Rolling around at the speed of sound
got places to go
gotta FOLLOW MY RAINBOW
Come at me.
An undisputed classic. Xenon 2 was the first game I ever played (I was maybe six?). My dad would put me on his knee and my job was to hammer the space bar and fire as fast as I could*. All to that pumping soundtrack.
In fairness though, Megablast probably deserves to be heard in its full, non-Amiga glory:
Since you’re tugging on my nostalgia, here’s a track from another shmup[ish] game that came out a decade later. I don’t think it’s as well known as Xenon 2 (or Megablast), but it intersected with the electronic/trance phase of my life at just the right moment and still gives me the feels:
* You could buy an autofire upgrade in the shop IIRC but you had to get a few of them before they were really effective. Why waste the creds when you can outsource child labour instead?
While the game was a somewhat forgettable the theme was not. This came to mind immediately.
I mean, this is easy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiHDmyhE1A
Also the only video game OST to have won a grammy.
I mean I rolled this out (ha) in the Thunderdome, but if you’re giving me another excuse…
Nothing beats that.
Cool story bro.
I’m also used to being dismissed when trying to find other people who do not like themes.
Don’t worry, I know a place where you’ll fit right in:
Friends I have no interest in this topic of discussion. I need you all to know this.
I’ll throw these three up for consideration, as I’ve always found them to be perfect for their respective games, and extremely memorable as well. From the greatest era of PC gaming…
Mafia
Max Payne
Deus Ex
There are so many others from the same timeframe that I’ll toss into the thread if nobody else does first.
Not sure about the best but man I was humming this out of the blue for no reason the other day. NES Music Orchestrated - Rush'n Attack - Stage 01 - YouTube
Anything from Óscar Araujo Lord of Shadows. Seriously, the best gd video game music.
All of this, hell yes.
These were the formative ones for me. The modular DX theme by Alexander Brandon, in particular, is my all-time favorite.
The Project Cars games were of… let’s call it variable quality, but the sound track was an absolute banger.
Sitting in a lobby waiting for a race while the main theme played was a great scene setter and I’d get goosebumps when the build and drop happened about 1:30 in.
The full soundtrack if you’re looking to kill about two hours.
The build at 58 minutes to the part where the drums and guitars come in just before 59 minutes… Best thing about the game!
Those classic Black Isle/Bioware games had some great music and I generally listened to the theme songs waaaay too much as I tried to roll up perfect characters.
Baldur’s Gate 1 is probably my all time favorite one though.
Starting up Baldur’s Gate 2 gave me a mild heart attack if I forgot to turn the volume down (you are warned!). All the fun came right out of the gate (ha!) though so I’d rank it below BG1’s.
I think Bethesda took the whole full orchestra main theme to another level though. Since Morrowind is already up, here is Oblivion’s, which is pretty great in its own right.
I really loved this when I finished the game. It was one of the very first games I played though with my kids, and this song just somehow ‘hit’ with how the story ended. (Yes yes, end credits, not main theme. Hush, telling a tear jerking story here).
How could I forget! Remember how the box hyped this up?
Only C64 version counts! Digital sampling on the SID chip was mind blowing at the time.
If this is actually the first thread ever on Qt3 dedicated to posting favorite game music then I vote we just all commit seppuku.
However, since it’s here, and since Ultima III already got a mention (yay), I’ll put in a few. These are tracks that feel more like ‘songs’ and less like I dunno, symphonies or electronic odysseys, just in keeping with the title. So I’m going more for brevity and catchiness/tunefulness.
https://youtu.be/Cys62eitVic?t=61
