dorchadas | Thirty-day Video Game Music Meme (Reply)

For the last month, I've been doing a game music meme over on a Facebook group I'm on, and I figured I'd repost the answers and some comments here so they'd be saved for posterity!

Title Screen Music

Myth III: the Wolf Age - Connacht's Theme.

There's a lot of great title music in the world, but there's only one theme song that I crank up to max volume every time it comes on. Myth III isn't great compared to Myth I and II, and I can't remember any of the rest of its soundtrack, but I can remember loading it up at university, bathing in the bagpipes. I'm pretty sure that tweetjoshtweet has referenced this song years later, because he never played the Myth games, but he definitely heard me blast this a few time a week for a month.
Opening Level Music

Journey to Silius - Level One.

I haven't played a lot of this game because, frankly, it's not my thing. If it's an 8-bit run and gun, give me Contra. But the soundtrack is fantastic, and this is a rocking way to open the game. The OST is good enough that I bought a remixed version of it from Sir Nuts, one of OC ReMix's most synthwave-ish remixers. Purple Skies is the remix of Stage One, and is a great song in its own right.
8-bit Music

The OST for the NES game Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

I played this game a ton as a kid, and while the actual game is mediocre--trying to be an adventure game, an RPG, a side-scrolling dueling game, and an RTS is probably too much--the music is great. For an especially good song, skip forward to 14:15, where the mass battle music kicks in.

I keep thinking I want to replay this game just to see if it holds up at all, and every time I listen to the music, those urges get stronger.
Music From a Console-Exclusive Series

Metroid Prime - Title Screen.

This one was hard, because I play very few games that are console-exclusive other than Nintendo games. And a lot of Metroid and Zelda and Mario music is great, but the Prime title music stands out for really selling the space horror otherworldliness that makes Metroid great. The warbling tones and groans evoke the cold of space and the creaking of metal on a derelict ship, and even though Metroid Prime takes place on a planet, it's still a lonely experience. The title theme immediately tells you what's in store for you and it's one of the most memorable Metroid songs for conveying that feeling.
Hub World or Overworld Music

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - Nerevar Rising.

Morrowind is my favorite game and this is my favorite song from it. It starts off with that heavy dum DUM drumbeat, and as you go through the game, you learn that the plot centers on the Heart of Lorkhan, the last remnant of a dead god who created the world, the source of power for both House Dagoth and the Tribunal. And then you realize that throughout the whole game, as you wandered Vvardenfell, fulfilled prophecy, and confronted the Sixth House, underlying your entire quest was...

...a heartbeat.
Music that Makes You Feel Relaxed

Night in the Woods - Possum Springs.

Night in the Woods is not a relaxing game. It's about millennial despair, about being trapped in a dead-end job in a dying mining town, so far from the civilization that it doesn't even have reliable cell phone service in the 2010s, but knowing that you're abandoning your friends and everything you know if you leave and there's no guarantee you won't fail and have to come crawling back. But that's not what this particular song is about. This is the song that plays when Mae is wandering the streets of her hometown, kicking autumn leaves, talking to her neighbors, exploring the various shops and seeing her friends, and otherwise living carefree. That's what I think of when I hear this song--the future is uncertain, and probably terrible, but right here, right now, in the waning autumn sunlight, everything is alright.
Music From an Indie Game

Aquaria - Undiscovered Waters.

Aquaria was the first Steam indie I played, over a decade ago before the floodgates were opened. I'm pretty sure I saw someone talking about it on RPG.net, bought it and tried it out, and I loved it. It was one of the few games while I lived in Japan that pulled me away from playing World of Warcraft, so it's up there with Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines and Dragon Age: Origins. I loved that game, but what I really loved was the art and the soundtrack. I loved the final boss music so much that I took it and set it as the boss track in Deadly Boss Mods, so for years after, every time the tank pulled, pounding music from Aquaria would kick in as our raid group charged. "Undiscovered Waters" is one of the best songs on the OST, really bringing home the majesty and mystery of the depths, and reminding us that we've explored less of the seas than we have of space. But it's bright and hopeful, too, as Naija sets out on her quest.

Honestly, it sounds like something that would have been on a Pure Moods CD from the 90s, and that is my jam.

I really wanted to use Fear the Dark, from the same game, but sadly it's only on the OST and not actually in the game anywhere.
Music From a Shooter (First or Third Person)

Unreal Tournament - Foregone Destruction.

