What’s some great overworld music? Feel free to interpret this as loosely as you want, but the quintessential overworld experience is that first time your little protagonist’s sprite/model morphs into an even littler protagonist as they are thrust into the game’s world at large. Great overworld music can elicit feelings of adventure, hopefulness, despair, desolation, heroism, wonder, and anything in between. Here’s a couple selections to get the ball rolling:
The Terranigma music falls squarely into the “adventurous” camp for me, with just a hint of mystery, which is a perfect way to start a journey to rebuild a broken world.
I had to include a Final Fantasy game here, and I don’t think anything is quite as wonderful as that wistful melancholy of the score accompanying the party’s emergence from the Rotting Pizza.
As anyone who may be following my recent posts may have gathered, I am enraptured by SMT Nocturne at the moment, and the Large Map theme has played no small part. This track perfectly encapsulates the idea of a slick modern world swallowed by weirdness.
I’ll leave it off with one more SMT track–I haven’t played IV yet, but the first time I heard this song I knew I had to some day!
edit:
I have to throw in one more that would be criminal to overlook:
As I discussed in the ambient music thread, this is an incredibly textured track, espscially considering the medium it was being produced for. Perfectly bleak and foreboding.