Ocarina of Time Soundtrack and Other Cool Video Game Music

What makes a video game a work of art? Is it a great narrative that connects with the gamer and drives them to delve further into the game? Is it the artwork itself, the splash of colors and shapes coming together to paint a world that we not only believe in but that we want so badly to be real? Or is it the characters that we control, these well imagined avatars that we traverse through the digital plain with, at once guiding but at the same time becoming the character? These all coalesce to make a truly great art form. But what binds it all together, what can move the story along without a single line of dialogue, or rip a specific emotional nerve from our vast network of cerebral impulses and make us cry or scream or laugh is great video game music.

Think about all of those retro games that didn’t have the pixel resolution or the graphical power to display a character’s expressions. They were just 2D models jumping or running across the screen and the story was as linear as it could get. But the video game music was able to convey the sense of danger, or the glee of exploration that any specific moment in the game called for. It’s that music that linked gamer to game. How many of us can hear just a few notes from a game of our youth and instantly remember what title, what level, what task that sound signifies?

Video game original soundtrack (OST) popularity has been on the rise in the past few years as people are becoming more accepting of these great musical scores as something more than just a couple of beeps and boops accompanying a video game character. Video game music composers deserve credit as great artists, and they are partially responsible for bringing a medium out of the basements and college dorms of adoring fans who know their work by heart and making it a well respected form of storytelling.

We’ve put together a video game OST list that includes some of the most revered and popular collections of music. I know that there are many left out, and maybe some that you don’t agree with, so forgive me. But these entrants deserve their due. Please feel free to leave feedback concerning these picks and any exclusions that you would like to see recognized.