A lot of people would vote Final Fantasy games and associated RPG’s which is understandable I guess since those games took a while to beat and music was instrumental (pun?) in setting an atmosphere.
However, I’ve never been into RPG’s at all. There was some memorable music in “Earthbound” for SNES though which I managed to beat.
There are many games with overall strong soundtracks or just some gems and I think I’ll delve into this more later, going into more depth for each system (perhaps) but just for now, I would have to mention Killer Instinct which was ported from Arcade to SNES, in 1995 or six.
The SNES cartridge was extremely expensive and came with a special soundtrack CD which was very unique at the time (for some reason, I never got mine) and I only learned about the soundtrack tracks fairly recently which it seems are similar to the Arcade music. The SNES music was different enough and worth a listen in its own right. I don’t like all the tracks/character themes all that much but this was a memorable game and one which really made an attempt to help sell itself with the music which makes it noteworthy.
I was always a big fan of the Silent Hill soundtracks, they fit the creepy settings really well. When the guitar/banjo solo kicks on in the beginning of the game, you know you’re stepping into hell… I always get goosebumps when I hear that song.
I was also a fan of the Nightmare Creatures soundtracks.
I never played Eternal Champions. In the absence of nostalgia, does not get much love from me though I think it would if I played it as a kid. I think that game was for the Megadrive. And talking about that system, there was this game called Comix Zone which came with a grunge’ish sound track true to the time period that I believe has a slight cult following.
Now that I think, Killer Instinct sort of was not unique in that the first Mortal Kombat was also associated with a vocal backed soundtracked which a lot of people never seemed to hear about. That said, I think it’s pretty goofy for most part.
[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:
There’s a great series of videos on youtube Music Of Video Games
My vote is for:
Super Metroid Super Metroid Mother Brain! - YouTube
Resident Evil - YouTube
Streets of Rage 2 - YouTube
Definitely agree with RE1 if only because of the nostalgia involved. I had a lot of exposure to the SOR series mut the music in part two kind of strikes me as tame and not very memorable. I would rank the first game higher in that regard.
I actually had a conversation about this yesterday, discussing whether it’s that the soundtracks of old were actually that much better, or just that because they were more prominent parts of the game. The “theory” we came up with(not all encompassing, always exceptions) was that modern technology allows a level of realism in games that a soundtrack that really sticks out would detract from the immersion in the game at many parts, so they opt for the more ambient, subdued type of orchestral tracks. In the older games, because they couldn’t animate everything they wanted to, they used the music to do a lot of the emotional pacing for the game.
RPG’s are clearly the easiest games to use as examples for this, but when lines are now all done by voice actors, a strong soundtrack would actually take away from the characters, and has to take a backseat.
WALL OF TEXT ASIDE, Lufia 2 has the greatest arrangement of music ever, Chrono Cross/Xenogears/Mega Man 2 somewhere just behind that.
[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:
There’s a great series of videos on youtube Music Of Video Games
My vote is for:
Super Metroid Super Metroid Mother Brain! - YouTube
Resident Evil - YouTube
Streets of Rage 2 - YouTube
Definitely agree with RE1 if only because of the nostalgia involved. I had a lot of exposure to the SOR series mut the music in part two kind of strikes me as tame and not very memorable. I would rank the first game higher in that regard.[/quote]
I started out playing Streets of Rage 2 and never really got into the first one because of that so I guess I appreciate the music from 2 more because of the nostalgia. RE1 nostalgia for sure that music is outstanding I think, the second RE has some great music as well.
