The Official Gaming Music Topic

Hidenori Shoji is a damn legend. Composer of Yakuza series, Super Monkey Ball series, the recently released Fist of the North Star game from the Yakuza Team, F-Zero GX/AX, SpikeOut and SEGA Touring Car Championship. His distinctive style of music involves lots of blaring sirens (looooots and loooots of frigging sirens, normally playing to emphasise intensity and hype things up, don't know where his obsession with this stemmed from, did he want to be an ambulance driver or something? lol. But it's all good, always hypes me up anyway), bass slaps, crazy electric guitar shredding, industrial noises (bang, bang, clank, bzzzz), hyper intense electronic music (lots of dark synth sounds and fast keyboard presses mixed in with fast drum beats) and just crazy sounding music in general. I love his sound. Below is an early example of where he developed his composing style in the underrated fighting game Fighting Vipers 2.

This track has an almost Jet Set Radio sound to it.


My favourite SEGA composer of all time.
 

Final Fantasy 7 & 9 probably had as much influence on me as Shenmue did when I was of that age...the age of...young. But I always found this map theme to be particularly soothing from IX.
 
So Killer7 Remastered has released for PC (Steam) and with it came a remastered soundtrack of the game (with new instruments that were missing in the original audio due to being compressed, you can already hear the differences from track 1) which also includes 10 extra tracks that were missing in the original soundtrack release. Still probably Masafumi Takada's best work:

 


Sega Sound Team band... lots more on the YouTube channel. Worth listening to them all if you’ve got the time.
 
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I am playing Asura's Wrath at the moment and I really love its music. This theme sounds a bit like Shenmue music:

 
This is such a beautiful, subtle, mesmerizing melody. Seems to me one of the underappreciated best of Mitsuda as well as the JRPG genre.


This cover is great, so I'm posting it too. :cool:

 
I could fall asleep listening to this. :sleep:

 
This thread is severely lacking in the Killer Instinct department. This game has the best music of any game, period (at least in my opinion):


 
Lately, I've been interested in some of the "off the beaten path" soundtracks on the Genesis/MD.

Jesper Kyd produced some interesting tunes for the console. Though Sub-Terrania has its merits, I particularly dig the dark and dancy (almost witch house) vibe of this Adventures of Batman and Robin boss track. It's a shame it can be beaten so quickly, as the full cut is a real bop.

 
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Kyrandia 3 was my first Point and click adventure on PC. I still love that game(s). I like the humor, the setting, the characters, the graphics, everything.
 
I've recently reviewed Sonic CD music! (your groan is apt)

To nod to the US vs. EU/JP rubbish, I'll qualify: I grew up playing CD on PC with the US soundtrack but, given my overall musical tastes, I've always valued the funk/disco/dance of the Japanese.

That said, I've been thinking about the atmosphere the US soundtrack aimed to create. In particular, I suspect it rightly captured the sense of bad futures: the guitar is often used in an unnerving manner (imagine that, before much later Sonic music became guitar-obsessed). You're hunting for these stones for a reason, and the guitar grind, grounded in that synth-scape, reminds us why.
Two stand out to me (to reaffirm: I love both JP versions too):

a. Metallic Madness (Bad Future, US):

b. Special Stage US
 

The feels...oh my, the feels. Some of Ko Otani's best work.

And something much lighter on the side

 
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