c4countdown

There are many reasons why you could like playing a particular console game and one of these reasons could be the soundtrack that features in the game. Does anyone here have any favourite songs from any console game?

For example I like listening to:

"Believe in Myself" by Karen Brake (Sonic Adventure DX)
"Alpine" by Twice A Man (Kula World)
"Like It Like This Like That" by Hideki Naganuma (Jet Set Radio Future)

I used to think this was pretty good when I was little:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B93QQvL0CGQ

Best game ever.

Jay S wrote:I used to think this was pretty good when I was little:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B93QQvL0CGQ

Best game ever.

I like the ending and credits music in the Sonic 2 game.

Ah, my kind of thread. Let's start with an oldie but a goodie- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vwIEqNWykzM and a free speedrun too!

...And undoubtedly the 16-bit era's finest sonic (no pun intended) achievement, if only for the fact it was almost certainly written by Michael Jackson- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=f_oUfB6-JF4

This- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kxJE6SSX-aw -is quite possibly the greatest video game bgm of the last ten years. Hell, after listening to it on a demo of the game it actually sold me not only the game, but the PS2 to play it on. Okay, I already loved the series, but still...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eyoR-Pg6o0c -familiar to anyone with a Wii and good taste in games. Simply epic.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=P_j5UafFl5g -I've loved the series for ten years, so this sends a shiver down my spine every time I hear it. As does the end credit music of the original game- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=URTt_imRTlM

...And of course, any discussion of videogame music can't be complete without a mention of the ultimate musical phenomenon that is this beast- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI -and playing it in Rock Band just makes it oh so sweet. (and the Mirror's Edge track of the same name- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dO5CD6Yv8a4 -ain't bad either.)

Ben Wilson wrote:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eyoR-Pg6o0c -familiar to anyone with a Wii and good taste in games. Simply epic.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=P_j5UafFl5g -I've loved the series for ten years, so this sends a shiver down my spine every time I hear it. As does the end credit music of the original game- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=URTt_imRTlM

Also just to add to the Wii songs Mario Kart Credits. I forgot about Brawl (I haven't been able to play that in ages )

And also just to add to the MGS range, MGS2 Intro

Joseph Bolas wrote:And also just to add to the MGS range, MGS2 Intro

When compiling the MGS range, how could we forget this example of sheer awesomeness- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oCgeHDFIFLY ?

Ben Wilson wrote:

Joseph Bolas wrote:And also just to add to the MGS range, MGS2 Intro

When compiling the MGS range, how could we forget this example of sheer awesomeness- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oCgeHDFIFLY ?

To be honest, I didn't really like Snake Eater. I played it once and have not played it since then.

The Jet Set Radio Future soundtrack was full of classics, my favourite was Birthday Cake by Cibo Matto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MqbYn2ZRsc

The music from Sonic CD was top grade, full of awesome rave and J-Pop numbers like this one http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dPiZAu6TPmI and I agree Joseph, the Sonic 2 ending music is really sweet.

Ben, I love the FFX soundtrack. Masashi Hamauzu's music is genius.

No discussion of videogame music is complete though without this: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1PxS-8fbNqU . All of Soyo Oka's music is brilliant, especially the original Sim City for the SNES soundtrack.

First off I'm going to assume no-one has mentioned ocremix because everyone already knows about its awesomeness (e.g.).

(I'm also presuming it's cheating to mention music from RAGs.)

The closing credits from Super Mario Land (the original Game Boy one) is really quite awesome, and sets off my nostalgia-ometer no end (if you haven't heard it before, make sure you listen past the 30 second intro to get to the good stuff).

More recently I was quite impressed by the music in Sonic Rush - pretty much every track is awesome (and there's obviously more than just those I've linked to), and it's the first game I can remember in recent times playing for the music more than the game (although the game is quite fun too). I think it's also quite interesting seeing a Sonic game continuing the series' form of excellent music, but in a relatively different style to what's come before.

Metroid Prime also has a good track record. (haha, track record, I made a funny)

And just because I've been playing it recently, one example of the surprisingly good stuff from Donkey Kong Country 2.

Expect more when I inevitably remember heaps of other stuff.

Ben Hunter wrote:The Jet Set Radio Future soundtrack was full of classics, my favourite was Birthday Cake by Cibo Matto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MqbYn2ZRsc.

I had to google for the lyrics in the end on that song, because I couldn't understand it

Concept Of Love and Oldies But Hippies are quite good as well.

I assume we're allowed PC games too? I really liked the Deus Ex (the original, not the travesty of a sequel) soundtrack, and Total Annihilation is another one with a beautifully constructed soundscape.

