Best Video Game Soundtracks

[The Weakest Suit]

I'll start with the first 2 katamari damacy games.
I also love the Final Fantasy IV - Celtic Moon soundtrack.

Here is a site where you can download almost any video game soundtrack imaginable (plus a lot of anime and j-pop/rock). You have to open a new screen to download each track, but it's worth the extra effort.
gh.ffshrine.org

[Niveous]

Awesome site! Being able to find an mp3 of the ending theme to Space Channel 5 part 2 has just made my life a little brighter.

And Katamari Damacy is my choice as well.

[Märk]

'The Neverhood' and 'Skullmonkeys' 4TW.

[HeuristicsInc]

I love Kelly Bailey's soundtrack works - Half-Life 2, Episode 1 & 2, and (I think) Portal.
The soundtrack to Diablo II was great. At the time they released mp3s of all the tracks, week by week. That was pretty awesome.
And I still love the music from Intellivision's SNAFU. So catchy.
-bill

[Albatross]

For my two-week spiel on PC gaming tunage, start here.

[ujnhunter]

Castlevania Symphony of the Night soundtrack is pretty killer... (Vampire Killer!) it's actually the only VG soundtrack I've ever bought the CD for...

[The Weakest Suit]

video game soundtracks i own:
star wars shadows of the empire: soundtrack for the n64 travesty (and novel travesty). it's also the first star wars music not composed by john williams and the first star wars music to encorporate choral aspects. this cd is better than the book and video game combined.
metal gear solid: a soundtrack was given to me when i pre-ordered the ps1 game.
silent hill 3: cd soundtrack was packaged with the ps2 game. i wish they would have done that for sh4 too. the voice of the major from GITS:SAC is the singer for the vocal tracks. that's pretty cool.
batan kaitos: a mini soundtrack cd came packaged with the game as a Toys R Us exclusive. i got the game and cd for ten dollars and it was very fun for a few weeks, but i never solved it.
final fantasy tactics: my comic shop had a copy of this double cd soundtrack (which i suspect is a hong kong bootleg because it was pretty cheap). a few tracks here are absolutely incredible. the rest is better than average.
and finally:
final fantasy IV celtic moon: another bootleg from the comic shop. ff4 came out before orchestral music was used in video games, so the main themes were recorded using celtic instruments. this is an incredible cd. anyone who has played ff4 (or ff2 for snes as it was known when i was a kid) will instantly remember these tracks. any ff fan would love this cd.

[fluffy]

Namco generally has pretty awesome sound tracks. Ridge Racer 4 and Mr. Driller are both totally awesome. (And of course Katamari.)

[HeuristicsInc]

Actually, now that I think about it, the best video game soundtrack must be Audiosurf, since you can make the soundtrack any song you want
-bill

[jimtyrrell]

Interstate '76 has to be my favorite.

[JonPorobil]

Music loops as you play, so inevitably it becomes one of the most memorable things about any game you spend any length of time playing.

I also mentioned this for "Best Video Game Ever," but the music is one of the many things that actually makes it great: Donkey Kong Country 2.

Also, the Mega Man games for which Bun Bun did the composing. I think that's the first three, but I might be wrong.

The Legend of Zelda franchise has done a great job of keeping the same tone and theme and everything with its music while changing the mood and introducing new pieces very carefully. Music in those games is basically the fourth triforce piece. It drives the whole series. The soundtracks to the Gameboy Zelda games are great but underrated. I think the franchise may have peaked musically with Zelda 64, but Twilight Princess was great with the moody stuff, even where it was short on melody.

Secret of Mana. I learned to play a couple of those tunes on the piano. The sad ones are just wrenching.

Oh, and Koji Kondo's work on the early N64 games, like Mario 64 and Star Fox 64. Great stuff, all around.

More recently, Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village has some really great MIDI-Orchestral stuff reminiscent (as is the whole game) of French animation. And the Ace Attorney series.

If you're really into video game music, check out Overclocked Remix: They've got a huge pool of really talented musicians and remixers who put together some stunning remixes of video game music. There's well over a thousand songs on the site at this point.

[EmbersOfAutumn]

While you all have mentioned quite a number of good games, I would politely ask you to be dragged into a street and shot for not mentioning THE quintessinal soundtrack of all time--

Final Fantasy VII

(As a member of the Nobuo Uemastu fan club and having officially played through all of the Final Fantasies (save 3, only recently released to the US), I do believe I have credentials to make the previous statement. Thank you - mgmnt.)

[fluffy]

Playing all the games in a series does not give you the authority to make such a decision outside of that series. FF7 may have the best soundtrack of all the FF games but it's still cheezy crap compared to most of the stuff mentioned in this thread.

