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Video Game Music: 10 Best Game Soundtracks From Grand Theft Auto to Zelda

Jay-Z video games DJ HeroDimitrios Kambouris, Getty

It's not just the gaming -- the hyper-jumping, mega-blaster shooting, sword-fighting or robot-crashing action -- that makes a great video game.

The best video games also have rich characters you feel emotionally invested in, smart plotlines that keep your attention, and, in an area that's constantly underrated, great musical scores.

Trent Reznor did the score for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Massive Attack's producer was behind Halo 4 and, most recently, Skrillex debuted Skrillex Quest, so it's not like the musicians in the field are lightweights, either.

Twin the right music with the right video game and you have something you'll not only want to hear for 80, 90, 100+ hours of gameplay, but something that you could genuinely consider "classic" music -- whether of the orchestral variety, or "classic" in the sense that it's timelessly awesome.

We rummaged through the boxes of our old gaming systems (Sigh, Sega. FYI Genesis is 24-years-old now) and classic cartridges to determine the best video game soundtracks.

Here are our results:

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Bowman

I'm just getting started! World of Goo - no praise for Kyle Gabler who also did all the game artwork? What about Brian Eno's procedurally generated soundtrack to Spore which would dynamically remix motifs written by the player? Speaking of mysterious, brooding ambient music, there's this one game that's really obscure but I think you'd like a lot called Minecraft (and it's really obscure but you should be able to find a copy if you really search around for it). And if you're going to include bullshit licensed soundtracks (seriously, ******* FIFA?) then could you at least have the courtesy to pick ONE rhythm game? Guitar Hero? Rock Band? DDR? Rhythm Heaven? Are any of those ringing a bell? What about DJ Hero which featured a bunch of exclusive mashups of club hits?

The point I'm making is this - the choices for this list are so generic and lacking in any real insight into games or music that it's a wonder you could possibly qualify to publish such utter dreck on a site that costed AOL hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire. If the fancy-pants businessmen who willingly put off buying a few bricks of coke to pay for this site knew that you gave this little of a ****, it's hard to say whether they'd strangle you or fistbump you for knowing how to waste people's money so well.

Seriously, that list is so bad that it makes the Video Music Awards look like Black History Month.

January 17 2013 at 6:06 AM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
Bowman

Whoever wrote this article knows nothing about video games or music. No mention of David Bowie's soundtrack to Omikron: The Nomad Soul? No mention of Jonathan Coulton's "Still Alive" for Portal? Nothing about MJ on Sonic 3? None of Mark Mothersbaugh's countless soundtracks? Nothing about Simcity 4 (or any other game with "Sim" in the title)? None of the Myst soundtracks? No praise for "Baba Yetu" from Civilization IV? Nope - just the first ten games under the TV in this guy's ******* frat house.

January 17 2013 at 5:35 AM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply