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Music Media

Video Game Music Mixes 213

Posted by michael from the wakka-wakka dept.
Matt Pollard writes: "A group of video game music fanatics and musicians have opened up a new website at VGMix.com. If you're like us, sometimes you can't get the snazzy tunes of today's video games out of your head. Also, if you're up for a bit of nostalgia, this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school."
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Video Game Music Mixes More

Video Game Music Mixes

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  • Get some Dance Dance Revolution music. There are tunes on there that I will not get out of my head for another century or so.

    • Re:VG Mixes (Score:2, Interesting)

      by irony nazi ( 197301 )
      I still hum Castlevania 1, 2, & 3 music every now and then.

      I never cared for the SMB music after I watched the SMB television show and they ruined the music for me.

      Megaman had some good music IIRC. When I was a kid, I would hook the VCR up to my games so that I could record the endings of them. I still have 3 VHS tapes somewhere with videogame endings on them. I was devestated when I had to tape over the cartoon Ducktales in order to get Megaman 2. I would also make cassettes of the video game music. I listened to rap and video game music.

      Those were the days.

      • Megaman had a lot of good music. That's why you'll find more Megaman remixes out there than anything save MAYBE Final Fantasy.

        Jeez...anyone remember looking for game music on napster and finding dozens of people with nothing but final fantasy music? God...how boring and repetetive.

        IMO, nothing tops Darius Gaiden and G-Darius. I recorded a clip from G-darius as my cell phone ring tone, which someone described as "scary." Wonder if anyone will ever redo some of that?

        • Umm... what on earth are you talking about? Mega Man X had some good songs (although awesome some boring ones). The original Mega Man series' music wasn't at all awe-inspiring in my opinion. However, I'll leave the Mega Man music criticism to those better acquainted with the series than I.

          But your comments about Final Fantasy's music are just flat out false. While which is better among Final Fantasy or Mega Man as far as music is a matter at least somewhat open to debate, the Final Fantasy series' music involves more variety than just about any other game series I have had the pleasure to experience. Here is a brief listing of some of the tracks which, should you wish to have that variety amply demonstrated to you, you should have no difficulty finding on Gnutella:

          • Celes, Final Fantasy VI OST
          • One-Winged Angel, Final Fantasy VII OST
          • Man with the Machine Gun, Final Fantasy VIII OST
          • Sleepless City Treno, Final Fantasy IX OST
          • Fighting, Final Fantasy VII OST

          I think music criticism in words is more or less a lost cause, so I really do encourage you to download these songs and try them out. But, to give you some idea, these range from piano to techno to classical (think Orff) to traditional video game music. Really, few artists in any genre deal with this much variety and pull it off this convincingly. And then of course there are the classic trademarks - the Chocobo song, the Prelude, and my single favorite song of all time, the Final Fantasy theme. Nobuo Uematsu's work is truly first-class, and it pains me to see him unthinkingly trashed like this. Give it a try - you might like it.

          • I stopped listening after 7. Basically because I realized how dumb the games were.

            Regarding originality, all the games had one or two really good pieces...out of what....40?

            Megaman X, IMO has better sound quality (of COURSE), but the music itself isn't as interesting. Check out some of the megaman 1 and 2 remixes. (3 is inexplicably less popular...IMO it's better than 1, almost as good as 2).

            If you like music that mostly sound like every other final fantasy game, and resembles 90+ percent of other RPGs (but admittedly is better than most other RPGs)

            If you want more than a handful of distinctive tracks per game, there are better places to find it, and Megaman (including X) is one of the best places to find it.

            But IMO, the last 2 Darius games beat all comers. Bwaahaha.

  • Overclocked Remix (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chocobo219 ( 105615 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @01:36AM (#3063817)
    Overclocked Remix deserves some credit. It's a moderated remix website that's been running for a few years.

    http://remix.overclocked.org

    • Re:Overclocked Remix (Score:2, Informative)

      by Prozax ( 414002 )
      Check the FAQ, or the links page. Proper homage is given to Overclocked Remix and it's where most of us met up to create vgmix.

