing right now for the iPhone that has a really solid soundtrack is called Chaos Rings. It's developed by Square Enix and the composer is Noriyasu Agematsu. Never heard of him. Really solid, well orchestrated tracks.

-John

My all time favorite video game soundtrack would have to be "Chrono Cross."

Everyone raves about Chrono Trigger but I really prefer the music in Cross. Dont get me wrong, I love Trigger and its music, but Cross is more dynamic in my opinion.