Soundtrack Central The best classic game music and more

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Ashley Winchester Feb 10, 2014

Like a lot of gamers I have a list of games I'm looking for and it's a mile wide. Unfortunately, some of those games I don't have too much data on... so I was wondering if anyone can fill me in on their opinions on anything included on/in this list:

http://www.listal.com/list/aws-gamegame … -wish-list

I'm working on filling the list out with what I do know... but I only have the first forty or so games covered as of now.

Anyways, if you have something to say about any of the games (good or bad) feel free to say so... or if you can recommend something else based off what is there that's be cool as well. However, since I'm not listing what I have I may already have it.

As a final note, I know some of the games listed aren't too great... but some of those are kind of ingrained in me from childhood and you know how that is.

Idolores Feb 11, 2014

Adventure Island 3 NES: Go for it. It's as fun as the first two, with more features, more dinosaurs and more leaf loincloths.

Battletoads NES: Difficulty be damned. The animation and oomph make it a worthy competitor to Technos games.

Breath of Fire 3 OST: Shoddy casing, ton of missing content both count as strikes to this. It's good, but not worth it otherwise.

Dracula X SNES: I wouldn't even consider it. That's a lot of money for a castrated product, completionist or no.

Darkstalkers 3 PSX: The money you spend on this could go towards a saturn copy of Vampire Savior on Saturn w/ Ram cart. Which you should be doing with all Capcom fighters anyways.

Fear Effect 1, 2 PSX: Do it. They're not hard to come by as far as I can tell, and they're definitely very interesting games.

All the listed FF Games: Better versions of every single one of these games exist (unless FFX remaster has the Japanese voice acting). Save yourself the headache.

Dawn of Mana PS2: Stay away. Truly bewildering gameplay mechanics overlaid on top of one of the most dubious uses of the havoc physics system make this one a mild curiosity at best.

Megaman Legends Prima guides: Jesus, man. These are early Prima guides. They stop just short of giving you the hantavirus.

Megaman Network Transmission GCN: Do it. For the love of christ, this is a solid game with a great soundtrack.

Metal Gear Solid GBC: Very well put together stealth title for the little brick. Shocked me with it's quality.

Metroid Prime guide by Versus Books: I'll just say this. I have never gone wrong with Versus Books.

Metroid Prime Hunters First Hunt DS: Just get the full version. No need for this demo cart.

Muramasa Wii: Get this. It's the best game on the goddamn Wii. Dat soundtrack, dat swordfighting, dat animation. Dat art style.

Punch-Out!! various: I'd get Super Punch-Out!! (my personal favorite in the series) and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! since it's such a bizarre timepiece.

River City Ransom GBA: I vastly prefer the NES original. Felt . . . I dunno, tougher? It's hard to take Kunio-kun seriously in his white school uniform.

Threads of Fate PSX: Hard to say. It's an interesting piece of work, coming from the hazy days of Square's golden-age of IP exploration. I didn't think it was terribly great, however.

Virtual On Saturn: I played the shit out of this in the arcades. The saturn version hurts my eyes. That said, it's pretty faithful, and if you manage to get the twin sticks, even better. Just do your research. Apparently, the sticks don't work with certain region's releases.

Wild-Arms anything: I wouldn't waste my own time with anything other than WIld Arms 1 and 2. The versus guides come recommended, though.

Xenogears OST: A must have for any VGM collector. My first OST was a bootleg of this, and I was so disgusted when I found out years later, I threw it out and sought out an official one.

Zelda Link's Awakening GB: I prefer the original over the DX version on the GBC. All the added stuff felt wholly unnecessary. Something about the somber green and yellow tones somehow add to the surreal dreamscape of Koholint Island.

Zane Feb 11, 2014

Battletoads (NES): Prequel to Flappy Bird.
Dracula Best 2: Original print over the reprint because of the adorable illustrations in the liners.
FF Tactics OST: Necessary; Saki and Iwata's most powerful duet thus far.
Killer7 (GC): Go for the GC over the PS2 - less load times. Total mess of a game, but worth a playthrough at least for the WTF factor.
Xenogears OST: Another necessity, I'd say. A little sappy at times, but it's still a classic. Love it even though I haven't played the game.

avatar! Feb 11, 2014 (edited Feb 11, 2014)

longhairmike wrote:

all of those bow before Goat Simulator

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgTQglGvNUs&hd=1

Holy... wow. Sure, the physics is not, uh, perfect, but who has never wanted to be an invincible goat?! Also, I can't wait for the survivor-horror version to come out...

