This is the Awesome Music page for PC only games.
Note: Some of the music from the older games (Mostly DOS games before Windows 95) were composed with specific hardware in mind (Sierra games' music was made with Roland MT-32 in mind, for example) that are not possible to emulate on modern soundcards and DOS Box. Fortunately, as of summer 2011 the fans madeconsiderable progress in emulating the Roland MT-32 hardware.
The. Battlefield. 1942. Theme. Let's get out there and kill some Nazis.
Indie game To The Moon has "Everything's Alright" by Laura Shigihara is a big Tearjerker in context.
The Dwarf Fortresstheme is so awesome it's the only track in the game, played on a six string guitar by the Toady One himself. The haunting notes suspend one's sense of time's passage and accentuate the despair felt as Fun begins to propagate through one's fortress.
EVE Online has this, which is just one song in a seriously awesome set of music tracks, saved especially for blowing stuff up.
And then there are Below the Asteroids and Red Glowing Dust that set the mood perfectly. By now the Soundtrack of Eve Online consists of over 100 songs with many of them being candidates for this page.
If you fail to stop any of the elementals in Quest for Glory II, Trial By Fire, the music is very awesome, even though technically you lost.
And yet no one has mentioned Erana's Peace from Quest for Glory I: So You Want To Be A Hero, considered by many to be a classic of video game music. Even the original MIDI version is beautiful beyond words.
Skyroads has some excellent tunes that fit the subject well.
Dawn of War has some great themes for each of the factions, matching them quite well. Notable ones are the apocalyptic (well, it definitely gives that feeling) Chaos theme, Asian orchestral Tau Empire theme and the Military March-style Imperial Guard theme.
Unless you enjoy bolter rounds to the face, you'd better include the Space Marines' theme.
An' if ya don' wanta be krumped, youze better inklood Da Orks theem!
Overall, Dawn of War's soundtrack is so good, that for the last few years, whenever Games Workshop (The creators of Warhammer 40,000) need music for promotional movies on their own website, they use this game's soundtrack.
Of course, before all that, you had Chaos Gate, which gave us the Ultramarines' Chant.
The best thing on the Dawn of War soundtrack may be an obscure little track called "Chant" that consists of nothing more than a mournful Latin chorus.
Dawn of War 2 used a new composer and didn't give us any remixes of the classic themes, but instead gave us "Dark Future of War" and sweet theme music for the Orks and Tyranids.
Even better, the entire soundtrack of Dawn of War 2 is downloadable on their website for free here.
Speaking of which, the Eldar theme here took the ethereal, ancient race of the eldar and added a completely badass chant to them that makes the listener instantly want to pull out a singing spear and start impaling Mon-keigh.
"Adagio for Strings" always kicks ass, but the vocal arrangement used in Homeworld was particularly awesome. It was appropriate as the introductory music that plays while the camera pans around your iconic Mothership, inspiring awe and wonder. And it was shockingly appropriate when used while watching your adopted home planet, Karak, burn, along with 99.9% of your species.
The Imperial Taiidan battle theme from the first game. You know there's going to be a fight when you hear it, and you know it'll be big.
The theme that plays for the planetkillers in the end of the second game. Fits perfectly.
The Battle of Hiigara in Cataclysm will always be a personal favourite of mine. Honestly, look up the scene itself if you can find it, and you'll see why. So simple, so calm, yet so fitting and Epic.
The relatively obscure planetary air-trading sim Hardwar had a soundtrack entirely comprised of artists from the Warp Records label, ranging from awesome techno-industrial to even funky drum n' bass.
The Descent series had quite a few gems. Let's start with the title theme, shall we?
Descent 2's soundtrack will make you feel dangerous. See Tracks 5-7.
Even the original FM MIDI soundtrack had its high points. IMO, it give the game a gritty, cybernetic feel.
Descent 3's soundtrack, although contested like the game itself, had several epic moments, such as the climax of Level 4, and Level 7(unfortunately not on the OST).
The end track during the epilogue of the original/Brood Wars campaign. Such a moody piece from the Protoss campaign. The first minute or so perfectly fits into the whole moody atmosphere of the Protoss story.
The main menu theme pretty much was the best musical introduction to a epic sci-fi RTS. The best thing of it all: the track gets a slightly updated version in the second installment, which sounds even better.
Bonus points for this track for having a brief reprise of Tassadar's sacrifice at 3:30, and a reprise of the background music of DuGalle's suicide at 5:12.
