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Game OSTs MEGA THREAD! (Patreon)

Published:
2025-11-13 18:04:09
Edited:
2025-11-13 18:09:35
Imported:
2026-09

Content

A place you can suggest:

Subcategories/themes for request-driven livestreams around game music (i.e. platforms, time periods, game types, etc. ). Your ideas will really help me get more specific during livestreams!

Specific OSTs to delve into for live listening parties and pre-recorded analysis videos (the more descriptive and detailed your pitch, the better!)

Files

Comments

Arashmickey

I'll repost this here, just to survey ideas before nominating them. I guess a starting point might be the genre that the Steam game store uses. https://steambase.io/genres Let's say we pick sports: We get Golf, American Football, Soccer, etc. Maybe also fantasy or sci-fi sports like Bloodbowl and Smash TV. We get old chiptunes and new music without hardware and software limitations. There's sorting by hardware and/or time, because each system had its own limitations, and the farther back you go the bigger technological limitations are. There's sorting by what the music wants to say: sad, free, triumph, scary, etc. Then there's technical game stuff: music that switches between two identical songs depending on what's happening in the game. Music while playing and music while watching a cutscene. Edit: Oh and of course, there's musical genres: jazz songs in games, metal in games, etc. I dunno, tons of options, lots of good or okay-ish answers.

Joe

I love the Elden Ring soundtrack in general, but in particular the Regal Ancestor Spirit music has always hit just right for a boss who is regal, ethereal, and carries spiritual significance in-game. I’d love to hear you talk about what makes that track (or the whole OST) work so well.

Marlon

The soundtrack to Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is the most deranged-ass razzmatazz you’ll ever hear. The kind of music you’d expect an actual Demon to make.

Marlon

Shin Megami Tensei V if you’re looking for a demonic Nine Inch Nails (With Teeth era)

Audrey Seningen

As far as subcategories, I think Arashmickey has some great suggestions. For specific OSTs, I highly recommend The Last of Us Part II soundtrack. Some tracks composed by the wonderful Gustavo Santaolalla, and some of the more "actiony" tracks done by Mac Quayle who's done a ton of other great work (he worked on the soundtracks for Mr. Robot, American Horror Story, etc.). The game was a little divisive when it originally came out (if you've watched the second season of the HBO adaption you'll likely understand why), but I loved it, and the soundtrack is so moving. Gustavo really has a knack for soundtracking tragic stories and characters in the most beautiful way.

Michael James Pettit

I definitely think it'd be good to separate music that was limited by the hardware (so like 8/16-bit chipsets etc) vs. music that could use full audio. As for suggestions: Neir Automata - City of Ruins - Memories of Dust - Pascal - Forest Kingdom NORCO - Endless Eye - Your Pawpaw - Canal Water 1 Mario 64 - Dire, Dire Docks Tomb Raider II - Main Theme IXION - Vanir's Legacy

Kevin Meyer

Scores I would love to see covered, possibly as a group: - Metroid Prime - Metroid Dread - Silent Hill 2 Here’s why I think it would be interesting to cover all 3 of these as a group: Metroid Prime has really anthemic techno-inspired music, and is a beloved score. Later, Metroid Dread got a lot of crap for not sounding like earlier Metroid games, not being memorable, etc, but it’s a very different game and has a lot more direct horror influence. I think its score fits the game really well in a horror-inspired context. Would I hum along to most of it? No. Is it a good score that fits its game? Yes. And then Silent Hill 2 would be there to demonstrate what a full-on horror game score sounds like (atonal/micro-tonal, tense, often barely “musical” at all) to draw a comparison between Metroid Prime and Metroid Dread’s scores.

Craig Griffith

Prime is great, I have also always wanted to do a full analysis of the OG on NES

Craig Griffith

Anything without a CD drive is kind of across a divide from stuff that didn’t have that or downloadable games

Craig Griffith

I like systems as a theme, like NES, Genesis, Commodore 64, Super NES, Amiga, etc

Mike C

Grim Fandango would be an interesting choice, as there is the original release, and then for the 20th anniversary remastered version of the game, they added more full orchestra to the re-recordings. It’s also jazzy + mariachi band, different than most game OSTs

Wolmar Dhalsim

I can suggest some things : - Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim OSTs are incredible. - Super Castlevania IV - Secret Of Mana - Mario and Zelda franchises obviously, but esp. in my opinion Super Mario World, Mario 64, Mario Galaxy (most amazing orchestration), Zelda A Link To The Past, Ocarina Of Time, Breath Of The Wild, likely every Zelda game. - Koji Kondo is a name to search for, he's an utter genius and composer for most Big nintendo games. - Street Fighter II music can be analysed, like why the hell are these themes both so weird but catchy ? - Clair Obscur has an amazing music, released this year.

