In-Game Music

[Caius]

Hello all. I will try to bring those kind of threads which has a lot of thoughts of some years ago.
This thread is about music in the games. Yes, those songs which made you annoy sometimes, because those song were so repetitive or had a bad melody or just they sucked. But there are masterpieces in others games, and I play those games due to the music.

I will bring some examples, and I'd like if you can, post your experiences related to In-Game music.

Recently I, thanks to YouTube, I heard Scouting, which is one of the songs of the good old Tiberian Sun. I felt like OMG!. It gave me a lot of hapiness, maybe because I'm a geek, or because I have been playing Tiberian Sun (one of the best games EVAR) for years.

Rome:Total War doesn't make the same effect as TS does. It has a lot of excellent songs, like the barbarian intro or Mayhem (battle song), but those became repetitive if you played a lot.

So, what are your experiences for In-Game music?

[Craterus]

Final Fantasy VII.

[FactionHeir]

Final Fantasy VII.

Absolutely agree.

also:
NWN (premium module music is great)

[TevashSzat]

The song for the ending credits of Portal.

I don't know why, but I simply love that song

[Martok]

Shogun Total War and Birth of the Federation. Both games' soundtracks are very atmospheric.

[Whacker]

Oh man, I used to just loop the 4 seasonal soundtracks from Shogun on my PC while doing homework in college. There was another track from the Mongol expansion that I enjoyed too, don't remember the name of it.

The Mechwarrior 2 games (Original, Ghost Bear Legacy, and Mercs, ESP. Mercs) were also outstanding, I still have my original mp3s I ripped off of my game cds from years and years ago.

I kinda liked the Deus Ex soundtrack. The Hong Kong streets music was probably my fav... cheesy, but I liked it.

And the Fallout soundtrack, I found a good looping version of the Brotherhood of Steel compound background music. The air raid sirens were just great in that.

Secret of Mana. Dark Lich theme ftw.

Final Fantasy series have always had good music. Apparently many folks didn't like the game overall, but Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, the final boss theme was one I really enjoyed.

Need For Speed 5 soundtrack was good.

Diablo 2 soundtrack was also good. My friend made a few looping versions of some of the area themes so we could listen to that in college as well.

The Wipeout games have always had absolutely outstanding music, but that's really most of what the games were about IMO. XL and 3 are my two favs.

Will post more if I can think of them.

[Veho Nex]

Sound track to FF any... all are good

[Praxil]

I'm just going to quote myself from other forum.

Halo series: CE, 2 (withouth the pop stuff), 3.
Medal of Honor series: Medal of Honor, Underground and Allied Assault.
Command & Conquer series: I love what Frank Klepacki did there. Excluding the Tiberium Wars which has horrible sondtrack. Generals has awesome soundtrack clearly influenced by the Black Hawk Down film.
NHL series: 96-99 PC versions.
Total War series: All of them, except Shogun which is too lazy.
Rainbow Six series: From Raven Shield to Vegas 2 pretty much.
Silent Hunter series: III and 4.
MGS series: Metal Gear Solid, Sons of Liberty, Snake Eater and Guns of the Patriots.
Hitman series: All of them, Kyd is one of my favorite gaming composers.

Emperor: Battle for Dune
Mass Effect
Freedom Fighters
Call of Duty 4
Dead Rising
Universe at War
World of Warcraft
Perfect Dark Zero
Operation Flashpoint
Company of Heroes
Army of Two


And something I probably forgot...

Adding to that mods like Desert Combat, Project Reality and Insurgency. All the Rainbow Six games have good songs and Ghost Recon games too. Splinter Cell games also. Assassin's Creed, Battlefield 2. ... Something more to that list. All are original, none are licensed soundtracks for these games.

[Fragony]

Sacrifice and Diablo 2 from a sooooo pretty point of view. The cleverest use of music and my recent favorite (minus of course Thief) the unbelievably awesome ' The world ends with you' (FFVII step aside). All whacky japanese pop that would never find it's way in my cd-player but is absolutily brilliantly integrated in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfYD...eature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmRx...eature=related

Gives the game a real sense of urgency and it's so HIP

[professorspatula]

I always get nostalgic whenever I hear the 'Stones' tune from the Ultima series. As the years rolled past and new Ultima games were released, it would sound more impressive and epic with extra instruments added. Ultima 7 and U7 Part 2 all had great music.

