Favorite Game Music

Games
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Props for the mention of Gabriel Knight:Sins of the Fathers, but I fear that’s mainly my nostalgia kicking in.

For my part I’ll mention some notable C-64 tunes.

Rob Hubbard’s Commando is awesome.

Martin Galway’s Comic Bakery

Ocean Loaders 2&3. For those blissfully unaware of what a Loader track is, it was the music that played while you waited for the game to load from your cassette deck into the C-64’s internal memory. This usually took 4-5 minutes and the game companies thought we might want to have something to experience during the wait. So they included Loader tracks that played while you waited for the fun to start. Like elevator music, for games.

For those who want to get mp3’s of old C-64 tracks I recommend sid.oth4.com. The site offers up original re-recordings of hundreds of SID-tracks (the music format of the C-64) done through a SID hardware chip sound board to make sure it sounds just like it did when it played on an actual C-64 but even if you’re not quite as big of a music nerd as to demand exact fidelity it’s still an excellent site.

146

First time for everything aye? I found the music to be memorable and charming, in a good way. I certainly don’t expect everyone to adopt my point-of-view of course.

I probably should have mentioned Trine too, but I haven’t finished that one yet. And Manchiurim [sp?]

147

That & Morrowind both install with music folders full of simple MP3s. You don’t even have to rip them!

148

I’m of the opinion that out of all the HoMM games, HoMM II certainly had the best music.

I still get goosebumps when the organ starts playing in the knight town theme.…oh yeah, and then once again when the vocals come in.

149

Speaking of sid tunes on the C64, The Games: Summer Edition was an ok game but it was really interesting in terms of music. Even though it come out at the tail end of the 8-bit machine era I think the C64 version had better sounding music than it’s 16bit cousins despite it’s electric tin quality.

This was a game notable for it’s easter eggs, and the music in the diving event was intriguing as it was generated by some kind of routine. While perhaps not Brian Eno’s stuff, it seems to be just stitching something together, it was pretty cool to hear on a C64. If you attempt to play the sid file widely available on sidtune you’ll only get a few measures of the song and if you start over you’ll likely get a different set of measures. If you run the full game in an emulator you can get the whole idea. It’s not something you normally hear as you need to hang around doing nothing after a dive, but if you do, the song can transition into a distinctly different second sequence. I recorded three takes of it. The second take doesn’t transition but the others do.

Does anyone know of other examples of this kind of musical improvisation in early games?

150

A lot of great examples already mentioned.

I quite liked the menu music from Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty

151

Hey, any idea where one can get a copy of these tracks?

152

Actually, it’s pretty hard. They are only around as .ogg files, and you have to have a special converter to play them. Something like that. I remember doing it once years ago, and it took searching around for the player. I suggest searching the EVE online forums for more info.

A shame really. These tunes should be more readily available.

153

I even just like the Meadow (exploring) theme from HoMM II. HoMM III’s Grass theme is also good, but not as good as HoMM II’s Meadow.

I can’t believe I didn’t think to mention Fallout 3. Not an original soundtrack, but definitely a fantastic one.

154

A lot of the Eve stuff is on their website; I think there’s a big compilation someone made with all the Eve tracks (including the title tracks, which aren’t in the actual in-game playlist) and a few remixes (like Whiteraven’s Red Glowing Dust remix), but I don’t know where to find it off the top of my head. :/

155

Sigh, I was able to use an awesome program called save2pc to download these YT vids to MP3’s, but it still feels like I’m missing tracks. Ah well.

156

Oohhh, found a couple more EVE tracks here.

Makes me wanna sub to the game again, honestly.

Actually, searching on that site linked me to a bunch of tracks I didn’t have, like this.

157

Nah, most anything can play ogg these days.

158

This is the compilation I was talking about before – it’s a little out of date though.

http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Nu11u5/EVE_Soundtrack-Revelations_1.4_Edition.zip

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Big ups. Thanks for the link to that, made me smile. HOMM II’s music remains a gaming high point for me. Loved the overland stuff, and the operatic scores for the city screens made me orgasm.
One of the greatest games of all time.

160

Lords of the Realm II! That blissful pastoral music is just waiting to be shattered by battle music! With that playing you just know there’s going to be some swording, castling, and horsing going on.

161

Some awesome titles and platforms mentioned so far. I’ll add a couple i’ve not seen listed(if i didn’t miss them that is!):

The Sid Chip on the C64 was indeed(and is) awesome, but i always had a soft spot for the Pokey Chip on the atari 8bits, so here are some examples of the best of that platform(Atari 8 bit):

IIRC FOFT(‘Federation Of Free Traders’, an ‘Elite’ type clone) never got a release on the Atari, but this is one of the best Atari 8 bit tracks i feel, really uplifting, and kinda groovy!

Draconus was a game that came late in the life of the Atari 8Bit, it was pretty much a dead platform, so it was great to see this wonderful game, with it’s fantastic music get released.

Probably the only game song, music and lyrics, that made me shed a real tear! It helped if you understood the context of the game of course. This is from ‘Alternate Reality: The City’ by Philip Price. Only worth playing on the Atari 800 imo, the graphics and music made this my favourite Atari 8 bit game ever(i still play it, but on a PC via emulation).

That’s a decent and artfully arranged selection of Atari 8bit tunes game clips, i like the ‘old black and white tv’ look.

Next up comes the Amiga:

From the game ‘Agony’, a truely amazing bit of midi piano and an incredible composition, one of my top ten game tracks ever.

A compilation of Amiga game music, with links on the right to a bunch more.

Modern ‘real’ music is good and everything, but there is something about these older sounds that carry a special feeling, in terms of computer gaming. I have a 43hour playlist running on Deliplayer 2, that covers everything from early 8bit game tunes up to late 90’s PC midi tunes, and admittedly some newer stuff(like the great music pack from the CivIV Dune mod). Computer music can be amazing, when it isn’t the lowest priority in the game dev process.

162

I remember loving the FOFT music on the Amiga version – really cool, spacey feel.

Someone has kindly Youtubed another of my favorite Amiga tunes: Hybris

Its spiritual sequel Battle Squadron had great tunes too. Main tune. High score tune (could only find a non-original version).

I have very fond memories of the music/lyric bits in Alternate Reality.

Armor
This we have for you, we do
Armor
Tools of death, we have them too
Swords
Worth much more than you pay for them…

Ah good times.

163

Mech 2 and Mercs were already mentioned, those were great. I also have a great deal of fondness for several tracks from MW4: Mercs, of which Behemoths is my favorite.

Enjoyed all the Infinity Engine soundtracks a great deal. BG2’s Dragon battle theme has a special place in my heart.

The Dawn of War games have solid soundtracks. I’d call the Winter Assault theme the best of the first batch. The second game had For the Craftworld, which I adore, and this Chaos theme which perfectly captures the feel of those lunatics.

165

The main theme from Mafiais another favorite of mine.