Hell, Chrono Trigger's soundtrack is better, and it's from the same company and in the same dang genre and on the previous generation of hardware.

[fluffy]

More recently, Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village has some really great MIDI-Orchestral stuff reminiscent (as is the whole game) of French animation.

I like the music but I end up turning it off when I play just because so far I've only heard like two songs and they're too short and repeat too often. That sort of thing gets on my nerves way too quickly.

Also technically it's not MIDI. I wish people would stop misusing that term. There is absolutely no MIDI running on the DS itself. Don't confuse a crappy sound bank style with a networking protocol. (Granted, one of the music compilers can use the notation from a MIDI file but that still has nothing to do with the end sound and what people mean when they call that kind of music "MIDI.")

[The Weakest Suit]

personally, i think FFIV's soundtrack is better than FFVII. VII has a lot of songs built off of IV. FFtactics is my second favorite FF soundtrack. the theme for the opening credits and the music when you pick your team are perfect compositions.

[EmbersOfAutumn]

personally, i think FFIV's soundtrack is better than FFVII. VII has a lot of songs built off of IV. FFtactics is my second favorite FF soundtrack. the theme for the opening credits and the music when you pick your team are perfect compositions.

IV has a bunch of great songs--I'm not arguing that. Edward's harp song is basically an exercise in advanced timing from a technical standpoint (triplets the whole way through). However, it really is hard to compare IV with VII, and not because one is better than the other per se, but the songs written for IV were meant to kind of stand out as compositional pieces. The vast majority of them contain either the word 'theme' after it (Rydia's theme, Rosa's Theme, Cid's Theme, etc.) or were the name of a place. VII had much more incidental music, music that really didn't stand out because of a person or place, but it added to the story, much like what one would expect from a movie composer. It's more nuanced in it's form. While I love IV and VI, playing select songs from both of them on piano, VII just strikes me as an overall well-rounded soundtrack.

[Niveous]

I was just reminded of one and I would like to change my vote to the game "Grind Session".

Soundtrack:
Black Flag - "Rise Above"
Cornelius - "Galaxie Express"
Dr. Octagon - "Blue Flowers"
GZA - "Publicity"
Jurassic 5 - "Jayou"
KRS-One - "Out for Fame"
Man or Astro-man? - "Television Fission"
NOFX - "Linoleum"
Sonic Youth - "In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader"
The X-Ecutioners - "Raida's Theme"
Zen Guerrilla - "Empty Heart"

[fluffy]

Jet Grind Radio also had a pretty good soundtrack.

[Niveous]

Jet Grind Radio also had a pretty good soundtrack.

I concur. I picked up a lot of it from that ffshrine site the other day. There's a lot of good stuff on it. I love that Cold song.

[Reist]

Jet Grind Radio also had a pretty good soundtrack.

Please tell me you have a dreamcast!

[fluffy]

I do! I have a lot of systems, actually:

NES
SNES
N64
GameCube
Wii
GBC
GBA SP
Nintendo DS
Dreamcast
Playstation (modded for imports)
PS2
PS3

I think my largest game collection is PS2, although I also have a lot of N64 games as well. Most of my PS1 games are imports. I think GBA is the one with the least amount of library love.

Most of the time only the PS2, PS3, and Wii are hooked up. (The PS2 because the games I play on it most have custom controllers which don't work so well on the PS3.) The NES and SNES are readily available as well. N64, PS1, and Dreamcast stay in the closet. The various portables are scattered everywhere (well, the DS is usually in my backpack but I'm never sure where the GBC and GBA are).

My next system purchase will probably be a PSP, as I may be developing for it in the near-ish future, and anyway now there's a bunch of games for it that I want, like Patapon and the next Ratchet & Clank.

Oh speaking of which (and back on-topic): the soundtrack for Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction is also very good. It's got a great mix of techno-oriented symphonic cartoon music, funky disco grooves, and pirate shanties. The graphics are also phenomenal, and while it is very rare for me to even bother playing a game all the way through anymore, R&C was so much fun that I actually played through it THREE TIMES IN A ROW. And I might do it again when my DualShock 3 arrives in a few days!

Also, personally I think the PS3 version of The Orange Box (another good soundtrack game, although of course most of it fades into the background aside from Still Alive from Portal) is the best for single-player (it's got amazing graphics and the friendliest controls), except that it's missing achievements and lately the TF2 servers have been a bit empty so I've been playing it more on the PC. When I play the HL2 Episodes I'm not sure if I'll do it on PC or PS3 though. I have to weigh achievements vs. better graphics and controls. Tough choice.

[sausage boy]

The Monkey Island series has always had awesome music, but most notably the first two games.

Xenon 2 Megablast had an awesome intro song, and Cannon Fodder had a nice intro ditty too.