    • Yes, very excellent site. My all-time favorite is the Lemmings theme remix called "Dabomb." There's very little these days that can consistently bring a smile to my face, but that remix somehow always does.

      If you have played Lemmings, I don't think you can NOT enjoy that track.

  • Big launch (Score:2, Troll)

    by Mattygfunk ( 517948 )
    Sorry but this isn't new. Videogame Music [vgmusic.com] has had almost 5 million hits (according to their counter) since 1996.

    I wish I could get Slashdot to launch all of my web sites.

    • For mostly shitty midis. whoo boy.

      Remix.overclocked.org has been doing this for a while. Almost all of it is listenable, some of it is phenomenally good. (Check out anything by DJpretzel, Jaxx, or McVaffe)
    • That's not really the same thing. The above are actual mixes inspired by the games, not a rehashed midi.

    • Re:Big launch (Score:2, Insightful)

      by shymog ( 531012 )
      There's a huge difference between what VGmusic.com does and what VGmmix.com does.

      VGmusic.com present MIDI data of song mixes, most of them trying to mimic the originals as much as possible.

      VGmix.com, on the other hand, presents MP3 remixes of songs. Decent ones, too.

      I dunno, I'd rather hear an MP3 of someone playing actual music than listen to some dinky MIDI data running through a cheap wavetable chip or soundfont any day.
      • I dunno, I'd rather hear an MP3 of someone playing actual music than listen to some dinky MIDI data running through a cheap wavetable chip or soundfont any day.

        So you're saying MIDI doesn't suck; your soundfont sucks. So don't replace the MIDI. Replace the soundfont, or use the MOD family of formats (.mod, .s3m, .xm, .it) that are similar to MIDI but include the soundfont in the file, but because the instrument samples are repeated over and over, it still remains at least an order of magnitude smaller than 128 kbps MP3.

      • Re:Big launch (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Junta ( 36770 )
        MIDI can sound really good and offer very nice compression, *if* you have a good soundfont.

        http://www.personalcopy.com/ has some great ones, my personal favorite being a 56 MB soundfont which together with either timidity or an appropriate soundcard sounds fantastic. Still not possible to accurately reproduce exactly what the creator heard when he put the piece together (unless you are sure you use the same soundfont), but it still sounds great.
        • A good alternative are GUS patches, along with timidity (which I believe also reads SoundFonts now).

          Still not possible to accurately reproduce exactly what the creator heard when he put the piece together (unless you are sure you use the same soundfont), but it still sounds great.

          Not only do you need the same soundfont, you need the same hardware (speakers, headphones) and maybe even software (not all sequencers are equal).

    • I loved vgmusic.com so much I burned myself a custom CD of Castlevania, Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, and (my favorite NES game) Shingen the Ruler! (Yeah, I know Shingen was crap. But it's the only NES game I still own because I love it so much.) The CD makes great music to work by (as a programmer, at least).

      My favorite system is still the good old 2600, but for great game music, make mine NES!

  • Other video game music sites (Score:4, Informative)

    by Novus ( 182265 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @01:38AM (#3063826)
    Other good video game music sites are:
  • Most of the songs on the site appear to be covers or remixes. I guess it's another example of how pervasive gaming technology has become - and it's not surprising that music whose intention was often to attract passers-by to machines, and to get the machine itself firmly hooked inside the head, should find itself appropriated by more general modern pop music.

    My favourite description, though, has to be for Little Nemo (arranged by Gux): "A string quartet rendition of the first level tune from Capcom's sleeper hit, Little Nemo. The original had much higher tempo (and it ran in 4/4). This version is slower with a waltz-ish feel to it." It's great to see that musicians can find inspiration in many places, and do interesting things with what they find. Let's just hope the lawyers don't get to them...
  • Will any of these remixes be availible for my PC speaker?

    Beep-boop-beep-be-beep

    Veramocor
    • I love old computer speaker music. Especially the Ultima series. Nowadays it takes no talent to appreciate the medium of the computer with fancy ass 24 bit surround sound.

