"Favorite Video Game Soundtracks"

[kane_magus]

Watch on YouTube

"What are some of your favorite video game soundtracks?"

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I won't go into the picks that Ian and Pat made, since you can just watch the video above to hear about those.

For me... well... for me, I have to say that music is probably one of the most important elements of a video game. If a video game has good music, I will forgive a lot of its other shortcomings that it may have. If a video game has shitty music (or no music at all, in some cases), then even if that game may otherwise be good, I probably won't care about it as much.

As for what I like, I'll just mention the Winamp playlists I have at the moment to start with. (See, all my shit is bootleg mp3s, mostly from KHInsider and, before that, from Galbadia Hotel which apparently went the way of the dinosaur. I don't have fancy vinyls like Ian does, though I have to say that's extremely fucking cool.)

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First playlist (in alphabetical order of playlist filenames): Binding of Isaac (original Daniel Baranowsky version, I mean, not the newer version by Ridiculon, though that's not bad either) + Shadow of the Colossus + Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. Just the boss/colossus/battle music, though.

Second playlist: Black Tiger/Bram Stoker's Dracula. That's pretty much it. The entire soundtracks from the arcade version of Black Tiger and the NES version of Bram Stoker's Dracula (though it was the Game Boy version that I actually owned and played, the NES soundtrack is slightly better, also not to be confused with the SNES version, which was completely different).

Third playlist: PaRappa the Rapper 1 & 2 and Um Jammer Lammy. (Convenient playlist that had all three together, there, though it left out all the incidental music. To be fair, I don't care much about that shit, and it's not part of my personal playlist either.)

Fourth playlist: Undertale/Homestuck Okay, so I'm cheating with Homestuck a bit, since it's not entirely or even mostly a video game.

Fifth playlist: It's just called "Vampires." It is basically an almost 36 hour playlist (that I usually play on random) which contains every Castlevania soundtrack (both OSTs and extra shit like the Dracula Perfect Selection/Dracula Battle Perfect 1 and 2/Dracula New Classic/Midi Collection/Midi Power Pro stuff), the aforementioned Bram Stoker's Dracula NES OST again, the soundtracks from most of the Legacy of Kain games (minus Defiance because I don't have that one [yet]), and the OSTs from the two Vampire the Masquerade games Redemption and Bloodlines.

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But those are just the multi-game playlists I listen to.

There's plenty of other stuff. In alphabetical order, here are the other soundtracks (mp3 version) I find myself coming back to again and again (not including the ones already mentioned above):
Ace Attorney
American McGee's Alice
Aquaria
Bad Mojo
Beyond Good and Evil
Bust a Groove
Chrono Trigger/Radical Dreamers/Chrono Cross (because those have to go together)
Doki Doki Literature Club (spoiler alert, the soundtrack gets just as fucked up as the game itself does)
Ecco the Dolphin (Sega CD version, anyway)
The Elder Scrolls (The "The" there throws this off, alphabetically, because I just have the folder named "Elder Scrolls," and most of the other "The" shit is down in the T's.)
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Fable 1 and 2
Fallout 1 and 2 and 3 and New Vegas (haven't played enough of 4 to get a feel for the OST yet, aside from the main title)
Final Fantasy (I'm copping out again and just linking to a Youtube search here, because damn.)
Folklore
Haunting Ground
Ico
Interstate '76
Katamari Damacy
Kingdom Hearts (I've only ever played 1 & 2 and Chain of Memories, original GBA version.)
The later Legend of Zelda games (the ones I actually have OSTs for, anyway, though I could easily get the even more recent games as well if I wanted [even if I still haven't actually played BotW myself yet]).
Metal Gear Solid
Metroid Prime Trilogy
The Neverhood
Earthbound/Mother 3
OFF
Okami (especially given that I just recently replayed this)
Parasite Eve
Persona 1, 2, 3, and 4 (still haven't played 5 yet, and not sure when, if ever, I will)
Planescape: Torment
Rule of Rose
Saya no Uta
Secret of Mana
Sequence (renamed to Before the Echo for asinine legal reasons)
Shenmue 1 and 2
So many different Sierra On-Line point-and-click adventure computer games that I was required to give them their own dedicated directory. (Yes, some of those aren't P&C games, but they're still Sierra.)
Silent Fucking Hill
Various Street Fighter and Capcom VS soundtracks (another cop-out set of links I know)
Super Smash Bros. (another cop-out, I'm getting tired, meh)
Terraria
The Longest Journey/Dreamfall/Dreamfall Chapters
The Path
Universe at War: Earth Assault
The various games in the X series

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Those are not every soundtrack I have... just most of them. That also doesn't include the colossal shit-ton of orignal NES/SNES/Game Boy/GBA/DS/Genesis soundtracks that I have in emulated (i.e. non-mp3) form, which includes stuff not above, like Super Mario Bros or the earlier Legend of Zelda and Metroid games. I'm not listing all of that shit here, because I'd be here for about two or three days, probably. (Even for what I did here, Dreamwidth claims I started on this post at 10:43am. It's now 2:20pm as I'm about to click the post button.)

I guess you could call this another Game Music Thing post, since that's what it is.

(Also, I see even now that this post is going to be a fucking nightmare when I come back to it in a year or three and see that 90% of the above links are dead or some shit. Hell, even some of the playlists I tried to use now had deleted videos or "not available in your country due to copyright" blocked videos.)