This is the Video Game Music Thread

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!

Manabu Namiki - Sally (select) from 'Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu - Black Label' (2010)

Manabu Namiki - Vertex (Stage 1), same

i can't believe this is just a throwaway joke song for a fake bar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKmt3oA7Vfg

love the MBV harmonies on the chorus

lol wtf, that is legit

currently I've been jamming the Silver Surfer title screen music a lot, like can you imagine hearing this come out of your NES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNpSPt30uSA

that's wild, definitely have never heard the NES sound like that. doesn't surprise me that he came from the C64 scene, very remniscient of SID-tracker tunes

This is my favourite 'Final Fantasy' related track, totally immense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al1MOxgQGf4

hell yeah, there's a whole genre of lush Japanese pop music that sounds like that and I'm always looking for it

Me too, the apex is this and the 'Ghost In The Shell SAC' theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kuE-yEs5VM

This is my favourite 'Final Fantasy' related track, totally immense.

WELP i just dug in a little bit and it turns out both the songs we posted were composed by Mitsuto Suzuki, that guy rules i guess

also looks like he did a shoegaze album with the vocalist from the kamekame track: https://www.discogs.com/release/15719043-Mojera-Overkill

That Plok track Frogbs posted is so wonderful.

Can't recall what thread this album was mentioned on but this guy is worth bringing up again
https://shnabubula.bandcamp.com/album/cosmic-diaspora

He has a youtube channel where he does cover versions of videogame tunes

this is gorgeous
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MygaMv5fVRY

reminds me of this fav of mine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKwI4myq2dk

Very good

https://x.com/coney/status/1709597886470562029?s=46&t=ybWek2m57bcE72i3ldMsfA

interestingly he also did the music for the snes version of this track... sounds like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u55wZLBQPS4

ok beasley was going a little wild with the voice samples on this one. maybe he just didn't give a shit about the genesis version of the soundtrack, or maybe the emulation on the genesis version is off (that happens sometimes). anyway yeah it's not great but i've heard worse honestly lol