This is the Video Game Music Thread

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…”