Day 1 - Title Screen (11/27/22)
Xenoblade Chronicles

In my eyes, one of the most iconic title screens in gaming. A time-lapse shot of the landscape surrounding the Monado while the day turns to evening and the melancholic piano slowly giving way to Yoko Shimomura going off on the violin is permanently burned into my memory. Just a chefs kiss masterpiece of a game with a title theme that nails the game's tone off the rip.

Day 2 - Opening Level (11/28/22)
Prologue (Birth of a Holy Knight)

Although not my absolute favorite song from this game (every one of the chapter themes and many of the enemy army themes are just spectacular), I think the 16-bit horns, strings and drums really set the medieval war tone of the game well. The song is triumphant and heroic, set to Sigurd and Co. stomping some bandits who kidnapped princess Aideen on your own turf. Oh, and special mention goes to the enemy phase Verdane Army theme, that song never fails to get me bopping my head along to those amazing drums.

Day 3 - 8-bit Music (11/29/22)
Title Screen Theme

Really, I could've chosen any of Tim Follin's soundtracks from the NES and it would just feel right for this category. Tim Follin squeezes all the potential of the soundchip he's working on and some really clean samples to compliment the often bombastic, killer melodies his mad genius mind creates. Its a real shame that most of the soundtracks are for games that, without Follin, don't have much else going for them... like Pictionary: The Game of Video Quick Draw.

Day 4 - Music from a Console Exclusive Series (11/30/22)
Opening

It's the single greatest opening to a video game ever, and it's not even up for debate. The live orchestra playing over this celebratory movie of all the Nintendo characters rendered in the highest quality graphics 2001 had to offer is just so instantly nostalgic and special. The rest of Melee's soundtrack is iconic as well; I love the digital synths the game uses to punctuate its live drums and orchestra in many of the tracks. And while Brawl's new compositions are overall stronger, Melee's OST has a nice sense of cohesion where all the songs have similar instrumentation and roughly the same level of stellar quality throughout.

Day 5 - Overworld Music (12/1/22)
Shinshu Field/Ryoshima Coast

Running around as Amaterasu in these wide open hub areas with the pristine oil-brushed ancient Japanese style art direction and the sweeping orchestral pieces with traditional Japanese instrumentation is just so fucking cool. Okami is definitely in contention for all time game soundtracks with it's versatility and depth of emotion, and realistically I could've chosen it for many of the categories, but I think the field themes represent the soul of Okami the best. Beautiful, exciting compositions that fade in and out with the sunrise and sunset to listen to as you're doing a number of different sidequests or traversing from area to area that really allows you to just... take the game in for a while. This game is just amazing. Also, it really hurts not to be able to put Kushi's Ride, Kamiki Festival or Rising Sun somewhere on this list because I'm doing hard mode, so go listen to those too!

Day 6 - Relaxing VGM (12/2/22)
Gate Theme

Man, how nostalgic is this one for kids who grew up on the DS and Wii? Coming Spring 2011? Jesus dude, I'm 21 and I feel like a fossil. I just love the laid-back drums over the light music-box-esque piano this game's soundfont uses, as the track slowly builds to the high notes at the end. It's just a perfect track for the 2 or 3 minutes you'll spend talking to the people in the gates, or having the camera pan up so you can read the mostly pointless announcements scrolling by on the electric billboard.

Day 7 - Indie Game Music (12/3/22)
Pressure Cooker/Positive Force

VVVVVV is probably the game I've beaten the most, and no small part of that is because of the banger SoulEye hifi-chiptune soundtrack. Pressure Cooker and Positive Force are tied for my favorites for slightly different reasons. The former opens with that sick triangle jingle and creates tenseness with those low synths and drums that build into the bombastic break in an amazing way. And Positive Force is the de facto theme for VVVVVV for a reason, who's melody is just so cool and full and energetic and awesome that makes completing "The Tower" such a highlight of the game.

Day 8 - Shooting Game Music (12/4/22)
Rave On

The greatest of all time stairwell theme.

Day 9 - Licensed Game Music (12/5/22)
Komm, süsser Tod

Really not sure what to put for this one. Hearing the music from Neon Genesis Evangelion transposed into (basically) the fucking Super Mario 64 soundfont is hysterical though.

Day 10 - RPG Battle Music (12/6/22)
Battle!!

idk who decided that modern JRPGs should start using modern fast jazz for their battle themes, but that guy deserves a raise and a half. Jazz is hands down my favorite genre! This song is catchy and frenetic, where I can't decide if the upright bass or the drum solo or the strings or anything the piano is doing in the song are my favorite parts. Phenomenal song and a gold standard for a genre with traditionally killer scores.

Day 11 - Puzzle Game Music (12/7/22)
Level 11-15 (Normal)

Everybody knows Type A, but personally I dig Type B almost just as much. Hell, Smash Bros Brawl's wild ""traditional"" Russian rendition of Type B is one of my favs from that game's stacked-ass soundtrack. I found this one from a Simpleflips stream though, and it may be my favorite of them all. It's this somewhat paired back techno track with some simple nokia-core midi samples that combine to create a tense, hypnotic song that feels a little nostalgic(?) Works well for Tetris the couple of times I played jstris with this on, works surprisingly great as workflow music!

