I was playing Theatrhythm tonight when it just really struck me how far video game music has come.
This is The Crystal Tower from Final Fantasy III. Now don't get me wrong. The music is fantastic. But no one's going to mistake this for anything other than 8-bit video game chip-tune. This is what I grew up with on the old NES.
This is Who Brings Shadow from Final Fantasy XIV. If someone had told me that this was some musical group that was mixing orchestra and metal, I would have believed you!
Okay, so I also wanted to show some of my playthrough on Theatryhthm. But here's the song without the rhythm game clanging drowning out the music, because this song is just awesome. It's not even awesome "for a video game." It is, without qualifiers, awesome.