Criminally Underrated/Overlooked Game Soundtracks

[J T]

Champions Forever Boxing on TG16 wasn't a great game, and there wasn't any music during matches, but the title screen/intro music was heavy with digital samples, and the game was replete with excellent digital sound. It's actually a pretty good example of using digital sampling well on the PC Engine hardware. Beats much of the sampling work I've heard on the Genesis, and even, in some cases, on the SNES.

That is impressive, sir.

That sounds like a scrubby version of The Prodigy - Diesel Power:

[Sload Soap]

The game predates the song I think.

[marlowe221]

I haven't read all 8 pages of this thread so I apologize if I am beating a dead horse with this one but....

Underrated: Turrican series. It's underrated in the sense that anyone who has heard it thinks it's awesome but a lot of NA gamers have never heard it.

Have a listen:
http://www.turricansoundtrack.com/

[dogman91]

'Cadillacs and Dinosaurs' for the arcade and Battletoads arcade! Sweet 80's rock-inspired soundtracks!

[Sano]

Civilization V: Baba Yetu theme song
Deus Ex: Human Revolution theme song
Darksiders theme song
Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, ending dungeon theme.

[ExedExes]

'Cadillacs and Dinosaurs' for the arcade

YES

[smoogyvonsmoogy]

Bully for PS2 has a fantastic soundtrack by Shawn Lee. I've included my personal favourites below.
Sneaking on a Date
Defender of the Castle
The Big Game

[Key-Glyph]

Civilization V: Baba Yetu theme song

Just in case you haven't heard it yet, Video Games Live did a lovely cover of Baba Yetu. I'm not always crazy about the Video Games Live arrangements, but this one's great.

[Xeogred]

The ZoE games have some amazing standouts.

[marurun]

I promised more great PC Engine / TG-16 chip audio soundtracks. I have been lax, but now I deliver. Some of these tracks are not underrated or neglected within the PC Engine community, but those who don't own or love the PCE typically only know a few of the high-profile CD soundtracks.

Final stage of Magical Chase. Give it a moment to warm up. You'll become a fan, especially if you have your bass turned up. The entire soundtrack is pretty good, though, composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto & Masaharu Iwata, who also did Final Fantasy Tactics. Sakimoto also did Gauntlet IV on Genesis, which also has a rockin' awesome soundtrack. Too bad this was Quest's only game for the PC Engine.



Air Zonk also has a fantastic soundtrack and uses the sound engine from Coryoon (in truth, it borrowed far more than the sound engine), another PCE game with a fantastic chip soundtrack.

Here's one of my faves from Air Zonk. It's kinda chill, but after a while it picks up for a spell. Sounds good all the way through, though.



And for comparison, here's a great track from Coryoon's 2-minute mode (sorry, it includes all the sound FX since there are few isolated track videos from this game on YouTube).



Sunsoft, in a rare PCE outing, created a top-down Batman game, which is very much an action-puzzler of sorts. The music is pretty solid, and the track for level 2 is a remake of a well-known music from Sunsoft's NES title of the same name.