The topic is self-explanatory and I’ll start with mine:
1st place: ex aequo The Secret of Monkey Island & Grim Fandango
2nd place: Gray Matter [The Scarlet Furies are awesome!]
I would like to invite you to cite, if possible, soundtracks of both older/classic adventure games an more recent adventure games. 
Links to videos or audio resources would be very appreciated, especially when citing less popular games.
Just too beeping easy.
Zak McKracken by Matthew Kane is just perfect up there with Indiana Jones, Star Wars, James Bond etc. if the game would have become a francise (which it should have) it would have been instantly recognizable to everyone.
This is the original demo recording done before the digitised versions where programmed:
Gotta love that gated reverb and those synths!
Michael Land´s Monkey Island is also beautiful and fits the series perfectly. Those steel drums, that flute, the reggae rhythm.
And I only recently noticed that the prelude to it, you know the very beginning before the tune kicks into gear actually is pretty reminiscent of the beginning of the Star Trek Theme (Next Gen probably even a bit more than TOS). Not the actual notes but the overall feel, if you get my drift.
LeChuck’s Revenge and Indy 4.
Worst: Deponia.
Specific tracks I enjoy:
The Curse of Monkey Island - Mr. Fossie
Kathy Rain OST - Cemetery
Sam & Max Hit the Road OST - 05 - Outside Headquarters
Thimbleweed Park OST - County
Thimbleweed Park OST - Hotel
And Thimbleweed Park also has one of the most annoying songs of all-time with that song that’s always on the radio.
Nothing from adventure games really makes it into my fave music list. Might update with more links later.
Well, at least I wasn’t rickrolled.
Without using the help of youtube and just trying to remember tunes, it has to be said that Sam and Max Hit The Road is standing out (outside of Monkey Island). I like the County theme from TWP and think of it as an “overworld” theme or a world map theme. I can think of many great overworld themes but they don’t come from adventure games… at least not the type that this thread is probably getting at (PnC).
I really believe that most of the best game music is not with pnc adventure games and that is a good thing, because you don´t want to get distracted. Most good tunes are credit sequences and theme tunes most of the rest is less memorable(still good though) ambient music. In action games it´s okay because the music pumps you up at the pace with what you want to do, so many great fast paced games have great memorable tunes like Mega Man or Castlevania.
Or you know, this little friggin masterpiece (as with most good SID Tunes it slowly evolves and the best part is around 2:10):
Most of my fave music from video games comes from RPGs or Zelda. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has a great soundtrack and it’s also one of the best games I’ve ever played. Adventures have some good music but yeah, I don’t regard it that highly in general. I love the music from the following franchises: Metal Slug, Sonic the Hedgehog, Zelda, Uncharted, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, and I’ll give it to Monkey Island and let it coexist. I’m no doubt forgetting some. There’s loads of great music in a lot of those older Snes and Genesis action games… high octane thrilling stuff in general.
My favourite is the Monkey Island main theme.
Beside other great ones already mentioned here (like from Zak and Zelda) I also like this one from MI4 (Escape from Monkey Island):
Speaking of the whole soundtrack, Monkey Island 2 and Sam&Max Hit The Road have the most memorable and catchy tunes. But the most beautiful is probably Grim Fandango to me.
Speaking of single tunes, Zak’s theme, Woodtick theme, the Quickie Pal from TWP and… @N_N annoying, really? I LOVED Tuna Head. If I were still living in my hometown, I’d have insisted on adding that song to my old band’s set list.
I had to keep muting Tuna Head whenever I was trying to think. "Maybe I should give Sandy the… the… " DEN DEN DEN DEN-DEN, DEN DEN DEN DEN!
As far as soundtracks go, I absolutely love the funky riff on the Maniac Mansion intro. I really like how it builds up to the high-pitched bit when the title comes up. The DOS version that I played is very ‘midi’ but I like that 
Guys, watch this, and have tissues ready when you do.
another gem:
Ha! When I first played Monkey Island 2, my PC hadn’t a sound card. So the music sounded very … limited. 
But the bone song on the speaker blew me away. If you hear that tune today, you can’t comprehend that. But it was a great work what LucasArts did with the speaker. (For the young kids in this forum: The speaker was meant to just beep when the PC was turned on or if an error occured.)
Edit: The PC speaker intro of MI1 is also amazing:
I suppose that the Bone Song in MI2 is some kind of reference to this one.
Apart from the MI soundtrack in all its facets (I even had the MI1 title music as ringtone on my Ericsson GF768 back then), this little piece below still gives me goosebumps each time I listen to it:
Oh, and I definitely like the “Huzzah”-songs of Deponia, too. Especially those of the first part. Catchy tune and fun lyrics (though perhaps a bit worse in the English version compared to the original). But for the benefit of our international audience:
Now, as mentioned in another thread already, the one MI song I come back to quite often lately is “A pirate I was meant to be” (not sure if it counts as soundtrack, though):
Apart from Monkey Island, Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion, Loom, Indiana Jones main themes, there is another adventure game intro I like: 999. It starts soft, then pretty hard and intense.
It’s sad that it was not re-dubbed in Italian.
But probably, given the quality of some adaptation, it’s better so
I’ll chip in: The 7th Guest and the 11th Hour soundtrack, both scored by legendary games composer George “The Fat Man” Sanger. I still listen to that soundtrack on its own.
-dZ.
