It’s obviously no secret how much I love music, or all kinds. But what about how much other people love music? Some songs transcend far beyond my own personal enjoyment, entering the cultural zeitgeist in a way that they persist past their own niches. In this article, we’ll be looking at the Top 10 gaming songs that almost everybody should know (in my opinion, and obviously you still need to have a slight knowledge of gaming to know some of these songs).
Let’s get into it!
10) One-Winged Angel (LINK)
Final Fantasy‘s most famous song, and for good reason. There’s no other song in gaming that screams ‘Final Boss‘ as much as this terrifyingly masterful tune. Remixed and reused across hundreds of games, Sephiroth’s climactic showdown theme is the stuff of boss fight legend, managing to be a fearsome and intimidating gaming track, and also just a very professional made song from a pure music theory point of view. I fairly-recently went to a video game music concert, and as soon as I saw that Final Fantasy was listed as a series that would have some of its music played, I knew in my heart it would be this song, and I was proven correct!
9) Mii Channel Theme (LINK)
This might seem like a silly pick, but if you’re ever touched the Nintendo Wii before, you’ve got this tune buried deep in your subconscious, I promise you. Now, maybe you’re not exactly like me (or my brother), and you didn’t spend hours upon hours crafting Miis in the visage of family, friends, or your favorite Star Wars characters and Disney Princes/Princesses. But even if you only toyed with this feature of the Wii for mere minutes, Nintendo created an earworm sure to burrow into the depths of your brain and remain there for all time. It’s just such a happy little tune!
8) Tetris Theme (LINK)
It’s Tetris, come on. One of the all-time video games, a classic that has persisted without fail for decades. Now, yes, technically this is just a rendition of an actual Russian folksong, but by this point in time the tune is far more recognized as belonging to Tetris than to whatever poor composer first conceived of it. And who can blame the general populace for doing such a thing, when Tetris has had fifty-gazillion incarnations on every possible gaming console and computer system (all those jokes about being able to play Doom on every possible technological device are twice as true for Tetris, I’ve definitely had Tetris on a calculator before), and every single version of this classic puzzle game includes this memorable theme!
7) Super Smash Bros Brawl Theme (LINK)
This song utterly dominated an entire era of gaming, even for non-Nintendo fans. Arguably, it’s a little ostentatious, and leans almost cheekily into the more mature tone that Nintendo was going for with this entry in the series. Did this inevitably-silly Nintendo-themed fighting game really need to bust out the full Latin Choir for its theme song? No, not really, but I’m sure glad that it did! This theme song slays, even in its instrumental form (or hard-rock remix during the story mode’s final boss). I guarantee that if you walked into a room that had even just a few mid-20s (or older) gamers in it, and you played even the opening seconds of this song, they’d start singing along with the choir. I know I would!
6) Megalovania (Link)
Hundreds of millions of views don’t lie. I think enough time has passed to consider Megalovania an all-time classic gaming song. It’s the newest song I’m including on this list, but I cannot understate just how much this tune has irrevocably changed the internet since Undertale released back in 2015. Spend even a few minutes dipping your toes into the gaming (or even just pop-culture) side of YouTube, and you’ll stumble upon this track. That being said, it’s deservedly popular. It’s fantastic, gets the blood-pumping during this tough-as-nails boss fight, and does a good job of hanging around inside your brain for the next few days, weeks, months, or even years. A rather simple song, all told, but it does its job wonderfully. I also heard this song played live during that same gaming music concert I talked about earlier!
5) Live and Learn (LINK)
The most popular Sonic song of all time (at least on the non-instrumental front), Live and Learn really gets your heart racing from the first second. That guitar, those drums, the vocals…it’s all just so perfectly 2000s that it gets you right back into the vibe, so embracing the inherent cheesiness that it circles back around to being super cool! You simply can’t not get pumped hearing this song, and seeing Sonic and Shadow team up to save the day. And the way in which they incorporate this song into the recent Sonic 3 movie? Nothing short of perfection.
4) Pokémon Theme (LINK)
It’s crazy to think of a time where Pokémon was just a random little idea cobbled together on the Game Boy, to now being the single biggest media franchise in the entire world. But that’s how everything began, with Red and Blue on the original Game Boy, a small selection of pocket monsters, and a dream (and a game with a staggering number of issues, really). And a part of that original release was this bleepy-bloopy little tune that has come to define the entire series, reappearing in basically every single one of the hundreds and hundreds of Pokémon games. But even through countless remixes, this song never loses its charm. Gotta catch ’em all!
3) Legend of Zelda Theme (LINK)
Nintendo paved the way for gaming to enter the mainstream, so it’s only fitting this list is primarily dominated by their games. And aside from a certain other song (gee, can you guess which song, and where on this list it’ll place?), the main theme of the Zelda series stands tall and proud amongst the pantheon of gaming music. From it’s chiptune origins on the NES, the the progressively more grandiose remixes in modern titles, to sweeping orchestral renditions in touring Zelda concerts , the main theme persists and endures across all games. It’s just such a perfect encapsulation of the adventurous feel that defines the series. Get out there, find the Triforce, and save Hyrule!
2) Halo Theme (LINK)
From the original Xbox, to the constant sequels, to impromptu singing sessions in boys locker rooms at school (plenty of videos of this occurring on YouTube, should you be so inclined to search them up), the Halo theme is a masterpiece. Slow, methodical, goosebumps inducing choir, that then shifts right into the epic orchestral hits we all know and love. Whether you’re partial to the electric guitar added in Halo 2‘s version, or the piano from Halo 3, the core gist of the theme is never dropped, nor does it ever stop being so amazing and chill-inducing, whether it’s your third time hearing it or thirtieth. It’s surprisingly how effectively the composer struck solid gold when creating this theme all those years ago, but I’m certainly glad he hit on such an iconic melody!
1) Super Mario Bros Theme (LINK)
And speaking of ‘iconic melody‘…it couldn’t be anything else in this top spot.
If you polled any random person on the street to hum a video game tune off the top of their head, chances are genuinely very high that it’d be this infectious little ditty right here (even if the chances are just as high that the person would say ‘oh, I know the song from May-rio‘). Partially due to the old age of this song keeping it in pop culture for so long, partially due to being one of the first notable gaming melodies, and partially due to its simplistic and hummable nature, the Super Mario Bros theme, at this point, is going to outlast the human race. I mean, Mario isn’t going away any time soon, and neither is this song!
I’m not even sure I have much more to say. It’s iconic, simple as that. Perhaps the most pure example of ‘gaming music‘ anyone could ever think of.
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
The Contrarian Corner 