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the Homeworld game, it had a pretty good soundtrack, very atmospheric too.

Here's an old game that had great sound-tracks at the time : Star Control 2. Fantastic stuff! I'd end up staying in Quasi space for longer than I needed to, just so I could hear the tune that played there. There are some fan made updated music files that I used to just listen to when I didn't feel like playing the game.

[FactionHeir]

Oh, and Morrowind

[rajpoot]

Loads of games, but a few that I really really liked above all else, and that are worth mentioning :
TWs (all of them are awesome music, though one does get a mite tired listening to a few tracks again and again), Medal of Honour Allied Assault, Oblivion, Morrowind, Age of Empires 2 and 3 (they have very little music, but the intro tracks are great) and Silent Hunter 4.

[Caius]

Even though I can't hear those songs anymore, I always loved teh Empire Earth songs. They fitted perfectly with the game, and, like I used to say, those songs were "smart". That is because when a fight came, the music suddenly changes to a faster rythm, and when the fight is over, it came back to a quiet rythm.

[drone]

Master of Orion 2 had nice music.

And I do love the MTW soundtrack, of course.

[Geoffrey S]

Monkey Island. I can still remember all those tunes after all those years. The guy who wrote that must have been a genius.

No-one Lives Forever. Fun game, great music from the era. Fits the style perfectly.

Outcast. Probably the first game I heard using fully orchestral soundtrack. In many ways an overlooked game, playing it more recently it's still amazing - the game, as well as the brilliant music.

Mafia. Great mix between period music and an excellent orchestral soundtrack.

Medieval Total War. Memorable, perfectly fitting, never grew old for me.

Full Throttle. That theme song, over the opening sequence. Perfect.

[aimlesswanderer]

Hmm, well there are a few games which had music which stood out (ie I still remember well after years)

- the original C&C
- Heroes II and III had great and varied music
- Mechwarrior II-Mercenaries
- Starcraft had lots of different music for each race
- Diablo II, listened to heaps of that as I played it again and again
- Battle Isle 2220, old and only midis, but I still remember them. An excellent game, pity about the sequel.
- Warcraft II
- the TW games have all had pretty good music, though after many many hours of listening to it I've muted it and put on my own.

[Ser Clegane]

Apart from some that already have been mentioned here, I always loved the music for Fantasy General

[TinCow]

The Baldur's Gate 2 theme. Appropriately 'epic' and I have never, ever gotten tired of it.
Also, the main themes from Morrowind and Oblivion. Say what you will about the gameplay, but the title tracks were freakin' incredible. I actually heard both of these played by the National Symphony Orchestra, and they were just as good live in an auditorium as in the game.
HOMM2 town opera music - I would sit in the town menu screens for long periods just listening to it. I played necromancers more than once just because I liked their music the most.
Red Alert - The only soundtrack I've listened to when not playing the game.

[PBI]

No one mentioned the Tetris theme? Incredibly annoying and gets stuck in my head for hours whenever I hear it.

On a similar note, the Xenon 2 music always makes me very nostalgic as it was the first "proper" computer game I owned.

The Monkey Island theme is also fantastic, made me want to be a pirate far more than the Pirates of the Caribbean films ever did.

[Quirinus]

Even though I can't hear those songs anymore, I always loved teh Empire Earth songs. They fitted perfectly with the game, and, like I used to say, those songs were "smart". That is because when a fight came, the music suddenly changes to a faster rythm, and when the fight is over, it came back to a quiet rythm.

Yeah, I was skulking around in my computer's disk space when I uncovered my old install of Empire Earth that I haven't played for years. Hearing the menu music alone triggered a Pavlovian response in me, I knew I had to play a few games. Ah, nostalgia.


Hitman II: Silent Assassin: especially the menu orcherstral score, even when I got tired of the game, I kept it installed for some time just to listen to that awesome piece of music.

Call of Duty 4: Specifically, the Chernobyl level is brilliant because of the haunting music. One scene that I always revisit-- when you walk along a corridor that looks out on some sort of plaza, the music plays, and your captain comments: "Look at this place... 50000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town."

Total War games: Jeff van Dyke is an excellent composer, one of my favourites is his "Melee" from RTW. It really conveys a kind of frantic, chaotic crush of men. I still use that music to set pace when I jog. His work for M2TW: Kingdoms is outstanding as well, "Time and Again" being my fave.

