Y’know, I’m really feeling like finishing the month with a thread every day… that said, here’s today’s thread! Franchises that come to mind for me are…

- 3D Mario (Mario Galaxy & Odyssey = masterpieces!),
- 3D Zelda,
- Pokémon,
- 3D Sonic,
- and MarioKart.

What about you? This should be a fun topic.

Ori, hands down. Not close.

So many to choose from. But OOT and FFX literally leap out of my mind whenever the question is asked. For me, those are 1a and 1b.

Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade Chronicles, Professor Layton.

Off the top of my head Mega Man, Kirby, and Kingdom Hearts. And Undertale.

Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Street of Rage, Megaman, Sonic, "shmup", ...

Final Fantasy easily. Nobuo Uematsu is a genius.

Final Fantasy is number one, no question. Uematsu's work is obviously amazing, but it seems like no matter who composes music for the series the end result is always excellent, at least within the main series.

Besides that, Nier games have excellent music, Castlevania and Mega Man are usually great, The Legend of Heroes is sometimes a bit uneven, but on average the quality of their scores is very high. There's just too many to list, honestly.

Of the three examples you gave in the poll Zelda probably takes it.
Outside of that Donkey Kong Country win.

I also love a lot of the music from League of Legends. Many of the character themes are really great.
StarCraft series and Warcraft series also have a lot of excellent music tracks. Late 90 and early 2000 blizzard was something else.

Chrono trigger also have ridiculously good music and Chrono Cross also have a few top notch tunes even if the standard does not reach Chrono Triggers level.

Final Fantasy as a whole ranks pretty high for me. The OST is those games is iconic.
Donkey Kong Country, the classic snes one, were so iconic for amongst other things for their OST.
Hollow Knight is peak.
Ori games is peak.
Zelda is peak.
Chrono Trigger's soundtrack is amazing.
DQ games generally have great soundtrack, tho a lot of the melodies carry from game to game.
Remember that Persona and Nier Automata had killer soundtracks as well.

Of more recent entries, Expedition 33 had a killer soundtrack.