Favourite Music

Most great games that I remember were not just games with good gameplay, they usually had great music as well.

What is your favourite piece of game music? Which game has the best music? I have spend a couple of nostalgic days listening to loads of Amiga music while I am working and I have come up with my favourite pieces that I could remember:

Agony
Alien Breed (series)
Apidya
Blood Money
Cannon Fodder
Chaos Engine
Chuck Rock
Fire & Ice
First Samurai
Frontier
Gods
Guardian (CD32)
Hired Guns
John Madden's
Jumping Jackson
Knights of the Sky
Lemmings
Lotus (series)
Microprose F1GP
Monkey Island (series)
Pinball Dreams/Fantasies/Illusions
Project X
RoadKill
R-Type
Shadow of the Beast (series)
Speedball 2
Supercars 2
The Spy Who Loved Me
Turrican (series)
Walker
Xenon 2
Zool

what about you?

The above list I just put in alphabetical order but the poll is my top 10 in order.

[RCK]

Here is my favorite games' music:

-> Turrican II (of course)
-> Dune
-> Fury of the Furies
-> Jaguar XJ 220 (haaaaaaaaa !!!!, fantastic)
-> Jim Power
-> Hybris
-> Nicky Boum
-> Pacmania
-> Pinball Fantaisy (!!!!!!!!)
-> Project X
-> Space Harrier
-> The Settlers
-> Xenon II

Of course Hybris. That was one the first games that confirmed to me that the Amiga could produce really good music. I didn't even own an Amiga when I first played that game and the first two things that struck me were how much better the graphics were and how good the music was.

I had a spectrum at the time and I was extremely jealous of my friend who had an Amiga. However I still refused to admit that Amigas were better than Spectrums.

I constantly had arguments with my friend that Amigas were simply spectrums with better graphics. Oh how foolish I was.

[RCK]

It is a Fact that the Amiga had the best audio capacity at this time: Forget the spectrum, forget the poor soundblaster 8 bit, just the AtariST can do one sound as good as the amiga. (gaming sound, not professionnal midi system)

I had always had arguments with ST owners about the capabilities of their machines.

Everyone knew that Amigas were better at games, than STs. Except for ST owners of course. Their one saving grace was apparently their sound. ST owners would constantlky go on about how much better sound was on STs. Then I played Stunt Car Racer on the ST and I thought the sound was poor, so my friend lost that arguement as well.

I wasn't trying to say sound on the spectrum was good, in fact it was awful. Although saying that, the first time I heard a home computer speak, was a spectrum game called 5-a-side and that would "say" GOAL when someone scored. I must have taken ages to program the spectrum to say GOAL.

When I try and think of great games music I hardly every think of any decent spectrum tunes. All good game music came from the Amiga.

[Fred the Fop]

I know you people are not as martial as I am, but the opening theme from the great stategy game from Empire, Campaign, is incredible moody and awesome.
I wish someone here would show me a simple way to rip the music and make a MOD.

[7-Zark-7]

As far as games music goes you could almost split into a sub category-Intro tunes & then in-game tunes.

I'll never forget the first time I booted up Cannon Fodder!!
"War has never been so much fun..."

In general though, probably my favourite Amiga music artist was Chris Huelsbeck,(Apologies if I have the spelling wrong), of the "Factor 5"/Rainbow Arts programming team in Germany. I can't recall a bad tune on either Commodore machines he ever composed.

Off hand, I recall the Turrican games,(1 & 2), X-out, & even one from the first of the "Strip Poker" games-the music was a lot better than the naked models they used.

Just a shame I can't get WinUae to ever run it properly, (Look under emulators for my thoughts on that).

[7-Zark-7]

Of course, how could I forget? The Tim Follin did Ghouls 'n Ghosts didn't he?

Made an otherwise crappy Amiga version worth having-That music was even better than the Arcade version really!!

I have to go with Xenon II.

I bought the game purely upon the music - without even playing it !!!

But the game is still my fave vertical scrolling shoot-em-up.

Personally, Civilisation's intro theme is inspiring, it always gets me in the mood to create an empire.