    • Try Inertia Player (Score:3, Interesting)

      by yerricde ( 125198 )
      Will any of these remixes be availible for my PC speaker?

      If you need to play MOD files on a PC with only the internal speaker, try Inertia Player [iaehv.nl] for DOS. Turns out the PC speaker can play 1-bit waveforms using only the internal speaker; toggling that bit fast enough creates a sigma-delta DAC.

  • huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by linzeal ( 197905 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @01:40AM (#3063832) Journal
    "Fear not, our sexy developers are currently looking into solutions and alternate options, in case you are one of those people with large arrangements you're dying to submit. Expect another posting in the near future with more info/solutions. "

    First off, I don't believe in sexy developers and second if these music production and archive shops do have sexy developers I'm in the wrong admin role.

  • This is great stuff that matters. I know there are other sites like this, but the more the merrier, and this one seems like it has some active movers and shakers behind it. Perhaps they'll surpass the others if they already haven't.

  • Awesome Tetris cover song (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chicks_Hate_Me ( 528837 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @01:46AM (#3063848) Journal

    May seem a bit offtopic but Ozma has a great cover song of 'Korobeiniki.' Ozma's just a damn good band and it's my job of an over-obsessed fan to advertise 'em as much as I can...

    Ozma Mp3's [mp3s.com]

    Ozma's Website [ozmaonline.com]

    • To get remixes of Tetris A-type music, go on winmx and search for any of the following:
      • Tetris
      • Korobeiniki
      • Korobeyniki
      • Korobushka
      Good ones include
      • Bond - Korobushka (and the rest of the CD Bond - Born [cdnow.com], which isn't all Tetris related but still beautiful)
      • Dr Spin - Tetris
      • tetris boonch
      • The Wookies - Tetris (and) Limpopo - Korobeyniki (drunk russians singing the song)
      • Tetris OC (several overclocked.org remixes)

      Or just go to Russia2000 [mp3.com] and get 'Korobeyniki' (which incidentally mixes perfectly from "Barbie Girl" by Aqua).

    • Dance remixes of this song have been around since 1993 or so. Buddies of mine used to use it in their mixes along with other gimmicky dance tracks like British white-label Pac-Man covers, Speed Racer, that Sesame Street theme remix, and Bombscare by 2 bad Mice back in high school. ^_^

      < tofuhead >

  • Hehe ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by __aasfhc1949 ( 71946 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @01:48AM (#3063856)
    I like this post on the front page by an editor:

    8041 visitors in less than a week.

    Should we start getting a 10,000th visitor
    contest going, or do you think the initial rush
    will die down soon?
    I just had to comment on this, even though its
    not necessarily important (its impressive).


    Vgmix.com: say hello to the Slashdotting!
    • Cute, but inaccurate.

      Accompanying that particular post by the editor is a timestamp showing "Posted by mellogear 02/24/2002 | 07:27 AM".

      The 24th was Sunday, so he posted that yesterday morning, many hours this story was added to Slashdot's front page.

      :-D

      • Re:Hehe ... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Jake K ( 561623 )
        Yeah, but we were still around 9100 when the story broke on Slashdot. We've been mostly overwhelmed and slow, but our single server has - amazingly - weathered the entire thing so far, 5k hits (in 3 hours or so!) later. If you guys are looking for hosting for a similar-sized site, I can heartily recommend rackshack.net. Cheap, fast, and they have extremely responsive staff.

        And of course, because I said that, the entire data center will be struck by lightning and incinerated while I'm asleep.

        -j

  • What do you mean, YOUTH? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ebbomega ( 410207 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @01:49AM (#3063861) Journal
    "this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school"

    So I was in my Calculus class about four months ago, hanging around, being relatively bored, so I started singing the "dada Da dada da, da..." and charged into the entire Super Mario Brothers song. My friends sitting next to me start chiming in and joining up. Now this would have been fine and all, If I hadn't then broken into the end bit with the flagpole and the fireworks... and then continued on to level 1-2 (Dada da dada da, da... Dooo! Dooo! Dooo! Dananananana.... Dananananana...). My friend sitting next to me collapsed over in laughter... I think I broke her.

