Holy crap! Monster Lair's soundtrack is friggin' amazing. First, as mentioned, it *perfectly* fits the game (the music for each stage complements, even helps *define* the mood for each stage).
Second, even if some songs are pastiches, they have more heart than the muzak you here in a lot of games! Seriously. And since when has VGM ever elevated itself above muzak? Very rarely, my friends, very rarely.
And I don't want to sound like a broken-record, but I still can't believe the almost-universal hatred of the R-Type complete soundtrack. No need to discuss it here, though, since we can resurrect the old threads.
Perhaps I should go on record stating I, too, am a musician. And it isn't necessarily the melody and tunes of Monster Lair I have a problem with, rather the arrangement and choice of horribly cheap sounding synths.
I don't know what to tell you guys, I listen to the original Megaman 2 soundtrack every now and then as I consider it brilliant, but it's basically "beeps" and "boops" as it's NES hardware we're talking about here
However, I still consider Monster Lair's nice crisp 16-bit CD recording as being much inferior
As for R-type, I don't understand the hatred either. There are a few tunes (stage 3, boss themes) that were done quite well. I will agree the majority of stage tunes are pretty lame as all they did was remix the original tunes with, again, cheap synths
Maybe I have a problem with cheap synths in general, not necessarily Monster Lair
Anyway, if I showed my parents (both musicians as well) the soundtrack to Gate of Thunder, then the soundtrack to Monster Lair, there will be laughing
It really is pretty bad
At leat HuCards have an excuse for having "cheap sounding synths"
OD