The Mega Man series of video games has a distinctive soundtrack. The music from the games is so influential that a bunch of cover bands have incorporated the melodies into their own versions of the popular songs.

Mega Man 1 -10 soundtracks – This is the full collection featuring music from Mega Man 1 for the original NES all the way through the recently released Mega Man 10. It weighs in at 684 MB and you will need 7 Zip for the PC or keka for OS X. The password for the archive is reddit.

8-Bit Instrumental is a video game-focused instrumental band from Brazil popular for their covers of Contra, Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter II, Altered Beast and others. They have an entire album dedicated to Mega Man 2 songs available for free on their website. The release was so popular that a hacked version of Mega Man 2 was released replacing the original soundtrack with the cover songs by 8-Bit Instrumental.

Project X has a 14-track album based on Mega Man 2 available for download in one 33 MB zip file. The Boston-based band produces guitar/electronica music.

Overclocked Remix has several remixes (mostly techno) based on Mega Man songs. The songs can be streamed via YouTube or downloaded for free.

Game Over, a Swedish Nintendo metal band, has three songs based on Mega Man. They’re kind of catchy.

Finally, thepulperizer.com breaks down the top 25 Mega Man songs. It is a pretty thorough list that I mostly agree with except I think the Bubble Man theme song should be number one, not number two.

So there you have it, the ultimate list of Mega Man songs for any video game aficionado. After all, the best thing to do when you’re not playing video games, is to rock out to their soundtracks until you can.