Day 12 - Sad Song (12/8/22)
Moonsong (Outer Wall)

There aren't a whole lot of songs in gaming that are sad without context you remember them playing them in (other than maybe Super Mario RPG's Sad Song), and Moonsong is a great example. While it's reflective and definitely a little melancholy, the chiptune groove is definitely enough to convince someone like 2021 Raccoons (hasn't played Cave Story) that this is just a downtempo song on one of gaming's greatest albums. But it happens at such a pivotal moment in the game's story where things go from mostly jokey to serious and you reach a aesthetically beautiful yet challenging portion of the game. There isn't any dialogue from the start of the Outer Wall to when you get to the top, which allows you to really soak in that rich atmosphere to its most chilling effect (positive connotation). God, what an amazing game! How did I not get around to Cave Story until this year!

Day 13 - Song from a Game you don't like (12/9/22)
End of All - Below

Man, what a disappointment this one was! Who thought snow shoveling or Fuga's Wild Ride would translate into fun to play maps? Or that in the game with everybody in it, only the royals were worth a shit and...ok but the music in 14 tho? Fuckin' sublime and that that especially goes for the final map theme. Continuing in the recent FE tradition of maximalist, energetic, emotional final map themes, Fates is up there with God Shattering Star, Id (Purpose), and fuckin' Twilight of the Gods. Even though, of the three route final map themes with slightly different instrumentation, this may be the weakest of them... Oh well Rev, you'll get em next time (when you can't be downloaded as of March 27, 2023 lollll rip bozo).

Day 14 - Vocal Track (12/10/22)
Asu e no Houkou ~ Howl to the Future

TACHIAGARE KEDAKAKU MAE SADAME NO UKETA SENSHI YO!!!!

Day 15 - Boss Battle Theme (12/11/22)
Rawk Hawk

Phenomenal game, phenomenal fight. This is the title match of the Glitz Pit arena, where you fight the underhanded, lovable Hulk Hogan stand-in RAWK HAWK. The synthesized electric guitar, rock drums, and that wooshy synth that the Mother games use a lot blend into a goofy (yet earnest) characterization of what I assume 90's wrestling culture was. The cheers from the packed crowd in the arena really sell the concert-stadium vibe this track was going for. PREPARE TO BE RAAAAAAAAWKED!

Day 16 - 16-Bit Music (12/12/22)
Powell

For the 16-bit category it only feels right to give it to Squaresoft, and to the best-in-class presentation of Seiken Densetsu 3. Didn't this game only have like 6 samples so they could make the soundtrack as high quality as possible? Regardless, they're well utilized here where that sexy midi guitar and drums create a hypnotic odd rhythm which the flute solos over in the third phrase masterfully. As of writing I've only played the remake, and that version's [couple of songs they had the budget for a limited orchestra for] are equally amazing and what turned me on to this game's impressive soundtrack.

Day 17 - Music That is Constantly Stuck in Your Head (12/13/22)
Level 1-2 Intimate

The melody for this one got lodged in my brain immediately when I played the freeware version back in the day. It's a very simple and paired-back love song with a tambourine and a guitar that plays and expands on one earworm phrase beautifully. Whenever I'm out on a rainy night or I think about past relationships, dumb and nerdy as it is, but this theme always pops into my head. Rhythm Doctor is such a joyful game which I recommend to anybody who likes indies, not just rhythm game players.
[Side note, I was drunk when I wrote this so it's the wrong prompt lmao, I'll do "Never Get Tired Of" in place of this one when we get there. ty ily]

Day 18 - Song in a Game from your Birth Year (12/14/22)
Astral Observatory

2000 was just an ok year for video games I think. Plus, I didn't grow up with any games from the N64/PS1 era, so it's hard to have that emotional investment that decides what things are your favorites. Regardless, Astral Observatory is a beautiful piece that captures both the place the song plays and the feeling of Majora's Mask extremely well. The minor key vocal and bell samples with the plinky N64 harpsichord playing a plodding harmony and the low bass part make for a sad piece with a haunting atmosphere. The astral observatory itself is a small area in the game where you need to see the moon tear fall, and you can actually see Skull Kid on all three of the days. On the first day, he's flying around, taunting you, but on the second day he's uncontrollably shaking and on the third, he's staring at the moon slowly crashing down onto Termina. Creepy...

Day 19 - Cover of a Song by a Different Artist (12/15/22)
Marisa Stole the Precious Thing

Is this cheating? Like kind of, but kind of not, right? It's a cover of Alice's Touhou PCB theme "Doll Judgement" that got remixed during the early days of peak touhou doujin culture, and is now a playable song in Taiko no Tatsujin for the Nintendo Switch. Touhou music (mostly jazz) has been on my driving playlist all year, so I'll allow it just this once. Anyways, the song is a pop-electronic tsundere-love internet weeb classic from IOSYS, one of the godfathers of the now sprawling cottage industry of remixing amazing ZUN songs into amazing tunes in all sorts of genres. I love the fun play on languages (referencing the multi-national origins of the dolls in Alice's spell cards) and this banger effing hook that's so easy to sing along to.
"Why why why why does the full version of this song have a 10 second period where it blows the fuck out of your car speakers?"

