And especially:
Turrican II
Great Giana Sisters

Oh, and nearly forgot my absolute fav:
Bubble Bobble
Even have that as my Ringtone *gg*

Low bitrate music is still intentionally made today in the form of chiptunes. It's also a very cool scene, seen in a much more trendy light than the stuff that inspires it. I agree that some of it was ear-rape of monumental proportions, but that was just someone who wasn't musically talented just bashing out any old crap. Typically the music is much more defined and smartly made since they have less to work with; necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes. A lot of modern music is incredibly forgettable. I can't remember any music from Dragon Age Origins apart from the title music (because it, like the rest of the game, is Lord of the Rings Lite) and the excruciatingly embarrassing Leliana song (not to be confused with the excruciatingly rushed-out Leliana's Song DLC).

Not the best example ever or anything, but I'll often just replay the first level of Castlevania IV just for "Simon's Theme" (though is that cheating since the SNES had that weird warpy sound chip?): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sX3fjpkFwk

Or inside any other electronics, for that matter :)

I think the AdLib is great too, been looking for one myself!
OP, games of that era depended so much on the audio hardware they were using, so try fiddling around with the audio emulation options in DosBox/SCUMMVM. To prove my point, watch this video about the history of PC audio as told by MI soundtrack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a324ykKV-7Y

There is so much old good game music it's ridiculous.

Tyrian 1995
Hexen 1995
Another World 1991
Body Blows 1993
Pinball Fantasies 1993
Ninja Commando 1989

Not to mention some great covers.

This.

Watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a324ykKV-7Y
Note how the best music comes from the AdLib, and later devices have very little to add. Ironically, the most boring version is a CD-quality one.
And I didn't even have a computer when any of these were realeased, so it's not some nostalgia speaking.

I disagree: old chiptunes (OPL and OPL2) and Music Modules rock. You don't like DOS gaming? You are not a retrogamer and you don't need something like GOG.com, plain and simple :-P

So true man, so true.

---

In-topic: Chiptunes are totally awesome, its cool to see music "rendered" in real time by using instructions and not just listening at a pre-recorded shitty mp3 :P

That's why the chiptune scene is so big, its something kinda magical. "Coding" a tune in the NES sound chip is just mindblow, so epic that there are programs like FamiTracker and MilkyTracker that were made JUST for that.

Orchestral VGM in general is rather forgettable. Inon Zur is a perfect example of stuff that's dry and forgettable.

Also, this piece from Bloodlines is one of my favorites.

Look, I just can't take anything you say seriously when you double ellipses your entire post. While your opinion is fine, it holds no objective merit.

Hell, even Tetris had a fine score.

Indeed
it
did.

Sorry I guess my age must be showing here...... I know radios still have transistors,but we don't call them transistor radios anymore........Maybe I should have said monotone transistor radios before stereo and so on but I recon you'll flame me for that too.............................

At any rate I have found that the more I play some of these old games the more my ears get accustomed to the music.....Mind you I did not mean to say that there were NO old games with decent music ..... I said SOME of them are hard to listen too.

I think on average old game music is better than new. By old I mean 90's though, not 80's.

It's for times like these that God crafted Foobar2000 out of a rib-woman and a failed presidential assassin pretzel.
Yeah, mid to late 90s maybe. Quite a lot of epic orchestral stuff back then and plenty more awesome tracks besides. If anything, music simply doesn't get as much attention paid to it by developers as it used to.