The Best Music in Video Games

[clem]

The theme from Ghost 'n Goblins is pretty catchy, too. [...] I have no idea who composed it, though.

David Whittaker? Usually MobyGames lists the credits of any game for all platforms it was ported to. Check the MobyGames entry for Ghost 'n Goblins.

I only remember the arcade version's music, which I assume was composed by some Japanese guy originally before it was ported

[Kaminari]

A chick in this case: Ayako Mori.

[Dark-Star]

My favorites are (sorted alphabetically because I couldn't decide on a better ordering):

• Final Fantasy 7
  Gianna Sisters
  Grandia II
  Guild Wars
  Kingdom Hearts
  Monkey Island
  Rez
  Ultima 7

The music from the Touhou games is very nice too, although I'm probably the only one here who knows them

[Kaminari]

The music from the Touhou games is very nice too, although I'm probably the only one here who knows them

Are you talking about the PC-98 games (Tōhō Kaikidan, etc) from Amusement Makers? Great FM tunes indeed.

[Dark-Star]

The music from the Touhou games is very nice too, although I'm probably the only one here who knows them

Are you talking about the PC-98 games (Tōhō Kaikidan, etc) from Amusement Makers? Great FM tunes indeed.

Exactly. Although it's quite difficult to get these running on a modern PC, "Mystic Square" (kaikidan) was one of the better ones.

But I was more thinking about the "modern" ones, like "Mountain of Faith" (Touhou Fuujinroku -- sorry I con't have macrons set up on my keyboard here ) and "Imperishable Night" (Touhou Eiyashou). These have actually MP3 music and run on Windows. They're not easy to find outside of Japan though (got mine from a friend who was there and who knew I liked shooters)

[doomer]

Final Fantasy and Nobuo Uematsu

[MrPunchy]

¡Please!

No one has played METAL GEAR SOLID 2?

[Noelemahc]

This is a nigh-infinite list, so instead of games I'll sound off the composers, if you don't mind.
<...>

Norihiko Hibino - Metal Gear Solid 2/3/4/TPO. Supposedly started out as a support for the guest-star of Harry Gregson-Williams, but quickly built his own vision of the soundtrack which made it quite popular out there.

Kazuki Muraoka - Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel. And probably even more stuff I've never even heard of. But this is the MEAT, the games that started it all. What Hibino and Williams do with the modern games by way of a sampler and an orchestra, he did with the 8-bit beepers of the NES and the GBC.

Harry Gregson-Williams' part of the score is generic Hollywood stuff, most of which is based on TAPPY's work for MGS1 (which, as has been pointed out on numerous occasions is a note-for-note copy of Georgiy Sviridov's score for the old Russian movie "Metel'", which was released in the late 1960s). And I did list Norihiko Hibino in my list

Please note that I do not list Akihiro Honda here because, while the MG AC!D musick is pretty, it is also blandly generic Hollywood-style stuff, pretty much like the linear near-identical grind that Inon Zur churns out at a superhuman rate.

[Kaminari]

Kazuki Muraoka - Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel. And probably even more stuff I've never even heard of. But this is the MEAT, the games that started it all. What Hibino and Williams do with the modern games by way of a sampler and an orchestra, he did with the 8-bit beepers of the NES and the GBC.

Much of the credits should actually go to Iku Mizutani (MG1) and Masahiro Ikariko (MG2), who composed the original MSX versions. Muraoka was more of a sound engineer than a composer, but he made some great PSG arrangements for the PC Engine (Gradius, Salamander, Parodius, Snatcher...).

[doc labyrinth]

Has anyone mentioned Doom yet?

[Noelemahc]

This is a nigh-infinite list, so instead of games I'll sound off the composers, if you don't mind.

Robert C. Prince III and his comrade-in-arms Lee Jackson - Duke Nukem 2, 3d, Manhattan Project; Doom 1-2; Rise of the Triad; Demon Star. The textbook definition of MIDI rock, ambiance and ambient rock And the crazy jazz of RoTT on top.

Guys, at this rate my narcissism will skyrocket once more

On a more related note, there's a video circulating on the Interweb listing all the various rock and metal songs by various bands that the music of Doom 1 and 2 borrowed from. Fun stuff. The main influences turned out to be Pantera and Slayer, although people have also spotted bits of Black Sabbath and Metallica.

[pinkfloyd789]

Easily Monkey Island.
Suprised nobody metioned this, Ghostbusters on the NES.

Even though this has nothing to do with video games, I pick Rocky Horror Picture Show. (Maybe it's because I'm 12,please don't kick me off the site!, but singing transvestites are so "unbelivable")

[DennisBergkamp]

Awesome music from games:

-Outlaws (although all of those tracks do sound a lot like Ennio Morricone ripoffs, still really amazing stuff)
-Little Big Adventure
-Full Throttle

[eriktorbjorn]

-Outlaws (although all of those tracks do sound a lot like Ennio Morricone ripoffs, still really amazing stuff)

I actually bought a second-hand copy of that game only because I was curious about the music. (It's stored as audio tracks on the CDs.)

[DennisBergkamp]

-Outlaws (although all of those tracks do sound a lot like Ennio Morricone ripoffs, still really amazing stuff)

I actually bought a second-hand copy of that game only because I was curious about the music. (It's stored as audio tracks on the CDs.)

I know, my dad actually plays these tracks in his car all the time. Pretty amazing for a fanatic "non-gamer"