Top Ten favorite game soundtracks?

[Dexie Oblivion]

Yes, this is slightly ripping off another thread at the forums, but I'm curious, and like discussing music. :) And who knows? Maybe you'll find a neat set of songs you haven't heard before.

What are your top ten favorite game soundtracks? Simple question.

For me, my absolute favorite OST ever would have to be for Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest on the SNES. It's a damn amazing soundtrack, David Wise did a fantastic job on it. It's just got this really neat feel to it that a lot of game soundtracks don't seem to have. Hard to describe, really. ^^; Go give it a listen, it's worth the download. :P

I'm not going to try to list the other nine in a specific order, so...randomly done!

1) DKC2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES)
2) Grandia (PSX)
3) Beyond Good & Evil (PS2/GCN/Xbox)
4) Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow (Game Boy) (It's got a fantastic soundtrack, trust me on this. >_>)
5) Suikoden II (PSX)
6) Final Fantasy V (SNES)/Final Fantasy VII (PSX)/Final Fantasy 8 (PSX) (Cheating here, yes, but all FF games have damn awesome soundtracks, so it's hard to narrow down.)
7) The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Game Boy)
8) Cave Story (PC)
9) Sonic the Hedgehog series. (Various systems) (Yes, I'm aware I'm cheating again.)
10) Parappa the Rapper (PSX)/Parappa the Rapper 2 (PS2)/Um Jammer Lammy (PSX) (And a third time~!)

Yeah, I cheated a bit and got more than ten games on there, sue me. >_>

The reason I listed the entire Sonic series is....well, no matter how shitty a game Sega puts their mascot into, it almost always ends up with a great OST. Sonic Adventure 2? Sucked ass, but Escape from the City is one of my favorite game songs *ever*. Sonic Heroes? Horrible game, but it has a ton of groovy pieces. There's really no Sonic game that stands out as my absolute favorite OST, so I just tossed the entire series down.

Same for the Parappa and Um Jammer titles. All three games are just full of absolutely kickass tunes, so it's a wee bit hard to narrow it down. ^^;

[Dracos]

How about favorite artists/groups with some references to what they did.

Such as:
Capcom Sound Team: Megaman series. =p

Dracos

[Sierra]

Xenosaga. Mitsuda fanboy checking in.
Final Fantasy IV. I have to give a nod to the first game that had me enjoying the music enough to hum it away from the console.
Final Fantasy VI. FFIV+. The antiquated sound quality somehow doesn't matter at all.
Shadow of the Colossus. Only just getting around to playing the game, but I've been listening to the music for a while now. Everything is appropriately Epic and booming, and I'm a sucker for melodrama.
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. Perfect soundtrack for a subterranean wasteland.
Mega Man 2/3. Drac hypes well. Fifteen years later and the tunes are still lodged in my brain.
Legend of Mana. I haven't actually played the game. Yoko Shimomura is just that awesome.
Star Ocean 3. Probably the least uneven of his scores, so it'll do.
Wild Arms 3. Naruke is god, that is all.

Guilty Gear Something-Or-Other takes the last slot. I haven't played anything in the series, so I wouldn't know which track goes to which game, but everything I've heard is completely badass.

[Dracos]

Yoko Shimomura is fantastic.  She's also verily responsible for most the awesome tracks in Mario RPG.

Sakimoto, responsible for the BoFV soundtrack, is another favorite of mine as  well.  He also did the FFTactics one (Such an awesome opening tune there), and the recent FFXII one.  The man excels in battle music thinks I.  Or at least composes  more of it than anyone else.

Uematsu deserves his props, but I've got to give props to Sugiyama and his legendary Unknown World for first to be hummed =p.  Albeit, I think his best work is Homeland ~ Wagon's Wheels.

I remember liking the WA3 tracks, but not finding it too listenable to by itself.  Dunno, been a while.



Dracos
Willing to share any of these.

[thepanda]

I'll throw in the Lunar: SSS and Lunar: Eternal Blue soundtracks. Not that they're spectacular, but I can listen to them for hours without getting bored/annoyed/wanting to play mp3s. Totally inoffensive with some really catchy tunes here and there. Also, SSS gets my vote for best overland map music ever.

[Dracos]

No overworld map themes beat Sugiyama's.  None! =p

Anyhow, I'll second Lunar:SSS.  I regret that I lost the included music cd somewhere during a trip.

Dracos

[Dexie Oblivion]

No overworld map themes beat Sugiyama's.  None! =p

Anyhow, I'll second Lunar:SSS.  I regret that I lost the included music cd somewhere during a trip.

Dracos

I'll third Lunar. :P Noriyuki Iwadare freaking ROCKS.

[Anastasia]

1. Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals. For a semi obscure SNES RPG, this game had a soundtrack years ahead of it's time. Not a single bad tune in the set and many were instant classics.

2. BoF2: Hit and miss, but the hits were epic.

3. Lunar: SSSC. Nice music that fit the game. Very catchy.

4. Final Fantasy 4: Much like itself in several other categories, it showed off the potential of the SNES.

5. Tales of the Abyss: Wow, a Tales game with really good music? I'm stunned. (Note: Since I get hit for this every time I say it, I didn't play much of ToL.)

6. Final Fantasy Tactics: Very good, well suited dramatica music.

7. Megaman 2. Simply classic.

8. Block vote of various classical NES game like Zelda, Mario, ect al.

9. Legend of Mana. Yay.

10. Wild Arms 2.

[thepanda]

No overworld map themes beat Sugiyama's.  None! =p

Anyhow, I'll second Lunar:SSS.  I regret that I lost the included music cd somewhere during a trip.