Ah, hell, let's just say ALL the music in StarCraft II WoL. Especially theTerranthemes, which combine violin, string guitar, drums, and electric guitar to make wonders. And theZergthemes, eerie and unease-inspiring - nightmarish, some may say (and yes, regarding the comment in the first game's section above, Zerg music does indeed become more awesome with lots of drums). AndtheProtossthemes, with their mix of tribal and ethereal/otherworldly elements (and occasional snippets of their themes from the first game). And even the main menu music, a superb redux of the original game's main menu theme.
Epic Pinball's music was from the same composer. First time this troper ever heard Amiga-style music in an MS-DOS game, and it stillrocks.
Not much love for electronic music around these parts, but the soundtrack to One Must Fall 2097 should bring back a lot of memories to a few. Awesome memories.
While the music from Star Control II is universally agreed to be mind-blowingly wonderful in general, the Yehat theme is considered to be the best.
I favour the Orz and Ur-Quan. But we could argue all night, and the best would still be the combat theme. It's practically synonimous with the game! Heck, even the combat victory themes were sweet!
There's also Precursors Team — a remake project with original artists involved.
La-Mulana with very few exceptions (2-3 mediocre songs) is the Crowning Soundtrack of Awesome, but Earth Wind deserves special mention. And also Curse Of Iron Pipe.
Tiamat's theme is "Interstice of the Dimention (sic)", which has an extremely badass rock arrangement, and Mother's theme ("Good Night Mom") is also definitely worth mentioning.
The short intro riff of that plays right when you first enter the ruins—and never again, unless you start over or use the La Mulana Jukebox—sets the tone of the exploration perfectly and leads into the excellent Fearless Challenger.
Mr. Explorer, Grand History and Giant's Cry.
Giant's Rage is considered by many players to be amazingly epic. It's definitely one of the most epic sounding boss themes, with an excellent instrumentation, and fits its boss fight to a T. In The Bottom is also very good.
Even though it's only a short loop, Requiem. It plays in the boss room when you have met the requirements to fight the boss. It's the soundtrack's way of asking, "Are you ready?"
Counter Attack. Original Generation character Haruna's theme. While it doesn't prelude any particular moments of awesome, you'll want to turn off attack animations so that it doesn't stop.
Reprisal. The theme for Irisviel and Kiritsugu. An anthem to the Power of Love. Also one of the more challenging boss fights in the game. Probably because of said power.
Ancient Weapon. Pretty much cements Kuu's status as a Lady of War and preludes a beatdown of epic proportions on your characters as she slams her chosen target with multiple, potentially unavoidable WaveMotionGuns.
Age of Mythology has some great background music (with odd names) but n. d. nile would have to be the best.
The music in the second half of the Chzo Mythos, especially the "you are going to die" theme, could probably be counted as one, if not for their unfortunate tendency of evoking memories of the Tall Man.
Every single song in that game is lifted from somewhere else (even the generic metal-sounding tracks for the file select, first area, and infamous "GAME OVER" jingle, which are all from Guilty Gear Isuka.) Mecha-Birdo's theme is from Ikaruga. The soundtrack used is amazing and fitting, even if unoriginal, Kayin at least has very good taste in video game music.
The game uses several songs already listed on this page, in particular The Moon from Duck Tales and the songs from Monty on the Run and Cheetahmen.
Basically everything from Rome: Total War. Divinitus and Forever deserve a special mention.
And the regular boss theme. This is pretty much the sole reason why I wanted to play this game, and it ended up being cool anyway. Also the artist made it a looping song, meaning if you add the beginning right at the end, it'll loop perfectly. Tom Mauritzon is a genius.
There's also a fair amount of awesomeness in "Kinda Green" and the strangely named "3 Cans Later".
The Mechwarrior 2 soundtrack. It's probably among the most memorable video game soundtracks ever. It makes even the most mundane activity in the game seem epic. Even listening to them outside the game, they sound like they should be played while something epic happens.
Especially Rogue Chariot! This track just gets me pumped for no reason at all.
Wednesday 7 from Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance is up there too. In fact, a lot of the Mech' series music is good, whether it's from #4 Mercs, either of the 'Commander games, or the other 'Warrior games. Also in #4 Mercs; Behemoths for the Heavy/Assaults and Skittersprint/Floodgate for the Lights and fast Mediums.
The best part is, Dan Wentz did the music for the Red Faction series too, so if you listen closely, you might hear some familiar themes from FreeSpace whilst playing the Red Faction games.