When I was a university student, there were two rival camps--Quake III Arena, and Unreal Tournament. I was on the Unreal Tournament side, and when Patch 436 removed the need to have the disc in the drive, I installed it on a bunch of friends' computers and we'd all log on and play UT. I preferred the Assault missions, but everyone else was really into CTF, and of the CTF levels, their favorite was Facing Worlds. It's one of the best CTF levels of all time, to the point that Kotaku wrote an article about how great it was, and Rock Paper Shotgun did an investigation into its creation. Tied with Into the Darkness, "Foregone Destruction" is the track I most associate with Unreal Tournament and all those evenings of sniping from the top of a high tower as the platform tumbled and the Earth spun through the void.
Music From a Licensed Game

Star Wars: X-Wing - Dogfight.

My main association with Star Wars is not the movies, and really it's not even the books, though I certainly read enough of the latter. It's the video games. I never played Tie Fighter, but I played hours and hours of X-Wing, and whenever I think of the space battles in Star Wars, I always think of the dogfight music from X-Wing. You can hear it during the scene when tie fighters are chasing the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope, but the version I think of comes from a Soundblaster.
RPG Battle Music

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC - Fate of the Fairies.

This sounds like the rockin' battle theme that comes in at the very end when shit gets real and the party is racing toward the villain's hideout to stop them from completing the final phase of their plan, and it is that theme--it's the standard battle music on the game's final area--but it's also the theme from the tutorial boss battle against Estelle's friend Kurt. I beat Trails in the Sky without too much trouble at all, so when I went into Trails in the Sky SC, I set it on Hard mode, figuring that I had 50 hours of Trails gameplay behind me and I could handle it.

I could not handle it. Kurt repeatedly destroyed me while "Fate of the Fairies" played in the background, and eventually I restarted on Normal. The fate of the fairies is me getting repeatedly kicked in the teeth.
Puzzle Games

Anticipation - OST.

I'll slot the entire OST in here because it's only a few minutes long. I used to play this game all the time with wanderluster_kp when we were kids, and the hook when you start to input an answer is burned into my brain forever.
Music That Makes You Sad

Homeworld - Adagio For Strings.
"No one's left. Everything's gone. Kharak is burning...
It is literally impossible for me to listen to this song without crying.

In Homeworld, you play a civilization that found a ruined colony ship on their planet that proves they came from elsewhere, with a map to a planet near the center of the galaxy called Hiigara, "Our Home." They study it, reverse-engineer the technology, build a hyperdrive-capable ship to explore the galaxy, and go on a test mission. And when they jump back to Kharak, they find a hunk of twisted metal where the construction scaffolding for the mothership was, the planet's atmosphere ignited, and the cryostasis trays containing all that is left of their people under attack.

The voice acting in Homeworld is some of the best I've ever heard in any video game, because it's all done on military communications channels. They maintain professionalism even in the case of disaster, but you can hear the despair in Fleet Intelligence's voice when he says "Not even beacons." And at the end? When you capture an enemy fighter to learn the reason for all this?
"From the interrogation we learned that a frontier fleet patrolling the border of a vast interstellar empire was dispatched to destroy our planet. The captain claimed our planet violated a 4000 year old treaty forbidding us to develop hyperspace technology. Extermination of our planet was the consequence.

"The subject did not survive interrogation."
Chills.
Music From a Game You Don't Like

Super Castlevania IV - Theme of Simon.

I did not like Super Castlevania IV, as the subject implies, but this song is fantastic. It's the perfect kind of Castlevania rock, such that when it's translated out of chiptune and into real instrumentation it sounds amazing. I would lose my mind if a band played a cover of "Simon's Theme."
Music Featuring Vocals

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - Nightsong.

I don't know if the night elves from World of Warcraft are my favorite playable group in any game, but they're easily in the top three. I played Sentinel in Warcraft III. I played Alliance in WoW because I wanted to be a druid and, coming from Warcraft III and knowing nothing about WoW, obviously druids were a night elf class, right? I mostly played Tyrande or Malfurion in Heroes of the Storm. I downloaded a Kaldorei mod for Stellaris. It's a thing. Blizzard kind of ruined them in WoW, but I still love their initial portrayal in Warcraft III. An entire society dedicated to protecting their holiest site, eternally on guard against another demonic invasion of their world. A society with no civilians--humans have peasants, orcs have peons, the Scourge have acolytes, and even high elves have villagers when they're playable in Frozen Throne, but the night elves' work is done by the spirits of their dead. A society of elite warriors, every one a centuries- or millennia-old killing machine.

And then in World of Warcraft, that uniqueness is almost all gone.

Cataclysm was where I lost interest in WoW, and I never even heard "Nightsong" in the game. It played in Ashenvale, and I never went back and did the revamped world quest because the guided theme park direction that WoW was going wasn't interesting to me. But I heard it on the soundtrack that came with the CE and it was the best song there, and it kept popping up with events related to the night elves that I heard about later. The death of Ysera. Tyrande becoming the Night Warrior. It's pretty much the night elves' theme at this point, more than the soft music that plays in Teldrassil or Ashenvale, and for years it was my ringtone. This was an easy pick. Elune adore!
Boss Battle Music

Chrono Trigger - Battle with Magus.