Dracos

I still have mine. XD

If you want I'll kick it to you on irc or something.

[Rift120]

Hmmm

1. Disgaea 2 - I liked it so much I ordered the arrange soundtrack and never regretted it.... Although why they cut out Kurtis's theme I'll never know...

2. Tales of Phantasia- I acutally managed to snag this off Ebay for under 20 bucks... very nice instrumentals....

3. Shadow Hearts Covenent

[Sierra]

Drac: Sakimoto also did Vagrant Story. He is generally cool. I didn't really dig FFXII's music, though. Most of the time it just sank into the background unnoticed (in fairness, it probably had to just to avoid becoming irksome, thanks to the tremendous amount of time you spend in some overworld areas, but that's another issue).

I've never been able to get into Lunar music. Iwadare really doesn't do anything for me, apart from a few select tracks in EBC.

And who exactly is Sugiyama? I don't recognize the name, or Unknown World.

[Dexie Oblivion]

I've never been able to get into Lunar music. Iwadare really doesn't do anything for me, apart from a few select tracks in EBC.

Heard his stuff for the Grandia series, or from the third Phoenix Wright? I can toss some stuff your way if you want...

And who exactly is Sugiyama? I don't recognize the name, or Unknown World.

Even I know this one. ^^; Dragon Quest.

[Sierra]

I haven't played a DQ game since #4 on the NES, so there's no real reason I'd remember Sugiyama. It's hard to impress with 8-bit sound quality.

As for Iwadare, I've played Grandia 2 and heard a couple tracks from Grandia 1. G2's music struck me as very unremarkable outside of a couple of the major boss themes. No experience whatsoever with Phoenix Wright, but the three Iwadare games I've played have pretty thoroughly convinced me the guy's music just isn't my style.

[Karlinn]

In no particular order:

For a game with a plot likely ripped from a straight-to-video action yarn, Headhunter had a truly excellent collection of tunes.  When you've got this as your throwaway boss fight song, and this for your token plot exposition music, you know you're dealing with a company that at least had the wisdom to pay their sound guys well.

Call of Duty has everything you could want out of a soundtrack for a WW2 game.  You have your big, epic pieces, your quiet, slow-building, hopeful pieces, and your "driving a stolen car behind enemy lines while being shot at from all sides" pieces.  And every second of it is glorious.

Keeping up with shooting at the inescapably evil, Freedom Fighters has a fitting soundtrack for what is essentially Red Dawn in New York.  It's got an odd mix of electric synth and orchestral work, backed by what sounds like Russian chanting, but somehow Kyd gets it to work.  "March of the Empire" is an awesome song, and I'll fight any man who says otherwise.  And by 'fight', of course, I mean 'disagree with politely'.

The Wild ARMs games have been mentioned, and I concur wholeheartedly.  I'll isolate ARMs: ACF because Naruke managed to improve on a soundtrack that I thought was solid enough already.  It's worth mentioning that I thought the music was the best part of WA2, which was a game I was not particularly pleased with.

I'll also second/third/whatever the Mitsuda love.  I'm by no means a Xeno fanboy, but I know a good soundtrack when I hear one, and it's worth mentioning that the Gears soundtrack stayed in my collection longer than the actual game did.  In a similar note to WA2, I'll mention that the Tower of Babel music manages to appeal to me, without channeling the murderous rage that particular section of gameplay inspired.

Shadowgrounds boasted a pretty tasty selection of tuneage, in and out of the action.  Samples are availablehere.  Off soundman Pulkkinen's own site, I wholeheartedly recommend the mixes of "Super Cool Disco", which plays during one of the bigger battle scenes (conveniently, at a concert hall).  I'm not even that keen on dance music, but damned if both mixes don't find regular playings.

I'm lumping Unreal and Deus Ex under the collected works of Alexander Brandon and Michael Van Den Bos, among others, simply because they're very similar styles of music - composed in the same format, for games in the same engine, using the same mixing program.  Neither has much in the way of epic-sounding music, but both soundtracks fit their respective games capably, and have an odd quality to them that allows me to listen to some tracks on continuous loop for quite some time without getting bored.  Obviously, this works very well in the actual games.

I'm something of a latecomer to Iwadare's music, namely in that I didn't know he was behind the Lunar games.  SSS stuck with me for a long time after I finished it.  The sequel, not so much, but still chock full of good music.  His work on Radiata Stories also made that game way more awesome than it had a right to; "Song of Freedom Fighters" is infectious in a way I have not heard since Boston's "More Than a Feeling".

The Chronicles of Riddick game (Escape from Butcher Bay) should have failed in so many ways (movie game, based on a lackluster 'series', etc.), but it turned out to be one of the biggest (pleasant) surprises of the year.  The music would be at home in a big-budget Hollywood production, and since that's basically what it is, it works quite well.

Lastly, Command & Conquer.  I don't think anything more really needs to be said.  "Hell March".  "Act on Instinct".  "Depth Charge".  "Times".  Take your pick.  Klepacki knows in-game jukeboxes like Webster knows words, and it angers me to no end that he's not working on the next game.

[Dracos]

Drac: Sakimoto also did Vagrant Story. He is generally cool. I didn't really dig FFXII's music, though. Most of the time it just sank into the background unnoticed (in fairness, it probably had to just to avoid becoming irksome, thanks to the tremendous amount of time you spend in some overworld areas, but that's another issue).

I ignored FFXIII and i try to pretend Vagrant Story never happened.  I dislike that crew's work as my memory serves.

Dracos