Europe's "Final Countdown" rocks! Hairy and cheesy as it is. Lots of fond memories of that from my youth, and we still play it at parties. Being a Swedish song, it's obviously huge in Scandinavia.
I'm guessing you'll find similar fanfaric synth rocking in stuff like diCola's ROCKY IV. Or Moroder's stuff in NEVERENDING STORY.
Two such scores that come instantly to mind are Vince DiCola's scores to Transformers: The Movie and Rocky IV. I wouldn't recommend Moroder because he stuff tends to sound a lot cheaper than DiCola's stuff. The same goes for the Europe song.
I can also recommend another synth driven 80s Power Anthem.
Oddly enough, while The Final Countdown is among my favorite songs of all time, I don't like Van Halen's Jump. It doesn't really... seem as powerful as Final Countdown is. Final Countdown just seems to have such an otherworldly, fantasy-like feel to it that really takes me away.
I've heard the samples on Rocky IV, but with the CD having a running time of 32 minutes, and the fact that it's an MAF (unlimited) release, I haven't really justified buying it yet. I've only heard Ivory Tower (the US version, I think) from Neverending Story. It's an okay tune, but I never really came back to it much.
Oh, and I found these as well. I want to buy/own the instrumental version SO BAD. ;_;
Lots of fond memories of that from my youth, and we still play it at parties. Being a Swedish song, it's obviously huge in Scandinavia.
