[GoldfishX]

I think it has to do with attitude...I feel like a lot of Japanese composers looked at the limited resources of early machines and saw it as an opportunity to create quality music and this ate its' way into the whole culture of VGM as technology advanced. So you had the in-house sound teams composing a consistant stream of awesome music.

I think western composers largely didn't take VGM seriously until streaming became available (and until gaming became mainstream). At least, growing up, I can only name a small number of western composers I ended up listening to via ingame soundtracks (the Follins, Tommy Tallarico -Cool Spot-, the Rare team -mostly David Wise- and Fat Man -Maniac Mansion-). Now you have kind of a new wave of western composers, but they are directly influenced by old school VGM (virt and Souleye immediately come to mind).

And if by "classical", you mean some of them will be looked at as cornerstones or representations of VGM as a whole down the line, yes. The early Megamans, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Zelda theme, SMB theme...These will be around many years from now.