Guitar Hero II

Game music has been a passion of ours roughly since, oh, 1985, but in the past 10 years, it’s come to mean something more. Don’t get us wrong, we still love the beepatronic music of the 8- and 16-bit periods (and the wave of chiptune artists it inspired), but the past decade has also seen licensed music become a surprisingly important part of gaming. Sometimes, this just means a selection of familiar hits to accompany our music games, but every so often, a game will use licensed tracks to careful, brilliant effect – and in the process, will expose legions of gamers to music they might never have heard otherwise.

What follows are the games and franchises that have been the most influential in bringing strange and terrifying new musical styles to gamers’ ears – and in the interest of making this our most self-indulgent Top 7 since that other one, we’ve asked a handful of our editors to explain what made each one important to them personally...

If you should take away anything from the last few days of this weeklong anniversary feature, it’s that the PS2 is damn near unstoppable. 10 years after its North American launch, the thing is still on store shelves, with new games still produced every so often. But while the PS2’s story doesn’t end with 2006 or 2007, these were the years when the PS3 debuted and rose to prominence, and the industry’s interest was correspondingly pulled toward current-gen, HD-enabled consoles.

Even with increasing competition from the new breed, though, the PS2 still had a few massive hits left in it – just not as many as we’d gotten used to. So, rather than stretch 2006 and 2007’s relatively thin PS2 lineups out over two days, or drag things out into the PS2’s increasingly dry twilight years (post-2007, it’s been tough to find 10 decent PS2 games, let alone 10 great ones), we’re going to finish out our recognition of the black box's best with the collective bang of the last two years it spent at the front of the pack...

Earlier this year we posted a video of our extremely handsome mugs chattering on about the most important games of the past decade. Did you miss it? Were you so distracted by our handsome facial hair that our words washed across you impotently like waves over rocks? Good news everyone!

DOWNLOAD (Right-click, select "Save Link/Target As")MySpace | iTunes | TalkRadar forums 03-20-09 | 1:51:34 | Intro song by AnamanaguchiWARNING: Explicit ContentTalkRadar Archives

The Top 7… games you either love or hate If you’re in the middle, you’re in the crossfire.

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Just in time for Black History Month, GamesRadar is proud to present a completely unrelated article about fat people. Chubbies are everywhere these days. Your next door neighbor could be a fatty. More than likely, your mom is one, too. Oh, Snap!