General Game Music Thread

[BenjaminW]

Fucking kick ass harmonies and riffs galore.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

This one always makes me weepy.

 

[Lorcan Ward]

^Inon Zur is a really good composer.

 

[wankerness]

What part of that is particularly good? I ain't listenin' to no 60 minute video!

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

For the Castlevania fans:

The Castlevania Sound Team just uploaded a megacrapton of the series' soundtracks for streaming. That's 30 years worth of quality game music.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Nurpyl4Q3KHXmqf7QMcfB?si=I5pIl2ywTomikIu2JBIVxA

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/castlevania-sound-team/1459082826

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=castlevaniasoundteam&c=music

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Since the soundtrack to Ys VIII is still rocking my car, Nihon Falcom just released a Super Ultimate album of arrangements of selected tracks.

Going through some of the samples, there's a fair amount of vocal tracks so if J-Pop/J-Rock isn't your thing the vocals won't win you over. But the instrumentals ain't bad, some greatness buried in there.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Saw this on my youtube feed:



While I'd rate Green Hill Zone a little higher, and probably add Chemical Plant, it's pretty hard to argue against that list.

With all due respect to Crush 40, to me, original Sonic composer Masato Nakamura will always be the soundtrack to Sonic. A great ear for composition and melody and was the first to push the Genesis/Mega Drive sound capabilities as per his music has testified. Also helps that he's the bassist/composer/director of J-Pop band Dreams Come True who have churned out countless hits since the late 80s until now. And of course he'd do something like ths:



I was also in a J-Pop band as bassist/backing vocalist and music director doing a bunch of Dreams Come True songs. The bass lines don't mess around either.

 

[Ralyks]

Figured this was the appropriate thread. All of the mainline Final Fantasy soundtracks were put up on Spotify and Apple Music. I have to drive 6 hours and back next week. This will do nicely.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Figured this was the appropriate thread. All of the mainline Final Fantasy soundtracks were put up on Spotify and Apple Music. I have to drive 6 hours and back next week. This will do nicely.

Yeah I was going to post that earlier, but got side tracked.

Link for the lazy.

50+ albums; that's a massive collection of excellent music. Even all post Nobuo Uematsu music and during the low point games like the XIII trilogy, the Final Fantasy music has been consistently good. I've got most of these already but even I think this is great news.

 

[wankerness]

13/13-2 are my favorite soundtracks by far. There’s plenty of skippable material on them but the high points are way higher than anything in 6/8/9/x/xii/xiv/xv.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

13/13-2 are my favorite soundtracks by far. There’s plenty of skippable material on them but the high points are way higher than anything in 6/8/9/x/xii/xiv/xv.

I'll be frank. As much as I've been a Nobuo Uematsu fan my entire life (introduced via Rad Racer on the NES and I freaking loved the 3 tracks there), I personally think Masashi Hamauzu is the best thing that happened to the Sqaure sound team. Especially since FF music was becoming less and less about character themes and more cinematic based.

That, and at that time, the old guard have since resigned and become freelancers. Hamauzu himself eventually following suit.

You can tell this in the FFX ost. Uematsu, despite some of the most memorable songs like To Zanarkand and Suteki Da Ne, wrote most of the weakest tracks in the game. The 2 semi newcomers Juna Nakano and Hamauzu brought a fresh dimension to what a FF game should be. In Hamauzu's case, I was introduced to his work in SaGa Frontier 2, which in itself also bought new life the series needed. He brought a complex Euro-Classical flavor to a mostly straight forward J-melodic genre, and pushing piano timbre and leitmotifs as far as one can go. Seriously, listen to that OST and you'll hear only 2 melodies stretched to 5 hours full of every harmonic possibility.





Naturally I was rapt when he was assisting on FFX, and in turn taking over the FFXIII series. You can tell he was doing something similar in XIII like all the variations of the focal themes like Lightning's and Serah's. He had help in the next 2 XIII games but they wrote some greats too (Naoshi Mizuta who's mainstay was the XI MMOs wrote Caius's theme, which is one of the stronger villain themes). His band Imeruat is pretty awesome too.

I will say that Hamauzu's stuff does get overbearing at times. Especially with all the sophisticated harmony used on a majority of his stuff, but then full game OSTs are generally hard to just binge listen, and that comes from a guy who does so on a regular basis.

 

[NotDonVito]

Thought this was kind of a funny reason to bump. Tak Fujii(yes THAT tak fujii ONE MIRRION TROOPS) apparently played guitar on the SOTN soundtrack, and came out on twitter recently regretting this song because his guitar was out of tune. It's still a classic, but I have no idea how I didn't notice that before.


https://twitter.com/Tak_Fujii/status/1236481421738311680?s=20