Favorite video game music tracks?

Hi everyone!  As I have in the past enjoyed video game music sometimes even more than classical music, I thought I'd post some of my favorite tracks to share with you.  If you post in this forum try to share your reasons for liking the excerpt(s).  Does it put you in a certain mood?  Is there some technical quality of the music that you admire?  Does it break some rules?  Does it follow certain other rules?  Anything you can think of!

Example:  This is a track from the original "Star Fox" for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.  "Titania" is an ice planet in the game that you have to traverse in the novice course to the planet "Venom" the ultimate seat of the antagonist "Andross".  I like this track because of it's cool house beats and use of both the natural and flat 7th degree of the scale at the same time.  If you listen carefully, the bass has a kind of tonic pedal-like riff that includes a flat 7th while the melody is playing a natural 7th.

At risk of being the only reply to my own thread I'm posting a track that I recently found out about through an 8-bit music theory video about Austin Wintory - a video game music composer.

This track captured my attention through its use of synth warm-pads and 7 harps playing their parts slightly out of time to create a kind of undulating underwater atmosphere that I love.  It also happens to use the dorian mode with an added b6 which is in the harp accomplished by using both an Eb and an Fb to fill in for the E natural needed to make this dorian.

I can't believe you haven't gotten replies to this topic.

I don't play games anymore, but I still have a lot of music I listen to from games.

The intro to lords of thunder always gets me pumped

Great melody in this one; would also make a good metal song

Castlevania probably has the best music in video games

The Witcher's soundtrack is, tbh, pretty over-rated, but there are some great tracks on it none the less

One of my favorites overall is the soundtrack from BoTW. A particular favorite is Rito Village:

Nice topic!

I like the Shadowgate soundtrack because it's eerie, mystical and has a little jazzy harmonics here and there:
 

I also did a keyboard cover of another Shadowgate song here:

And I love Metroid soundtrack, as one of my music college mate said "It doesn't sound like anything else". Perfectly fitted for the NES platform with three individual parts, interesting harmonic lines and counterparts.
 

Another favorite, from PC land: Civilation 4's "Baba Yetu."

Anybody out there still own a gaming console and regularly actually play any games on it?  I used to own a Super Nintendo back in the day.  I played some really classic games on it including Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan), Chrono Trigger, RoboTrek, SimCity and Pilotwings, among others (I just can't seem to remember more right now).

But I guess the very first console I owned was a Turbo Grafix 16 which had cards instead of cartridges.  I don't even remember the titles of the games I played on it.  There was a really neat RPG that I played on it in which instead of battling the enemies you encounter on the world map - you race them.  Then you have to save money to buy (or find) better equipment for your car.

I of course had my fair share of gaming on the PC.  I played TIE Fighter which has a great soundtrack based on the Star Wars themes including a really neat fugue with accompaniment based on the Imperial March theme.  The classics that I played were among others, Duke Nukem 3D, and Blood 3D (an offshoot of the former).  Of course I've played more modern installments of these genres of video games but somehow they don't really stand out as much music-wise.

I really like the soundtrack to "god of war"

15 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

I used to own a Super Nintendo back in the day.  I played some really classic games on it including Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan)

My all time favorite story line from any video game I've ever played. Half way through was a pretty big twist.

@AngelCityOutlaw I love how the 2nd chromatically descends into a flat 2 making the mode momentarily phrygian in the Castlevania track ... great theme as well ... I must have heard it before because it sounds famous.

@Olov Are you sure that the keyboard cover you posted is the same piece that you posted first from Shadowgate - the Castle Room?

@Tónskáld Could you provide some context for this Baba Yetu piece that you posted?  Where in Civilization VI is this music used?

@Left Unexplained Any particular track from God of War that you like the most/favor?  Feel free to post it if you do have one!

@Thatguy v2.0 The only story-line that I think is even more sublime is Chrono Trigger as far RPG's go.  I don't know if you've ever heard the music from that game but Nabuo Uematsu helped write it as well.  Yasunori Mitsuda was so stressed out by the undertaking of writing music for this game that he developed stomach ulcers LoL.

2 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

 

@Tónskáld Could you provide some context for this Baba Yetu piece that you posted?  Where in Civilization VI is this music used?

It's the title song, comes on during the main screen of the game.

21 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

@AngelCityOutlaw I love how the 2nd chromatically descends into a flat 2 making the mode momentarily phrygian in the Castlevania track ... great theme as well ... I must have heard it before because it sounds famous.

@Olov Are you sure that the keyboard cover you posted is the same piece that you posted first from Shadowgate - the Castle Room?

@Tónskáld Could you provide some context for this Baba Yetu piece that you posted?  Where in Civilization VI is this music used?

@Left Unexplained Any particular track from God of War that you like the most/favor?  Feel free to post it if you do have one!

 

Sorry. Changing one sentence to be more clear. I think it was the game (soundtrack) I referred to as "it", not the song. But now I rewrote the sentence

My favourite soundtrack is from vagrant story.

But I like so much game music that listing it would take forever, lol.

On 11/18/2020 at 2:22 AM, SSC said:

My favourite soundtrack is:

But I like so much game music that listing it would take forever, lol.

 

Great, I like this video.😍

The different tunes included in the video are definitely better, and you can see it at Tonosdellamadacanciones.

One of my favorite game soundtracks is from an old fantasy strategy game, Heroes of Might and Magic III (which I still play to this day).  It has excellent sweeping orchestral scores.  I particularly like the theme song for the "necropolis" city which uses the classic Dies Irae theme which I thought was a nice touch.

I found this guy who makes his own orchestral versions of video game music tracks using EWQL sound libraries.  This is one of my favorite tracks in Chrono Trigger because of it's strange and interesting sound.  I haven't analyzed it yet but I downloaded a midi of this to figure out the harmony and how it gets that weird sound.  This also happens to be a track that Nabuo Uematsu composed rather than Yasunori Mitsuda who was the main composer for this game.

Of course it is one and only- Age Of Empires II

Sometimes I play this theme (https://musescore.com/user/14900781/scores/3177081) before I start playing AoE II to raise my fighting spirit. 

Max Payne! 

https://musescore.com/user/4588086/scores/4126696

https://musescore.com/user/39593079/scores/6933806

 How dare you forgot the Final Fantasy!? 🙂

On 8/10/2021 at 12:23 AM, Roman Koval said:

Of course it is one and only- Age Of Empires II

Sometimes I play this theme (https://musescore.com/user/14900781/scores/3177081) before I start playing AoE II to raise my fighting spirit. 

 

Heh, I did a Bardcore remake of that tune recently. 

A lot of old strategy games had good music. 

Starcraft 2 has some good stuff.

As an addition 

https://musescore.com/user/29460897/scores/5474892

On 8/27/2021 at 11:49 AM, Henrik Stromberg said:

Max Payne! 

https://musescore.com/user/4588086/scores/4126696

 

My friend actually did score on this melody and on the same musescore!!!! 🙂 here it is- https://musescore.com/user/29326211/scores/5476461. I don't know which one is better but I hope Max won't be angry 😉

Favorite game soundtracks:

Diablo 1, Diablo 2, Vampire the Masquerade, Hexen, various WoW 'zone' soundtracks, Age of Mythology, Age of Kings, Half-Life, Resident Evil, etc.

On 3/9/2022 at 4:00 PM, Syth said:

Vampire the Masquerade

Redemption or Bloodlines?