I've never played Beatmania, but found this when I was browsing for piano music on youtube, and was reasonably entertained.

Tangenitally, these folk dances where penned well before the invention of the (digital) computer, but they strike my ears as a strange sort of precursor to a lot of the music you'd have heard in 70s and 80s console games, and on the gameboy, particularly the one starting at 3:35. Exquisitely played too.

Paul Howe wrote:I assume we're allowed PC games too? I really liked the Deus Ex (the original, not the travesty of a sequel) soundtrack, and Total Annihilation is another one with a beautifully constructed soundscape.

Yes, PC games are included are in the topic

Paul Howe wrote:I've never played Beatmania, but found this when I was browsing for piano music on youtube, and was reasonably entertained.

I remember playing something called Tap-A-Jam and one of the music tracks included was The Flight of the Bumblebee, I think.

Joseph Bolas wrote:
I remember playing something called Tap-A-Jam and one of the music tracks included was The Flight of the Bumblebee, I think.

Assuming its the same thing, that's a famous piece by Rimsky-Korsakov and isn't as hard to play as it sounds.

Paul Howe wrote:...Tangenitally...

You want to be careful there

Paul Howe wrote:

Joseph Bolas wrote:
I remember playing something called Tap-A-Jam and one of the music tracks included was The Flight of the Bumblebee, I think.

Assuming its the same thing, that's a famous piece by Rimsky-Korsakov and isn't as hard to play as it sounds.

I think it is the same, yeah.

When I play Burnout Dominator (can't wait to get an Xbox and Burnout Paradise), there's normally only one song I listen to when I play it.

Just about anything from Final Fantasy VII for me. I can play a little of Tifa's theme on the keyboard.

I recently came across a game on YouTube called Boom Boom Rocket, which is one of these games where you have to press buttons in time to the music. Two of the best songs (from what I have seen) include Moonlight Sonata and the William Tell Overture.

Joseph Bolas wrote:I recently came across a game on YouTube called Boom Boom Rocket, which is one of these games where you have to press buttons in time to the music. Two of the best songs (from what I have seen) include Moonlight Sonata and the William Tell Overture.

Just to be picky (because I know you'd want me to be), neither of those is a song.

Phil Reynolds wrote:

Joseph Bolas wrote:I recently came across a game on YouTube called Boom Boom Rocket, which is one of these games where you have to press buttons in time to the music. Two of the best (from what I have seen) include Moonlight Sonata and the William Tell Overture.

Just to be picky (because I know you'd want me to be), neither of those is a song.

Well yeah, that was a mistake, but they are still good

The FFX soundtrack is great, I was particularly struck by this haunting song. As for FFVII, this version of One-Winged Angel is my favourite. As for Pokémon music, I like all of Red/Blue/Silver/Gold's music, so there's no point posting it, and a large amount of Ruby/Sapphire's music. As for Diamond and Pearl, they weren't great. The final piece of music is from a rather retro game that I haven't played personally- Mach Rider. However, with the music for it being included in Super Smash Bros. Melee, I got a chance to hear an updated version. Updated version and the retro version, complete with gameplay video (Mach Rider).

Some Amiga classics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w-tiRnac2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_oW6AOXkdE

In a few days time, Silent Hill: Homecoming (the 6th instalment of the SH series) comes out on the Xbox 360. My favourite SH song I have listened to is from SH4: The Room, called Room Of Angel.

I always quite liked racing to the Chemical Brothers tune from Wipeout.

Also, the melody from Bubble Bobble is nice and catchy, and you can't beat Manic Miner's ditty of course...

Althrough instrumental pieces, Tomb Raider had some good ones as well.

In TR2, when you are at Lara's House, there is a switch in the hall that plays a short bit of instrumental music, but I don't know what its called.

Also going by the TR2 Soundtrack, I like the Skidoo Pursuit music.

Just recently, Outrun Online Arcade came out for the Xbox on the Live Arcade and Splash Wave is one the best pieces of music I have heard.

Nah. Passing Breeze is the original and best.

Sounds even better in the arcade. 4'56 is my PB for completing the course - one of my favourite pounds sterling spent in recent memory!


Jeff

I think that the last three songs posted here have been absolutely awful and completely unoriginal.

The song "Still Alive" from the game Portal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI By Jonathan Coulton
(which is simply hilarious)

The song "Downstream" from the game Braid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kflCLshkOg by Shira Kammen.

"The Pacemaker" from the game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOCb8-2p ... re=related by Magnet.

