I’ve put together a list of 60 tunes that have stuck with me through the years, inspired by Jeffrey Canam (@GrahfMetal)’s Twitter rundown of his top 100 favourite video game tracks. I’ve attempted to limit myself to a couple songs per game, but there are exceptions.

I posted them here and on Twitter every Tuesday and Thursday using the hashtag #KongsTdayTunes.

Honorable Mentions

One of the things I didn’t anticipate about this project was how hard it would be not to mention certain songs or soundtracks that I love. I deliberately leaned heavily towards the nostalgic impact of specific memorable grooves and riffs and hooks, to the detriment of “holistic” soundtracks that are consistently excellent without any one song standing out and “atmospheric” soundtracks that perfectly complement and enhance their games without digging into the forefront of my brain.

So it feels criminal not to mention a game like Fez, with a lovely soundtrack by Disasterpeace that permeates (and helps to fully realize) the whole world of the game.

I’d be similarly remiss if I didn’t mention Chipzel. Pretty much every one of her tracks is utterly entrancing, and it’s ironically only because her compositions are so effective in helping me get lost in the games in which they appear that I couldn’t include them on this list.

The same is true of someone like Motoi Sakuraba, who composed the music for the Dark Souls series. I love those games, and it’s a testament to how immersive the music is—how faithful the composition is to the understated, subtle, atmospheric essence of the series—that I only hear the music while I’m playing.

I love these tunes, these games, and these composers, and it was a weakness of my own list design that they got left out.

This has been a fun journey! Thanks for sticking around and sharing some of your favourite tunes with me as well!