Christian Müller

I will mention a few more I think are worthwhile at the end.... Edit 5 or so.... I have a second big pitch to make. There is a long running online space game. Very nerdy, very deep, many people sink a lot of hours in this. It's going since 2003 and was never a big hit but more of a underground phenomenon. Now the music in the game is... not that great IMHO, BUT they have a yearly fan fest in iceland (where the company sits) and for the 10th anniversary fan fest they commissioned the icelandic symphony orchestra to arrange the music into a symphony and the result is amazing. It has a didgeridoo, it has orchestra and still kinda space vibes. Atonal stuff, tonal stuff, you name it. It's found in this video from about 16:30. The game is EVE Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWmGNRoGLhc Edit: Moved this down because there was one track of transistor in last nights stream already (although I think there are better ones in there).... My big pitch is the "Transistor" OST. The game ist over 10 years old but the music stuck with me, it's clearly more concept album than tracks for specific scenes and IMHO works well when listned to front to back. About a third of the tracks have vocals too,. It has a 90s/00s vibe to me and either way is worth a listen. This is the link to the whole thing with subvisions for the tracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zA1jRmAYfU Now some other ideas: - Far: Lone Sails OST, that game is more of an ambient/vibe game and that's the way the soundtrack sounds as well. Purely instrumental. - Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice - This is about a celtic warrior potentially going mad and the music fits right in. Creepy vibes, lost vibes, celtic/nordic vibes. It's moody - Subnautica - This is about being stranded on an alien oceanic planet and having to explore the depths to survive. It's synthy, dark, ambient. Many short pieces to pick from, that fit certain environments and moods in the game.

Klors

The Witcher 3 OST is fantastic, but it's also many hours long... however, contained within it are several styles of music, mostly orchestral and folk, but with eastern European themes, (some) vocals and instruments. This goes well with the landscape and themes of the game, following a "witcher" on his journey fighting monsters of fantasy and folklore - helping the people of the towns, villages and woods for coin. So the themes are everything from creepy, dark, sadness, through to evocative, exciting, mysterious, and adrenaline-fuelled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI2vjPUztJc

Klors

For themes, I think you could go with - The year of release is an easy one that would give you variety but many episodes and probably overall "sounds" that vary as you go through the hardware capabilities. A topic/antagonist type would be a way to get variations on a theme... like "zombie games", "international warfare", "vampires", "dragons/fantasy", "space ships", "aliens", "villagers/sims", "vs environment", "mutants", "gardening", "race cars", "trucks", "planes", etc. - whatever you can imagine, there are probably games involving them Country of production could give you some idea of the different games markets there have been, especially if you combine it with some of the older decades before it became more global. There are a number of OST composers/producers that are well associated with the games industry, you could spotlight one at a time. You could have a stream purely for "standard" musicians that made music specifically for a game, or ones that were featured in games.

Quinzhee Jones

Soundtracks of independent (“indie”) games

Arashmickey

To recommend a specific OST: Into the Breach, by Ben Prunty. Not my #1 favorite but maybe top 10. The good: the main theme introduces a number of motifs and instruments that return during the course of the game. It's very consistent, I think it makes for a good case study. The bad: if we listen to the whole 1-hour soundtrack, the consistency can get samey or... too on-the-nose. However, there's a lot that can be skipped. Background: The game takes place in four main locations, plus a fifth and final location. Each location has its own character. The 4 main location each has 4 songs, plus their own introduction theme, plus a 30 second jingle. Lastly, there's one song for the fifth and final location, plus one end credit theme. What to play/skip: The main songs for each location is 2 to 5 minutes each, or ~30 minutes total. We can try 1 song for each location, pare it down to 12-15 minutes. The 30 second jingles are pretty skippable too. The intros for each location are ~2 minutes each or ~8 total. I'd play at least one, partly because it's my favorite: Detritus! (1 minute 41 seconds) The main theme, final theme, and end credits theme take about 8 minutes together. I wouldn't skip these, they're the core of Into the Breach. Okay! That's the pitch.

Wax Duck

My pitch for a video: "the harmonic style of 18th century european musicians lied to us and now music reactionalysis is hard" It would just be you playing The Sims.

Mike C

I will add that the game is basically an expansion of the idea of “what if you mixed Humphrey Bogart films with the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition?”, in what is considered the last great classic puzzle adventure game. The dad from Ugly Betty voices the protagonist, Manny Calavera, a down-on-his-luck salesman for the DoD (department of death) trying to sell travel packages to newly arrived souls. After one beautiful soul is stuck with the arduous 4-year trek to the final underworld (heaven), rather than fast-tracked (literally, the best mode of transit is a bullet train that makes the journey in 4 minutes rather than 4 years), he uncovers that the rot runs deep in the land of the dead. There’s Mexican/central/South American folk music or instrumentation, big band jazz numbers. All of it is instrumental. It was so good I went online (in like 1998, the game came out in 1997) and bought the soundtrack for itself.

