Back in the day when gaming industry had limited resources to work with due to hardware, they used to come up with awesome, fist pumping, blood rushing level boss music.

Case in point, 2 classic boss battle tunes below...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjLSrlCYeFg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfgVAAFGdvY

Today with unlimited budgets and hardware capabilities, boss music and game music in general has become a pathetic joke or nonexistant. Due to the "cinematic experience" everyone is trying to chase, games tend have movie like soundtracks which provide ambient noises, grunting and team based bot chatter over music.

Do people actually prefer the audio treatment in current gen games? I somehow doubt it but maybe I am just out of touch with reality and mass market rules...

Funny enough, from time to time I hear videogame influenced boss music on the radio in actual songs which usually puts a smile on my face.

Here are couple of modern radio tunes which could be easily used for a Contra 3 boss battle or a final boss in DmC and similar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ5pMK7X3yU (from 0:00 to 1:00)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=l2ImjFZu-kA#t=105s  (from 1:45 to 2:18)

If anyone has any other awesome boss mucis, please paste some links below (dont embed in order to keep the thread and page loading lite).

And yeah discuss your thoughts on the matter...

EDIT - check out this guys channel on Youtube. Essentially he is taking already badass boss music and making it more badass. I've been picking up my jaw from my downstairs neighbout while listening to some of these tunes at how awesome they are...

http://www.youtube.com/user/Zaghurim?feature=watch

Just play this with every boss fight, forever.

Lack of passion? idk, every time i play a zelda game, the boss soundtracks are awesome. Especially the Twilight Princess end boss fight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr-I76OxsVg

and also when he turns in to Ganon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl98PiDeHY4

here you goooooo kirby final boss (Kirby Return to Dreamlan) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBB8MV_mDK0

also this.. trust me just awesomeness imo! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjXC08_YZAc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raAp4xXNnqM

I doubt Pokemon ___ Version games are high budget (and they have been releasing every year since 2009, unless you're in Japan) but every time I hear this when facing a gym leader's last Pokemon, I feel more excited and tense than I should be.

Nice...yeah that Dreamland final boss music knows how its done.

Awesome tune as well... Judging by the posts so far, it seems like Nintendo still knows how to do this videogame boss music right.

Two good boss songs I can think of are these
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVOg1muoAko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGZNL0lbtjE

Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Metal Gear Solid 4, Nier. Some of the games with awesome boss music I remember this gen off the top of my head.

Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4QTEzsCRIE&list=FLZBrPg4i5DuL41mXMi6wizA&index=1