    The end.

  • nice TF3 remix (Score:3, Informative)

    by AndyChrist ( 161262 ) <andy_christ@yahoo. c o m> on Monday February 25, 2002 @01:53AM (#3063872) Homepage
    They [classicgaming.com]also have some remixes. Mostly it's ripped stuff, though.
    Also, if you're willing to wade through tons of "inspired by" shit, MP3.com's electronic section has lots of good remixes...many are also on other sites like remix.overclocked.org [overclocked.org], though.

  • Overclocked Remix (Score:3, Informative)

    by chronos2266 ( 514349 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @01:59AM (#3063886)
    There is another site that has been around for a while that deals only with video game remixes as well. Overlocked Remix [overclocked.org] has listings of numerous MP3 format video game music remixes. The genres range from classical to techno to ambient to rock.

    Since you need to create a fairly high quality remix in order to get listed on the site, almost all of the music on that site is worth the listen.
  • I use Junkbuster [junkbuster.org] to rewrite the information sent by Nutscrape to websites. Obviously, my bogus browser ID strings breaks their PHP scripts : at the bottom of all their pages, there is this :

    -----
    Couldn't insert new row into MySQL table
    Reason: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'You_dont_need_to_know_what_browser_I_use."","en" ""You_dont_need_to_know_what_si' at line 1

    Check if the name of the MySQL table in phphits.php is correct!
     -----

    So my question is : what business does a mere "group of video game music fanatics and musicians" has logging people's browser infos into a SQL database ?

    • Like most websites, they want to know what users are visiting their sites. They may be using something like bbclone (http://bbclone.tuxfamily.org/) which uses php scripts to log web page accesses... example of a bbclone report is at http://bbclone.tuxfamily.org/varstuff/bbclone-0.15 .1.html

      One of the interesting side effects is that it can be a way to find out who is linking to your pages since it also shows the referrer info...

      Knowing which browser you use can help in making sure that their pages work in all availible browsers that their potential audiance uses.

      {before you say anything... yes... the pages should be optimised for ALL browsers... but then who said we lived in a utopian world...})

      • "Like most websites, they want to know what users are visiting their sites"

        So do I : vi /var/log/apache/access.log

        That gives me an idea of how many people come to my site, and an idea of where people visit my site from (tld).

        /var/log/apache/access.log is cheap and easy (since it's there by default). But when you want more data, you need to make an extra effort to get it, and usually I'm pretty confident that people who make an effort to be nozy are (1) corporations (2) in the business of statistical data to sell. Neither match my conception of a group of people making electronica music from dinky video game tunes and distributing it on their website. Hence my question.

        • /var/log/apache/access.log is cheap and easy (since it's there by default).

          It's also unavailable unless you're paying a premium for dedicated hosting. What do you suggest for virtual-hosted users?

    • So my question is : what business does a mere "group of video game music fanatics and musicians" has logging people's browser infos into a SQL database ?

      The same business any web server that logs user agents types has.

  • Sierra Music (Score:2, Informative)

    by RinkSpringer ( 518787 )
    If you want to get Sierra Music, visit Quest Studios [queststudios.com]. They have music of about all Sierra games, some in MP3 and some in MIDI format.

  • More remixes.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Zarathustra.fi ( 513464 )

    For more great game choon remixes, although from the world of Commodore 64, check out these two commonly known great sites:




    http://Remix.Kwed.Org [kwed.org]

    http://www.c64audio.com [c64audio.com]




    Also, quite recently I happened to hear probably the best C64 game remix ever. It's from the game "The Great Gianna Sisters", by a band Machinae Supremacy [2y.net]. Here's [2y.net] the direct link to the MP3 file at their site, and here's [mp3s.com] another for a mirror at MP3.com. Enjoy! (And may the Gaia forgive me for starting a /. flood on the band's page.. =))

  • The Minibosses [minibosses.com] are a really cool band that's been doing video game covers for a couple years. They have an awesome CD. (Probably technically illegal, I dunno). Contra, Castlevania, Wizards and Warriors, and the GI Joe theme song, among others, all in sort of an instrumental punk-metal thing.

