This is the Video Game Music Thread

Also - Nobuo Uematsu's work for Squaresoft.

http://www.readsatellite.com/temp/robhubbard.doc

http://www.readsatellite.com/temp/comic.jpg

The Super Mario Brothers Theme supposedly being played by the London Symphony Orchestra

The Super Mario Brothers Theme supposedly being played by Mr. Bungle

Music for Zelda Ocarina of Time was k-fantastic, particularly Saria's song -- which, yes, I have listened to outside of the game context and enjoyed possibly more.

The question got complicated as soon as disc-based systems were introduced and "actual" music could be put on them: Wipeout XL, the Japanese dancing game Bust a Move, and Grand Theft Auto all have "imported" stand-alone studio recordings on them that I enjoy.

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!

koshiro is GOTY

Not sure where to post this, but I have this Cool Notes 12" and the synthesizer and overall vibe of this track have always made me think of some lost Japan-only import SNES game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4EOhMRtfYA

In fact, just playing it again reminded me of Hal's Hole in One Golf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOFVVlbwndI

The course zoom around at 0:50 is the jam

streets of rage ii is coming to switch online, so maybe i'll actually play the game after jamming the soundtrack for so long

banger, right here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov1ULTDTdiY

https://kotaku.com/dragon-quest-composer-koichi-sugiyama-has-died-1847815597

disgusting politics notwithstanding, he was an unequivocally great and influential composer of game music. always loved this 8-bit samba from a Japan-exclusive FDS backgammon game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-rIpXeRj9A

Listening to all this stuff brings home why I love so much current Balearic revival stuff, and also fusiony things like Pat Metheny

Man, Mickey Mouse Castle Of Illusion had some pure bangers on it, especially towards the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzLd8p4mc0M

The Game Gear/Master System version also had some choice cuts. I wish there were versions of Spotify but I guess Disney would intervene

Posted a while ago about how the Hylics games have some of the most original visuals I've seen in recent times, soundtrack is great too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdwVwX1hWzA
https://masonlindroth.bandcamp.com/album/moonage-lobotomy-a-hylics-2-musical-expansion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3BQsCCwo8w

turn it up!!!

here's one I discovered via the Cardiacs Discord, not hard to figure out why it showed up there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UrsaKcZHI0

That was by Tim Follin, who was a wizard. I remember his 8-bit music on the ZX Spectrum, where he managed to play polyphonically with a one-note speaker by rapidly switching notes. He also did this, which is fantastic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_gObHt1uZA

Of the games I've played more recently I remember liking FAR: Lone Sails, which is a little bit like Michael Nyman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj98RoU4HSE

And also Gris, which is a much better game than I expected:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM3w76XbExY

And NaissanceE, which has its moments but the soundtrack is neatly done (it's made up of existing pieces):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKlTPLyGfZI

thanks for those, I've been looking up Tim Follin videos and found this really good (and long) one which showcases a bunch of it. it also explains how he did it and why he was so ahead of everyone else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC1dTzyb5Gs

the Pictionary one made me laugh out loud, it's so inappropriately intense.

I'm in awe of how good all this stuff is. very much on the Tim Smith/Tatsuya Yoshida/Gentle Giant level but with an added element of rave/techno music. the joke of course is that virtually every game he wound up doing sucked!

also he was quite young when he made most of this - he was barely 20 when he did all that wild NES music!

Manabu Namiki - Sally (select) from 'Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu - Black Label' (2010)

Manabu Namiki - Vertex (Stage 1), same

i can't believe this is just a throwaway joke song for a fake bar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKmt3oA7Vfg

love the MBV harmonies on the chorus

lol wtf, that is legit

currently I've been jamming the Silver Surfer title screen music a lot, like can you imagine hearing this come out of your NES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNpSPt30uSA

that's wild, definitely have never heard the NES sound like that. doesn't surprise me that he came from the C64 scene, very remniscient of SID-tracker tunes

This is my favourite 'Final Fantasy' related track, totally immense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al1MOxgQGf4

hell yeah, there's a whole genre of lush Japanese pop music that sounds like that and I'm always looking for it

Me too, the apex is this and the 'Ghost In The Shell SAC' theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kuE-yEs5VM

This is my favourite 'Final Fantasy' related track, totally immense.

WELP i just dug in a little bit and it turns out both the songs we posted were composed by Mitsuto Suzuki, that guy rules i guess

also looks like he did a shoegaze album with the vocalist from the kamekame track: https://www.discogs.com/release/15719043-Mojera-Overkill

That Plok track Frogbs posted is so wonderful.

Can't recall what thread this album was mentioned on but this guy is worth bringing up again
https://shnabubula.bandcamp.com/album/cosmic-diaspora

He has a youtube channel where he does cover versions of videogame tunes

this is gorgeous
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MygaMv5fVRY

reminds me of this fav of mine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKwI4myq2dk

Very good

https://x.com/coney/status/1709597886470562029?s=46&t=ybWek2m57bcE72i3ldMsfA

interestingly he also did the music for the snes version of this track... sounds like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u55wZLBQPS4

ok beasley was going a little wild with the voice samples on this one. maybe he just didn't give a shit about the genesis version of the soundtrack, or maybe the emulation on the genesis version is off (that happens sometimes). anyway yeah it's not great but i've heard worse honestly lol

the Genesis uses FM synthesis which can make for some really harsh sounds. I think the SNES sound chip might be entirely sample-based?

yes it is, and a lot of the instrument samples in SNES games sacrificed their high-end when downsampled, which is why it comes across as muffled but less harsh than Genesis games. Kinda cool that some composers were able to figure out how to make the most of the two different consoles' limitations

the genesis did have one PCM channel, which you can hear they used the voice samples for. idk why they sound so much worse than the SNES version though. i'm guessing a lower samplerate

Also the Game Boy Robocop title theme (as immortalized in "Dilbert 3") is surpirsingly well done for such a tossoff game

― frogbs, Thursday, January 23, 2014 11:21 AM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Such a beautiful piece of music. "Dilbert 3" was my first encounter with it lol. It works perfectly there, but I wish I had heard in in its original context as a kid; seems like hearing it now would unlock some powerful nostalgia.

Also I'm willing to bet that the Game Boy Robocop theme is the primary musical inspiration for Oneohtrix Point Never's "No Nightmares" though I haven't seen confirmation of this.

in the uk that music is famous for its inexplicable use in an ariston ad in the early '90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUVs7vXNZiw

and yeah the tech specs allowed for way better sample based playback on the snes than on the genesis/megadrive

basically my take is that the two systems had very different capabilities... you look at something like streets of rage 2, and that would've been a lot tougher to do on the snes. on the other hand, a lot of the RPG music, like final fantasy vi, that wouldn't have worked so well on the genesis/megadrive.

There can be no worse music thatn Tazmania on the Game Gear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQe4qcrwMKo

Also I'm willing to bet that the Game Boy Robocop theme is the primary musical inspiration for Oneohtrix Point Never's "No Nightmares" though I haven't seen confirmation of this.

good call - it has a lot of the same chords doesn't it? and if anyone was gonna draw inspiration from an obscure Game Boy game...

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…”