Community Picks: The 25 Best Game Soundtracks

[Guest]

We asked the Tom's Hardware Community to rank the best game soundtracks and came up with the following list.

Community Picks: The 25 Best Game Soundtracks : Read more

 

[darth_adversor]

Skyrim number one...again. How about Oblivion???

 

[FaceBob]

I'd personally put Total Annihilation, Sacrifice and most of the Heroes of Might & Magic soundtracks above all of these. Just my opinion, mind.

 

[alisamenna]

Quake II

 

[icelava]

+ World of Warcraft: say what you like about the changes in game design, but they've never failed to delivery mesmerising and splendid music throughout each version.

And Nier Automata is truly out of this world.

 

[tarek.said.info]

I'd also the soundtrack of iconic games like Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past;
Top Gear;
Super Mario World;
Doom.

 

[Onus]

I really enjoy the original Guild Wars sound track. As for getting my blood going, the music in Unreal Tournament: G.O.T.Y. is good too.

 

[hotaru251]

Xenoblade Chronicles X also had a much better OST than most of these :/

example being Wir fliegen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGUaVZN2ttw

also TWEWY soundtrack would beat every last one on this list hand down.

 

[knowom]

Perfect Selection: Dracula New Classic
https://youtu.be/3fr4Q2roQ3o

Symphony of the Night OST
https://youtu.be/0Ghd3tvsNAs

I don't know how you miss either of these in this type of discussion.

 

[darth_adversor]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sXfzMn26uEU

Boom.

 

[bramahon]

Monkey Island, Divinity series and few Black-Isle games should have made the list. As for theme musics of TES I see things as this - Morrowind + high tempo = Oblivion + higher tempo + Dragon Shout = Skyrim!! Jeremy Soule masterclass

 

[hannibal]

Well we Are missing some serious game soundtracks in here

Dune
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IF_0W1cYPYo
One of the best soudtracks, not so Great game though...

Star controll
https://youtu.be/dXeMgY4gpQQ

UR-Quan masters
https://youtu.be/8XTq88G8kSI

Ghetto Blaster
https://youtu.be/Z7Qt749HJX0

Last Ninja2
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hrxPzxOwI_4

And all those Ron Hubbard game music
https://youtu.be/AtKyHqqXB8g

 

[kiniku]

Age of Conan.

 

[Pompompaihn]

Seriously discounting anything that doesn't include Fallout 3 and/or New Vegas....

I can't hear an oldies station in the background anymore without wanting to subconsciously trigger VATS.

 

[bit_user]

I'd be more interested in a ranking of game soundtrack albums. I'm not about to play a game just for the soundtrack, but I do like videogame music, from time to time.

Anyway, two 8-bit NES games that I always thought had good music were Zanac and Squoon. Also Zelda and FF1, but those go without saying. I didn't play many SNES games, but I liked Actraiser's music.

 

[hirschbergt]

What about Doom 2016?

 

[mlee 2500]

Interstate 76 was an awesome game all around...first PC game I ever used an accelerated 3D graphics card on.

Anyone else remember the Diamond Edge 3D? Looking at Wikipedia, it was the first consumer 3D accelerator card, long before 3DFX/Voodoo. Apparently some company called "NVIDIA" made the silicon...the "NV1".

 

[bit_user]

Anyone else remember the Diamond Edge 3D? Looking at Wikipedia, it was the first consumer 3D accelerator card, long before 3DFX/Voodoo. Apparently some company called "NVIDIA" made the silicon...the "NV1".

Yeah, it wasn't exactly a stellar success. In fact, it sounds like the NV1 almost sank Nvidia. Here's a very illuminating analysis:

http://vintage3d.org/nv1.php

As for Diamond, I seem to recall they got out of the VGA card business, a few years later. Perhaps that had more to do with their MP3 player, which was the first of its kind.

 

[mlee 2500]

Anyone else remember the Diamond Edge 3D? Looking at Wikipedia, it was the first consumer 3D accelerator card, long before 3DFX/Voodoo. Apparently some company called "NVIDIA" made the silicon...the "NV1".

Yeah, it wasn't exactly a stellar success. In fact, it sounds like the NV1 almost sank Nvidia. Here's a very illuminating analysis:

http://vintage3d.org/nv1.php

As for Diamond, I seem to recall they got out of the VGA card business, a few years later. Perhaps that had more to do with their MP3 player, which was the first of its kind.

Yeah, I seem to remember the same thing about the card, including having to wrestle with Driver Issues, but that was more typical of the times back then, and I most remember it for allowing me to smoothly play a handful of demanding games.

I'd forgotten all about the Diamond Rio MP3 Player! Super cheap plastic thing, held just one or two CD's worth of music (and then only at a lower bit rate), but it was the awesome culmination of what people who had been ripping their CD's to their PC's hard drive had been hoping for.

 

[bit_user]

Anyone else remember the Diamond Edge 3D? Looking at Wikipedia, it was the first consumer 3D accelerator card, long before 3DFX/Voodoo. Apparently some company called "NVIDIA" made the silicon...the "NV1".

Yeah, it wasn't exactly a stellar success. In fact, it sounds like the NV1 almost sank Nvidia. Here's a very illuminating analysis:

http://vintage3d.org/nv1.php

Yeah, I seem to remember the same thing about the card, including having to wrestle with Driver Issues, but that was more typical of the times back then, and I most remember it for allowing me to smoothly play a handful of demanding games.

I definitely lusted after higher framerates and resolutions, but such graphics cards didn't fit my budget, at the time.

I have to admit that I found this writeup slightly thrilling. I thought I had missed out on a bold vision of what might have been, in their quadratic rendering approach. After reading about the raft of problems, I rather feel as though I dodged a bullet.

In any case, tessellation finally arrived on the scene and seems to have delivered the goods. We just might've gotten there a bit sooner, had the NV1 been more successful.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I always liked Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction best. It's not too well-known of a game, though, so it makes sense why it wouldn't be too well-known, but if anybody enjoys nice orchestral music it's got it all.