General Game Music Thread

[wankerness]

Not just NES! I'm keeping this here where with the real nerds where people will talk about it and it won't instantly get swamped with people posting youtube videos of Zelda OOT or Tony Hawk 2 or whatever soundtrack excerpts with no commentary.

I picked up the Orchestral versions of Nier/Nier Automata when I was in Japan a couple weeks ago. I'm kind of disappointed that they're truly Orchestral, so all the vocal stuff is a huge choir! It means that they're well and truly arrangements, though, instead of just direct translations. Surprisingly the Nier one might be better than N:A, even though with the actual game soundtracks N:A is greatly superior. The Kaine arrangement in particular is really damn good, even if it goes too far into cheesy territory towards the end with big stupid cymbal crashes (something a lot of orchestral arrangements could stand to learn not to do).

I have the Persona 5 and Gravity Daze [Rush] 2 soundtracks set to be delivered today, so that should be good times.

I've been playing Ys VIII (Action RPG with gameplay more like Zelda than a J-RPG) the last couple weeks and the music is so great, reminds me of how I felt listening to the soundtrack to like, Mega Man X3 or F-Zero X back in the day. Lots of catchy cool guitar leads and high tempos.

 

[Lorcan Ward]

Thats an oldschool sounding track for sure! Its just begging for a guitar recording.

The BG 2 opening theme just fills me with nostalgia. The opening few bars make me want to install and play it right now.


This is one of my fav game tracks, it just captures the atmosphere of the game's quiet moments so well.


This was a great piece for the game because you got little snippets that perfectly set up a scene and then got the full piece for the ending. These point and click adventure games had such fitting music.


This Witcher 3 track that plays during fights is just perfection. The scratchy tinny sounding stringed instruments, followed by the high screaming and the le le le melodies that would usually be played on an instrument, but sung instead. You know its a good soundtrack when you pause the game to just take in the music.

 

[wankerness]

Witcher 3 had some good music, but not the kind that made me run out and get the soundtrack. I loved all the creepy violin stuff during like, the scenes with the witches with the covered faces. That battle music was in the same vein but less in-your-face. I'd forgotten it entirely until I listened to that! I don't know the word for that genre, but it reminded me of what I think of when I think of creepy English folk music that would have been written by druids, or something. There's some influence from the Suspiria (1977) soundtrack, I think, with the kinds of string sounds and playing along with the creepy vocals.

Your second link is from "Icewind Dale 2"? I've never even heard of that!! Haven't played the other two, either. Old-school stuff! Baldur's Gate 2 definitely has the same kind of music that Dragon Age and World of Warcraft and Skyrim and whatnot continued the tradition of. They have more memorable orchestral stuff than most big-budget movies these days, sadly.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

If we're mentioning Nihon Falcom's Sound Team jdk, this needs to be posted:



...and that's just one of a plethora of awesome.


Game Music is pretty much my bread and butter, perhaps more than 'normal' music especially nowadays. I've amassed a rather ridiculous collection, both physical and digital to point of beyond redemption.

I'm currently giving this the rounds in the car:

While I was already loving game music from the NES, the original Secret Of Mana was what really made me take game music much more seriously. I already heard a lot of bad stuff about the remake, but I ended up getting the OST for it anyway, because some of the arrangers like Tsuyoshi Sekito (Black Mages, Last Remnant-crap game great OST) involved . Yeah, there's some tracks that completely transcend the original, some that works just fine, but there's some tracks that were arranged and even mixed with unlistenable results.

The album was produced by the original composer Hiroki Kikuta so I'm baffled with some of his choices in the arrangements. Some of them just kill the originals or just end up like amateur fan midi mixes you can get from the depths of Overclocked or vgmusic.com. But as I said, there's some great selections, so let's just say it's alright overall.

