Music from Video Games

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Catman

Catman

Rock n' Roll Doggie
Joined
Jan 14, 2002
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3,529
Location
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
I find video game music to be, for the most part, largely unappreciated. There are some really interesting compositions and melodies that just go completely and totally ignored by most music enthusiasts. Is this because video games are thought to be nothing more than merely a child's plaything?

Meh, whatever the reasons, just lay down some interesting tunes for those of us who appreciate the quality of superlative video game music. Here are some of my favorites...

Gusty Garden from Mario Galaxy :love:
YouTube - Super Mario Galaxy Music: Gusty Garden Galaxy

Buoy Base from Mario Galaxy :combust:
YouTube - Super Mario Galaxy Music: Buoy Base Galaxy

Melty Monster from Mario Galaxy 2 :rockon:
YouTube - Super Mario Galaxy 2 Music - Melty Monster Galaxy

Throwback from Mario Galaxy 2 :dance:
YouTube - Super Mario Galaxy 2 Music - Throwback Galaxy


Staff Credits - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker :heart:
YouTube - Zelda: The Wind Waker Music - Staff Credits

Dragon Roost Island - The Wind Waker :weekend:
YouTube - Zelda: The Wind Waker Music - Dragon Roost Island

Oath to Order - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask :ohmy:
YouTube - Zelda: Majora's Mask Orchestrations - Oath to Order


Bramble Blast - Super Smash Bros. Brawl :drool:
YouTube - Smash Bros Brawl Music - Bramble Blast (DK Country 2)


Court Suite - Ace Attorney :applaud:
YouTube - 05 - Ace Attorney Court Suite


Love Theme - Mother 3 :sad:
YouTube - MIDI MOTHER3 - MOTHER3 愛のテーマ


Anybody else care to share some of their favorites? :shifty:
 
YouTube - Best VGM 180 - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Chemical Plant Zone


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I've said this before, but the Donkey Kong Country games for SNES have some of my favorite music ever. I'm not going to post any YouTube clips, because you can go look them up yourselves, or buy the games. And I hate threads that just have a million fucking YouTube clips clogging the page.
 
:love: Oh yeah, the Mega Man stuff is golden. Some of my favorites are Solar Man YouTube - Mega Man 9 OST: Galaxy Man Stage
Also, someone managed to create a really spiffy remix of the Mega Man theme... YouTube - Megaman- Techno

Solid :up:

GirlsAloudFan said:
I've said this before, but the Donkey Kong Country games for SNES have some of my favorite music ever. I'm not going to post any YouTube clips, because you can go look them up yourselves, or buy the games. And I hate threads that just have a million fucking YouTube clips clogging the page.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the Donkey Kong stuff is :love: About the youtube links cluttering up the page, I feel the same way... is there anyway to just have the links appear?

:shrug:
 
I wish you could just post links as a choice, because this is why threads like the Music Video thread can't have any discussion, it takes an hour for the pages to load.
 
The DKC2 version of "Bramble Blast" is a lot better than that SSB one.
 
Imperor said:
The DKC2 version of "Bramble Blast" is a lot better than that SSB one.
Click to expand...
It's close. I certainly wouldn't say a lot better, though. I had always been a fan of this song, and when I heard the SSBB remix, I remember doing, like, an aural double-take or something; completely took me by surprise. Regardless, it's still an absolutely gorgeous melody :drool: :drool:
 
It's all about RPGs.

One of the all-time greatest pieces of music ever written for a video game. It was written for one Final Fantasy game, and is so good that it went on to appear in form or another in every FF game thereafter:

YouTube - Final Fantasy IV (II) Music: Prologue

And the famous FF prelude:

YouTube - Final Fantasy IV (II) Music: Prelude

Overworld theme from the same game:

YouTube - Final Fantasy IV (II) Music: Overworld Map

Overworld theme from FF7:

YouTube - FF7 OST-Overworld/Main Theme

I could post FF music all day...but I'll move on...

An orchestral version of the legendary theme:

YouTube - The Legend of Zelda Theme (Orchestra)

Anyone ever play a game called Actraiser for the SNES back in the day? It had some amazing music...the guy who composed it also did orchestral arrangements of the game's score, and there was an album released of those arrangements. Here are two pieces from it:

YouTube - SOTW #2 Actraiser Symphonic Suite - Birth of the People ~ Offering

YouTube - Actraiser Symphonic Suite - Overture and "Bloodpool"

EDIT: I wrapped all the videos I posted in spoiler tags so the page would load faster. Others may want to do the same.
 