The Black Wind howls...

For a big chunk of Chrono Trigger, Magus is the final boss. In the future, the party learns that Lavos destroyed the world, and in the Middle Ages they learn that Magus is performing a ritual tied to Lavos. So he seems like the final villain for most of the game, and it's only after fighting their way through his minions and entering his fortress that Crono and his friend discover Magus is just as much of a victim of Lavos as they are. But he's willing to stop at nothing to destroy Lavos, even conquering the world if that will help, so he becomes the Demon King (魔王 maō, localized as "fiendlord"). He transforms Glenn into Frog and kills Cyrus. He's legitimately villainous, and his music reflects it.

And the buildup in the song! The confrontation is timed to the music, so at 0:08, when the wind sound starts, Magus says:
Again, the bitter black wind begins to howl… Very well. Come, if it is death you seek!
And then the desperate struggle begins against one of the hardest bosses in the game.
16-bit Music

Final Fantasy VI - Terra's Theme.

I could have put this as my favorite Overworld theme, but I don't have the same connection to it as I do to "Nerevar Rising." That said, Final Fantasy VI wars with Final Fantasy X for my favorite Final Fantasy game, and the music in VI is worlds better. Look at "Terra's Theme," by turns melancholy and triumphant, following Tina's journey from slave-soldier of the Empire to outcast half-human foundling to caretaker and protector of orphans, a woman who found her true place in the world with the aid of her friends. There are so many good songs on that soundtrack, from "Catastrophe" to "Shadow's Theme" to the battle theme to "Searching for Friends," but this is the best of them.
Music You Never Get Tired Of

Stardew Valley - Spring (It's a Big World Outside).

I played Stardew Valley for almost a hundred hours over two long games, and spring and summer were my favorite seasons. Summer has more energetic music, but spring has cherryblossoms and this song, which really captures the sense of promise you feel when the snow finally fades and the warm part of the year, with beaches and street festivals and rooftop parties and all the wonders of the season that are cancelled this year. Stardew Valley is all the good parts of the rural experience with none of the disadvantages: the close-knit community of small-town life without the bigotry that sometimes comes from it, the satisfaction of creating something using hard work without the threat of starvation or bankruptcy that comes from farming, and the knowledge that no matter what happens, no matter what you do, you're always making progress. Well has it been said that video games allow us to accomplish feats we never could in real life, like be given a task and then complete that task.

This song came up on a podcast a couple years ago and I legit teared up remembering how cozy and happy playing Stardew Valley was, so if anything fits the prompt, it does.
Music In a Game Released the Year You Were Born

Dig Dug - Theme.

I was born in 1982, so video games, and especially video game music, were in a pretty primitive state then, so the pickings are slim. But Dig Dug is a game I've played in the arcade and like a bunch, and this is a pretty bopping song.
Cover of Music by a Different Artist

Friedrich Habetler Music - Bloody Tears.

I listen to so many OC ReMixes, but I feel like a lot of them change the song up too much to be considered a cover (that is, in fact, one of the site's missions). So instead, I offer you this. I haven't seen Castlevania, though a ton of people tell me I would love it, and they're probably right, but my first engagement with the show and with Friedrich Habetler was finding that YouTube video. And having seen the actual opening, the Bloody Tears version is 1000% better why didn't they think of that?!?! They even used "Bloody Tears" later in the series! Now when I do watch Castlevania, I'll have to skip the opening because it can't live up.

Also, remember above when I said I'd lose my mind if a band played a cover of "Simon's Theme"? Friedrich Habetler has a cover! It was used as the final battle theme for Dracula in the Simon's Destiny Doom mod I played, just like the original was in Super Castlevania IV! So good.
Music from a Racing Game

F-Zero - Big Blue.

A war between this and "Mute City," but this one wins. I don't have a lot of actual experience in racing games other than Test Drive 3 for DOS, which was not a good game, but I did play F-Zero a bit with friends and I heard this song a lot in Smash Melee, so it comes out on top.
Music Associated with Frustration

Blaster Master - Area 5.

This song is beautiful, but it's the area music for as far as I ever got in Blaster Master. I wrote seven years ago about the last time I played that game, when I finally beat the boss of Area 5 but had left Sophia on the other side of a barrier that I needed Sophia to get to. I can still remember staring at that tank, mere pixels away but totally unreachable, blocking me from progressing after the only time I had ever beaten ~~the Giant Enemy Crab~~Hard Shell.