One of the better remixes:





I will say my favorite OST of the year comes from a game I've yet played. Simply because I'm so familiar with the prequel. 5 discs from Yasunori Mitsuda and a team of top tier talent.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

The mention of Icewind Dale made me think of Jeremy Soule's long spanning and fascinating career. I remember when I found out that he became a big name scoring all the Elder Scrolls games, Star Wars KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Total Annihilation, and thought, wow that's awesome. And he continued to get better and better.

Prior to that, all I knew about him was Secret Of Evermore: the American bastard child of the now sadly maligned Mana series. It was everything you'd expect from a Secret Of Mana clone, much to it's success as it's own detriment. It had its fans, and while I didn't care for it myself, I will say it's a solid game and better than a lot of the new Mana games. The music was the best aspect of the game. And while it didn't touch Hiroki Kikuta's works in Mana and SD3, it was still pretty great and showed that Soule was on to something big.



Mad respect to Soule from his humble beginnings to Skyrim and beyond.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Since I'm still on a Yakuza high, thought I may as well do a review of one of their more interesting compilation albums:

Yakuza soundtracks are generally pretty awesome but their OSTs are huge and difficult to obtain outside digital. The moment I found out there was a Goro Majima karaoke album in limited quantities, I rushed to a site that had them available and ordered it. I didn't get Kazuma Kiryu's album, namely due to voice actor Takaya Kuroda being an accomplished singer and having his own band, thus novelty appeal wasn't as strong. Though it's becoming rarer these days (one available in Shinjuku's Don Quixote ebay store appropriately enough). I might consider it.

This album does exactly what it says. Yakuza's authentically presented karaoke songs sung by series fan favorite boggle eyed loon Goro Majima be it lead or interjecting. A great novelty album, but I've got a few quibbles.

Opening with As Long As You're Happy (Kiwami 2) in all it's glory sets the album pretty nicely. All the songs that Majima sings are here full spec and quite a spectacle. Between the opener and his glorious version of Get To The Top (Dead Souls) is one of the reasons you want a silly album like this. The more tamer moments like 24 Hour Cinderella (0), which perhaps Majima at his most normal to his own Image song Majima no MajiROCK shows that voice actor Hidenari Ugaki can hold a tune, while nowhere near as well as some of the other mains (Akiyama comes to mind), is sufficient enough. Perhaps my favorite of his solo songs was Samurai Ondo (Isshin) in full enka arrangement and that signature wail and completely forgetting the lyrics at one point. It's a true testament to Ugaki really laying right into the character.

The rest of the album are all the songs Majima has interjected over the series. This is another large novelty appeal in the karaoke sections of the games and they're as hilarious as ever here. But it's also where all the problems lie.

So to get the good out of the way. Pride From Despair (Kiwami 2) is awesome drop-A heavy J-Rock lead by Kiryu and Majima getting to soliloquise in parts. It's bombastic and a great Yakuza motif and one of the strongest songs on the entire series. x3 Shine (0, Kiwami 2) and Ring (5, Kiwami 2) also has both characters doing their interjections. The former being the better in the silly sense. Yuki's techno remix in Kiwami 2 (Euro de x3 Shine) also shows up but the interjections are the same. One of the bigger surprises was Haruka's version of Get To The Top (Dead Souls), that includes all 4 playable characters (Kiryu, Majima, Akiyama and Ryuji) all jumping in and 'ruining' the song in full intensity. It's a nice reminder to anyone who's forgotten or had no idea how the song melody was supposed to go after Majima's rendition.

Now for the not so good. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but if I wanted an album with Majima yelling all over it like in the game, I expected that. However some songs were slightly edited to differ. Some of the Yays and cheers are absent with some of his wailing laugh is recycled and reused throughout. Raindrops (4, Dead Souls) has Majima mixed rather low. He's still prominent but some of the shrieking is buried in the mix. But on the flip side I'm glad they used 4's mix as it's the better arrangement and it has the benefit of having prominent voice actress/singer Aya Hirano singing (who out sings every other version).