Good call on the spoiler tag. Never really had a need to use that function until now... But yes, "Final Fantasy" and the "Zelda" series both have phenomenally epic music. I can't believe I didn't mention any FF music in my original post! You brought up some great stuff, but I don't think those games can get any better than FFVI :drool:

Terra's Theme - Final Fantasy VI
YouTube - Final Fantasy VI Music - Terra's Theme


EDIT: Actraiser is great :up: I'd actually never played it until (somewhat) recently; downloaded it on the Wii a few years ago and was really surprised that the title managed to slip under my radar for so long... never even heard of it until it became available on Nintendo's virtual console. Good game with fantastic music (listening to your clips now... :drool: :drool:)
 
I saw a band in Austin perform only songs from video games! It was amazing! I forgot their name, sadly. But they were the only band of their kind in Austin! it's a shame that video game music doesn't get more recogonition or for that matter movie composers like Thomas Newman who did the soundtrack for Phenomen and Meet Joe Black. I wish the movie and video game mediums were looked as equal as the next rock band. Anyways, the girl in that video game rock band played bass and she kicked ass! She played with her hat backwards and she wore a Mario hat. They played Mario songs from the original Nintendo, Sonic, and all kinds of music from the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo. It has been forever since I have heard stuff from those old systems but I might add, very refreshing as well, esp. thru a guitar and bass driven version. It brings back so many fond memories. I didn't play on those systems much but I remember listening to those theme songs when my brother played video games. I wish I remembered their name, so people could look them up. How's anyone else seen a video game band play before anywhere?
 
Cute Irish Bono said:
I saw a band in Austin perform only songs from video games! It was amazing! I forgot their name, sadly. But they were the only band of their kind in Austin! it's a shame that video game music doesn't get more recogonition or for that matter movie composers like Thomas Newman who did the soundtrack for Phenomen and Meet Joe Black. I wish the movie and video game mediums were looked as equal as the next rock band. Anyways, the girl in that video game rock band played bass and she kicked ass! She played with her hat backwards and she wore a Mario hat. They played Mario songs from the original Nintendo, Sonic, and all kinds of music from the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo. It has been forever since I have heard stuff from those old systems but I might add, very refreshing as well, esp. thru a guitar and bass driven version. It brings back so many fond memories. I didn't play on those systems much but I remember listening to those theme songs when my brother played video games. I wish I remembered their name, so people could look them up. How's anyone else seen a video game band play before anywhere?
Click to expand...
I'm intrigued! Performed a quick search on Google and found this. Any of those band names ring a bell?

Canadiens1131: Metal Gear :up: Some epic scores in those games. While sometimes the games can be a bit too cinematic for my tastes, the music is definitely outstanding.

Theme of Love - Metal Gear Solid 4 :hyper:
YouTube - MGS4 [Theme of Love] - Super Smash Bros. Brawl
 
Catman said:
I'm intrigued! Performed a quick search on Google and found this. Any of those band names ring a bell?
Click to expand...

The Advantage were who came to mind when she mentioned it. I think most of the rest have copycatted them, though I don't claim to be a historian in rock bands covering video game music. They were great, but I have no idea if they're still together or not.

In regards to recent games, I think Marty O'donnell's scores for the Halo games are about as good as it gets in music composed specifically for games.

On the "licensed soundtrack" front, it's interesting to see how good or terrible of a job some games do in choosing songs. Racing games frequently choose complete garbage, but then you have the opposite end of the spectrum with games like SSX3, where people go out and buy albums by artists because of the game (we actually had a thread specifically about that soundtrack here back when that game came out, because so many people loved it or were asking about artists/songs from it). I thought Alan Wake's choices of licensed songs to use at chapter ends and in the game were absolutely amazing, as they really added to the story and the atmosphere they were trying to create.
 
GirlsAloudFan said:
I've said this before, but the Donkey Kong Country games for SNES have some of my favorite music ever. I'm not going to post any YouTube clips, because you can go look them up yourselves, or buy the games. And I hate threads that just have a million fucking YouTube clips clogging the page.
Click to expand...

You wrote what I was going to write, like word for word.

My favourite from DKC2 is the Forest Interlude track, Aquatic Ambience for DKC1. I'm hoping we can expect more good stuff in the new DKC, they seem to be recreating the experience pretty well from what I've seen.

Few soundtracks stand out for me in more recent years, I guess because of the emphasis on ambiance due to the growing prominence of voice acting, but I liked a lot of music from Mass Effect 2. I recall the Ratchet and Clank games having some pretty great stuff, too.
 
A musician I like a great, great deal, Kurt Feldman (from Pains of Being Pure at Heart and The Ice Choir) also makes iPhone games. The soundtrack to his latest one is awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CdE30KZev8

EDIT: Oops, looks like he didn't really work on the design of this one, just sounds and music.
 
The game is free in the App Store and you can buy the soundtrack for $5. I really would love to play the game, but...Android :(
 
As many of my favourites are posted already, I'd just like to share this:

We had this annual Games in Concert event for years.
Professional orchestra and special guests playing about 1 hr of game music in total.
They never broadcasted the whole shows but here's a nice listen for anyone that loves some great videogames and their scores.

Enjoy :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBmZAg8HxfY

This one is winning :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boXguYT3TsM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPjdF_QFa6c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DubinoMOLI8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoSsKtlv8Go
 
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