    Also, search for the Rabbit Joint and try and find their "Legend of Zelda" song. You will laugh your ass off. "Link...he come to town...come to save...the princess zelda!"
    It used to be on MP3.com, but it's gone now. Probably lawyers didn't like it.
    • Also, search for the Rabbit Joint and try and find their "Legend of Zelda" song. You will laugh your ass off. "Link...he come to town...come to save...the princess zelda!"
      It used to be on MP3.com, but it's gone now. Probably lawyers didn't like it.

      You can find it at Overclocked [overclocked.org].
  • ..If you have good games that have sound tests.

    My recent favorites are: Solstice, and Journey To Silius. If you like chip music, you should love these two. They both have fairly long and interesting tracks. Check out the arpeggio patterns in Solstice, it's brilliant, and IMO Solstice has the best music of any NES game.

    Of course I have my NES plugged into my stereo so I can hear all the great fuzz and other weirdness in hi-fi. Emulators tend to mess up the music.

    Does anybody know of any other NES games with great music?
    • Shatterhand, Contra, Castlevania (series), Megaman (well, everyone knows those three). I also kind of like the first TMNT game. Of course, there's Super Mario Bros 2 and 3. 3 is remarkable in that it actually sounded BETTER on the NES than on the SNES, particularly the end music.

  • VGMix.com: The long and the short (okay, the LONG) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jake K ( 561623 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @02:25AM (#3063933)
    Hi folks, I'm virt, the guy who came up with the idea and helped design and implement the site (and whose wallet will ultimately suffer for the slashdotting ;))

    I just wanted to say thanks in advance for the support and the interest, and to get a couple of things cleared up.

    First of all, we KNOW we're not the first. Believe me, we know. We're just the first site designed from the ground up for the purpose of multi-platform game arrangements. Most of us are people who are also (or have been) active contributors to remix.overclocked.org - OverClocked ReMix is the site that really started it all with game music arrangements, and it's incredible how a real living, breathing community can form around a single niche interest. However, OverClocked started out as a personal site that gradually featured other people's music until it became MOSTLY about other people's music. VGMix was made, back-end and all, specifically for harbouring a community. Few things are done by hand, because we want people to be able to put their stuff up without us babysitting, and let the moderation and reviewing dictate what's enjoyed without any one person trying to decide for the whole community. We're mostly musicians first, game players second, but the entire spectrum of musicians/gamers is represented here, and we all really love what we do. We DO, however, have a Panel of trusted arrangers who can pick what they consider to be exceptional songs and give them separate, "official" attention - but it in no way supersedes the original purpose of the site because it's a "side project." :)

    I consulted with an attorney (got 5 of them in the family, holidays are JUST LOVELY) a long time before I set this site up, and there's nothing illegal about writing music inspired or derived from another's work. If it were REMIXES -- the original audio with a new beat slapped on, for example -- it would not only be illegal but immoral, too, if we didn't ask first. But what we're doing here is interpreting the original song in a new and very changed form. IANAL, but I don't like being sued so I made sure I talked to people who are. OverClocked ReMix is in the same boat. I'm sure someone could disagree or be misinformed and bring a suit against either site, but before it came to that we'd probably skip the hassle in the first place and zap the song. Not likely, though. Us game composer types (I also freelance commercially) are usually laid-back and flattered by arrangements, as long as there's no money being made from them.

    Now, VGMUSIC.COM is another story entirely. They have nothing to do with us, but they are a fantastic resource for people who ARE with us. Vgmusic is a place where people submit General MIDI arrangements of game music, usually done by ear by a talented (or not) sequencer. It's like sheet-music transcriptions, just a database of music MIDI files. How is this a fantastic resource? Not everyone who arranges has the kind of ear that allows them to capture the melodies and harmonies by ear, so having a file that they can examine visually is a good thing for them.