Edit: What's better than a goat simulator? A goat simulator where you have a sticky tongue and can chase people with hatchets!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN2QUhaKN2Q

raynebc Feb 11, 2014

That Donkey Kong gameboy game brings back memories.  I wonder if I can still find my old cart of it.

Ashley Winchester Feb 11, 2014 (edited Feb 12, 2014)

Idolores wrote:

Breath of Fire 3 OST: Shoddy casing, ton of missing content both count as strikes to this. It's good, but not worth it otherwise.

Well, to put your mind at ease I'd only get this if I got a good deal...

Idolores wrote:

Metal Gear Solid GBC: Very well put together stealth title for the little brick. Shocked me with it's quality.

Crazy, you pretty much reiterated what I've been reading about this one.

Idolores wrote:

Wild-Arms anything: I wouldn't waste my own time with anything other than WIld Arms 1 and 2. The versus guides come recommended, though.

Yeah, I feel the same way... I love the first two games but after that.... I do think the WA4 is better than it seems however.

Idolores wrote:

Xenogears OST: A must have for any VGM collector. My first OST was a bootleg of this, and I was so disgusted when I found out years later, I threw it out and sought out an official one.

I had this and got rid of it... and I DON'T KNOW WHY. The soundtrack is stretched a little thin in the game but that's not a problem outside it.

Edit:

Idolores wrote:

Zelda Link's Awakening GB: I prefer the original over the DX version on the GBC. All the added stuff felt wholly unnecessary. Something about the somber green and yellow tones somehow add to the surreal dreamscape of Koholint Island.

Did not know the DX version had additional content.... just thought DX added color.

Idolores wrote:

Muramasa Wii: Get this. It's the best game on the goddamn Wii. Dat soundtrack, dat swordfighting, dat animation. Dat art style.

I have my local gamestop shipping a copy of this in from another store so I pretty much have it already.

Idolores wrote:

Metroid Prime Hunters First Hunt DS: Just get the full version. No need for this demo cart.

I have the full version already... I'd only get the demo if I could get it for next to nothing. However, people tend to think it's actually worth something....

Ashley Winchester Feb 11, 2014 (edited Feb 11, 2014)

Sorry DBL post

GoldfishX Feb 12, 2014

Nice site, it looks like something I should consider for the capsule reviews. Anyway, my take on the VGM:

Wild Arms XF - Still need to listen, but I gutted the hell out of WA4 (10 tracks favorited out of 4 discs, most were Naruke's) and I remember being unimpressed with this one when it was first released. Looking forward to hitting it with an open mind.

Xenogears - Essential listening, one of the soundtracks that made Mitsuda even more of a household name.

Star Ocean 2nd Story - I popped a capsule of this one and it went down nice and easy. Sakuraba's best.

Soul Edge Khan Super Session - Weird album, it varies in quality from track to track. Not as memorable as I'd like, but a quality release. Worth revisiting, moreso than the Soul Calibur soundtracks. "Edge of Soul" is a longtime favorite.

Metroid Game Sound Museum - These releases are my favorite versions of most NES classics (I like their recordings). Nothing but high marks from me. Original Metroid shows you can by with 10-12 effective tracks for a whole game.

Rockman Theme Song Collection - Kind of lame overall, but it has a small collection of cool themes. I got my $10 worth from the GMO final sale. The Legends 1 and X4 themes are highlights, I honestly don't remember anything else making an impression.

Irregular Hunter/Rockman Rockman - I ended up cutting quite a few X tracks off of this one, I felt like they could have done better overall and the guitar samples were annoying. I rather enjoyed the Rockman Rockman soundtrack, but I gutted Time Man's Stage and Elecman's Theme was kind of lame. No real desire to seek out a real copy of this one, it's rare from what I understand.

Legend of Mana - This one is THICK, it suffers from Playstation sound compression pretty badly and has a real lack of air between the instruments. I need to try it on my good headphones, I always get fatigued a couple tracks in. My second favorite Shimomura soundtrack (at least her Square stuff), behind Mario RPG, but way out in front of the various Kingdom Hearts scores.

The Legaia - Wanna Wanna = good, everything else out of context = not so good. I used to own it, but I'm too lazy to even download it to give it a rating. In context though, very effective.

