I think Undertale's a lock for me this year, but thanks for giving me a little more to chew on. I'm also planning to check out XCX's soundtrack at some point: if it's anywhere near as good as Xenoblade Chronicles's, it might give Undertale a run for its money and then some.

@mento: Undertale's soundtrack is damn good! I remembered many of the songs from my playthrough earlier in the year, but as I pieced this list together I was still surprised by the sheer quantity and variety of good songs to choose from.

Picking a favorite out of these would be tough (hence why I didn't do it), but I've probably listened to Axiom Verge and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime the most this year. They both have a weird appeal for me personally that makes me keep coming back; Lovers in particular has an oddly dirty and aggressive tone that's just too catchy in a way that's hard to explain. I haven't played Xenoblade Chronicles X, but the previous game did have some stellar music!

Thanks for the list. It gives me a lot more game music to explore.

I haven't played Undertale yet, but that track is very reminiscent of older JRPGs from the SNES era, without the 8/16-bit effect. It's very simplistic, so they probably had to come up with great melodies - it has me intrigued and also makes me feel nostalgic. My personal favorite track of the year is Disco Descent both with and w/o Shopkeeper vocals. Sadly, the rest of the album is not as stellar.

@spacetrucking: ThewholeUndertalesoundtrackisoutstanding. It's rare when that happens: when it isn't just one or two standout tracks which appears to be the case with Crypt of the NecroDancer. The original Xenoblade Chronicles was the same way - somehow managing to maintain a consistent high level of quality for all 90+ tracks - which is why I'm still doing my musical homework for XCX and a few others before I draw any conclusions.

I am slightly concerned that for their "Best Music" award GB will have once again voted for the game with the best track, which may well be CotND's Disco Descent, and not the best overall soundtrack. They always tend to get fixated on one particularly great piece of VGM in particular - the Pacman DX menu music or the singular track of Luftrausers, for example. I guess as long as they don't tear into David Wise again this year, I'll be fine with whatever they go with.

@mento: Well, the Necrodancer soundtrack as a whole is pretty solid. But yeah, it's not as exciting as Disco Descent. They also love Danny B's musical style so it might just win.

You're right that GB's 'Best Music' award is in reality the 'Most memorable track of the year' award. Last year, I thought Transistor was easily the most consistently good soundtrack with many highlights but it wasn't enough to beat Luftrausers's one track.

My memory is a bit hazy but is the David Wise thing related to whole Donkey Kong fiasco, where someone played a track from youtube to convince the rest?

@spacetrucking: Yeah, Dan wanted DKC: Tropical Freeze in the running for best music, him being the only one who can stand Donkey Kong Country on the crew, and after making a spirited case they've been giving him shit for it ever since. It was all actually pretty amusing, but I'm sort of relieved there's no David Wise soundtracks Dan's going to try to bat for this year.

XCX's OST is pretty good so far, as an update on that to keep things on (sound)track. It's also four and a half hours long...

Ohhh yeah. Good year for game tunes. I still bump to Undertale's Papyrus theme on a regular basis.

@mento:Is the XCX soundtrack produced by Charli-XCX? Real missed opportunity. Last time a British pop icon appeared in a JRPG (Leona Lewis FF13), things turned out so well.