This is the Video Game Music Thread

mentioned it in the console games poll but the thread blew right by it lol

the "highway star" meets jean-luc ponty "mute city" song from f-zero x is one of the all-time video game bangers

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

Actually, I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon listening to the F-Zero X OST thanks to your post--it shreds wayy harder than I remembered. Some of the tracks are like straight-up death metal w cookie monster vox and everything

e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkWQEy0n6lg

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

omg i totally forgot about devil's forest

the 8-bit version of "mute city" shreds, obviously, but doesn't have the garish grandiosity of the orchestrated version

a friend of mine has done a radio show about video game music: https://www.mixcloud.com/pete_forsaken/forsaken-on-sub-fm-201400815/

F-Zero OST > F-Zero X OST, but I might be biased, the commentator on X is just too irritating

Devil's Forest is crazy haha

another banger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf1cZs95kYE

give the drummer some!

Yeah Big Blue was my jam from this game

lol you can buy the soundtrack on cd from discogs for the low-low price of one thousand and thirty three dollars

https://www.discogs.com/Taro-Bando-F-Zero-X-Original-Sound-Track/release/2158441

you know a fight's about to get real when this starts playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GB-xej4GFc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3g0Ts60220

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dyBn3x0zCc

some serious waking the witch vibes on this track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJYbU2D4wgM

The soundtrack to Hades is great and I just nominated it in the heavy music thread. I've been thinking a lot about game music lately because of it. I also got a Switch and started playing some older titles on their NES/SNES apps and remembered how much I love the Donkey Kong Country music. Mario 2 also has great music. Just bookmarked this thread and am going to check out a lot of new (to me) stuff.

this exists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDhcKp2XAhs

this game and OST is good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhuOkxllZpc

this is pretty good
https://leyawn.bandcamp.com/album/return-to-bird-world

This one is awesome:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQxGy5maIQ0

so good

feeling it

One of my favourite things is YouTubes of people covering tunes from Chrono Trigger.

Kara Comparetto does some lovely piano versions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgI8Aw3sqmw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkp72WR0hX8
(although I've noticed nearly everyone struggles to get that quick slide quite right)

wow you can tell the difference immediately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajYLHvFL0sU

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD-vbw8Jmuyg3JYDxm1QPPj1mP3soOVEx
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/02/super-high-fidelity-mario-the-quest-to-find-original-gaming-audio-samples/

fascinating effort/scene but i wouldn't say their end products are necessarily aesthetically 'better' than the compressed versions we heard from the cartridges

richer!

i'm not really a fan of the SMW recreations, they're an interesting curiosity but the way the original SNES version of the soundtrack sounded was so heavily coloured by the compression that these ultimately don't have the same feel to them at all

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

i do really like the DKC ones people have done though, the compressed versions of the samples on the cartridge weren't anywhere near as coloured by the compression so it really does just sound like a clearer version of the original

finding that lovely too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjEDX-2M7Qk

zero mentions of "one-winged angel" in this thread, which is a shame because it's truly batshit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDD-iYkHBhc

an all-time classic transformed into stars of the lid's next album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3a8zqTzats

Loop Hero has some really good SNES-chip music. there are like 8-12 different songs and they all rule

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjAzHlmJ2l8

That was one of the first game soundtracks I bought on CD, but I never played the game

i might be mistaking this for SoM, but i believe there's a rom hack that lets you provide the soundtrack as WAV files and are played uninterrupted by the other sounds on the screen which constantly take away instruments from the soundtrack

a stone cold classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTdZedIqU98

koshiro is GOTY

Not sure where to post this, but I have this Cool Notes 12" and the synthesizer and overall vibe of this track have always made me think of some lost Japan-only import SNES game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4EOhMRtfYA

In fact, just playing it again reminded me of Hal's Hole in One Golf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOFVVlbwndI

The course zoom around at 0:50 is the jam

streets of rage ii is coming to switch online, so maybe i'll actually play the game after jamming the soundtrack for so long

banger, right here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov1ULTDTdiY

https://kotaku.com/dragon-quest-composer-koichi-sugiyama-has-died-1847815597

disgusting politics notwithstanding, he was an unequivocally great and influential composer of game music. always loved this 8-bit samba from a Japan-exclusive FDS backgammon game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-rIpXeRj9A

Listening to all this stuff brings home why I love so much current Balearic revival stuff, and also fusiony things like Pat Metheny

Man, Mickey Mouse Castle Of Illusion had some pure bangers on it, especially towards the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzLd8p4mc0M

The Game Gear/Master System version also had some choice cuts. I wish there were versions of Spotify but I guess Disney would intervene

Posted a while ago about how the Hylics games have some of the most original visuals I've seen in recent times, soundtrack is great too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdwVwX1hWzA
https://masonlindroth.bandcamp.com/album/moonage-lobotomy-a-hylics-2-musical-expansion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3BQsCCwo8w

turn it up!!!

here's one I discovered via the Cardiacs Discord, not hard to figure out why it showed up there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UrsaKcZHI0

That was by Tim Follin, who was a wizard. I remember his 8-bit music on the ZX Spectrum, where he managed to play polyphonically with a one-note speaker by rapidly switching notes. He also did this, which is fantastic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_gObHt1uZA

Of the games I've played more recently I remember liking FAR: Lone Sails, which is a little bit like Michael Nyman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj98RoU4HSE

And also Gris, which is a much better game than I expected:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM3w76XbExY

And NaissanceE, which has its moments but the soundtrack is neatly done (it's made up of existing pieces):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKlTPLyGfZI

thanks for those, I've been looking up Tim Follin videos and found this really good (and long) one which showcases a bunch of it. it also explains how he did it and why he was so ahead of everyone else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC1dTzyb5Gs

the Pictionary one made me laugh out loud, it's so inappropriately intense.

I'm in awe of how good all this stuff is. very much on the Tim Smith/Tatsuya Yoshida/Gentle Giant level but with an added element of rave/techno music. the joke of course is that virtually every game he wound up doing sucked!

also he was quite young when he made most of this - he was barely 20 when he did all that wild NES music!