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10 of the best video game soundtracks, chosen by DanTDM

10 September 2025, 10:48

DanTDM: 10 of the Greatest Video Game Scores (with gameplay) | Classic FM

By Classic FM

@ClassicFM

DanTDM reveals 10 of the greatest video game scores with gameplay, from Final Fantasy to Zelda.

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Over the last half a decade, video game soundtracks have evolved from the bleeps and bloops of 8-bit ingenuity to full-scale virtuosic orchestral tracks.

And, as the genre has become more beloved by fans and grown a strong fan base of its own, video game music has taken on a new life in the concert hall, regularly selling out performances from Skyrim to Kingdom Hearts.

YouTube gamer and Classic FM presenter DanTDM has selected 10 of the greatest soundtracks ever written for a video game, complete with gameplay.

Watch the full video above, and find the list below.

Super Mario Bros - Koji Kondo

Beloved by many as the godfather of video game music, Koji Kondo’s addictively upbeat music for Super Mario Bros was written for the original instalment of the game in 1985, and has been used across Nintendo’s franchise ever since.
Employed as the first ever dedicated composer at the games company in 1984, Kondo wrote the six themes for the game under the limitations imposed by the NES console’s 8-bit hardware.
In 2023, Koji Kondo’s main theme for Super Mario Bros became the first piece of video game music ever to be included in the United States’ National Recording Registry.

Super Mario Bros. Main Theme (Original Mix)
Red Dead Redemption 2 - Woody Jackson

For the second game in the Red Dead Redemption series, composer Woody Jackson took a completely different approach. Rather than sticking with the Morricone-inspired Wild West of the first game, the RDR2 soundtrack has a distinctly more modern vibe.
With instruments bought from the infamous 60s session group The Wrecking Crew, Jackson headed into the studio with the musicians on the soundtrack and encouraged them to improvise in a call and response session. He would play a short melody to them, and would be met with either a repetition or a response of their own, many of which made it into the final soundtrack.
As part of the quality control process, Jackson landed on what might be the coolest way a soundtrack has ever been put to the test. Armed with a gun from the same era as the game, set in 1899, he headed to a shooting range and listened to his soundtrack while he fired it.
Bullseye.

American Venom
Baldur’s Gate 3 - Borislav Slavov

The soundtrack to Baldur’s Gate 3 is the one that projected its Bulgarian composer Borislav Slavov into the video game music halls of fame.
With a background in IT, Slavov felt his lack of classical training held him back as a composer initially, but that didn’t stop him from writing one of the most epic orchestral scores to a video game.
Filled with leitmotifs and impactful instrumentation, the soundtrack won him the Best Soundtrack award at the video game BAFTAs in 2024, where he gave an emotional speech thanking the musicians who “left a piece of their heart in the music, because if you don’t leave a piece of your heart in the music, nobody can enjoy it.”

Baldur's Gate 3 OST - Raphael's Final Act (Full Fight Version)
Sonic the Hedgehog - Masato Nakamura

Much like Koji Kondo six years earlier, the composer for Sega’s 1991 game Sonic the Hedgehog had their work cut out when it came to penning a theme.
The Sega Genesis console was only capable of playing four sounds at once, and the game wasn’t finished yet with only concept art available for inspiration, so Masato Nakamura had to get creative.
Having only just started as the bassist and songwriter for J-pop band Dreams Come True, Nakamura didn’t have much experience writing music on a computer – something he said made the task “impossible”.
Despite all the obstacles in his way, Nakamura’s music for Sonic was a resounding triumph, and remains a beloved and nostalgic soundtrack for gamers to this day.

Sonic The Hedgehog OST - Green Hill Zone
The Witcher 3 - Marcin Przybyłowicz

Following the success of his music for The Witcher 2, Polish composer Marcin Przybyłowicz returned for the third instalment of the game in 2015.
In his task, he was joined by Polish folk metal band called Percival – named after a gnome from the original The Witcher book series by Andrzej Sapkowski. The group play on modern reconstructions of medieval instruments, with music that is often inspired by old Slavic melodies.
It wasn’t a straightforward process, as Przybyłowicz didn’t anticipate that most of Percival were not formally trained, and that much of their music was improvised. However, the final product is an extremely immersive score that brings the player right into the world of The Witcher.