Day 20 - Music from a Racing Game (12/16/22)
Pearl Blue Soul/Naked Glow/Move Me

Originally this entry was gonna be MK8's Dolphin Shoals, but fuck Nintendo! R4's OST has that lightning-in-a-bottle early 2000's jazzfunk futurism like CvS2 with the then-cutting edge digital synths and dense, percussion lines with hip hop hi-hats & tasteful record scratches. Namco circa the turn of the century was allergic to missing, especially with its sound design [R4, Katamari Damacy, Tales of Symphonia, Klonoa 2, Tekken 4]. Each of the songs on the soundtrack, not just my favorites is groovy, tense, flow-state inducing kino that even works as killer bgm for working or playing Super Smash Bros Melee to. Just a flawless soundtrack, and once again, fuck you Nintendo.

Fun Fact: Move Me actually got sampled by a certain experimental rap artist who looks like Ray Allen.

Day 21: Music that You Associate with Frustration Wild Card (12/17/22)
Watcha;Watcha Doin'/Desastre

Didn't feel like putting an overtly negative entry in my list plus it's my birthday tomorrow, so deal with it.
Dohna Dohna's OST overshadows the game it's itself, although that's probably not surprising since the game was made by the fine folks over at AliceSoft, is exclusive to the h-game dark web mafia site Johren, and had a collab with muse dash for some reason??? Either way, the bright and catchy electro-pop bangers on offer have packed soundscapes with sick instrumentation the capture the tone of (most of) the game really well. The battle songs are maybe the best examples of this. Watcha;Watcha Doin' is the standard battle theme for scrapping with the police, which has these low dubstep pulsing saw waves topped with the energetic synths and that earworm chopped-and-screwed vocal sample, all of which reappear in many of the other songs on this stacked soundtrack. Desastre is one of the boss themes, and it's a lot more tense with its booming metal guitar and chiptune Toad's Turnpike synth, that leads into an amazing synth solo that is simply chef's kiss. I can't give this game a universal recommendation, but I will say that it heightened the game experience a lot for me! Also...

[SFW] Minecraft sex scene.

Day 21 - Town/Village Theme (12/18/22)
Sprouting

Sakuna is such a labor of love by the two-man team at Edelweiss, as seen in the minutia-focused depth of the rice planting, the fun and snappy, almost CAG-like depth of the side-scrolling resource gathering segments and, of course, in the OST. The instrumentation on the whole soundtrack is filled with live recordings with traditional japanese instruments like the shamisen or the shakuhachi, which are played to fun filled, action-packed interpretations of "game music". The main melody, specifically that one sharp note in there is just so memorable! What turns this song from one of my favorites to the favorite though is how it isn't actually the first song the game uses for the base of operations. No, for the first couple of cycles, you'll be listening to the slow and mysterious "Rugged" as your resources are still low and you're figuring out the intricacies of maintaining the rice field. But after a couple of hours in the story, a moment where the unlikely family works together and becomes closer to each other, then this jolly and upbeat song starts to play and, man! This game is so good, I need to finish it at some point!

Day 23 - Underrated Music (12/19/22)
To Aru Ryuu No Koi no Uta... or really the whole soundtrack

What does it mean to have an underrated soundtrack? Music is mostly subjective anyway, and there's hardly any people who are willing to argue that a soundtrack is terrible. (Outside the egregious examples ofc). So this spot goes to Dra+Koi, an obscure eroge on a random NitroPlus fandisc that happens to be one of the greatest short-form VNs I've read, featuring one of the greatest VN soundtracks I've ever heard. It's got a strange combination of all sorts of genres and tones, from the pop-punk "Honnou Girl" with a fucking Godzilla sample, to the slow and mysterious electric guitar which gradually builds tension in "Hiai Tosui. Cannibis", to the bright and cheerful love rock song "Are You Happy", to the army march song for the mom character "Moete Susume!", whom I simply can't get into here. I think my favorite song out of the lineup though is the main theme reprise, To Aru Ryuu No Koi no Uta, for being a beautiful and stirring kinda-celtic rock banger with an amazing vocal performance from Ebata Ikuko, as well as it being the perfect emotional conclusion for what the game is. This game is truly a hidden gem among hidden gems.

Day 24 - Music You Never Get Tired Of (12/20/22)
Waterfall

Man, what an opulent track this one is. Ticks all my personal boxes in being a silky-smooth, groovy, jazz fusion anthem set to the prettiest stage in the game. And really, the whole soundtrack keeps up this absurd level of quality; many of the tracks have wildly different composition and instrumentation, but riff on UCH's main jingle in constantly fresh ways. Props to the Quebec-based audio engineering team at Vibe Avenue for their work here, I'll definitely be checking out more of the games they got contracted for in the future.