This is the Video Game Music Thread

three mile pilot's chief assassin to the sinister has a few obscure video game refs, most notably "androsyn guardian".

Video game music appreciation site: remix.overclocked.org

huh? Isn't that a BIBLE reference?

lucasarts' the dig had great music but i can't remember how much of it was just made of up of wagner excerpts. ("mitch do you like hitler?")

well yes...

but if you've ever played that video game where your driving the Ferrari you may know what i'm talking about...

pitchfork!

the Tekken soundtracks are great - i like Yoshimitus's theme from Tekken 3

Yes! The music to Secret of Mana is beautiful, especially the main theme (with the flutes), and there's some really nice orchestral writing in Actraiser too -- very rich, intelligent, creative. The SNES is probably my all-time favorite platform for video game music -- it's poised right between the two eras, with a palette that's rich enough to be totally convincing, but not so broad as to lose the distinctive flavor of the old-school stuff. Other favorites for SNES include the usual Mario/Zelda/Metroid suspects, as well as a couple less-known games like Drakkhen and Spiderman and X-Men: Arcade's Revenge, which has some pretty tremendous disco-funk music laden with wah-wah guitar and horn stabs. Mario Paint had some nice ambient music hidden in various sections on the cart.

Other platforms: I haven't played much in the way of Genesis games, but Ecco the Dolphin is definitely right up there. On the NES, besides the obvious ones (i.e. the original versions of the usual suspects above), I was always quite taken with the music to Xexyz -- it had a remarkably haunting and self-consistent soundworld. The opening theme to Marble Madness bears a pleasing resemblance to a section just before the end of the first movement of Debussy's La Mer. And The Adventures of Dino Riki had a charming little jaunty theme in the opening stage.

check out especially (free mp3s on that site):

-contra (OH MY GOD)
-kraid/metroid (OH MY GOD)
-ghosts n goblins (etc)
-wizards n warriors (etc)
-mike tyson's punchout! (etc)
-megaman 2 and double dragon (if they've been put online yet, i dunno)
-castlevania

um yeah. up up down down left right left right b a select start!! (i'm talkin 2-player)

Oh, and I can't believe nobody's touched on Hamburg's wonderful L'Age D'Or label - http://www.lado.de/ - who've long been flying the computer-games-done-weirdly flag:

http://www.enduro-disks.de/images/illu/output64/output64-cd-cover.gif

is the one that you want, yes it is - Add N To (X), Jeans Team, Plundersonics et al twist loads of, uh, old Commodore 64 tunes into wikkid shapes.

I have to be honest and admit that had, say, the Super Mario Brothers theme (which I completely adore) been released completely outside the video game or the industry itself, I would have overlooked as muzak. The nostalgia is the main appeal.

HOWEVER...

The limitations placed upon how much resolution the music could contain back in the day was a big part of its charm today.. the further you go back, the more charming the music is (to me), because of the limitations. It's also educational, and for DSP/IDM enthusiasts especially, provides the most clear-cut case study on the development of computerized music...

Nostalgia obviously figures back into this again of course, but I think electronic music today has been very recently been heavily influenced by ancient video game technology and the music thereof, mainly because this has been the most accessible forum for hearing the odd ancient sounds of its time.

Someone on ILM in a past thread mentioned "Well, if those guys could have made the music back then sound like Styx, they would have, but they couldn't... hence..". Sadly, now that the technology is there to pretty much play fully rendered analog rock music, there's going to be less charm and less reason to be excited about the music of video games today.

NOTWITHSTANDING...

...the fact that the catchiness of video game background music is a key element to a video game's success. This is the understated reason I think recent cutesy Japanese video games have captured the hearts of those who would be bored by all the big sounding sports or racing games.

Just clusterfuck of thoughts here... but I'm curious to hear all y'all thoughts.

It was all vague and genre constraints fly out the window, just in the face of making music that is fun and/or isntantly memorable. My roommate and I used to guess what genres were present in SNES games. Castlevania IV has some intense free jazz that just comes out of nowhere. Yoshi's Island had a few songs that were perfect combinations of old school metal and circus music.

On this note: www.supermadrigalbros.com!

Almost every song from Mystical Ninja/Goemon [N64 again] is a dead set classic.

And of course WipEout, WipEout 2097, and Wip3out/SE.

Some of the music from from Final Fantasy 2 US reminded me of Debusey (sp).

You can also download it here - http://www.grimfandango.net/index.php?section=downloads&page=music

Which is nice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNF-bRKvbeA

Megadeth covers the theme to Duke Nukem 3D

kirby's adventure bangs

is there any way to listen to 8-bit video game music/chip tune without playing the game? like, compilations? wikipedia lists some composers, but i haven't been able to track down any collections.

i keep replaying the end of 'machine gun' on the new portishead and i'm DYING FOR SOME XX-BIT

http://www.ocremix.org/ has some apps for playback of ripped tracks from roms and such

the pause screen music in battletoads!!! (NES) it's a short loop, but so great

This deep cut FromSoftware game called Evergrace has one of the wildest future-music soundtracks I've heard.

I've always wondered if Oneohtrix was familiar since it has some surprising overlaps with some of his more esoteric sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm17vgmh854

And just last night I discovered he featured a track from it on a BBC 6 playlist! Cool.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/djmix/oneohtrix-point-never/freak-zone-playlist.p/

I should mentioned the Evergrace composer is Kota Hoshino.

He also did the sequel to Evergrace, Forever Kingdom. This is from 2001 and it sounds like an Animal Collective song.