Leanne

I’d quite like to see Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 ost - but it’s mostly dark ambient and Heilung/Wardruna esque beats and chanting. And lots of sounds recognisable from the Albion Solstice library! It is very atmospheric though. The hellblades are the only games I tend to play, well that and Assasins Creed Valhalla, in which I tend to mostly forget what the controls are and get killed 🤦‍♀️

Wax Duck

Regarding how to organise future streams Knowing how many there will be could help in suggesting how to divide them up. Bracketing by release time seemed like it would be easiest but might be tricky. Simply going by decade could end up being unbalanced; there is a hockey stick in both quantity and quality as we approach the present. Game genres could work. I think we'd need to come up with a list of planned genres up front. Some games could fit in multiple genre streams, some won't fit any genres we pick. An "everything else" stream at the end might be appropriate. Regarding specific OSTs There are some fantastic ones already suggested and I hesitate to suggest any myself. I'd group the ones I listen to into two categories, thinky background ambiance and narrative scores. Similar to movies, I avoid listening to the narrative group until I've played the game. The music then becomes a shortcut to re-experiencing memories of the game. Not to suggest the music can't be enjoyed separately, I'd just always choose to hear it in context first. If you need an example as to why, try imagining listening to "... To Die For" without having seen The Lion King. Then imagine it's literally titled "'s death theme" on the OST. Unlike movies, even in games with preordained events, you have the impression of having agency in the story and experiences land extra hard because of it. As long as you don't mind only getting part of the experience, there are plenty of OSTs to dig in to. I have enjoyed hearing your perspective on game music; particularly attempting to guess the genre and how the music might be used. I was joking in the other comment but I do actually think "ixi plays a game and talks about the music" has potential. I'd obviously recommend Journey as a possible choice. It's a two hour long, story-driven, third person platformer. Everyone I've forced to play it has managed to complete it. Paradoxically , I also _wouldn't_ recommend watching a video of someone play Journey. It's a game you have to play. It hurts my soul that some of the most viewed playthroughs (and I have to assume some peoples only experience of Journey) were done without a companion.

Arashmickey

"Similar to movies, I avoid listening to the narrative group until I've played the game. " Haha! Sorry for laughing but I do this too: If I think I want to play a game some day, I tend to avoid the soundtrack. It eats me up to skip soundtrack I know I'd like..

Arashmickey

More options / overviews: Waking Mars OST (2012). Electronic music with some natural instrumentation, decent variety, multiple composers. Bells, guitar, flutes. Some of it reminds me of Aphex Twin and the Pi movie soundtrack, but less moody. The game is about peaceful exploration, concerning the first manned mission to Mars in the late 21st century, to study a small ecology of plant life and insect-like creatures discovered in the Lethe cave system. 32 songs, almost 2 hours. The first 9 songs would make a 40 minute album. Endless Legend (2014): Folk music and classical music, decent variety. Mostly natural instruments and choirs, some electronic elements. Some nice dulcimers and steelpans. An ancient fantasy world of many exotic species, some of which form tribes or civilizations, all vastly different in culture and physiology. They coexist or cooperate or wage war, while the planet itself is changing its seasons and patterns. Themes: Nature, history, peacetime, war, community, exploration. 47 songs to choose from, over 2 hours. La Mulana (2006, remade in 2011): The game was made in a retro 80's style (2006), then remade in a 90's style (2011). The soundtrack was remade too, mostly the same compositions but with higher fidelity. Opinions vary which version is favored. It mixes folk music from around the world with modern music such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, or metal, with a nod to that 80's and 90's game sound. The game is like Super Mario combined with Indiana Jones, but emphasizes the sheer variety found in history, and heavily features meticulous note-taking and cryptic interpretation that emulates real archeology. 60 songs to choose from, almost 3 hours. Dune 2 (1992): Inspired by the same books as the recent Dune movies. The game is old and sounds old, but Frank Keplacki made the most of the hardware limitations and delivered a score that was videogamey yet serious, in tune with the source material yet novel and musically innovative in its own right. His subsequent works were each much beloved. The old hardware attempts to emulate sounds of natural instruments, of a desert environment, and of war. Admittedly, the sound is a bit samey. The theme is also limited, relating to conflict and politics. It's the mood and ambiance in which most of the variety is to be found. The fact is that the game, soundtrack, and composer were each pioneers in their own particular ways.