Kaer Morhen
The Last of Us Part 1 - Gustavo Santaolalla

Before writing the music for The Last of Us, Argentine composer was probably best known for his film soundtracks – most notably Brokeback Mountain. In fact, he had been interested in scoring a video game for some time but had turned down all previous offers for not focusing enough on the stories and characters.
Whilst they were developing the game, creative director Neil Druckmann and game director Bruce Straley put together a playlist to serve as a musical mood board for the game. When they realised that most of the tracks had been written by Gustavo Santaolalla, they gave him a call.
After seeing the trailer, Santaolalla was so taken in by the project that he said: “I want to be a part of this. Whatever it takes, I want to write for this.”

Gustavo Santaolalla - The Last of Us (Main Theme) | The Last of Us (Video Game Soundtrack)
Final Fantasy XV - Yoko Shimomura

One of the most respected video game composers in the industry, Yoko Shimomura made a name for herself with her scores to the Kingdom Hearts series and Street Fighter II.
Ranging in inspiration from orchestral music to bossa nova and the blues, Shimomura was brought into production for Final Fantasy XV in 2006 and stayed with the game through its 10-year development through to its release in 2016.
Her aim was to create a ‘darker’ score than the previous Final Fantasy titles, whilst still paying tribute to some of Nobuo Uematsu’s themes written for the first game in the franchise.
Shimomura also carefully engineered her score so that there were multiple ‘transition’ points in the music that would allow it to merge into different themes based on gameplay.
The result was so intricate that a whole new music tool had to be developed to make sure the score worked as seamlessly as possible!

Magna Insomnia
Undertale - Toby Fox

Toby Fox’s 2015 game Undertale is one of the biggest indie game success stories of the 21st century – thanks in no small part to its soundtrack.
Fox developed and scripted the game himself, and wrote the score as well. With over 193 million streams on Spotify alone, the music to Undertale has become the most streamed video game soundtrack ever.
The music that accompanies one of the boss battles, titled ‘Megalovania’, has had a surge of popularity in recent years. Originally inspired by a track of Yoko Shimomura’s called ‘Megalomania’, Fox’s music enjoyed viral TikTok fame and was even performed for Pope Francis, in 2022.

100. MEGALOVANIA (UNDERTALE Soundtrack) - Toby Fox
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata and Hajime Wakaj

The Zelda franchise has produced many brilliant soundtracks since its original 1986 release. Koji Kondo’s themes to that first instalment have become some of the title’s most beloved, and many composers for later games in the series have paid tribute in their own music.
The soundtrack to Breath of the Wild is no different. Set at a later point in the series’ timeline, it begins as Link reawakens from a 100 year slumber. Composed by Manaka Kataoka, Hajime Wakai and Yasuaka Iwata, the Japanese trio departed from the Zelda musical style audiences were used to, as if reflecting Link’s detachment from the previous timeline.
It’s a largely piano-based score, more ambient than heroic, and transforms as you explore Hyrule to match the environment.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Theme (SoundTrack)
Halo 2 - Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori

When Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori came to write the music for Halo 2, the game’s developer Bungie asked them to compose something “ancient, epic, and mysterious”.
That is how a 21st-century game came to have a soundtrack rooted in 9th- and 10th-century musical traditions. O’Donnell and Salvatori wrote a Gregorian-style chant for its main theme, blending a choir together with their own voices for the mix.
O’Donnell paid so much attention to making sure the score worked that, after it had been recorded by a 50-piece orchestra, he played through each and every level with its designer to make sure the music fit, and would revise anything that wasn’t absolutely perfect.
Legendary producer Nile Rodgers, who worked on the soundtrack, said: “30-40% of the [recording] budget was spent in downtime playing video games. Since all that money was going to that part of the recording session, I decided to figure out what was so compelling about it, and I got hooked.”

Halo 2 Volume 1 OST 01 Halo Theme Mjolnir Mix