    So, to sum up, we are well aware that we're not the first, we're just the first set up this way; we're not doing anything illegal, though we'll have to work hard to ensure that our system is not abused; and there are other sites in the game music community that can help us through cooperation. We're not so arrogant as to think we're movers and shakers, we're just guys who love game music and we're trying to provide place to share it that is unlike the others that already exist.

    It's a really tiny niche community but it's ...really fun.

    -j
    • moderators, pull your head out and mod this up...

      i know its more fun to mod as offtopic or redundant, but, cmon.

    • I consulted with an attorney (got 5 of them in the family, holidays are JUST LOVELY)

      So, did your Christmas presents have license agreements inside the wrapping? Was there litigation filed over dinner?

      LV
  • Just wanted to mention that Zophar's Domain [zophar.net] has a *HUGE* collection of original soundtracks and music files from the games...in the original format (SPC, NSF, GYM, etc). Probably the largest and most complete console music collection around.

    If you don't know what it is...use the SPC as the example. SPC is the file format for an SNES sound file...extracted directly from the game. The player emulates the hardware, so it sounds EXACTLY like it does on the SNES.

    A few links:
    Links to the players are provided on the individual pages, but the best multi-console music player is Meridian Advance [overclocked.org].

    When you get sick of remixes, check out the originals and remember your childhood :)

  • Best. Soundtrack. Ever. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @02:37AM (#3063952) Homepage
    Grand Theft Auto London. Ska, mod pop, and DJ's from the swingin' 60's. Any game soundtrack that features the Upsetters wins, hands down. Sadly, not available at VGMix.com.
    • I disagree. I think the best Video Game Soundtrack ever was Outlaws. LucasArts had some absolutely awesome music for that game. Then again, like all music, I guess its a matter of taste. It was the Mexican Mariachi music on this game that got me hooked on Salsa and traditional Mexican music. I enjoyed this music because it really did fit with the game. Not available for VGMix.com either, but well worth the low cost of the game and just buying it yourself.

  • My vote for best audio in a C64 game is Frantic Freddy. I just hooked up my old C64 today, and after a little coaxing, I got frantic freddy to load up. That music still sounds just as good today as it ever did.

    It's really what got me hooked on classic rock. A 5th of Beethoven, Kodachrome, it's all great stuff. I hope that c64audio.com site has the MIDIs :).

    I'd have to say a close second is some of the audio in Jeff Minter's games. The bach intro to Sheep in Space is excellent.
  • The theme from Battlesquadron on the amiga is my all time fav. It's even more impressive when you know the composer just typed in hexnumbers in a texteditor :) I hope this site gets that tune up soon :)

  • I was having a discussion the other day about this, how people of a certain age have emotional attachments to video game music, and sometimes it's hard to understand.

    One of my favorite labels is an online MP3-only label, Monotonik [mono211.com], they have some cool original chip tunes [mono211.com] and some Mario remixes (here's one [mono211.com]). Actually look around and there's lots of cool stuff for fans of IDM, electronic music, etc.

    Also of interest, there's a music machine [sidstation.com] that uses the sound chip from the C64 (that's Commodore 64, kids) with MIDI support.

    Also check out the Minibosses [minibosses.com].

    Lots of this stuff around! I never played video games much but that stuff all managed to get stuck in my head anyway..

  • If you want to get more video game music, there is streaming mp3 video game music at Scene Music [scenemusic.net]. They have reflectors around the world, so you should be able to listen to a stream near you. If your lucky enough to have a high speed dsl, try the 128K stream.