FF Tactics - I really gutted/cleaned this one up, but what I was left with was really good. With so much music, there are a lot of meandering dark themes I have zero patience for, but some of those battle themes are amazing. I can much easier tolerate Sakimoto and friends in "greatest hits" form than 100% soundtrack form or even ingame form. I can go along with this being the #1 Sakimoto score I've come across, but I don't think Bubble Ghost has had a proper release, lol.

As an aside, I really enjoyed the FF Tactics A2 soundtrack recently. I realize it pulled a lot of tracks from other games, but since I haven't heard Tactics Advance 1 or FFXII, it was a virgin listen.

Dracula Best 2 - Essential release, a must-have for oldschool Castlevania fans.

Breath of Fire II and III - I didn't care for these much back in the day (I sold III to raise capital and listened through the box versions of both a long time ago). I need to revisit them, but I'm not approaching them with the greatest of enthusiasm.

Ashley Winchester Feb 12, 2014 (edited Feb 12, 2014)

Idolores wrote:

Megaman Legends Prima guides: Jesus, man. These are early Prima guides. They stop just short of giving you the hantavirus.

Actually, I found a good deal on the guide for the first game and got it earlier today. To be honest it doesn't look bad at all. I was skimming through it and it looks pretty thorough... the only sore spot I saw was the lack of special weapons recommendations for boss fights. Anyone who has played that game knows certain weapons make certain battles way easier. Also, it looks like this is where most people got the names of the enemies in the game... the names aren't butchered or anything.

GoldfishX wrote:

Wild Arms XF - Still need to listen, but I gutted the hell out of WA4 (10 tracks favorited out of 4 discs, most were Naruke's) and I remember being unimpressed with this one when it was first released. Looking forward to hitting it with an open mind.

I've had the XF soundtrack before and I really do like a lot of pieces off of it... but what happened with 5? There were like three tracks on that one I liked and none of them were by Kouda. As for WA4 I have that one and I didn't think Naruke's tracks were that good (save the battle theme) but a good chunk of Kouda's tracks pretty much nailed it down as purchase for me.

GoldfishX wrote:

Nice site, it looks like something I should consider for the capsule reviews.

I really do like Listal... but there isn't much of an audience for anything VGM related. I have a few VGM lists on there but they don't get many votes. Additionally, I had to add pretty much every non-FF album I own to their data base myself.

The games section is pretty good but the movies/tv/thespian area of that site obviously gets the most traffic.

Ashley Winchester Feb 12, 2014

Zane wrote:

Killer7...Total mess of a game, but worth a playthrough at least for the WTF factor.

Sorry it took me a while to get back to this one, but I am rather surprised to hear this opinion. I pretty much wanted to check out Killer7 because you had mentioned it a few times... not to sound "betrayed" or anything but I thought you would have a higher opinion of this one.

However, at the same time, there are games that I love yet know are poor creations when I look at them outside the box... so I can't say such a viewpoint is alien to me.

XLord007 Feb 12, 2014 (edited Feb 13, 2014)

Here's how we're going to do this. I'll make four categories: Great, Good, Mediocre, Poor and put each thing that I have tried in one of them. I will skip the items I haven't tried.

Great:
Breath of Fire III Original Soundtrack
Demon Castle Dracula Best 2
Castlevania: Dracula X - Super famicom and SNES
Contra III: The Alien Wars - Super famicom and SNES
Donkey Kong - Game Boy
Final Fantasy Adventure - Game Boy
Final Fantasy Tactics: Original Soundtrack
Gargoyle's Quest - Game Boy
Legend of Mana Original Soundtrack
Rockman Theme Song Collection (worth it for "We Are Rockmen" alone)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time - Super famicom and SNES
Threads of Fate - PlayStation
Wave Race 64 - Nintendo 64
Xenogears Original Soundtrack
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - Famicom and NES
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - Game Boy (the DX version is better)
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX - Game Boy Color

Good:
Bionic Commando - Famicom and NES
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Game Boy Advance
Contra 4 - Nintendo DS
Donkey Kong Country Returns - Nintendo Wii
Killer 7 - GameCube
Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil - PlayStation 2
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile - PlayStation (get the Wii remake instead)
Metal Gear Solid - Game Boy Color
Metroid Fusion Official Nintendo Player's Guide
Metroid: Zero Mission Nintendo Player's Guide
Metroid - Famicom and NES
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (first one is much better)
Rival Schools: United By Fate Original Soundtrack
Star Ocean the Second Story Original Soundtrack
Street Fighter Collection - PlayStation (PS2 collections are better)
Street Fighter Collection 2 - PlayStation (PS2 collections are better)
Tecmo Super Bowl - Famicom and NES

