Wet hands
Unbreakable Determination from Ninja Gaiden.
Either Nemesis the Warlock or Planescape: Torment’s ‘Bones of the Night’ by Mark Morris.
Baba Yetu from Civilization 2005 is the first video track to win a Grammy.
Hidden character from Tekken 3
Tim Follin’s music for the first level of Bionic Commando on C64. It sounds like coming up on acid.
I could not even describe this song when I first heard it as a kid. As an adult, I realize this is the funkiest shit ever.
Probably Stickerbush Symphony from Donkey Kong Country 2.
Lots of good Final Fantasy tracks from Nobuo Uematsu and Chrono Trigger/Cross ones from Yasunori Mitsuda too. But Stickerbush Symphony was the first video game music that really moved me, like more than your average SNES soundtrack. David Wise went hard on those Donkey Kong Country games.
Red Alert, Hell March
I’ll give you two albums worth:
*Bastion OST
*Transistor OST
I’ll add Hades OST, Supergiant generally do amazing soundtracks.
I almost always mute in-game music as the first step before even playing, sorry.
Definitly Black Fairy by Akira Yamaoka from Silent Hill 2. If you played it you know how powerful this track is.
That would be the opening prelude of Final Fantasy VII. You immediately understand what the themes of the game are when listening to it, it’s highly effective in portraying things/feelings like loss, despair, melancholy, overcome, hope. And all of that with a rather limited set of instruments (compared to other compositions). It’s pure and sincere without being kitschy. Nothing is hidden or ambiguous or pretentious. It wears its big broken heart on its sleeve in the best possible way. It’s a masterpiece.
I couldn’t pick just one.
- From The Witcher 3:
- Whiterun theme (unforgivably absent from the OST albums)
- Fields of Ard Skellig (a version of the folk song “Fear a Bhata”)
- From Skyrim… hard to pick out favourites
- From Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance (Jeremy Soule again): The Art of War. It opens boldly but there’s a moment when it’s just twinkling in the strings, percussion and a little piano with almost no melody. If at that moment you happen to be watching the trajectory of your artillery arcing towards the enemy, and then the theme comes back as they land… sublime.
- From The Witcher 3:
Still Alive
Still Alive from Mirror’s Edge is also excellent.
They really had to give the ending credits song the same name huh.
That’s the video game song that gets in my head the most.
Interestingly, despite how it’s not as good of a song, I probably think about Want You Gone about as often as Still Alive. It doesn’t really come through as a song, just the phrases. “Now I only want you gone.” “You’ve got your short sad life left. […] I’ll let you get right to it.”
Goodbye, my only friend
Oh, did you think I meant you?
That would be funny
If it weren’t so sad
I wish Want You Gone was more popular, because it’s genuinely a better song and plays the relationship double entendre so well.
Shoutout to You Wouldn’t Know, which rounds out the trilogy of songs.
