What videogame music can be up to classic music?

[XHolySmokesX]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LFl91YN3UM

The version of Fountain of Dreams from super smash bro's has always been an awesome bit of music to me.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8rZWw9HE7o
Just to be different

 

[coldshadow]

she sounds dumb, give her a smack....that is all.

 

[xMelior]

Alan Wake. Nice soundtrack and a pretty cool game.

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI

 

[efeat]

If this girl has decided that she wants to look down on VGM because it's not classical, then you're wasting your time. Perhaps try and confront her about this possibility first? If she is honestly open to VGM, perhaps show her some VGM that has similarities to classical pieces.

Like...this song here is awesome...

Spoiler: You have probably never even heard of this game. I didn't either, until a few weeks ago.

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...but it has nothing to do with classical pieces, so she probably won't care for it. Try these instead.

Spoiler: Actraiser - Birth of the people by Yuzo Koshiro

a[/youtube]

Spoiler: F-Zero - The Flood Plain (Big Blue Remix) by JigginJont

There have been plenty of good suggestions in this thread so far; find some that nod to her classical tastes and you'll have a winning argument.

 

[Furious Styles]

Oblivion springs immediately to mind

 

[Urgh76]

Crash Bandicoot, all of it (except for past Wrath of Cortex for I have no clue how it does past that)

 

[Shirokurou]

Not that weird. Considering the ginormous number of remixes, there has to be at least one that she'll like.

By weird I mean that it has like a TON of music...

 

[ShakyFiend]

My friend has a girlfriend who's mostly into classical music and is a cellist herself. She's not into pop music, likes some rock, but is mostly dismissive of anything other than classical music (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.). She's slightly elitist about it.

My friend showed her some videogames' music, but she found it too simple and repetitive. She doesn't like the "bleeps and blops" of retro games. However, she did like the flute stuff from Ocarina of Time. She thought videogame music isn't sophisticated enough to match old classical music, and I'm sure most people would say not much of any other music is.

I was hoping to find some videogame soundtracks that I could tell my friend about, to impress her. I've already recommended Psychonauts, Hitman: Blood Money; Halo; Too Human; Silent Hill; Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Metal Gear Solid, to him.

She might reject everything, but I'm awaiting his results. I'm sure her remarks will be interesting.

Oblivion (and morrowind for that matter) have really epic soundtracks that arent electronic at all,

 

[kittii-chan 300]

type sadness & sorrow into youtube thats been used in games

 

[Arqus_Zed]

SHADOW HEARTS
Seriously, you just can't go wrong with this soundtrack

(a slow and atmospheric start and at 2:00 it drops the crazy violin)

(more gentle, but very nice)

(more crazy, not so 'classical', but a very powerful song)

Also, Final Fantasy VIII, the intro song (Liberi Fatali) - and don't forget to turn up the volume. Anyone who even dares to say these aren't "sophisticated" enough, deserves to be slapped in the face with a cheese grater.

 

[ThatDaveDude1]

Pretty much anything from this game.

 

[Vrach]

Throw her a video of "making of" for Star Wars: The Old Republic, you can find it on the official site. 6 hours with a fucking orchestra iirc.

That said, with all due respect, she sounds like a snob from how you describe her :\

 

[Valkaris]

FFVIII

Eyes on Me.

HAHAHA no. Worst song in games.

 

[maiqtheliar]

check out all the stuff by Play! a Video Game Orchestra-- they convert even the 'bleepy bloopy' stuff into excellent orchestral pieces. it's really glorious, actually. i do a radio show that plays exclusively classical music and i often sneak in video game stuff.

 

[trooper6]

Really this girlfriend seems annoying.

Rather than try to convince her to like video game music, I think she has much larger problems that she needs to address. Were she in one of my classes, then we could discuss in great length her attitudes. But since I don't know her in person, that isn't going to happen.

So, rather than offering video game soundtracks I offer instead three academic articles she might want to read:

Janet Levy, "Covert and Casual Values in Recent Writings about Music" Journal of Musicology, Vol 1 No 1, Winter 1987
Robert Fink, "Elvis Everywhere: Musicology and Popular Music Studies at the Twilight of the Canon" American Music Vol 16 No 2, Summer 1998
Bethany Bryson, "'Anything but Heavy Metal: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes" American Sociological Review, Vol 61 No 5, Oct 1996

All three articles are available through JSTOR if your friend's girlfriend has access to it.

But if she is determined to fixate on the music of German nationalism, there isn't much you can do about it.

Note: I say this as a Professor of Musicology

 

[General BrEeZy]

yeah, good. Halo.
A Thousand times, and a Million times more, HALO!
ODST had some amazing orchestrated pieces, actually my favorites. the Sax was an awesome addition to the Nighttime atmospheres in that game. Drum beats were great in all the games, and the original Halo theme from Halo Combat Evolved is, in my opinion, one of the best classical pieces of the Century thus far. I really think Martin and Michael should go down in History for the Halo OST's.

 

[SenorNemo]

I'm surprised there's been no mention of this one yet.
Or this one.
Michael Giacchino scores aren't invariably great, but when they are, they're absolutely superb.
With all the Ace Combat music here, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this gem. Then again, it has overt electric instruments. Does she mind electric instruments, or does she insist on purely analog?
Homeworld 2 is full of great music, but this is one of the more iconic pieces. There's also The Keepers, but that has an overall structure too similar to contemporary pop.
Starcraft Aria. No way she turns her nose at this.

Anyway, I hope none of these have been mentioned yet. Also worth mentioning is Civilization IV, that's soundtrack is quite literally classical music from around the era your civ is currently in (though it cheats a bit, playing baroque during the renaissance when baroque really came into its own as late as the mid to late 1600s and 1700s.)

 

[Verkula]

 

[noble cookie]

FFVIII

Eyes on Me.

HAHAHA no. Worst song in games.

From the Final Fantasy wiki.

Spoiler

The Final Fantasy VIII theme song, "Eyes on Me", which Uematsu wrote and produced for Hong Kong pop diva Faye Wong, sold a record breaking 400,000 copies, placing it as the best-selling video game music disc ever released in Japan until the release of "Hikari" by Hikaru Utada for Kingdom Hearts.

ORLY?