The Blue Planet mod is known for its excellent soundtrack, which, in addition to several remixes of the original game's music, includes such songs as Nobuo Uematsu's "Those Who Fight Further"*
Though the game is not out yet (and likely will not be played by many) nearly the entirety of the soundtrack (warning: free membership site, sorry) of Ragnarok Online 2 is simply stellar. Of course, it IS scored by Yoko Kanno...
Since one of the last Patches, Morroc Satan got revived, this deserves a place here.
Don't forget Steel Me. Newcomers to Einbroch were standing around for hours listening to it.
The MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online is starting to amass a seriously impressive backlog of awesome music, with more undoubtedly to come. (Better links will hopefully be posted at some point.)
The music at Tom Bombadil's house, which was also awesome because it's right in the middle of a really difficult and scary (at level 10 or so, anyway) forest.
Most of the songs that play in the Trollshaws are awesome (some play in Ered Luin as well). There's a clip of one of them in the first part of this trailer. And let's not forget Rivendell itself!
Most of the soundtrack in the Shire is really good, but this troper nominates the music that plays when trying to cross the Brandywine Bridge (I apologise for the lack of a Youtube, trying to find one), leaving the Shire for Bree-land. This troper has a hard time bringing himself to cross the bridge (hence "trying") because the soundtrack is just so good, and fits the Shire so perfectly.
Here is the link for it. It is called Hills of the Shire. And it has a Dark Reprise called Warpipes, which is equally awesome and is heard when the Nazgul comes to the shire, as well as in the skirmish 'Trouble at Tuckborough,' during which goblins raid the shire.
Mirkwood. Strangely, this music was in the official soundtrack before Mirkwood was added to the game. It is heard during the Ford of Bruinen skirmish, and made this troper participate in it again and again just for the music. This is the PERFECT music for a Big Damn Heroes moment.
Field of Wind, the overworld theme from the first game, a lush and melancholy theme.
Sierra games are known for having some excellent scores. For instance, the ending anthem to King's Quest VI. Literally crowning music of awesome. The ending scores for any of the Quest for Glory series also count.
And while not a Sierra game itself, the music for Gray Matter was done by the composer for Gabriel Knight, Robert Holmes, so the music is similarlyawesome.
It's easier to list the tracks that do not qualify for this list. There are none.
There was also a remix project, which managed to make them even more awesome. Sadly, the original links to the music at Shack Space are gone, but other people have been able to upload mirrors, such as here, as a huge bundle of more or less every song listed in this entire Crowning Music of Awesome section! Some standout tracks:
Grass Stains, a remix of the Grasstown theme with some awesome guitar.
Island of Eden, a medley of various songs with epic guitar.
Ball of Ballos, the already epic Sacred Grounds theme but even more awesome.
Never Die, the final boss theme made ridiculously awesome.
The Last Battle OC RemixPolar Star Overdrive, while not on the Cave Story Remix Project, may be even better than Never Die.
White, King's theme song, barely sliding into the actual game as a secret track.
Meltdown 2 sounds much, much better in the new fixed rearrangement.
The 3DS version of Cave Story has some pretty awesome remixes. On to Bushlands and Plantation are a couple of good examples, and the Last Battle is also totally epic.
Charge is one of the best boss themes you'll ever find in any game. It also happens to be less than fifteen seconds long.
And let's not forget thevariousscorestothegames. And those are just a few examples. Kevin Manthei has a knack for capturing the mood in each game perfectly.
Seiklus' soundtrack consists entirely of a bunch of previously-existing demoscene tunes. But the thing is, they're all good. What Clysm lacked in composition skills, he made up for in the ability to find incredibly catchy music. Particularly noteworthy are "Rainy Summerdays" and "Believe in Yourself (Extended Remix)".
Raptor and Nexus are this troper's favorites: the former plays during the first serious space battle of the game while the second comes with brutal Scenery Porn (translation: Epicness turned Up to Eleven).
Also, Haegemonia and it's expansion, The Solon Heritage. Even better, both versions has the soundtrack in MP2 format without encryption, compression or custom codecs, neatly organized in the game folder!
Diablo. The second game's soundtrack never struck much for This Troper, but the first game featured some ridiculously atmospheric tracks. Tristram theme comes to mind.
Mention must definitely be made for the final boss theme, "~Requiem for Myself~"
Its sequel Freudenstachel has been showing strong signs of this: Zorne's new stage theme Eruption Trigger and Sichte's new stage theme The Ancient Cry are much more awesome than their original stage themes. Sadly, Eruption Trigger can't be found on YouTube... yet.
At Doom's Gate, which is great for starting off your day at UAC with filling a zombie's face with pistol lead.
