Bad Ass Game Music Thread

[asatiir]

It was revived in the G+ community a while back, so there's no reason for it not to be here. To commemorate George Kokoris's Tumblr blog of the same name, this thread is for bad ass game music, thought I'd start with a few of recent favorites:

Tokkyu Shinrei Solbrain/Shatterhand - entire soundtrack:


Shovel Knight - La Danse Macabre (Lich Yard):


Shovel Knight - In the Halls of the Usuper (Pridemoor Keep):


Shovel Knight - Fighting with all of Our Might (Guest Director Boss Battle)

[Angry Jedi]

Ooh! Ooh! Game music thread. All right, here's some joy for your listening pleasure, on the theme of "first levels".

If Super Mario Bros. and Castlevania have taught us anything from an auditory perspective, it's that the music that plays as the game proper starts is enormously important and often becomes the most memorable, iconic piece of the soundtrack. I bet all I had to do was to type the word "Castlevania" and "Vampire Killer" started playing in your head, right?

Here's some examples of other games that get it right -- in many cases, they might not be as well-known as the aforementioned examples, but they work on the same principle.



Gundemonium Recollection is a bullet hell shooter from Japanese indie dev Platine Dispositif. This track is full of energy and adrenaline, and is the perfect way to start off the frantic action.



DoDonPachi Resurrection is one of the best games on mobile devices, and a strong entry in Cave's library of bullet hell shooters. Like Gundemonium Recollection, the game starts strong with a lively, energetic piece designed to get the player's pulse pounding. (Interestingly, this track only shows up in the mobile versions; the Xbox 360 version has a rather darker soundtrack more in keeping with the series' fairly downbeat storyline.)



Harmony of Despair may be one of the lesser-known Castlevania titles due to its peculiar multiplayer time attack structure, but its music is some of the best in the series. This one is from the first level.

[Bowley]

This isn't game music, but who cares? I binge-watched the anime Attack on Titan last weekend and loved it.

A lot of the tracks are great, but "Counter Attack Mankind" is a god damned rich, symphonic electronica delight for the first half and then switches over to a rad metal/choral theme. Heroism and hope turns into, "Here comes humanity, bitches."

[Angry Jedi]

If we're going to do anime music, I feel obliged to mention Sword Art Online. Hey, it's sort of game-related.

SAO is a popular show that it's fashionable for people who think they're too good for it to hate on, but I really enjoyed it. Haven't started the second season yet, but I loved the crap out of the first season, at least partly for its soundtrack. Here's a prime example; probably one of the OST's most well-known tracks:



Composer is Yuki Kajiura, who worked on Xenosaga II and III as well as a bunch of other anime, including Puella Magi Madoka Magica (which I'm still yet to watch, so no spoilers!).

[Angry Jedi]

Bump!

[Teryn]

Bad Ass, hm? Hope this doesn't kill the loading time for this thread... ^^;


One of my new (old?) favourites from VVVVVV, the retro-style is the video game music I wish I could have had. This is the definition of "Epic" to me.


Not very long, from Knights of the Old Republic 2, but it definitely haunts you. Mark Griskey takes the spirit of Return of the Jedi's "The Emperor" and makes it even better.


Classic Fallout 2 track. If this doesn't make you feel like you're the baddest MoFo in the California Wasteland, nothing will.


Probably one of my most favourite tracks, though the title is a spoiler for Mega Man X5. One of the most moving electronic-style tracks I've ever heard.


This one isn't very well known, but the SNES Power Rangers game had excellent music, though you'd think otherwise from the corny series.

EDIT: Thanks for the tip, Angry Jedi. ^^;

[Angry Jedi]

Teryn, FYI: you need to use full YouTube URLs with the YouTube BBCode tag, not shortened youtu.be links.

[Raven2785]

SAO is a popular show that it's fashionable for people who think they're too good for it to hate on

I am one of those people, but I hate it for a very specific reason and that is the total change in direction from the first to the second season.

Spoiler: show

I loved the Aincrad arc and it looked like they were heading into an interesting direction by the end of that arc with people wanting to settle down and live their lives instead of trying to get out of the game, if they kept going with that it would have turned into people splitting in two and fighting to stay in the game vs Kirito and co.

Nah, instead let's go to another game, were our MC can build another potential harem and save his love interest who went from being a strong female character to a damsel in distress in a literal gilded cage, it became the same thing as Gundam 00 for me, where it started interesting and when the second season rolled around, it became Gundam Wing, nothing bad against that, but I wanted you to build up in the interesting stuff you've brought in, not scrap it so you can become another anime.

Whew, mini-rant over

Anyways, game music!



I loved Shadow of the Colossus soundtrack, and of all the themes in there, this one is my favorite, simply cause it reminds me of hanging of for dear life at the little tufts of hair on flying colossi



FF X-2 really didn't end up being my cup of tea, played it for about 10 hours before I put it down and got rid of the game, but I always spent about 10-15 minutes of every play session just watching the intro cause of this theme, I LOVED FF X and this theme with it's slow, almost melancholic delivery hit me right in the feels



Payday 2 has a fantastic soundtrack that fits perfectly with the whole cops and robbers thing it's got going on, Calling All Units is my favorite of that soundtrack, it's the perfect song to get your blood pumping when you are surrounded inside a bank and a Bulldozer decides to show up.

[Grant Heaslip]

I'm going to interpret "badass" music as music that makes you go "fuck yeah, it's on now". This track from Hyrule Warriors did it for me:



This track from Persona 3 really sets the tone of a cool area (the monorail). The Japanese rapping might be an... acquired taste:



The FFX-2 mention reminded me that FFXIII-2's final boss theme is pretty badass. It just keeps on building:

[Angry Jedi]

Time to bring this thread back, because who doesn't love some badass music?

Today I want to celebrate the art of remixing classical music, something which went away for a while since the 8-bit era (when everyone was doing it, as composing original computer music was new, exciting and difficult) but seems to be making a bit of a resurgence.

Here we have Bizarre Creations' take on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata from Boom Boom Rocket:



And two tracks from Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, the first of which is a homage to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons (though I'm buggered if I can remember which one it is without sitting and listening to all of them)



...and the second of which is a homage to the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky:



Then, of course, we have Pandora's Tower, which just straight-up used a bit of classic Verdi as its main theme:



...and referenced Liszt's Liebestraum throughout as a recurring musical motif.