S-Tier: The Soundtracks That Rewired Your Brain
You know that moment when you hear the first few notes of Chrono Trigger’s “To Far Away Times” and suddenly you’re twelve years old again, sitting cross-legged on your bedroom carpet? That’s S-tier territory. These soundtracks don’t just accompany gameplay, they fundamentally alter your relationship with music itself. Yasunori Mitsuda’s work on Chrono Trigger belongs here not because it’s nostalgic, but because it introduced an entire generation to concepts like leitmotifs and musical storytelling without them even realizing it.
Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. theme earns its S-tier status through pure ubiquity and genius simplicity. That melody works as a ringtone, a doorbell, or hummed absent-mindedly in grocery store lines because Kondo understood that video game music needed to be catchy enough to survive endless repetition. The bassline alone has probably been stuck in more human heads than any classical composition.
Journey’s dynamic soundtrack system by Austin Wintory pushes into S-tier for a different reason entirely. The way it weaves player actions into musical phrases creates something beyond traditional composition. It’s collaborative art happening in real time. When you slide down those sand dunes and the strings swell perfectly with your momentum, that’s not just good music, that’s technological poetry.
A-Tier: The Deep Cuts That Deserve Your Respect
Metroid Prime’s soundtrack by Kenji Yamamoto sits firmly in A-tier, and I’ll defend this placement until my dying breath. Yes, it’s atmospheric and moody rather than hummable, but that’s exactly why it works. The way “Phendrana Drifts” uses steel drums and ambient soundscapes to create genuine alien beauty shows compositional sophistication that most film scores never achieve. This isn’t background music. It’s environmental storytelling through sound.
Katamari Damacy’s eclectic collection belongs here too, though for completely opposite reasons. Yuu Miyake and his team created something so deliberately unhinged and joyful that it transcends conventional music criticism. “Katamari on the Rocks” shouldn’t work as a jazz fusion piece about rolling up cosmic debris, but somehow it captures the pure absurdist joy of the gameplay perfectly. The soundtrack succeeds by being exactly as weird as it needs to be.
Hollow Knight’s Christopher Larkin delivers A-tier work through restraint and emotional precision. “City of Tears” uses minimalist piano and strings to create genuine melancholy, while “Dirtmouth” establishes the perfect lonely frontier town atmosphere with just a few sparse instruments. It’s proof that modern indie composers can create music with the same lasting power as the 16-bit classics, just with different tools.
B-Tier: The Solid Performers With Room to Grow
Most Zelda soundtracks land in B-tier, and before you grab your pitchforks, hear me out. While individual tracks like “Zelda’s Lullaby” or “Song of Storms” are absolutely iconic, many entries in the series rely too heavily on nostalgic callbacks and familiar melodic patterns. Breath of the Wild’s minimalist approach shows promise but feels incomplete. Those sparse piano pieces work beautifully in context but lack the memorable hooks that define great game music.
Pokémon Red and Blue’s soundtrack by Junichi Masuda earns B-tier placement for historical importance rather than pure musical merit. The Game Boy’s sound limitations forced Masuda to create incredibly efficient melodies, and tracks like “Lavender Town” and the battle themes became genuinely iconic. However, the technical constraints also mean much of the soundtrack feels repetitive by modern standards. It’s important music that paved the way for better things.
Most modern AAA orchestral scores cluster in B-tier territory. Games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have competent, sweeping compositions that check all the epic fantasy boxes, but rarely surprise or challenge listeners. Jeremy Soule’s work is professionally crafted and emotionally effective, but it plays things too safe to reach higher tiers. It’s the musical equivalent of a well-made blockbuster movie. Impressive in scope but forgettable in specifics.
C-Tier and Below: The Missed Opportunities
Sonic the Hedgehog sits in C-tier, and I know this is controversial. Masato Nakamura’s compositions have undeniable energy and perfectly match Sonic’s speed-focused gameplay, but they lack the compositional depth and emotional range of higher-tier entries. “Green Hill Zone” is catchy, sure, but it’s essentially pop music that happens to be in a video game. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t push the medium forward.
Many modern mobile games and live-service titles fall into D-tier by design. Their soundtracks prioritize being inoffensive background noise over creating memorable musical moments. Games like Candy Crush Saga have competent but utterly forgettable loops designed to avoid annoying players during long sessions. This is functional music production, but it’s not art.
The bottom tier belongs to games that actively damage their own experience through poor audio choices. Silent Hill: HD Collection’s replacement soundtrack demonstrates how badly wrong audio decisions can derail entire projects. When developers don’t understand that music is integral to game design rather than mere decoration, everyone loses.
Why These Rankings Actually Matter
Video game music deserves serious critical analysis because it represents one of the few truly interactive musical art forms. Unlike film scores, which accompany predetermined narratives, game soundtracks must respond to player agency while maintaining emotional coherence. The best composers understand this unique challenge and create music that enhances rather than simply decorates the interactive experience.
The tier system here isn’t about objective quality. It’s about recognizing different approaches to solving the fundamental problem of interactive music. S-tier soundtracks succeed by creating lasting emotional connections that transcend their original contexts. They become part of players’ personal musical vocabularies, influencing how they hear and understand music outside of gaming.
What soundtracks would you move between tiers? More importantly, what overlooked gems deserve recognition alongside these established classics? The conversation around game music is still evolving, and every passionate argument helps establish this medium as legitimate musical art.