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YEah, that's right. I don't want to hear anything about how "Makarita's Tearsong Death Happy Happy Family Lobster Theme" From Final Mana Dragon Quest XIIXIXIVIX Makes you cry like a little girl with a skinned knee and a barbie doll with a missing head. I'm talking about the music from when putting together a symphony required hours and hours in front of a pitiful 8-bit midi machine. I'm talking about the really GOOD composers who had to take a fucking *beep* and turn it into a sweeping techno-symphony that made you HOPE a zombie came to your house just so you would have the oppotunity to cut it's head off with a rubber spatula.

My vote?

Club Kukeiha for Bloody Tears in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. IMHO simply the best Castlevania game ever. Certainly revolutionary, if nothing else. To this day, I often find myself idly humming the themes in this game.

Koji Kondo. Legend of Zelda, bitch.

Some of my favorite old-school game soundtracks:

Super Mario Bros. 3 (Standard Level Theme, "Obstacle Course" Level Theme, Fortress Theme, Hammer Bros. Battle... all classics) Koji Kondo
Earthbound (and its NES predecessor; love the "New Age Retro Hippie" song, among many others) Keiichi Suzuki, Hirokazu Tanaka, Akio Ohmori, Ritsuo Kamimura
Street Fighter 2 (including the updates through Super Turbo... once they got into the Alpha games and beyond, the music wasn't as good, IMO) Yoko Shimomura
Star Fox 64 (this count? I think it's still in a MIDI/MOD-like format...) Koji Kondo
Dr. Mario (God, who can ever forget Fever and Chill?) Hirokazu Tanaka
Chrono Trigger Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuo Uematsu
Super Mario RPG (Weapon Boss Battle Theme for the win) Yoko Shimomura

Hrmm. May as well fire off a few.

Most of the music from Megaman 2
Castlevania: Bloodlines (Genesis)
Chrono Trigger
Starfox
Goldeneye 64
Star Ocean: The Second Story

Mega Man 2

Streets of Rage series
Road Rash series.
Many NES Games

Star Control 2, hands down.

Dark Overworld and Overworld themes from Link to the Past.

Kefka's theme from FF6. Pure awesome evil.

I know the era's wrong, but for good MIDI music Advance Wars is quite good. A lot of them, especially Sami's theme, are definitely reminiscent of the 16-bit era.

I'd say the Mega Man games, but also must praise the NES itself as a whole. While somewhat limited, the NES' sound really had quite a bit of depth. Just listen to an NSF format file or an MP3 recorded or converted directly from the source and see.

Then again, the Atari 2600 has a pretty sweet sound, too... (scroll down for samples)

Metroid, Contra, Super C, and Lifeforce.

hey hey hey

The Sonic games had great music, and I'm a fan of the majority of the tracks from Phantasy Star IV, among many others not on the top of my head at the moment (though for the NES I can name Balloon Fight, Solomon's Key, Crystalis, and I happened to like River City Ransom's theme and some stuff from the first Ninja Turtles game).

The music from Bionic Commando was great. The theme during the first Area is amazing. Mega Man 2 is also pretty good.

I liked Chrono Trigger's music, particularly Frog's theme.

I'd also like to add Final Fantasy VI in general, Terra's and Shadow's themes specifically.

I liked Super Mario 3...

but Zelda takes the cake.

If we're just dealing with the 8-bit systems, Castlvania II's Bloody Tears, the intro music from Ninja Gaiden II, and most of the tracks from MegaMan 2, 3, 5, and 6 are the ones that jump straight to mind. If the 16-bit generation is also allowed, the immediate answer is Chrono Trigger's entire soundtrack (Frog's Theme and Time Circuits being my absolute favorites). Mention must also be given to Super Metroid, Shining Force, and Ecco the Dolphin.

The main tunes from all three Super Mario Bros. games and The Legend of Zelda almost go without saying, as well.

Hmm... Blaster Master and Journey to Silius, both for the NES, immediately come to mind. Oddly enough, both seem to have the same composers -- both list "N.Marumo" and "N.Kodaka."

Also in my list (limiting it to only NES-era):
- Gradius II, by H. Maezawa and Y. Morimoto
- Akumajou Densetsu by Club Kukeiha
- Ninja Gaiden II by S. Kajiya, Mayu, Miya
- The Guardian Legend by Miyamo Shant
- Bionic Commando by Harumi Fujita
- Contra by H. Maezaka and K. Sada
- Final Fantasy Adventure by Kenji Ito
- River City Ransom by Kazuo Sawa
- WURM: Journey to the Center of the Earth by ???

Whoever did the theme for Bubble Bobble and Tetris. Simplicity is its own reward

Yeah, I've found myself humming the Bubble Bobble theme out of nowhere from time to time.

Also:

Bridge Battle (Final Fantasy V)
Stage 5(Destroy Them All!) (Gunstar Heroes)
Battle Theme(Lunar: the Silver Star)

The introduction theme from X-COM. Hell, the battle-theme too...not as outwardly badass, but got more atmospheric than I've seen MIDI go in most games.

For consoles, the opening music from Final Fantasy IV.

For PC, the best MIDI music of all time was the score of Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, especially the intro. Of course, they had to go and repalce it with something vastly inferior when they repackaged it as Wizardry Gold.

Holding to the NES, nearly the whole of the Mega Man series was gold - catchy enough to get you humming it later on, well-fitting to the stages where they played, and set out well enough that you'd rarely ever get tired of the same 30-second audio clip looping over and over. The only one I really didn't favor at all was 5, but I've got a feeling that nobody really likes that

If I'm allowed to go as far as 1995, Romancing SaGa III has some of the best audio I've heard on the system. Go ahead - crack open an SPC dump of Four Noble Devils, and I'll dare you to not be amazed.

Anything from Mega Man. Shit, that was awesome. Super Punchout, oddly enough, had some good music too for the fighter introduction sequences.

Genghis Khan II's music is also very good. I don't know who the hell the composer was, but it definitely has a good feel to it.

Ogre Battle also had some good music.

Final Fantasy VI, damn it. 1994, Aria di Mezzo Carattere.

Super Dodgeball for NES had a lot of distinctive music. I liked the song vs the UK team.

Metal Gear
Contra (stage one baby, its all you need)
Mega Man 2
Ninja Gaiden 2
The Jackie Chan Kung Fu game had some rockin tunes
Shadowgate
Deja Vu