I used to put a tape recorder up against the TV to record C64 game music :)
What the hell happened to video game music though? It used to be fun and not afraid to sound nothing like any other genre. How did we go from (1) (2) to the sterile sameness where everybody tries to imitate either Hollywood'ish orchestra, hiphop or mainstream rock? I have to go far into the past to recall the last time the soundtrack of a Western game stuck with me.
This might be a little reactionary to say, but I think constraints breed creativity. I have noticed there's kinda a line in the sand temporally where not just game music but most music exhibits a cambrian explosion in quantity but not necessarily differentiation. I may have posted this [1] before but I think it's a great read, and you can likely see parallels between the points it makes in pop music as in VGM.
I mean taste in music is subjective but theres a lot of games out there with bomb soundtracks. Triple A games often have ambience instead of music so you'll have to look into solo projects or indie games. Here's a couple examples I really enjoyed.
Civ IV won a BAFTA award for its music, but that was a while ago now. I think this is just a side-effect of AAA stagnation; everyone's trying to make the same game within a very narrow target market. Meanwhile in the Wild West of monetisation the cutting edge is A/B testing your loot box gambling systems on children.
It's still possible to find great creativity, but it's less likely in the mainstream.
What the hell happened to video game music though? It used to be fun and not afraid to sound nothing like any other genre. How did we go from (1) (2) to the sterile sameness where everybody tries to imitate either Hollywood'ish orchestra, hiphop or mainstream rock? I have to go far into the past to recall the last time the soundtrack of a Western game stuck with me.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA95o7RNjqA
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b68n5FZ1ASg