Best "real" music in a game

[SpacePirateCaine]

LOOM was basically one big compendium of great classical music. Granted, as the music was run through 'inferior' soundcards when released (by today's standards, of course), it isn't perhaps exactly what Kinoko was talking about, but it still had a great feel to it. When I first played it (As a wee laddie) I didn't realize it wasn't original to the game, so I was blown away. I recognized some of The Nutcracker, and maybe a bit of Swan Lake, but things really don't connect at that age like they do now. Back then, I'd spend time even just sitting in front of the computer, listening to the music (A habit I carry to this day, though not necessarily the LOOM soundtrack exclusively).

Ahh.. Lovely.

Something more recent, and not public domain (like the LOOM soundtrack was, by and large) is the music in the WipEout series (A 'futuristic' racing game released on the Playstation, Sega Saturn and for DOS, for those not in the know). Particularly "Wipeout XL". It featured some awesome techno of the day, by Fluke, Future sound of London, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and so on. It fit the game really well, and had the sort of high energy generally needed for such a game.

And I agree, the Neverhood and Skullmonkeys had awesome music as well. I want those soundtracks.

[Phemar]

OMG no-one so far has mentioned the Grim Fandango soundtrack which was one of the best I've EVER heard!

Doom 3 and Full Throttle were excellent as well.

[Eggie]

Hey hey hey...If we're just talking about homegrown, instrumental music here the nothing, NOTHING beats the original Secret of Monkey Island...'cept maybe Curse of Monkey Island 'cos it was all .mp3 but it was not as good a game to package the music in so...bleurgh!

[Kinoko]

I'm rather amazed at the amount of people that manage to completely miss the point of this thread.

Real songs, people. Licensed! The Loom stuff counts but this isn't just your favourite game soundtrack in general.

I've changed mine anyway. It's Aerosmith's `Dream On` from the Dead or Alive Ultimate opening. Damn that song is beautiful.

[modgeulator]

I'd have to say the radio stations in San Andreas were all pretty fantastic. Especially the hip hop stations for personally reminding me why I used to like the stuff  :o.

One thing about licensed music, though: no matter how good the music is, does everyone else get sick of it after awhile and turn it off? I rarely get annoyed with specially composed games music, but licensed songs get on my nerves quite quickly. I can happily play through a whole Zelda or Mario with the one tune looping throughout, but after the 7th repeat of a licensed tune I find myself going into the options menus to turn the music off.

[Kinoko]

Playing Tony Hawk gets like that. Mind you, I hate most of that music front the outset.

It depends though. A lot of Jet Set Radio's soundtrack is licenced and I could listen to that stuff over and over. In fact, I used to play the game JUST to hear the music over and over.

[2ma2]

Burnout 3 had some crap music, but once in a while, Ramones popped up with "I wanna be sedated".. you can't believe how good it feels to cause mayhem in 100mph with that tune. I havn't experienced such joyful road carnage since I put "Another one bites the dust" with Queen on repeat whilst playing Road Rash.

[Chrille]

Burnout is full of terrible generic american skatepunk music, thankfully you can make your own playlist.

[esper]

I forget which Tony Hawk game it was, but one of them featured a song that went "DIE! DIE! PSYCHO BITCH!!!" and I was playing it at my best friends house with his (fat) eight year old brother. I have never felt so uncomfortable in my life.

I know it isn't necessarily licensed, but maybe you can appreciate this, Kinoko: the first live, recorded song I ever heard in a game was in Lunar: the Silver Star for Sega CD. When it started up, I thought I was just going to be playing any old RPG, and then:

When all the land is peaceful and there is no real threat to us at last,
then comes the time for love, two hearts colliding into one great hymn!
But there are winds foreboding and there is a great storm that soon will pass,
Kiss me my love, and Go! The time for valor has returned again!

I will always remember that. It was the turning point, for me, in video game history.

[modgeulator]

Burnout is full of terrible generic american skatepunk music, thankfully you can make your own playlist.

Try it with the soundtrack to Cronenberg's "Crash" for a truly strange experience  :o