Wow, how did I forget that Tetris theme? And now I've listened to it, I won't be able to forget it no matter how hard I try.
Question of the Day, September 24, 2010
- Thread starter The Escapist Staff
- Start date
I find the preulude to hard to hum to be that memorable, and the only other tunes I remember are the battle theme and dungeon theme.Jaredin said:
And honestly, i don't think that's even an overstatement. However, the Zelda theme is widely known as well.Irridium said:
But Sonic, Final Fantasy and Mega Man... sadly not so much among the common citizen. I voted Mario because that was the first one to really get stuck in my head.
Uh, depends how far back you want to go. Ours was an Atari (ST) household, so a lot of the iconic games we enjoyed will simply be unknown to the console crowd (particularly the NES freaks who end up dominating discussions such as this), and vice versa.
Heck, a lot of the most memorable pieces of music from that era for me (and there are quite a few - the ym2149 sound is strangely evocative) came off of megademos and the like, which is a phenomenon that simply does. not. exist. in the console arena. Some of the best things Mad Max (Jochim Hippel) ever made, for example, were - at least initially - known to me through that route. (I've since learnt that one of my favourites of his - A Brief History Of Time - was actually the theme to some trashy platformer, and only later made it to demotown... bit of a waste, if only it had been picked up by the big players)
But let's have a think in the spirit of all this.
ST
Supercars (1) - which you could make a mini album of good tunes from, Fast Lane, the quite quiet and subtle background themeage of Mega Lo Mania, the bounciness of mario-wannabe Terry's Big Adventure, Xenon (1...) and ... ah, I've gotten too rusty since the machine itself broke down and I lost my emulator files. There were some titles that were cool just to load up for the music alone. Those are but a few.
Also the PD/coverdisc titles (i.e. NO ONE else will probably have heard of 'em) "Snacman" and "Tesserae" (go on, just guess what classics they were based on) were audio visual treats throughout. Not bad, if you consider the computer's dismal official specs.
(hmm, am I allowed Elite, and moreover Frontier, even though they only played classical pieces?)
Then eventually we got a Game Gear...
Sonic 1 ... good variety of good tunes in that. I once considered finding some way of getting the blue streak into a safe place on each level and taping the headphone output for independent enjoyment.
Streets of Rage does things with the sega PSG that may just make you cry.
and ... hmm. There weren't THAT many instances of good music on this platform for some reason, despite the above examples, and it having something that was probably a very close YM relative. Not many horrors, but not too many standouts either. Merely adequate.
(Defenders of Oasis starts out well, with a solid title theme, but once you've heard the overworld or battle music loop for the seventy trillionth time... ugh)
After that, a PC and the big wide world of emulation, with everything melding into each other.
Whereupon, after a brief fling with the C64 (Outrun FTW), we discovered FF5 and 6 on the SNES, and all bets were immediately off.
(Oh yeah, and Worms... ok I know it was on PC CD-ROM, but given it's now 15 years old (age-check: we used C64 and ST emulators a lot because neither the machine had enough power to emulate 16-bit consoles very well, nor had the state of available emulators progressed enough to offer a good experience), is it allowed to be included? 15 years before that, the home computer/console market practically didn't exist. And the composer did bring some fun 16bit sensibilties to both the ambient and thematic pieces for what, essentially, was a very slightly souped up Amiga/ST game)
Eventually a game boy. Tetris of course, and Zelda:Links Awakening. But on getting a knockoff multicart, my favourite on that system immediately became, and remains Bombjack. Only like four short little tunes, but expertly crafted. And in stereo!
Fun fact. The whole world doesn't know the mario theme. I myself only really learnt it on getting that multicart (late 90s). Just wasn't exposed to it enough, or very early. Early Nintendo systems really didn't make anything like the headway in europe as they did in the states or japan. Too expensive for a start. Our world was of 6502/Z80/68000-based keyboard computers, or (cheaper!) Segas.
