Best Game Music…. Ever

The purpose of this post is purely informative, and I hope to have more like this in the future, if it’s something you enjoy. =) Let me know. Hopefully it will enable some of you to look at games in a different manner, and let you in on some of the fun that can be had with older games still… and as for the music? Read on =)

My favorite game music ever:
If I had to choose just one… it would be an easy choice. If you haven’t heard this game’s music, you owe it to yourself to not only PLAY (the images are important for the whole picture) it, but listen to the music…. I’ll tell you how to do both.

The game is Shadow of the Beast. Originally released on the Amiga platform, it is the most fateful, tragic and haunting, yet meaningful music I’ve ever heard from a game. It was also one of the most difficult games ever… and at the time (even now), beautiful. It had 13 levels of parallax scrolling which was unbelievable, and released later on the Turbo Duo CD, Genesis and Atari Lynx.

Now, to PLAY the game (yes play! and get a feel for the atmosphere…but not the awesome Amiga music… only a much lessened version of it) on the Genesis, here’s what you do.

1. Go to Genesis Project for a quick glance at the screenshots. Go to the “S” section then to “Shadow of the Beast” and watch the screenshots and read the description.
2. Go to The Gens Emulator for the best Windows Genesis emulator. It’s incredibly easy to use. Get wGens .88… just scroll down to 10/23/00 for the link.
3. For the Shadow of the Beast Rom, two options. Go to RomHQ and follow the links. Or do a search for s_beast.zip from your favorite search engine.

What this allows you to do is play the exact game Shadow of the Beast, for the Genesis. Having played and beaten the Amiga version many times, the Genesis version isn’t as tough… but it still is difficult.

Now to LISTEN to the original Amiga Beast music:

1. Go to The Best Game Music in the World… Ever! site at and go to the “S” section to download the original Beast music in David Whittaker format… the composer’s own format.
2. You’ll need a player in Windows that supports this format, and fortunately there is one. Go to the DeliPlayer Homepage and download DeliPlayer. It supports all sorts of Amiga formats, as well as mods, xm’s and tons of others.
3. Listen to the SOTBeast.dw first as that’s the wonderful intro. Then listen to the SOTBeastForest.dw as these two are in order and the best. Now, in most of these .dw files there are multiple tracks. So click the fast-forward button to cycle through each of the tracks.
4. While you’re downloading the Beast 1’s music, skip over Beast 2 and download Beast 3’s music at the site, just below where you already downloaded. It picks up the style of Beast 1 wonderfully…. and it’s in the more common .mod format.
5. The only problem I have with those .dw’s is perhaps the best track, the last subsong off the SOTBeastForest.dw file, and for some reason it’s a bit off. To download that single track (my favorite) in perfect condition (.mod format) go to this site – it’s called Beast-Attack. And that’s it!

Keep in mind this is the original Amiga music, back in 1989…. such a leap forward for its time, both the computer and the music.

For a BONUS:

1. This is a link to the RealAudio version of a song that is also incredible and I just discovered today… thanks to a link by someone in a thread at the Lionhead Studios site. It’s to an old game called Lost Eden and for the streaming version click here. For the downloadable RealAudio version, right-click and save as… here. For fun and a beautiful song, listen to the streaming now while you’re getting the other stuff.
2. Visit Monteiro-music for an awesome modern version of the soundtrack for Shadow of the Beast along with other ‘Immortal’ games. You can actually buy his CD (which I’m going to do) or listen to samples of the music by selecting the “Immortal CD” link from the bar on the right side of the page.

I sincerely hope you enjoy
-Applebrown