The songs that suffer the most are the 2 that show up in 0. Heartbreak Mermaid is the biggest offender as the developers decided that going for the DJ Majima approach and feeding all his interjections into an auto tuned vocoder was a good idea. So the immersion of having the Mad Dog Of Shimano sitting in my car gleefully yelling along is marred in this track, though I still find the song enjoyable. Rouge Of Love isn't as badly affected. While obvious towards the final chorus with his parts being chopped and manipulated, it's more faithful towards the game. And it's still the best version of Rouge Of Love by far (the final cackle never fails to bring the laughs). Oddly enough Kiryu's version is the tamest, the 2 in Yakuza 5 do much better, but I digress.

There's 3 bonus tracks. 2 versions of the Majima Construction Theme are here: the original and a karaoke version (I suppose if you know how the English version goes). It's a nice touch. And the last is the original version of Pride From Despair with Kiryu doing all the parts. Still awesome without Majima.

TL/DR: This is a novelty compilation album through and through. Aside from a few quibbles on my end, it's still a fun barrel of hilarity. A nice fanservice on Sega's end for the Yakuza fans. For everyone else... well, the whole album's on YouTube to you can check it out if you're mildly curious. Don't say I didn't warn you.

 

[wankerness]

While I love Yakuza, your description sounds like listening to Leonard Nimoy's original album or something. Those games have a lot of good music in them! And it usually isn't the karaoke songs, let alone ones with Majima singing/yelling over them! You're a much more dedicated fan than I, apparently.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

I can get obsessive with game music in general yes.

As stated, I only brought the Majima album purely for novelty purposes, mainly to scare the crap out of anyone who happens to be in my car when it's on. The karaoke songs on their own are so hilariously camp, yet so sincerely well done (basically my outlook on the entire Yakuza series really), I can't help appreciate them as somebody who's listen to truckloads of J-music for a long time. Majima is just the icing, and it's a rarity if ever for games to do this kind of thing. As far as I know, Saints Row The Third and 4 are the only games that came remotely close, 4 in particular being awesome actually.

And yeah, they're not even the best part of the Yakuza's music library. I mean:



A game that allows you to destroy a urinal by violently smashing another man's face into it, while tusk is being played in the background, is a shiny gold star in my book.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

But that's enough of me riding the far east. Let's talk about an awesome dude who just happens to be in my neck of the woods:



I could have just posted anything from Doom, but this was the song that got me into Mick Gordon's stuff. It also blew me away that he taught himself throat singing just for the track. Such a shame that Killer Instinct 13 was held hostage as an XbOne exclusive, but enough digression.

And yeah, everyone knows the rest of the story: he then proceeded to blow everyone away with his scores for Wolfenstein New Order (onwards) and Deum. Not familiar with his work on Prey, I should check that out soon. Gordon may be the only guy who's ever written with a 9 string that I actually like. Looking forward to what he comes up with for Doom Eternal.

 

[wankerness]

Ugh. Killer Instinct almost made me buy an xbox one at launch. Years later, and it's still the only reason I want one

THe first game system I got was an SNES, and it was the release that shipped with Killer Instinct, and it came with a CD of all the music in its hi-rez versions ("Killer Cuts"). I listened to that a TON. It was kind of formative to my tastes. After listening to plenty of the main theme and the tracks without lyrics, I went right into listening to Megadeth

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Managed to score the last copy of Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana OST from my usual nerd ephemera store. So that's doing the rounds in the car for a while.

Funny enough Falcom Sound Team jdk released a Christmas themed 2 song single for the game. It's more novelty but the remix of Iclusian Dance is awesome (if the original wasn't already cool enough).