Galactic Civilizations: the first one, that is. I felt the music of the second was a little overblown. In the first one, all sorts of situations had excellent ambient music that conveys the mood well. From the wonder and sense of discovery at the start, to a tense atmosphere of a galaxy teetering at the edge of war, the war-weariness of a long slogging match, to the megalomaniacal blare of a reign of evil..... it constitutes a large part of the reason why, flawed as it is, I still love the game.

Super Mario: the original, very first Mario. Very catchy ditty. xD


aaaand, any Star Wars game.

[professorspatula]

Hitman II: Silent Assassin: especially the menu orcherstral score, even when I got tired of the game, I kept it installed for some time just to listen to that awesome piece of music.

I second that game. I was going to mention it myself but didn't in the end. Some of the tunes are fantastic. There's one called Exploration which is fantastic. Really builds up the atmosphere.

Another game worthy of mention: Magic & Mayhem. Had a CD soundtrack from 'Afro Celt Sound System' which fitted the dark atmosphere of the game brilliantly.

[rajpoot]

I think the tune Quirinus is referring to is the music for the German song 'Ellens driter gesang', often confused with the Latin prayer 'Ave Maria'. Very nice and touching really. The song was composed by Franz Schubert in 1825, if my knowladge is right, afterwards it was used with the original Latin texts too. Can't think why did they use it for a game whos theme is assasination.

[Praxil]

Both God of War soundtracks, especially this track link which is sadly only 1:21 minutes long, but so good.

[Whacker]

The Tenchu games also had great music.

[CountArach]

Tetris is the pinacle of game music.

[Crandaeolon]

Seconding Monkey Island (Michael Land), great uplifting tunes there.

Also seconding Star Control 2, it was one of the first PC games to utilize tracker (=sequenced samples) music - Riku Nuottajärvi did some great pieces for that game, including the hyperspace music.

From the Amiga era, Turrican 2 (Chris Hülsbeck) comes to mind. Still often remixed. Stephane Picq deserves a mention for the original Dune soundtrack as well - perfect fit for the setting. Shadow of the Beast (David Whittaker), particularly the second one, was good for the ears too.

Commodore 64 had some great music despite its limited resources. Ocean Loader (Martin Galway) anyone?

In the modern PC era we have Jeremy Soule (Total Annihilation, Morrowind, Oblivion, Icewind Dale etc...) but he's IMO a tad overrated musically (his technical achievements deserve high praise though) - many of his games have good theme musics, but the rest is pretty "stock" material. Some exceptions that come into mind are the previously mentioned TA soundtrack plus the soundtrack for Guild Wars: Eye of the North, which has surprisingly many good pieces of music.

Mark Morgan did fantastically fitting music for Fallouts 1 and 2 and Planescape: Torment. Inon Zur has some big shoes to fill for Fallout 3, so far most of his music (that I can remember) has been nice but far too cheerful.

I'm not all that familiar with consoles, but something that wasn't mentioned yet is Actraiser - absolutely great soundtrack, especially in symphonic rendition. Mega Man 2 left an impression too.

[Quirinus]

I think the tune Quirinus is referring to is the music for the German song 'Ellens driter gesang', often confused with the Latin prayer 'Ave Maria'. Very nice and touching really. The song was composed by Franz Schubert in 1825, if my knowladge is right, afterwards it was used with the original Latin texts too. Can't think why did they use it for a game whos theme is assasination.

Nope, that's the menu music for Blood Money, the fourth game. I was referring to this, actually (even though "Ave Maria" is a piece of genius as well).

Tetris is the pinacle of game music.

Right you are.

[Caius]

Lone Trooper
It has a no good intro, but hear it all.

[Meneldil]

Final Fantasy VII & IX - Nobuo Uematsu is probably the best you could find when your looking for video game music (Zomg "One Winged Angel" orchestral, "The Place I'll return to someday" or "Loss of me").

Eternal Darkness - The music/ambient sound was great overall.

Magic and Mayhem : Arcane - Music composed by Afro Celt Sound System. As you could guess, it was a mix of celtic and modern music, and it sounded absolutely gorgeous. The "CelticII" soundtrack is my favorite game track.

Heroes of Might and Magic 5 - Great musics.

[Viking]

Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault; great classical music.

Very much liked the music from all the three TW games that I've played: MTW, RTW and M2:TW.