Mediocre:
Balloon Fight - Famicom and NES
Breath of Fire II -The Destined Child
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - PlayStation 3
Contra Advance: The Alien Wars EX (stick with the SNES version)
Contra: Hard Corps - Sega Genesis and Mega Drive
Darkstalkers 3 - PlayStation (get Darkstalkers Resurrection on PS3 instead)
Gradius - Famicom and NES
Loaded - PlayStation
Game Sound Museum ~Famicom Edition~ 12 Metroid
Muramasa: The Demon Blade - Nintendo Wii
Super Punch-Out!! - Super famicom and SNES
Punch-Out!! - Famicom and NES
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - Famicom and NES
Ninja Five-O - Game Boy Advance (WAY overrated on the internet)
Project Justice - Sega Dreamcast
Resident Evil: Director's Cut - PlayStation
Silhouette Mirage - PlayStation
Strider 2 - PlayStation
Super Mario Bros. 2 - Famicom and NES
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters - Super famicom and SNES
Twisted Metal III - PlayStation
The Legend of Zelda (Classic NES Series) - Game Boy Advance

Poor:
Bushido Blade - PlayStation
Bushido Blade 2 - PlayStation
Castlevania: Legacy Of Darkness - Nintendo 64
Devil May Cry 4: Collector's Edition - PlayStation 3
Dino Crisis 2 - PlayStation
Dragon's Crown - PlayStation 3
Final Fantasy Origins - PlayStation (GBA versions are better)
Final Fantasy - Famicom and NES (GBA versions is better)
Dawn of Mana - PlayStation 2
Mega Man: Anniversary Collection (button config is messed up, get the PS2 version instead)
Metroid Prime: Hunters: First Hunt - Nintendo DS
Musashi Samurai Legend - PlayStation 2
Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword - Nintendo DS
Paperboy - Famicom and NES
Star Wars: Masters Of Teras Kasi - PlayStation

Ashley Winchester Feb 12, 2014 (edited Feb 12, 2014)

XLord007 wrote:

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile - PlayStation (get the Wii remake instead)

I own and have played through the Wii remake and while good... it kind of cut my enthusiasm for the PS1 original in half. Getting the original is not really high up on my list... unless I got a good deal.

I probably should have made it clear that I'm not planning to get everything on this list, but these are items I have/want to look into/or have collections for.

Thanks for the feedback and notes.

Ashley Winchester Mar 1, 2014 (edited Mar 1, 2014)

Zorbfish, I got and replied to your e-mail... I am interested. However, I think most of the time e-mails sent through STC's messaging system end up in most people's spam folders. You might want to check yours unless you've just been busy.

Zane Mar 3, 2014 (edited Mar 3, 2014)

Ashley Winchester wrote:
Zane wrote:

Killer7...Total mess of a game, but worth a playthrough at least for the WTF factor.

Sorry it took me a while to get back to this one, but I am rather surprised to hear this opinion. I pretty much wanted to check out Killer7 because you had mentioned it a few times... not to sound "betrayed" or anything but I thought you would have a higher opinion of this one.

However, at the same time, there are games that I love yet know are poor creations when I look at them outside the box... so I can't say such a viewpoint is alien to me.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I love killer7, always have. The plot is a beautiful, incoherent mess; the gameplay straddles between FPS and "Wait, am I actually doing anything here?"; the music is the perfect audio compliment to the crackpot cell shaded visuals; and the symbolism is so deep that you'll need to put one of those tiny little flashlights on your helmet to be able to get your bearings if you decide to dig in deep beneath the surface. I've been talking about/recommending k7 for years, and most people are like, "That was a disaster but I think I kind of liked it even though I have no idea what just happened?" My comment to you was just cushion for that kind of reaction; totally play it, give it a few hours, and enjoy the total WTF. Still one of my favorite games!

EDIT: I should say that the sound design (not just the music) is one of the best overall from any game that I've played. The continuity, the music, the voice dialog, the weird sounds that pop in and out... so good.

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