See also:
Best VGM 887
Best VGM 2315
A collection of my favorite videogame music. Note that most of them are from games I played so I might miss some great ones from games I never played.
Genesis
Castlevania : Bloodlines (1994)
Reincarnated Soul (Stage 1)
Michiru Yamane
BigAl2k6 brought me here.
my very first castlevania game ever and still my favorite castlevania game next to symphony,harmony and aria
Alternate Title: Castlevania: Basslines
You get the point 😉
Awesome basslines tho 😜
Wasn't this remixed in SOTN for the Library?
So much better than any track from SCv4 imo!
Amazin game with awesome music prob my best castlevania soundtrack of all time
Awesome! The Dracula Battle heavy metal version of this is one of my favorite songs ever.
Fuck yes! This game is so good! The music is great as well.
i knew you would upload this one day.
Stereo drum fills through headphones are ASMR as fuck
I prefer Adventure: Rebirth's rendition of it. But then, I prefer Adventure: Rebirth's rendition of a lot of the soundtrack. New Messiah (Adventure 2's Crystal Castle theme) and its Aquarius remix were... awesome. And so too would have been Battle of the Holy, had they, you know, put it in.
The whole soundtrack is brilliant. Blew me away as a child. Personally would go with "Prayer of The Tragic Queen" as my favorite track in game.
You mean the Versailles Castle Level?
yes
IMO this is the best of the 8/16 bit Castlevania's. Tight level design, good bosses, fast pace while still nailing the series emphasis on measured action, and both characters play completely differently. If it had a slightly better final stage (bit of filler with the recycled halls and boss rush), I think it would be superior to Akumajou Dracula x68000.
I believe the Sharp x68000 game is also 16-bit. Either way, it's unusual to find someone who shares my opinion that those two Castlevania games are the best of fourth gen.
@Cheeseman Yeah, both games are really amazing.
The genesis' inferior sound card managed to have an interesting tangy sound with music made on it. What came out was some amazing pieces like this.
I don't think that the YM2612 is really that inferior to what the SNES had the SNES only has the advantage of having hardware sample playback and more channels, it lacks any kind of synthesis, unlike the YM2612
I really love the music in this game. I really think its Yamane's second best soundtrack in the series only trailing SOTN imo. It's a shame that she had to leave Konami, but she continues to make great soundtracks like Skullgirls and others.
Yamane's first Castlevania soundtrack, numerous of its themes are now considered classics and they got their fair share of remixes. The game itself is very solid, though I found it felt a bit archaic 2 years after Super Castlevania IV introduced great gameplay innovations.
Yeah, though the music was still really good, especially coming from the horrendous Sega Genesis sound chip.
@Aaron Smith Not entirely sure if the genesis sound chip was actually bad, or just a result of lazy programming on most developers parts who didn't take full advantage of it. I remember there was a larger story behind this.
@Aaron Smith As this song alone shows, the chip is actually quite versatile, and has quite a beefy sound to it in the right hands. Look up some of Hitoshi Sakimoto's Genesis soundtracks: he mastered the chip, and even wrote and licensed his own engine for use in other games. Some of the best chiptunes of all the time!
@BuyMeThingsNow I'll say it's most likely lazy programming, especially in Western Genesis games **cough** GEMS **cough**. From what Genesis/Megadrive music I've heard, Japanese-made games tend to have better sounding music than their Western counterparts. My guess is that Japanese developers had access to better tools/documentation of the hardware, while NA/Europe devs were stuck composing with GEMS, which doesn't even utilize the YM2612 sound chip to its fullest potential. But there are a few exceptions where GEMS wasn't used though. For instance, Jesper Kyd composed soundtracks for _Sub-Terrania_ and _The Adventures of Batman and Robin_ using a custom sound driver he wrote and the music for both games are *fucking glorious.*
It doesn't really help that it's really hard to make good-sounding synths intuitively with FM synthesis, especially when the feedback loop for composers and sound engineers was probably quite minimal.
@Fellshard For me FM synthesis have one name: Zun. PC9801 is a good example of what a good FM synthetizer can do. Besides Mega Drive games here in America, had its good games.
The reason why Western developers used GEMS is because it's what SEGA of America/Europe handed out to them in their dev kits, and so they simply didn't bother making their own. Also, some part of me wants to believe that they didn't know that FM chips could sound any better, given how bad their Sound Blaster/Adlib (YM3812) soundtracks tended to be as well. YM3812 too was capable of much better music than the reputation which preceded it.
To all of you thrashing on GEMS, it was quite a good engine not even made by SEGA Japan. It allowed you to use the Genesis/Mega Drive for playback and create your own instruments. It came with built-in instruments for you to start on. Most composers used those instruments as they were and didn't bother to edit them. There are great western soundtracks for the Genesis like everything Tommy Talarico wrote, the early EA Sports games and Toe Jam an' Earl, etc. There is a video that delves deeper on the topic called "How Genesis music was made".