Heck, a lot of the most memorable pieces of music from that era for me (and there are quite a few - the ym2149 sound is strangely evocative) came off of megademos and the like, which is a phenomenon that simply does. not. exist. in the console arena. Some of the best things Mad Max (Jochim Hippel) ever made, for example, were - at least initially - known to me through that route. (I've since learnt that one of my favourites of his - A Brief History Of Time - was actually the theme to some trashy platformer, and only later made it to demotown... bit of a waste, if only it had been picked up by the big players)
But let's have a think in the spirit of all this.
ST
Supercars (1) - which you could make a mini album of good tunes from, Fast Lane, the quite quiet and subtle background themeage of Mega Lo Mania, the bounciness of mario-wannabe Terry's Big Adventure, Xenon (1...) and ... ah, I've gotten too rusty since the machine itself broke down and I lost my emulator files. There were some titles that were cool just to load up for the music alone. Those are but a few.
Also the PD/coverdisc titles (i.e. NO ONE else will probably have heard of 'em) "Snacman" and "Tesserae" (go on, just guess what classics they were based on) were audio visual treats throughout. Not bad, if you consider the computer's dismal official specs.
(hmm, am I allowed Elite, and moreover Frontier, even though they only played classical pieces?)
Then eventually we got a Game Gear...
Sonic 1 ... good variety of good tunes in that. I once considered finding some way of getting the blue streak into a safe place on each level and taping the headphone output for independent enjoyment.
Streets of Rage does things with the sega PSG that may just make you cry.
and ... hmm. There weren't THAT many instances of good music on this platform for some reason, despite the above examples, and it having something that was probably a very close YM relative. Not many horrors, but not too many standouts either. Merely adequate.
(Defenders of Oasis starts out well, with a solid title theme, but once you've heard the overworld or battle music loop for the seventy trillionth time... ugh)
After that, a PC and the big wide world of emulation, with everything melding into each other.
Whereupon, after a brief fling with the C64 (Outrun FTW), we discovered FF5 and 6 on the SNES, and all bets were immediately off.
(Oh yeah, and Worms... ok I know it was on PC CD-ROM, but given it's now 15 years old (age-check: we used C64 and ST emulators a lot because neither the machine had enough power to emulate 16-bit consoles very well, nor had the state of available emulators progressed enough to offer a good experience), is it allowed to be included? 15 years before that, the home computer/console market practically didn't exist. And the composer did bring some fun 16bit sensibilties to both the ambient and thematic pieces for what, essentially, was a very slightly souped up Amiga/ST game)
Eventually a game boy. Tetris of course, and Zelda:Links Awakening. But on getting a knockoff multicart, my favourite on that system immediately became, and remains Bombjack. Only like four short little tunes, but expertly crafted. And in stereo!
Fun fact. The whole world doesn't know the mario theme. I myself only really learnt it on getting that multicart (late 90s). Just wasn't exposed to it enough, or very early. Early Nintendo systems really didn't make anything like the headway in europe as they did in the states or japan. Too expensive for a start. Our world was of 6502/Z80/68000-based keyboard computers, or (cheaper!) Segas.
Man, For me its the Corneria level theme, from the ORIGINAL StarFox on SNES. Man, the memories..... DIE ANDROSS!!! DIE!!!! AND TAKE SLIPPY WITH YOU!
Of those listed, I'd say the Super Mario Brothers. The Sonic theme is fairly memorable as well, but I had a NES not a Sega, so SMB is stuck in my head (EDIT-like an axe).
Just want to make sure you're all aware -- catchy though the Tetris theme song may be, its distinction from the rest of the tunes on this list is that it's not an original song for the game. It's a Russian folk song from 1861. Not sure if that would affect how you judge it compared to these other games.
Personally, I couldn't vote on this one because it's too close between Mega Man 2 and Super Mario 1. Oh and Super Mario 2 first stage music is really amazing as well.
Personally, I couldn't vote on this one because it's too close between Mega Man 2 and Super Mario 1. Oh and Super Mario 2 first stage music is really amazing as well.
This is really hard for me because I remember 5 or 6 tunes from all of these games, plus others.
But if I had to pick just one, I'd say Legend of Zelda, as a series, because I remember tons of songs from each game. More so then any other game/series I can think of
But if I had to pick just one, I'd say Legend of Zelda, as a series, because I remember tons of songs from each game. More so then any other game/series I can think of