Hangarmageddon is an awesome version of it. And whilst we're on the subject, the Playstation version intro, whilst the title rises slowly from a sea of flames, still sends shivers up this troper's spine.
ZX Spectrum home port makes you wish you had that music on original version.
The Doom 3 heavy theme. Reason being that besides the startup, you'll only ever hear it again when you're victorious, and almost invariably at the end of any Doom 3 mod episode too. It's sort of like an awesome music of crowning.
"Nobody Told Me About Id" is so good, it was used for the super secret level of The Plutonia Experiment and gets a new remix for every community-made sequel for it. So far we have Nobody Told Me About Plutonia for Plutonia 2 and I Already Know About Id for Plutonia Revisited.
A little-known game by Apogee called Rise of the Triad did this with half the music in the game. Instead of going atmospheric and moody like most first-person shooters of the time, Triad had music that made you want to charge in, guns blazing - and given that almost all the game mechanics revolved around the Rule Of Cool, this was not only feasible, but totally awesome to do.
It's made even better, somehow, through having a good chunk of the Doom fan-expansion Hell Revealed feature its music for a good portion of its frenetic stages.
To put it in perspective, someone remixed Goin' Down The Fast Way with Megaman X instruments. Not only is it still awesome, but it would feel right at home in one of the SNES titles.
X3: Terran Conflict has a fair collection of "spacey" music, some uplifting, some haunting, most of it just being there, without you really noticing it. But then, one day, you make the jump into Kingdom's End and you get this.
Most of the soundtrack is awesome, but the one that stands par to "Potential For Anything" in terms of awesomeness is "Positive Force". It takes "Pushing Onwards" and raise its motive to a whole new level.
Baba Yetu just won a Grammy. The first time ever for a piece of computer game music.
Especially when combined with the rotating world.. But IMHO the whole game has awesome music. Just the fact that every leader got it's own piece, which is performed by increasingly more (modern) instruments as the civilization advances.
And especially the tunes that are newer versions of old themes, which give an awesome moment of nostalgic realization, and of course, an opportunity to remember how amazing those songs were as well.
Lets not forget the music from Civilization III, which honestly saved the game for me. While only a few of the songs have names, many of them still stand out, like the Ancient Era Theme for the... well... Ancient Era, and especially the Modern Era songs: Smash, Techno Mix, and Stars Full
Civilization V has a number of great pieces as well, especially Russia's war theme and Greece's peace theme, especially considering it is the oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition from anywhere in the world.
Most of the Planescape: Torment soundtrack is made of awesome. A small taste is the Main Theme and Transcendent One. The latter is chillingly awesome in game, with its first appearance being right after the Nameless One has moved on after defeating Ravel Puzzlewell. The Transcendent One, aka the Nameless One's disembodied mortality (and final boss of the game) arrives and this theme starts up. He and Ravel proceed to have a truly epic battle against one another, which made the previous battle against the Nameless One himself seem like little more than a warm-up. Can be seen here. There's also a bit of Sigil Battle and the theme from Ravel's Maze to be heard there as well, which are cool in their own right.
Killing Floor soundtrack mostly consists of industrial/trash metal like music. And when you have something coming up against you that has a rocket launcher for an arm, all you could do is abandon all...
Pathalogic: You need not go any further then the Main Menu to already know that you're in for some mind-blowingly scary stuff.
Princess Waltz- The song "Battlefield of Steel" alone is worth the price of admission, and the rest of the soundtrack is pretty catchy too.
The four-disc soundtrack to the doujin Shoot 'Em UpCho Ren Sha 68K, which includes the already-awesome in-game songs, such as the music to Stage 4, "Infinity", as well as fan- and self-remixed songs such as this remix of "Impossible One"
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
The music that plays in Allied Assault during the level where you hijack the King Tiger tank and go a merry rampage. Awesome.
And lets not forget the version of the theme played during the loading screen of Wake Island 2142. Played with electric guitars.
You want electric guitars? Battlefield 3's theme for you. Sounds kinda futuristic... then the Battlefield theme kicks in at 1:16...
That track isn't actually the theme, it was composed by Remo Baldi, but is not included in the game. This is the Official BF3 Theme. It sounds like a thunderstorm.
StepMania, a free implementation of DDR, holds competitions for songs—composing, writing steps, doing background art. Some of them are at least as good as the tracks in the commercially-released games.
Lacuna Coil's "Swamped" in the credits of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, when you (well, at least in one ending) walk out of Ventrue Tower that just blew up. With that asshole prince Lacroix inside. Crowning Music of Awesome indeed.