Quake soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails.
For something more recent, the score in F.E.A.R. 2 is great I recall.

Jeff Clayton wrote:Nah. Passing Breeze is the original and best.

Sounds even better in the arcade. 4'56 is my PB for completing the course - one of my favourite pounds sterling spent in recent memory!


Jeff

Wot no Magical Sound Shower love? :-/ Even better when you realise it was also in Shenmue.

Ooh, speaking of Shenmue...

What are console games?

Derek Hazell wrote:What are console games?

Games you play when you feel sad.

Michael Wallace wrote:Games you play when you feel sad.

Haha, that's pretty good.

Jeff Clayton wrote:Nah. Passing Breeze is the original and best.

Sounds even better in the arcade. 4'56 is my PB for completing the course - one of my favourite pounds sterling spent in recent memory!


Jeff

My PB so far is 4'40, via route 'D' (going Right, Left, Right, Right) and this route is meant to actually be the easiest route to getting a time of under 4'30 and unlocking an achievement.

An oft-underrated classic.

Ben Wilson wrote:An oft-underrated classic.

I absolutely love this game.

Ace game. Played 'twenty questions' the other night and I used Cool Spot as my thing, took em fucking ages. Great music too, I loved the funky 'behind the wall' music

The Monty On The Run music on the C64 by Rob Hubbard (from back in 1985!) is probably still my favourite. It's difficult to explain now what an impact this and Hubbard's other themes had at the time - nobody had really exploited the C64's sound chip to this extent before and it was a revelation. What makes it even more amazing is that he had to fit the entire theme (about 6 minutes) and the end credits music (another couple of minutes or so) into something ridiculous like 7 kilobytes of RAM.

Oh, and I'd forgotten how good this was - the game was shit but at £1.99 was genuinely worth buying for the music alone.

JimBentley wrote:The Monty On The Run music on the C64 by Rob Hubbard (from back in 1985!) is probably still my favourite. It's difficult to explain now what an impact this and Hubbard's other themes had at the time - nobody had really exploited the C64's sound chip to this extent before and it was a revelation. What makes it even more amazing is that he had to fit the entire theme (about 6 minutes) and the end credits music (another couple of minutes or so) into something ridiculous like 7 kilobytes of RAM.

Wow, that was seriously awesome. Was the rest of the game comparable?

Charlie Reams wrote:

JimBentley wrote:The Monty On The Run music on the C64 by Rob Hubbard (from back in 1985!) is probably still my favourite. It's difficult to explain now what an impact this and Hubbard's other themes had at the time - nobody had really exploited the C64's sound chip to this extent before and it was a revelation. What makes it even more amazing is that he had to fit the entire theme (about 6 minutes) and the end credits music (another couple of minutes or so) into something ridiculous like 7 kilobytes of RAM.

Wow, that was seriously awesome. Was the rest of the game comparable?

Indeed. It probably wouldn't stand up very well nowadays, but for the time it was a damn good platform game. Most platformers made the mistake of being stupidly easy (Chuckie Egg, Bruce Lee), unforgivingly hard (Fahrenheit 3000, many others) or just so buggy that they were impossible (Jet Set Willy) but Monty On The Run pitched it just right.

A little different in style to the rest of the thread, but the theme tune from Madden 2000 by Ludacris never fails to get me pumped up. Epic choon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1prWUfkud0

I BRING THE BANGS SO WHAT YOU GON' DO?

I loved the Monty games, especially Auf Wiedersehen Monty, which had probably the most awesome videogame theme ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQG8vkNG8aM. Also check out this sweet remix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfpyFIvTbGc

Ben Hunter wrote:I loved the Monty games, especially Auf Wiedersehen Monty, which had probably the most awesome videogame theme ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQG8vkNG8aM. Also check out this sweet remix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfpyFIvTbGc

Excellent! I'd not heard the Auf Wiedersehen Monty theme before but it is indeed splendid.

Incidentally, anyone who likes C64 chiptunes should download SIDplayer, which is a perfect SID chip emulator, then the music from pretty much every C64 game ever made can be obtained from here in original 8-bit perfection (far better quality than youtube and the files are tiny, typically 10,000 bytes or less). Drifting off-topic for a second, that's one of the things that's always annoyed me about youtube, it encodes audio at a really shitty quality. When a five minute video clip's going to be about 40 or 50 megabytes anyway, why is the sound squeezed down to 1.5Mb when it could be done at a decent quality for 6Mb or so and make scant difference to the total filesize? The fucking cunts, they treat us like pricks.

Reviving this thread to say this and to see if anyone else gets the extra significance of the music.

