Your Top 5 Game Soundtracks

[popstandards]

It's List-Mania here at ol' PlanEx Hobbies!

Dr. Zoidberg's mentioning of Marty O'Donnell the other day made me think of doing this. Okay, the rules are there are no rules. The soundtracks you name don't have to necessarily be soundtracks that saw release on CD. Of course it's no coincidence that some I'm listing were also on my favorite games list because music plays a huge roll in games that I connect with. So I'll start:

5. Halo - Marty O'Donnell
Epic material for an equally epic game. The MIDI strings just aren't up to par with what a real orchestra could have brought to Marty's score though. Hopefully he'll be able to get real strings for Halo 2.

4. Beyond Good & Evil - Christophe Heral
Like the game itself, the score is all over the place. Mostly beautiful and dark string and piano stuff.

3. Maniac Mansion - Chris Grigg, David Lawrence
Lovingly geeky themes for each of the teenagers. Truly innovative stuff for the 8-bit days. I imagine "Dave's Theme", in particular, would be pretty hard to reproduce, even today. If you look hard enough, you can find some of these online at: http://www.tentakelvilla.de/download/empedrei.html

2. (Tie) Parappa The Rapper/Um Jammer Lammy - Masaya Matsuura
Fun stuff. If you never played these you should. These actually came out on CD so you can hear the songs the right way without having to worry about screwing them up.

1. Skullmonkeys - Terry Scott Taylor
The wackiest game music ever, all done with real instruments. Songs include "Elevated Structure Of Terror", The Incredible Drivy Finn", and the infamous "Bonus Room" song. (AIM me for a copy of this one.) This guy used to be selling a homemade soundtrack on his site, but it's been out of print for a while. I've seen copies of it going for $75+ on eBay.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ August 21, 2004 06:18 PM: Message edited by: darwin farkus ]</font>

[Mercenary Drago]

Well considering its the full soundtrack I'll have to drop Halo, mainly because most of it's music is just ambiance. Personaly I can't count any game sound tracks cause of the ambiance tracks but there arer some good songs out there.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

All I have is Halo....
most video game music suxs

[popstandards]

I should have also mentioned in the rules that you don't have to OWN the soundtrack either. I only own 2 out of the 5 I listed because soundtracks don't even exist for the others.