[Dastardly]

My top ten tunes would be:

1. The Secret of Monkey Island (my vote)
2. Shadow of the Beast
3. Chaos Engine
4. Xenon 2
5. Turrican 2
6. Agony
7. Hired Guns
8. Gods (the intro tune)
9. Speedball2
10. Project X

Richard Joseph was responsible for some of the best Amiga tunes IMO, closely followed by Allistair Brimble.
Monkey Island gets my vote though because its just SO atmospheric and suits the game to perfection

[Djay]

I have to go with Xenon II.

yeah, Xenon2 featured one great piece of music, but it wasn't exactly original though (by that i mean it wasn't an original Amiga score)

i loved the ALL music from Turrican 1 and 2, (download the Cd sountrack, its great)

i also liked...

the end tune of DynaBlaster
the intro tune of Full Contact
the intro tune of Cannon Fodder
most of the Project-X soundtrack
the intro tune of Gods
most of the Chaos Engine soundtrack
the intro and end tune of Shadow of the Beast 2

and... i also liked some the scene music too, Switchback (rebels), State of the Art/9 Fingers (spaceballs, who doesn't), Enigma (phenomena), most of the Jesper KYD stuff... and loads more i can't remember at the moment.

it's funny how just listening to the music can bring back floods of memories!

[Codetapper]

I think Turrican 2 has the best soundtrack for any Amiga game, so many tunes and almost all of them fit the game perfectly! So good they made a CD out of them!

Some other great tunes I would mention:

Final Fight intro tune by The Judge.
Leander music.
Interference demo by Sanity (can't remember composer!)
Qwak tunes by Bjorn Lynn, great bouncy tunes!

[sarek2k]

I think that you have all overlooked System 3's Ninja Remix that also had great music (not as great as Turrican 2 but still damn fine!)

(The Last Ninja 2 on Amiga was pants all round!)

The Last Ninja series came from C64 (Sid chip) and was a tough act to follow!)

Also Very Good musicians where Maniacs of Noise (loads of C64 games however when they got on Amiga they Flunked out with only memorable tunes being Unreal, Supremacy (may have been more but i can't remeber now!)

Also Alister Brimble was a music God on Amiga many great tunes like Wonderland (team 17 requested this but no one heard of it!) Overdrive and Tonnes more games.

[Twistin'Ghost]

I am really stunned that Apidya is not on the voting chart (and some of the others that are...) This has always been my favorite game soundtrack and it's really quite remarkable that something this ambitious could be created for such a minimal spec machine (generally A500). Every time I listen to it, it never ceases to amaze me.

[Shatterhand]

Hey, that's an old thread coming back

I agree with Twistin.. maybe Apidya isn't my fav soundtrack ever , but it's close to be ... the music is great, and that ideia of having a "general theme" for each world, only changing it slight at each level, is just brilliant... Chris Huelsbeck is truly a genious .

Turrican 2 is probably my fav soundtrack, followed by Turrican 3, then Turrican 1

And I have also to mention 2 games that most people don't seem to remember when talking about music and sound

GLobal Gladiators have some GREAT tunes, and also very good sound effects

and Battle Squadron, with that GREAT intro tune, the FANTASTIC main tune, the EXCELLENT sounds effects ... in a general point of view, I think Battle Squadron is the game with the best sound ever ... Even the small game over tune is brilliant, and also it has the best explosion sound ever in a game (I wish every shump had that sound when my ship blows )

[blackcornflake]

I just voted for Guardian CD32.

Mine is the only vote!!!

Is everyone aurally challenged? Is it frowned upon for being CD audio?

I feel faint.

BTW: The titles to Cow Wars are art. Strauss's The Blue Danube plays, with intermittent explosions and moos, as cows are fired from cannons across screen. It all builds to a crescendo until the words 'Cow Wars' hit the screen with a brown squigy splat.

[gary]

Chris Huelsbeck was a legend on the Amiga. Sadly the same can't be said for the other ex-C64 composers (Rob Hubbard, Ben Daglish, etc..) They seemed to move away from computers after the C64 stopped being commercially viable to work on.

The Xenon 2 soundtrack was just tracked samples of the Bomb The Bass soundtrack. It doesn't really take much effort to do that.

I would have added the Pinball Dreams/Fantasies/Illusions... series to the list. Created by people from the Demo scene all of the tunes were well above the average game efforts.

Didn't the Atari ST have the same off-the-shelf low cost sound chip as the later Spectrum machines? The Commodore 64 SID chip had better specs.

[Bloodwych]

Ok, here are a few not yet mentioned:

Beachvolley had a great intro tune!

Rock N Roll had some great tracks.

Chase HQ intro tune was good (ok not original)

IK+ theme suited the game perfectly and had some real crisp FX

But my all time favourite hasn't been mentioned!

LIBERATION!!!!!!!

It may not be the overall best tune, but the way it fits the intro graphics is most excellent!

[Twistin'Ghost]

I liked the title toon for Jumping Jack'son, too!