The Elder Scrolls: Arena is the first game in the series, and has an OST composed by Eric Heberling (who would also be on audio duties for The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall.) TES: Arena shipped in 1994 on MS-DOS, meaning that Heberling's orchestral-style compositions had to be compressed to fit the technology of the time, something he bemoaned in a 2011 interview :

"The Elder Scrolls games used an 'orchestral' palette," said Heberling. "I mainly used the instruments offered by General MIDI. That said, I composed with a Roland Sound Canvas, when few players owned anything remotely similar. Inevitably, I had to convert them for FM Sound Blasters, etc. All the tracks suffered as a result. Especially the arrangements that relied on the timbre of the GM samples.…