This guy was on another level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjEhb0DLv3s

damn, never heard of that before, like if jp massiera wrote PS2 video game soundtracks

today i'm nerding out on the adlib gold, a soundcard that was screwed by creative, maker of the soundblaster (creative and adlib got their fm synth chips from the same source, and that source had mysterious delays in making the new chips for the adlib gold)... so the company was bankrupt by the time it came out. basically the only adlib gold soundtrack anyone knows is stephane picq's "dune" soundtrack (not dune ii i don't think). anyway apparently in the korean demoscene people are writing songs for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBXhcTEKIuI

also somebody transferred stephane picq's soundtrack to "kgb" in 24/96 fidelity using an OPL3 card (the OPL3 is the FM synthesis chip on the Adlib Gold - the OPL2 is on most of the FM soundcards of the era), worth checking out for you hi-fi heads out there:

https://archive.org/details/picq96khzmasterskgbopl3

i like the kgb soundtrack better than the dune soundtrack myself so this is cool to have

just clicking around on that link reveals a lot of great stuff, thanks for posting that. absolutely love this sound.

I know Stephane Picq from Megarace - perhaps the game itself was not great, but I loved the cutscenes, and the music was incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7JgalAgkjE

I was probably like...9 years old when I first heard this. had no clue about techno or electronica or anything else but this blew my tiny little head off

so here's an album of the works of russian composer nikolai kapustin arranged for chiptune

https://sexytoadsandfrogsfriendcircle.bandcamp.com/album/staffcirc-vol-4-switched-on-kapustin

turns out kapustin has a certain notoriety for sounding like kirby music

ok wait _this_ is the worst video game music ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uifYj8Efaw

i'm obsessed with another falcom track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ok9bzDzaS0

i think power metal truly found a home in video game soundtracks

https://www.nts.live/shows/otaku/episodes/otaku-winter-soundtrack-27th-january-2024

“Chilling, frigid and wintery scores from the obligatory snow level - featuring music from Final Fantasy, Silent Hill, Stardew Valley, Skyrim…”

played the original arcade version of marble madness for the first time yesterday and was v struck by the music even tho i only got thru the first 2 levels lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2t5fIUyJs0

unsurprised it has already been mentioned multiple times upthread

original 8-bit soundtracks on streaming?

i found the complete ninja gaiden on spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6sokQkWFPf5MWUB82HIRCp?si=IqTtiK82R8atIEkm3Zwr1g

i find it funny how chiptune became a thing, but most of the actual music that inspired it is still only available when running the games. not even the original mario brothers scores are on streaming. shame because the mario 3 end credits song is probably one of my favorite songs oat.

onto something else----
contempo "remixes" of old video game themes? bland coffee shop fodder mostly imo, but some of them do good imitations of legitimately good hold music. check out tune in with chewie riffing on super metroid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx3kVMB1fJA
tune in with chewie - "lower brinstar" (2021)

and it's wild to think how a six note figure from the original game ultimately folk music'd itself into this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf-jM3szYuI
collosia - "title theme (from the legend of zelda ocarina of time) [lo-fi version]"

sorry, that collosia is from 2020.

I like some of the Consouls' jazzy covers

This is great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwiuDu4NqsQ

found this "extended remix" of last wave from outrun+i can't stop singing fishmans' "nightcruising" over it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al542KY-w1A
sega sound team - "last wave (1993) (outrunners)" composer: hiroshi kawaguchi

Not easy to recommend music coming from the old ZX spectrum, but I remember listening to this title screen quite a lot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-pquDR7Ws

surely this is posted upthread but what a jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne-09Bs_bRo

The Great Giana Sisters / C64 Intro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S--Wi4v8IfA

adjacent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbedGvGbQQ

obsidian blue - "kirby's flight" (2008)

basically a coffee shop beat of the classic between stage jam from kirby. am a big fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb8WbGIT57E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XruY72JamWc

That Jazz Jackrsbbit music is incredible

Some of this Yuke 2kki soundtrack is like top tier ambient

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whhEMe-xbmY

*Yume 2kki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoxE1URe8Qs

Here's a pair of recent discovery standouts:

Kota Hoshino the savant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjEhb0DLv3s

Genesis FM synth jam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz7qouHTyRo

That Jazz Jackrsbbit music is incredible

― Sade of the Del Amitri (dog latin)

thought u might like it!

I did, very much

the tetris game for cd-i's new age soundtrack is amusing but surprisingly effective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_SwDWKf-78

i guess i haven't talked about it here, how much great music there is for different versions of tetris. they're all different. hip tanaka did the music for the Nintendo NES version, which is the version the championships are held on. Ján Deák did the music for the 48K speccy Tetris 3 and that's fantastic as well (he passed away far too early in 2014 at the age of 46, I now find). idk who did the soundtrack for "Magical Tetris Challenge" on the N64, but it's some heavy fucking funk, particularly for a game where you're going head to head against Disney characters. peter wagner did the music for T-Maxx, a tetris clone on the Mac. The SAM Coupé version of Tetris has music by Rob Mies that's great (not the Cooking Circle version). and my fave is Wally Beben's C64 version, which is a fucking 26 minute epic and what got me into Beben. Tetris I think lends itself well to music, because it's one of those games where you don't have to worry about the music fitting the game - compare Koji Kondo's music for "Super Mario Bros", which was written to match the music, and Tim Follin's theme to NES Pictionary, which was clearly just a banger tune he had lying around and gave them when they needed a song. Tim Follin is probably the best example of someone who provided great music for crap games, but early game music wasn't particularly tied to the game itself. That's one of the things that made Super Mario Bros. so groundbreaking!