How could you forget Marathon's "SPLASH!"? It totally defines this trope!
And Rushing, although to a lesser extent.
Flippant is also excellent. I'm actually quite disappointed there's so few remixes of the Marathon music, I can't find a single one of the Marathon 2 theme.
The first two Fallouts. If Fallout 2's Beyond The Canyon doesn't sound amazing to you, then there is most likely something wrong with you.
The Fallout franchise has always had some crowning selections, and This Troper is pleased that's one thing Bethesda got right. A mention of Mighty Man should be included for another beltable example. And Let's Go Sunning for a crown of dissonance.
Fallout: New Vegas has an beautiful main theme that's sort of a grandiose reworking of the already awesome Fallout3 theme. And of course, you can't have Vegas without Frank Sinatra...
One of the developers contributed some surprisingly awesome songs for the different radio stations — some are original, and some are "Fallout''-ified versions of well-knowntunes. "Home, Home on the Wastes" is "Did-I-just-hear-that" hilarious, and "Cobwebs and Rainbows" is downright sexy.
Coming from someone who can't stand country music, This Troper is forced to admit that "Big Iron" is made of 24-carat badass and win.
All the music is available for download seperately here or as a package here.
Nexus War has no music normally, but this makes up for it. It won't make sense unless you play the game.
Jets'n'Guns. Brazillian developer Rake In Grass thought their game didn't feel old-school and PC-ey enough, so they hired Machinae Supremacy, a self-styled SID-Metal band. That's right, a SID chip synthesiser is one of their key instruments. Check it out.
Just about anything from La Tale qualifies. The game is fun, but nothing amazing. The music, however, is very good. Most of it has a sort of upbeat techno feel, and it's very catchy. (The soundtrack can be found here, by the way.) This troper has almost the whole soundtrack on her iPod, and her personal favorite is Bird Against the Storm. She rarely plays the game anymore, but still loves the music.
Distorted Pain from Gore Screaming Show. It is the opening song, but still it is creepy enough, matching the atmosphere of the game.
From the X68000 game Mad Stalker, we have Stage 1's theme. The game was later remade on the PC-Engine CD and PSX, but this song just didn't sound quite as good in those versions.
The song 'Stones' from the Ultima games. It's been around since Ultima V (where it was bleep-bloopy, of course), but later versions keep making more elaborate arrangements. The version from Ultima IX and the vocal version from Ultima Online are probably the best, however.
Three words: The Incredible Machine. Each of the games has a fair share of amazing soundtracks, such as Rock, Jazz Fusion, New Age, and Progressive Rock. YMMV on the greatness of the songs though, due to different tastes in genre. Overall, these games produce some kick-ass music.
Hip Hop, Progressive Rock, Experimental Jazz and Old Title Theme are just some of my favourites!
Old, obscure DOS game Mystic Towers had little music, scratchy sound effects, and was generally somewhat forgettable, but the main menu theme is just pure early Soundblaster goodness.
Transport Tycoon. Transport Tycoon (and Transport Tycoon Deluxe) had some AMAZING pieces of jazz, easy listening, blues and so much more. Amazingly, this music sounds better on the old Adlib and Sound Blaster cards. Here, have a sample!
Also from the same person who did Transport Tycoon's music; X-COM. This game had some good music, on all the versions (PSX, PC and Amiga). Here, have a listen.
The sequel foregone faction-specific music but in exchange, the soundtrack is EPIC with a capital E. The main menu theme is simply beautiful with the setting's cynical tone.
When you're fighting the final battle of one of the chapters of the MMORPG Mabinogi, you can pretty much bet that the music which is playing will be awesome.
Psygnosis' Novastorm for Playstation had forgettable music, but the PC version of it was positively epic - in particular, Stage 4-1's approach to the Big Bad's space station, the evasion of the perimeter defenses, entry into the station itself, and a frenetic dodge-and-weave through obstacles are set to a pulsing techno piece that keeps building the energy right up to the stage boss.
Creepy indie game The Path has some great music. In particular, there's the Forest Theme. It will haunt you.
The soundtrack from Minecraft (available for download here) is simple but absolutely outstanding. The entire soundtrack, Sweden in particular, really sets you in the mood of being the only human alive.
Trample Machine from the freeware FPS game Another Bound Neo. Some really nice piano and violin.
The Steam Punk MMO Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent has this theme playing in Greticos - especially fitting for the PC's first visit to the national capital.
considerable progress