What game music evokes a visceral emotional response from you? (Updated with Playlists!)

100% moon over the castle. Its a damn shame they don't use it as much anymore.

Man I love rippin guitar solos.

God only knows...

JRPG scores always seem to stick with me the longest, and none of them have done so as thoroughly as Chrono Cross. I don't think there's a single game song that immediately hits me and makes me feel as much as the Another World version of Arni Village. It's hardly a big song, just an unassuming background track, but something about it burrowed in deep in the back of my mind.

Radical Dreamers gets right the hell to me as well, as does To Far Away Times from Chrono Trigger. And speaking of ending themes that I have to stop listening to in public lest I break down into a sobbing mess, Memories of You from Persona 3.

Undertale is going to stick with me for a good long while, too. The title track does not get nearly enough love, but the songs from the true ending finale really are a hell of a thing, the kind of stuff that makes you want to run around and high five people.

Phewwwwwww! Finally caught up to most of the music on this thread. Thanks everyone for posting! And keep posting, these are all great!

OKAY SO HERE ARE THE PLAYLISTS.

As I mentioned previously, I divided all of the music I heard into 3 rough categories. They are:

1. Get AMPED

In short, this is all music that motivated me to get off my ass and do something, while making me feel epic (or like a badass) for doing it. Some of these, like E1M1 and Megalovania are no-brainers for this category because of their fast tempos and raging solos. Other songs, which have a more orchestral sound like OoT's Last Battle and Frog's Theme, were also selected for this category because they have an epic, "going off to war" kind of feeling to them, or a chord progression that clearly culminates in an epic manner. The main musical theme that ties everything in this playlist together is the heavy percussive element in each track.

2. Introspective

These are all songs that had the exact opposite emotional impact compared to those songs from the first playlist. While the Get Amped playlist made me want to go make an impact on my surroundings, this playlist makes me want to just sit down by myself and look inwards. In general, all of these songs have slower pacing, with broad, sweeping chord progressions and softer instruments like the piano, harp, and acoustic guitar, as well as operatic or choral vocals. Drums are optional.

3. The Escape

The third and final category consists of tracks that managed to do what neither of the other playlists could do. These tracks didn't evoke a response out of me; rather, they transported me to one of the levels in a game or injected the atmosphere of a game into me. For example, it was impossible for me to think of the Super Mario Bros. Underground Theme in terms of how it made me feel. As soon as I heard it, I could only picture the levels themselves and Mario jumping around in them. Other cases for which this happened to me were Gerudo Valley from OoT and Dire Dire Docks from Mario 64. At the same time, songs like the Starcraft Terran theme, the Shadowrun theme, and the GTA 4 theme were great at instilling their respective atmospheres in my mind. Because the essences of these games are vastly different from each other, it was really hard to find a musical through-line for all of these songs compared to the previous playlists.

Final Notes:

I'm pretty sure I managed to include most of the music suggestions from each post on this thread. If I somehow missed you, let me know! I've been going through a lottttt of music over the last couple of days so it's entirely probable that I just forgot to add your song.

Again, music is subjective, so I don't expect anyone to completely agree with how I've categorized these tracks. That being said, I WOULD LOVE FEEDBACK. How badly did I screw up organizing the songs? Did I totally miss the mark with a track, and should it instead have gone into another category? Was three categories too few in this context? Any other musical similarities between tracks that I neglected to mention?

And as I said before, keep posting! I will continue to grow these playlists as more tracks are posted!

To celebrate the release of XCOM 2, how about my favorite piece from the first game, back in 1994:

Every time you see your little interceptors flying out and you hear that music kick in, shit gets tense. You only get a few seconds to bust that UFO down to size, so make `em count.

I like Priscilla's Song from The Witcher 3:

There aren't many games that throw something like this into the middle of a quest, I think it's a good example of how the Witcher games are more about the journey than the destination.

Baldur's Gate 2 also has some great music, like this one from Throne of Bhaal. You know shit's about to go down when this music starts:

Here's another one that takes me right back to childhood. I never had a console growing up and my access to arcades was super limited, so this was the closest thing I could experience to Mortal Kombat. The robot on robot hype was very real for me as a kid thanks to this song. The subsequent remixes are also good, but it's the original that really resonates with me.

This might be a quite specific music, but I loved two themes from Shining Force II OST.

The attack theme (with normal characters):

And while not good as the above the theme when character where promoted, was very good too:

Also I still love the soundtrack from Heroes of Might and Magic II, specially the town theme which where quite opera-like:

Talking about music with lyric, the "Strange I remain" from Metal Gear Revengance is amazing and more game should have music with lyrics related to what going on or characters.

The title theme in Mass Effect (and the rest of it), the end song in Portal, most of FF7, they all get my emotions flowing, and this:

Profound!

I can't believe that none of the songs from this OST have been mentioned by anyone else so far!