    BTW, Have you heard Giana Sisters [uni-frankfurt.de] lately?
    Old skewl test - mod.gianasisters or gianas.sid
    -
    Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room. - Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

  • we did this at work (Score:3, Interesting)

    by oo7tushar ( 311912 ) <slash.@tushar.cx> on Monday February 25, 2002 @03:20AM (#3064018) Homepage
    At companies they play radio music while they put you on hold. No different at our place. In fact the way most companies do this is to hook a radio directly into the phone line (they have a connector and all). Sometimes they hide it away in some corner where very few people visit. That is exactly where they hid it at our place (in the server room).
    So my buddy brought in his laptop and we hooked it right up to the phone line. For almost that entire day we were pumping out the Super Mario Brothers theme, some nice game remixes (like Speed Racer) and various other goodies. All good stuff that customers would like to listen to.
    We got away with it and we plan on doing it again =)

  • Also, if you're up for a bit of nostalgia, this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school.


    Well, I wouldn't quite say that listening to video game music has anything to do with my youth. Especially not with games like Dance Dance Revolution, Parappa the Rappa, and even Rez where the music is a very integral part of the game itself. I still go around humming the tunes to various video games every day. In fact, lately I've spent so much time in front of our (rather sizeable) collection of game consoles that I've probably heard more video game lately than I have "real" music. A good tune is a good tune, whether it was created for a video game or not.


    Although, I am not nearly as hardcore as one of my friends who based part of his decision to purchase a Turbo Duo on the fact that the music on all those games was so damn good. He was right about the quality of the music, though. I was simply amazed at the music compositions from games like Lords of Thunder and Cotton. In fact, in a side by side comparison of Cotton for the Turbo Duo and Cotton for the PSX, the music on the Turbo Duo version was hands down the winner. Video game music kicks ass, dammit!

  • speaking of video game music... i think megaman had just about the most rokking synth music of any recent video game... recently, i was inspired to craft a song for a megaman game that (one day will / should have / never did) exist using an analog synth emulator and the Cubase sequencer...

    if you care to listen, download it here: Megamanic - 1.6 MB mp3 download [sneezingfish.org]
  • Maybe I'm missing something here, but it looks to me like these are remixes that haven't been authorized by the copyright holders. I can't imagine that a media behemoth that does both music and video games, like Sony, is going to let this go on. Maybe they like the fact that fans are preparing the market, but once it starts making money, I bet they will send out their lawyers and want the market for themselves.
    • Well, it DOES make money in Japan, and as a result, fan-made arrangements ARE illegal in most cases, if I'm not mistaken. This hasn't happened yet in the states, and I'm seriously VERY doubtful that the American popular music market is going to be very receptive toward video game music ...arrangements, seeing as game music soundtracks themselves don't even sell too well to begin with, over here.

      You have a very valid point in theory, but in practice it's just not panning out like that. American people as a whole don't seem to appreciate game music in the same way that Japanese people do, and while I'd like to kid myself into thinking that a few talented American composers can change that, it's just not happening yet. Game music is a cultural thing in Japan. Here, it's just seen as background noise by most people. There are the few for whom that's NOT true, and for them, there are many good import houses and then sites like this that can help satisfy their cravings.

      OverClocked ReMix has been around for two years and - unless I'm mistaken - has remained unmolested by legal professionals because it really ISN'T a money-generating market here in the US and so no copyright sparring has taken place.

      So.... Yes, it is going to last. Maybe not into the next decade, but for at least long enough to be remembered, absolutely.

      -j
  • Hmmm... I remember when music in games was a huge thing. For me, the sole reason for wanting to buy a spectrum 128k over my perfectly adequate rubber keyed chum was the presence of the mighty sound chip (which sounds somewhat lacklustre in retrospect). Ahhhh, I still remember humming the tune to Spectrum Tetris for months on end! Arcades were yet another step up... C&VG once gave away a cassette (remember them, kids?) with the musics from Outrun and 720 arcade machines. Man, I must've to that tape till it broke! ("Skate or Dieeee!")

    Its not the same anymore... While I can happily hum the tune to Saboteur or Where Time Stood Still (from 15 years ago), I couldnt for the life of me tell you how the score of Medal Of Honour went (from 15 days ago!).

