I need some new video game OST to download, give me some suggestions
Ooooookay, it's late and I'm bored and I like showing **** I like to other people so imma slide in some VGM I like.
First up, the one pick I always like to recommend to anyone who listens is the work of Taito's in-house sound team,
ZUNTATA. To cut a long story short: they're incredible. They have an incredibly deep and rich variety of work (as you do when you're the collective that does music for one of the most prolific arcade developers ever), and in my opinion should be mentioned in any conversation of the greatest video game sound teams, yet go criminally overlooked by the vast majority of the Western gaming community. If I may suggest some soundtracks to check out:
the entire Darius series, Rayforce/Raystorm/Raycrisis, Metal Black, Night Striker, Galactic Storm, Ninja Warriors, Cleopatra Fortune, Space Invaders Extreme, Psychic Force - and those are just some of the bigger fan favorites, there's plenty of great deeper cuts to go around as well. They're fantastic and I will shill them whenever possible.
Moving onto another influential arcade sound designer, though this time it's just one person, another one whose music I love is
Manabu Namiki. He mainly works in the shooter space, scoring several of the most acclaimed releases in the genre - he's done plenty, but I think a good place to start would be the "holy trinity" of
Battle Garegga, DoDonPachi DaiOuJou, and
Ketsui. All of these are personal faves of mine and well worth a look.
Now it's time for probably the most well-known choice in my list:
Ridge Racer Type-4. Hoooooooooly **** is this soundtrack good. Banger after banger. Anyone who hasn't looked into it owes it to themself to check it out. Good stuff.
Now let's try something a little different: RPG soundtracks. In general, I would say to check out
Nihon Falcom's old-school soundtracks. They did some real good stuff on computers and consoles at the time, but if I had to pick just one, I'd say......
the PC Engine CD arranged version of Legend of Heroes II. There's still a lot of chiptune tracks on there, but a ton of the soundtrack has been given a live band makeover, arranged in this 80s rock/fusion style with lots and lots of echoey drums. It's great, and I very much enjoy this era of VGM.
And uh.....I guess I should recommend
something from SEGA. Alright, here's the deal: I don't know if this type of music is really up your alley, but I think one of the musical peaks on the company's history that's really worth checking out is their mid-to-late-80s arcade era, which spawned several of their most iconic and acclaimed tunes. I'm talking
OutRun, Space Harrier, After Burner, Super Hang-On, Fantasy Zone, Quartet, Power Drift, Galaxy Force, the likes. They're still some of their most revered output, and, yeah they're just really good, though again I'm not sure if it's really your thing.
Good listening!