Here's a fun discovery: Ubisoft has released the soundtrack for Beyond Good & Evil, as high-quality MP3s, for free. They must have done it some time ago as the original download page has disappeared, but happily it has found a home on MySpace.

Most people probably have never heard of Beyond Good & Evil, a third-person action-adventure that was released back in the 2003 holiday season — and promptly lost among the Maddens and Tony Hawks that dominate that time of year. A shame too, because it is an awful lot of fun, and remains to this day one of our all-time favorites. There is nothing particular about the game that stands out as great. Rather, everything just comes together — the characters, the environments, the voice acting, the music, the story — to turn what is essentially a sequence of mini-games into something compelling. Even now, several years later, we still occasionally fire it up, and it is still a blast. Playing the soundtrack at work is a surreal treat.

If you like the genre, and you can find a copy, it is worth picking up. Here are the Amazon links on the off-chance you can find a seller: for the Playstation2, for Windows PCs, for the Xbox, and the GameCube. PC users can also get it on Steam and Direct2Drive. If you do give it a try, be sure to let me know what you thought.

In case you don't believe me, here is a well-written retrospective on EuroGamer.

Update: Beyond Good and Evil 2 has a ship date! Woot!