As I do every year, I’ve made a new mixtape sampling my favourite music from the best video game soundtracks of 2017. It’s been another banner year for the industry and as always, the games were blessed with an astounding selection of musical scores. This year was exceptionally notable for giving us soundtracks with grand ambitions and a much more varied assortment of musical styles including large-scale orchestrations, operatic singers, experimental Hip-Hop, ambient, jazz, and even some folk music – not to mention lengthier soundtracks than usual, many of which received a vinyl release. As always, the selection of songs reflects my personal favourite tunes and not that of Goomba Stomp’s staff. There are a few soundtracks I debated including such as Jeff Russo’s What Remains of Edith Finch and Andy LaPlegua and David García Díaz’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, but in the end, I felt they just weren’t good enough to make the cut.
Most of the soundtracks are available on iTunes or streaming services so if you like what you hear, I recommend seeking them out. I’ve also listed the tracks I sampled below. Enjoy!
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Playlist
Sonic Mania – Tee Lopes and Hyper Potions – “Title Theme”
Super Mario Odyssey – “Super Mario Bros. Theme Remix”
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom – Grant Kirkhope – “The Phantom of the Bwahpera, Act 1”
Super Mario Odyssey – Naoto Kubo, Shiho Fujii and Koji Kondo – “Cap Kingdom”
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom – Grant Kirkhope – “Huggers!”
Cuphead – Kristofer Maddigan – “Don’t Deal with the Devil”
Cuphead – Kristofer Maddigan – “Introduction”
Super Mario Odyssey – Super Mario Players and Kate Higgins – “Jump up Superstar”
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – Yasunori Mitsuda, ACE, Kenji Hiramatsu, and Manami Kiyota. – “Fonza Myma (Night)”
NieR: Automata – Keiichi Okabe – “A Beautiful Song (Opera Boss Theme)”
Nioh – Yugo Kanno – Yokai Battle Theme
Persona 5 – Shoji Meguro – Gochitera Gang
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Manaka Kataoka * Yasuaki Iwata – “The Champions Ballad featuring Kass”
Resident Evil 7 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau – “Go Tell Aunt Rhody”
Night In The Woods – Alec Holowka – “Playground”
Night In The Woods – Alec Holowka – “Title Theme”
Nidhogg – Daedelus – “Menu Chow”
Nidhogg – Daedelus – “International Death and Dismemberment Plan”
Floor Kids – Kid Koala – “OST Mix”
Yooka-Laylee – Grant Kirkhope, David Wise & Steve Burke – “Hivory Towers Theme”
Cuphead – Kristofer Maddigan – “Ruse Of An Ooze”
Little Nightmares – Tobias Lilja – “Little Nightmares Theme”
Hallow Knight – Mantis Lords – “Piano for Hands”
Pyre – Darren Korb – “Bound Together”