 

[Malkav]

I've really been digging on the Dark Souls 1 OST, some of the tracks are just super memorable for me and really nicely written

 

[GatherTheArsenal]

Best thread to pop up on SSO in awhile, good idea

Some of the best music I have comes from game ost's. As you guys may agree, a well composed soundtrack gives an otherwise alright game that extra something that makes it so memorable. Case in point, say what you will about the Fable series and their shortcomings but their soundtracks IMO are hauntingly beautiful. Especially the first one.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

I've really been digging on the Dark Souls 1 OST,

They're all consistently great for that dark dissonant atonal horror vibe. I've got the OSTs for 1 and 2 in the car. Need to find 3 and planning to buy the Bloodborne OST as well.

What amazes me about the Souls music is it's the first time the composer has written in this style. Most of his stuff prior are mostly the standard JRPG affair (namely the Tales and Star Ocean series). I even did a full thread about him a while back.

Also he's awesome live, performing with a trio in full Keith Emerson style.

 

[Sumsar]

Just found this thread now, lots of good stuff

My obvious favorite is obviously Castlevania Symphony of The Night:



I think PS1 games was the first to have really great music quality to it, and prompting a lot of focus to be put on the OST, with several parts actually being performed instead of just being MIDI, even though I think most of the orchestral stuff on SOTN is sampled.

Also another old but gold one for me is the Heavey Gear 2 soundtrack from 1999:



I remember playing this on my fathers first home PC in like 2000 and the game and the music just completelt blew away the 11 or 12 year old me such an atmostphere it had!

 

[wankerness]

SOTN is a classic soundtrack alright. It was my go-to pick for best videogame soundtrack from when I bought it back in the PS1 era until just the last few years. It's REALLY varied and thus there's some bad stuff on it, especially the second castle where it seems like more than half of the zones share the same music and some others are switched to much more boring new stuff like that calm chapel music, but there's tons of stuff on it that's still up there with my favorite. And besides the wonderful stuff like the latin-y crystal cave music, we get some of the all-time great nerdy videogame metal stuff with Tragic Prince and that "b-side" embedded on the disc but not used in the game with Bloody Tears done with actual guitars. I remember getting into bands back in high school purely based on people telling me they sounded like Tragic Prince!!

I'm not sure if that orchestra stuff is fake for the most part. Midi stuff really didn't sound very good 20 years ago, and most of that doesn't sound bad. I think they probably hired one since a lot of the tracks don't have orchestra and thus it would have maybe been affordable?

Recent game soundtrack reactions:

Dragon Quest XI has some of the stupidest music ever, especially sonically, but damned if it doesn't cause a sort of Stockholm Syndrome in which you come to start appreciating it and think that yes, this was the right way for it to sound. Then you finish the game, look back on it, and go "that really was shit!!!"

AC: Odyssey sounds like the Witcher 3's soundtrack, which is a good thing. I was surprised to see that the guys that did it didn't do Witcher 3, and instead did Horizon Zero Dawn, which is another good one. But it has a lot of the same twisty vocal lines and strange exoticism that Witcher 3 had.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Looking forward to what he comes up with for Doom Eternal.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

For those interested:

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/02/12/capcom-game-soundtracks-spotify/

Capcom just uploaded a ridiculous amount of their soundtrack backlog onto Spotify. A few selections are region locked like Monster Hunter World and all of Resident Evil, but Capcom have a rich amount of great music. Seriously, Megaman, Street Fighter, Ace Attorney, Okami, Breath Of Fire, Sengoku Basara… some excellent game music right there.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

For the Octopath Traveller fans (assuming I'm not the only one here who enjoyed the music)...

https://store.na.square-enix-games....octopath-traveler-arrangements-break-boost-cd

Square Enix have released a 'Break' and 'Boost' arrangement album of selected tracks from Yasunori Nishiki's soundtrack. But what's worth noting is some of the talent involved. Fans of G5 Project and GOD Guitarists On Demand will recognise the names: Masahiro 'Godspeed' Aoki, Mitsuyo, Ren, Yamato, Zenko Mitsuya; so it's certain there's a lot of tasty melodies with face melting shred involved.

 

[dr_game0ver]

cause F*ck Tristram theme!