Best VG music (c. 1980's early 90's)

[NeoGoomba]

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

[Dooey Jo]

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.

IMHO Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse is better. The music is simply awesome. I can agree that Simon's Quest's music was more hummable, though (funny coincidence how I was playing Bloody Tears on the keyboard just before I read this thread, BTW), but that could be because there's only four or five melodies in there. There was a special sound-chip in the Japanese version of Dracula's Curse (it's called Akumajo Densetsu there, by the way) that gives the music more depth, but I think it is just fine without it (in fact, some of the samples (I assume they are samples anyhow) get pretty repetitive and annoying after a while).

And just to clear some things up. MIDI != beepy, low quality sound. How MIDI music sounds depends on the quality of the samples used to define the sound of each instrument. The soundtrack for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is in a MIDI-like format. And so is Ocarina of Time. And there's a good chance even the awesome quality music in Super Smash Bros. Melee is, too. It's not unusual at all to use MIDI music in console games, even today.

And the best MIDI music for a PC-game of the early 90's is the original TIE Fighter. There's no contest.

[Datana]

The soundtrack for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is in a MIDI-like format. And so is Ocarina of Time. And there's a good chance even the awesome quality music in Super Smash Bros. Melee is, too. It's not unusual at all to use MIDI music in console games, even today.

The first is completely wrong. The only MIDI track in SotN using the PSX's onboard synth is the Librarian's theme. Everything else was stored as XA-compressed audio, either pre-rendered from a higher-quality synth or recorded live (depending on the track) -- you can even play back or convert these to WAV with an XA player like PSMPlay. Ocarina of Time and SSBM, however, both make extensive use of synths (OoT relies completely on them because the files take up less space on its cart). Games that use prerecorded music for most of their tracks are in a distinct minority (such as Star Ocean 3, SotN, and Katamari Damacy) -- most console games today use a combination of a MIDI-like synth for a majority of tracks (as they're easier to loop) coupled with prerecorded pieces for vocals and cutscenes.

What I think Chardok is aiming for are tracks where uber-high-quality-samples-of-DOOM! to use with synths weren't yet feasible to include in a game -- this would include the days of the old Ad-lib and Gravis sound cards, the NES, early SNES games (before custom samples came into vogue -- essentially nothing after, say, Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, to give an arbitrary example), and 80s-era arcade games. In other words, being able to make do with less and still sound kickass.

[Sarevok]

Star Control 2. It ties with KOTOR for the best music I have sheard in a game,

[Damaramu]

Streets of Rage 2
Super Turrican

[Dooey Jo]

The first is completely wrong. The only MIDI track in SotN using the PSX's onboard synth is the Librarian's theme. Everything else was stored as XA-compressed audio, either pre-rendered from a higher-quality synth or recorded live (depending on the track) -- you can even play back or convert these to WAV with an XA player like PSMPlay.

Oh crap! That's why I shouldn't write when I'm tired. Legacy of Darkness was what I meant It has some really good sounding music, actually better than OoT, I'd say. I also meant to add that Bloody Tears first appeared in Haunted Castle, although Simon's Quest was released the same year...

However, to expand on SotN, there are also a few unused tracks in there which also uses the synth, and also the bells in the confession room, IIRC. But, heh, if they would have used the synth for all music, I'd like to have their voice samples for the intro prayer

[RogueIce]

Does Donkey Kong Country (1994 - SNES) count? If so, that was awesome.

FF6 had it, with Aria de Mezzo Caraterre. The voice even sounded almost opera-y. And Shadow's Theme is just badass.

SMB3 was good times as well, and of course the original SMB overworld theme. If you don't know this one, you know nothing of VG music.

Starfox had some good stuff. I was always a fan of the Corneria theme myself.

For the PC, Quest for Glory 1: So You Want to Be a Hero? (1989, original release) had some damn good music, but I don't know how that was produced.

And if I can count it, Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness (1993, original release) had some truely amazing music to it.

[Alferd Packer]

Secret of Mana's Dark Lich theme. I wanted that battle to go on forever.