I had plenty of frustration from wiping for hours in World of Warcraft, but nothing beats knowing I had finally succeeded and still not being able to progress.
Town/Village Music

The Legend of Zelda: the Minish Cap - Hyrule Town.

Minish Cap is secretly one of my favorite Legend of Zelda games because it's so cozy! The pikkoru's hidden existence amidst the people of Hyrule, exchanging カケラ (kakera, "fragments," Eng: "kinstones") with other villagers, Zelda and Link being childhood friends...everything is calculated to be warm. And this song is the same way, with a driving energy like a town market day, which it is in Hyrule Town when Link first arrives thanks to the Pikkoru Festival. This is probably my favorite Legend of Zelda town theme.
Underrated Music

Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero - The Magic Meadow.

Early PC music doesn't get a lot of focus among VGM enthusiasts compared to the works of Uematsu or Mitsuda or anyone who composed for the NES or SNES or Genesis, but I was a PC kid so that's where all my nostalgia is! And the music from Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero is great! The Hero's March, the Dryad's Theme, and this, the music for the magical meadow in the northern part of Spielburg Valley created by the mage Erana. When wandering around away from Spielburg, probably injured and looking for safety, you stumble on a glowing meadow filled with flowers, with a tree whose fruit satiates hunger, and where no monsters can enter.

I've legitimately thought about getting a print of the EGA art for Erana's Meadow and having it framed.

This song is one of the only QFG songs that got an OC ReMix, so it clearly made an impression.
Music You Constantly Have Stuck in your Head

Myth: the Fallen Lords - The Siege of Madrigal.
Friday August 8, Otter Ferry

Our vanguard has crossed the Scamander unchallenged and remains hidden on the southern bank of the river. Their assault will begin two hours after midnight against Shiver's right flank, at the same time the Madrigal garrison throws open the Gate of Storms and attacks her from the front.
This is the song in my iTunes with the highest play count. Most people who know it nowadays know it because it keeps getting used as an easter egg in the various Halo games, but this is where it started, with the narration of the third mission of the first Myth game. It doesn't play during the mission, so there's only one chance to hear it, but I don't remember any of the other mission narrations from Myth, even from far more dramatic missions later in the game. Just this one.
Music That Gets You Pumped

Shovel Knight - Strike the Earth!

This is legitimately one of the most rocking songs written in the last decade and one of the best pieces of VGM ever. Shovel Knight is a fantastic platformer that echoes all the good parts of Ducktales, Mega Man, and various bits of other NES platformers throughout the ages, with modern game design sensibilities like a Dark Souls-style risk-reward saving system. This is the theme from the first area where you learn how to play the game, and even today I'll still play it when I need a bit of a pick-me-up.
Music You Like from a Game You Haven't Played

Chrono Cross - Dream of the Shore Near Another World.

There's a lot of video game music I get emotional over because of memories of the game, or memories of who I was when I played it. It's a rare bit of VGM that makes me emotional when I've never played the game, but "Dream of the Shore Near Another World" is the top example of it.
Music from a Handheld Game

Metroid II: Return of Samus - Surface of SR388.

I only played a bit of this game, though I did play through all of Another Metroid 2 Remake, but this was the most memorable part of it for me. I only vaguely rememebered the graphics or the gameplay of Samus running around on that little Game Boy screen, but I've intermittently listened to the surface theme for years. It's got a wonderful upbeat crunchiness, reflecting the hope that Samus has after her successful Zero Mission on Zebes. The music gets creepier and darker the further into SR388 she goes and this is the brightest of the bunch, but that makes it the most memorable.
Music that Makes You Feel Nostalgic

Sierra Logo Compilation.

There are so many answers I could give to this, but this short jingle is honestly the most accurate. Quests for Glory, Kings Quests, Space Quests, Eco Quests...so many games I played as a kid were Sierra games, and all of them started with the mountain and that bit of music.
Final Boss Music

Kingdom Hearts II - Darkness of the Unknown.

Sure, Kingdom Hearts's story is a mess, but that music! It's rocking, operatic, melancholy after the halfway point, and I remember fighting a giant flying dragon in space who kept telling me that darkness would consume all and firing hundreds of lasers at me. Shimomura Yoko really pulled out all the stops for this one, and since I do things like search Spotify and Youtube for playlists of "epic" music, of course this was going to stick in my mind.
Credits Music

Trip World - Credits.

Trip World is an extremely weird game, and I don't know if I'd recommend that anyone actually play it. But like how Silver Surfer has an amazing title screen music even though the game isn't that great, Trip World has amazing credits music even though the rest of the game is extremely confusing. It's crunchy and rocking, a great way to play out a game where half the enemies are nonviolent and you spend the entire time looking for...a flower? Sure. It's great, that's what matters.

Thirty-day Video Game Music Meme

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