Baldur’s Gate is the one that has stuck in my head.
Troy
The Chinese music, with it’s mix of Oriental and Western sounds, really reminds of the soundtrack to the TV show “Firefly”. It’s an odd mix, but it works.
That said I seem to spend most of my time in that game loading, so I have trouble not being annoyed by it.
Monkey Island
Battlefield Vietnam
Katamari
This one sorta got derailed from the start. Were we talking about music being used outside of the game that made us smile, or talking about games where the menu music made us smile?
As for menu music, I don’t think anything even comes close to the march that’s played in Wing Commander II between missions (in the Concordia barracks). Now that theme was memorable. I guess that counts as menu music, right?
Also, Quest for Glory IV had a pretty good intro tune, didn’t it? Wolves howling and shit. Actually, yeah, that was pretty hot.
Also, on a not wholly unrelated note, am I the only person who finds 99% of combat music in RPGs to be tiresome and obnoxious? It seems like the composers are going entirely for tension and don’t bother with things like melody, movement, or theme. Notable exceptions would be Betrayal at Krondor, Icewind Dale (the “Serpent” theme) and KotOR II (the Telos battle theme stood out).
I just mention this because I’m currently playing X-Men Legends, and while it’s really a beatemup (and not an RPG), I like how the combat music keeps the same theme as the exploration music, just kicking it up.
The ones I can easily hear in my head?
No One Lives Forever
Heavy Metal FAKK 2
Starcraft
Silent Hill 4
Katamari Damacy
Romance Of The Three Kingdoms 7
Quake 1
Command & Conquer:Red Alert
Tenchu:Wrath Of Heaven (the main menu’s song is super-short and not impressive, but the Options menu gets its own theme, a fantastic classical-Oriental song that’s maybe five minutes long)
There’s a bunch others that are really good, but they’re tougher to conjure up in my mind. For instance, I know Giants:Citizen Kabuto’s menu has really nifty world-music stuff by Jeremy Soule, but all I can remember is something about drums. I remember Crusader:No Remorse being great in a vague general “it rocked!” sense. The console Fallout action-RPG has this neat “country song playing on a crappy transistor radio” thing going for it, but I forget the lyrics/melody.
How about Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm with all its Yes goodness. I thought that music was really cool.
The Halo (1 and 2) music was also suitably epic. Gotta love the choral work.
M.U.L.E.
Datastorm
Obliterator
Lemmings
Populous Amgia Version Ambient music (missing from the PC version).
WINNAR.
Easy, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory simply has some sweet menu music.
World War 2 Fighters had that big band swing music. I used to leave it up to clean the apartment!
Disgaea
All wrong, but thanks for trying.
Summoner
and
Drakan
are easily the best. E-V-A-R.
WORD
Mega Man!
BTW, this site has some cool remixes of old games. I especially like some of the Metroid ones.
Yep, I remember that being a good one. Maybe some day i’ll get around to actually finishing the game though.
It was a really fantastic assortment of classical songs; I still listen to the soundtrack from time to time. I wish more games would do that. I’d love to see a shooter replace the cheesy generic rock music that’s typical to the genre with a classical score.
Gyruss…
Oh, I guess by shooter you meant FPS.
Summoner
You know, that’s a good one. Not best of all time, but I remember it was pretty good.
Mega Man!
Surely, you meant Mega Man 2?
Commando for the C64
Metroid for the NES
Ascendancy
Wild Arms (Though technically, it’s the intro, and not the menu.)