This is the best video game music ever and I will hear no arguments.
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MAPPY!!! 
My favorite mom-and-pop video store (IT HAD TWO FLOORS!!!) had a Mappy machine in the lobby, and I loved loved loved that jazz.
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I can get ridiculously far in Mappy. I’m strangely very good at it. I’m usually not good at games, but Mappy I kick butt at.
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Going back to my love of endings (and Capcom music), there’s the ending theme from Little Nemo: The Dream Master, which did a beautiful job of conveying the message that the adventure was over.
Wonderfully bittersweet and wistful.
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To lean outside the Capcom/8-bit ring, I’m gonna go with a couple of tracks from the wildly creative and innovative side-scroller Dynamite Headdy. A trio of tracks comes to mind here.
First, there’s the South Town theme:
Then there’s the Tower of Puppet / Stair Wars theme, which is freaking exhilarating:
And then there’s the Final Boss theme, which solidly establishes that things were gonna get real. It starts out with an quietly unsettling tone and then escalates to a more chaotic and hectic “chorus” of sorts:
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The old MS-DOS game Skyroads had a great soundrack.
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And it was cool how Super Mario 64 kept reinventing the wheel with memorable new tunes that didn’t borrow from previous music but built upon them, creating something distinctive and indelible.
My favorites would include the water level theme. Easily the best track there for my money…
… as well as the Koopa’s Road track for the three Bowser levels. I love how this music communicated the message that you weren’t merely embarking on another level, but that you were going to WAR.
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It’s actually illegal to have a video game music thread and no Streets of Rage.
This is just the Character Select screen:
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The bar stage music in Streets of Rage 2 is GOD-TIER.
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Gaiares for the Genesis was a maddeningly underappreciated space shooter with a slamming soundtrack.
Mission 6 had a particularly glowing theme:
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Everything about Gaiares was stellar. Amazing Genesis game.
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Loved loved loved it. The TOZ System for capturing/replicating new weaponry was novel.
And that soundtrack was AMAZING. That first stage theme got you SO PSYCHED for the adventure to follow:
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Just checked my music collection. Roughly 40GiB is used up just on game OSTs.
If restricted to only one choice,… it’s Tim Wright and the W1P3’0UT" series:
But there are so, so many talented musicians providing backing:
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I had serious issues with the gameplay mechanics of Uncle Fester’s Quest, but that theme for the boss battles is among the best to be found for the NES:
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For live performance stuff, I love love love the work of Descendants of Erdrick. Particularly effective is their Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos medley.
The way the flute is incorporated into the prologue tune gives the piece a foreboding and ominous Ennio Morricone kinda vibe.
The actual intro opening (with sensational music) for comparison:
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When I think “best video game music” I often think of this first, because nearly a quarter of a century later, I still sing it to myself.
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When not so good games get good music.
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I mean, the whole soundtrack is great.
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From the cancelled Hero Quest (NES) game…
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