Ben Wilson wrote:Reviving this thread to say this and to see if anyone else gets the extra significance of the music.

That's a great one. I instantly (from the first couple of seconds, anyway) had it down as a classic David Whittaker composition but apparently someone else did it. What is the extra significance?

Ben Hunter wrote:I loved the Monty games, especially Auf Wiedersehen Monty, which had probably the most awesome videogame theme ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQG8vkNG8aM. Also check out this sweet remix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfpyFIvTbGc

I can't remember whether I noticed this post at the time, but I loved both Monty on the Run and Auf Wiedersehen Monty, and have versions of the tunes of both games on my phone.

Charlie Reams wrote:

JimBentley wrote:The Monty On The Run music on the C64 by Rob Hubbard (from back in 1985!) is probably still my favourite. It's difficult to explain now what an impact this and Hubbard's other themes had at the time - nobody had really exploited the C64's sound chip to this extent before and it was a revelation. What makes it even more amazing is that he had to fit the entire theme (about 6 minutes) and the end credits music (another couple of minutes or so) into something ridiculous like 7 kilobytes of RAM.

Wow, that was seriously awesome. Was the rest of the game comparable?

The game is awesome.

Oh, the song from a secret level on PS1 Doom - Club Doom.

In terms of nostalgia, these two songs from Pokémon Colosseum for the GameCube win it for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZsOwo9rhsQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owXv2qq5XGE

I got into Nintendo games at an extremely odd time (and at an older age than most first-timers), and this was the first game I owned, followed closely by Super Mario Sunshine. Previously, I had ordered late-1990s Apple Macintosh games through a monthly catalogue, and the music in these was typically very lacking, if indeed any was present at all. The only decent soundtrack was from a game called Harry the Handsome Executive, and it appears to have been yanked off of YouTube within the past week.

They never offered the ZX Spectrum in North America. Shame, as it seems it would have been glorious to grow up with (and to reminisce about years down the road).

I remember a game song with the lyrics ' war, never been so much fun' can't remember the game though

Johnny Canuck wrote:They never offered the ZX Spectrum in North America. Shame, as it seems it would have been glorious to grow up with (and to reminisce about years down the road).

Yeah, Sinclair (as far as I know) didn't enter the US market at all. I think they licensed the design to Timex, who sold some sort of version in America.

Marc Meakin wrote:I remember a game song with the lyrics ' war, never been so much fun' can't remember the game though

The rather excellent Cannon Fodder.

In the Rob Hubbard debate, I thought Action Biker was his best tune. Tony Crowther did a good job on Suicide Express, especially considering he was a game writer rather than just doing the music.

Fred Mumford wrote:In the Rob Hubbard debate, I thought Action Biker was his best tune. Tony Crowther did a good job on Suicide Express, especially considering he was a game writer rather than just doing the music.

I in was a funny little computer shop sometime in Newcastle, sometime around 1987 or 1988 and along with the C64 and Spectrum games, they had a music cassette with about a dozen of Rob Hubbard's best C64 tunes on it. I really wish i'd bought it now but at the time I reasoned that I could just record them from a mate's C64 instead.

Might have a look for it on ebay; thanks for the timely reminder, Fred!

I did make a tape of all my fave C64 tunes once I knew its days were numbered (ie that I was getting an Amiga). Must dig it out.

Rob Hubbard also did an excellent synth piece of music that was featured on a freebie tape that came with one of the issues of Zzap! 64. Worth checking out if you are a fan.

I can't find a video of the C64 original but this one- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDhWG2MUzOE -always makes me smile, especially because of the surreal afternoon I spent in an airport in Belfast where the current World Scrabble Champion began humming it with very little provocation.

Actually, the entire soundtrack to Tempest 2000 is worth listening to, especially the bonus level music.

I loved the soundtrack to I think it was FIFA 14. It just seemed realistic to what a player would listen to before a game, and was also quite funky.

Also, when I type A on my phone, the two auto-options are vowel and consonant!

Euan Slatter wrote:I loved the soundtrack to I think it was FIFA 14. It just seemed realistic to what a player would listen to before a game, and was also quite funky.

That's probably because EA license existing tracks for their FIFA games; we were rather talking about music specifically written for games. I would say that whoever's in charge of choosing the songs does a good job, though.

My favourite game soundtracks are:

Super Mario World, especially Fortress
Dark Souls - Here's a class metal medley of the soundtrack
Street Fighter 2 - Don't think you can have a video game music thread without mentioning Smooth McGroove
Killer instinct - Struggled to pick an absolute favourite so just went with this one