Top 10 videogame songs of ALL TIME

[awall]

Damn you Cesar, you made me late for class!
Me: Oh, I have half an hour before I have to leave. Lemme respond to this thread.
Me: Oh, I still have 10 minutes, I can still finish this.
Me: Eh, it's only 5 minutes past when I need to be off, I'm not that late.
Me: Eh, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, the difference is just a one in the second column.
Me:... Gaaah! To heck with this, I'll finish it when I get home.

Anyway, this is gonna be a toughie. Here are my top ten, in no particular order:

FF8 - Don't Be Afraid. But I had a really tough time choosing this one. FF8 is IMO the best game ever in terms of overall music quality, Don't Be Afraid is probably the only battle music in the entire series that I can listen to over and over and it still doesn't get repetitive. However, I feel really bad for leaving Force Your Way and The Legendary Beast off this list, because they're both totally amazing songs that's only failure was being from the same game as Don't Be Afraid.

Secret of Evermore - Halls or Collosia (I love all of it, but the part in particular I'm referring to is the background music in the room where you enter). The absolute pinnacle of background music EVER as far as I'm concerned. The first time I played this game, I ran into a corner with no enemies in it and just sat there for several minutes listening to the music. It invokes... I don't know... it's like you can feel the ancientness of the room around you, feel the mythology that must have passed through these halls, and feel the ruins that they have since become. I can't describe it. If you have never played this game, DO SO! Background music is scarce, but when it exists, it's beautiful.

Super Mario Kart 64 - Rainbow Road. I've listened to this song on it's own before... it's not great. But the effect this has when you're "in the zone" is almost hypnotic, for some reason. This is the one stage in the game where I can start out in the back of the pack and the next thing I know I'm way in the lead and halfway through my final lap, yet I have no recollection of time passing. Maybe the car engines and psychadelic track have something to do with it, but I remember this stage for the music.

Starfox 64 - Zoness. I would say Corneria, but Cesar already got to that one. Actually, I like them both for different reasons, so it's hard to compare. Corneria is more "Starfoxish" and better suits a space shootemup, but Zoness is more beautiful and evocative. It really goes well with the elegant but deadly serpents that leap out of the water as you fly past. Also, I happen to just love this stage for the "shoot all the searchlights" objective.

Chrono Trigger - Sealed Door. This song is the most evocative (I love that word) in the game, and almost made me cry the first time I heard it. Especially the second time you come back and Balthasar is gone. It's like... this song makes the room feel so... like you've just lost everything important that was here, and all that's left is a Nu that's supposed to be the culmination of his life's work... shudder.

Thanks to Lakazoo for the title to this song.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Forest Temple. I swear, that place is scarier than the Shadow Temple for me. The Shadow Temple reeks of death, and loves to suprise you by dropping huge invisible spiders out of nowhere. But the Forest Temple... is... so... empty... and abandoned. I feel so alone in there, like I'm deep in a haunted building with passages that rearrange themselves and ghosts that drift in and out of paintings and hands that fall from the ceiling... *shivers convulsively.* The music in this place just contributes to the feeling SO much and... well, if you've played this game, you'll understand. The music isn't nearly as impressive on its own without the foggy, haunted atmosphere, so you really have to be playing the game.

Yoshi's Island - Koopa (a.k.a. the final boss music). The execution isn't miraculous, but that's gotta be the best final boss atmosphere-feeling ever. Picture this - you're standing on the parapets of a ruined castle. Pieces of debris from the recent pre-final-boss-battle are falling from the sky around you. The music drones on one note in the background and eventually gives way to a forlorn fanfare of sorts (not sure if you can call something in a minor key a fanfare, but...). Slowly, a dark shadow rises in the background. As the background drone picks up, the shadow unfurls into something with a snout... horns... a pair of bright eyes... and HOLY CRAP, YOU MEAN I HAVE TO FIGHT THAT THING??? And then the music switches from the drone to a rock-ish synthy battle music and... well, it's just really really cool. Again, not nearly as cool for the music itself as it is for the effect it gets when you combine it with the scene.

Kingdom Hearts - Dive Into The Heart ~ Destati. This is the very first song you hear (not counting Hikari PlanitB Remix, which also kicks rear end) in the tutorial sequence. It's this kind of mystical, almost surreal chorus of voices. And then slowly, almost unnoticably, the music shifts from that to dark undertones and from there to sounding really ominous, but still recognizably Dive Into The Heart. And then there's this staircase leading off into nowhere, and as you climb it, the music starts speeding up and getting more bass, and - don't ask me how they manage to do this - but they time it so that JUST as you reach the top, the music hits its peak, and this GIANT SCARY black shadow boss materializes and rears up and the music is perfectly in sync with it and it's all amazingly done and... yeah. Wow.

Super Mario 64 - Bowser. Not the Bowser music itself, but the dungeon leading up to him. I don't remember whether it's the same each of the three times you fight him, but the one I'm thinking of is just the right combination of ominous (oooooooh crap, this is gonna be really hard) and inspiring (alright, I'm gonna go kick Bowser's arse RIGHT NOW!). In fact... I wanna play that game again.

Crono Cross - Tower of Stars. What? Not Chronopolis? It was really hard to make the choice, especially because what plays inside Terra Tower isn't strictly "music"... it's more of a collection of sounds, but it's beautiful nonetheless. I love the bell and the wailing voices and the climactic tone of the song... wonderful creation, that.

Wait... where's the second Final Fantasy? How could I not have picked two tunes by our man Nobuo? Well, the truth is that as much as I like certain FF songs (FFX's Attack, FF7's Perfect Jenova, FFT's Decisive Battle) they just don't have the same sort of effect on me that some other songs do in general. Sorry.