    Music is now just one of those things in videogames. Shame really.
  • http://remix.overclocked.org/
    They have some non-traditional
    remixes, too. Check out
    "Zelda, Music of My Groin".
    "Samba de Agua" is pretty awesome
    too.
  • "....this is certainly the place to go to relive the days of youth when you hummed the Super Mario Bros. theme under your breath during class grade school."

    actually, i relive it fairly frequently... the new version of the same situation is hearing a blaring cellphone ringtone rendition of the theme song in the middle of a lecture at university.

    nokia butchers a classic... :/
  • I'm thinking of uploading a cool Windows Solitaire remix. Kind of a trance/house type thing.
  • I wonder if any of the BM Remixes will ever get posted... ( IE a trillion Parnaoia Dirty Mix remixes, a few DJ uNF mixes etc)
  • Glad to know I'm not the only one who has the music from Level 1-1 in his head as he walks down the street... or the music from Level 1-2 as he walks down a dark ally.
  • These are mixes, not copies of the original artwork (i.e. variations or inspirations from the original piece.) Does that still make it illegal?

    remixes, in the music industry, are not done without authorization. if they -are- done without authorization, they are called "bootlegs". you can be sued for distributing bootleg remixes (that is, remixes without the permission of the original artist). even if you change genres, and add piles of reverb and flange to the main melody, if people still have a good chance of recognizing it and you don't have permission to remix it, you are breaking copyright laws. so yes, it is illegal. music inspired by other music is not illegal, though, i must add.

    where it gets blurry is with really tweaked out remixes that are completely different and almost impossible to identify. at that point, if it came down to a court case, the judge would have to make a...well... judgement, and you don't know who it's going to favour. it's a dangerous game. but the ones on that site are blatantly in violation. and a lot of them are really bad too :P

    • Re:it's illegal (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jake K ( 561623 )
      "music inspired by other music is not illegal, though, i must add."

      Perhaps I have not made myself clear.

      THESE. ARE. NOT. REMIXES.

      In fact, the only reason we called it "VGMix" is because "VGArrange" sounds awkward. Arrangements are something else ENTIRELY. They are a completely different type of interpretation. The only case in which copyright could pose a problem is if audio samples from the original song are used. Remember the whole MP3.com fiasco about using sampled material in songs? That was that.

      These songs that we have on our site do NOT use the original audio (there are exceptions, of course, but only in tiny snippets, samples. These are completely original, 100% from-scratch pieces of music that are only inspired or loosely melodically / chordally / rhythmically based on the original song. This is a hobby that must often be explained in-depth, but what it really is, down at the core, is composition practice. This is one of the reasons that midi-sequence repositories like vgmix.com come in handy - we're doing it all by ear!

      I'm sure I will have to repeat this over and over again over the course of this article's visible lifespan, but vgmix.com does NOT deal in remixes. It's about derivative/inspired works that are created completely by us. We just don't really have a great term for it, so some people call them "remixes" because it's catchy, even though it's completely inaccurate. I just go with "arrangements."

      -j

  • The now defunct Hi-Fi Gaming Page, once located at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~vetayase/ [usc.edu], used to feature huge MP2 downloads and MIDIs back in 1997 or so. This is the site that introduced me to the wonders of MPEG audio. They had some killer remixes of rare games, along with some soundfont downloads, etc. I once got a sweet Super Mario Bros. waltz medley from that site, and I haven't heard it since my HD at the time crashed so many years ago.

    Jim Vetayase and the other guys who ran that site moved on to create another site, but I just don't know if that one is still around, and if so, which of the major sites it is. The old Hi-Fi page had a great library of cool stuff, and I'm still looking for that content 5 years later, with no luck. If anybody knows what happened to that site, and where those old downloads can be found nowadays, I'd love a heads-up reply.

    < tofuhead >

  • Those lucky enough to have heard Knut's Video Game Music Revue on KSPC (www.kspc.org)

    As the tag line goes, "The music of video games, from the 8-bit bleeps of yesteryear's classics to the high-tech music scores of today's popular games."

    Knut plays a wide range of video game music and doesn't limit himself to just transfers from games. He does play re-mixes, though usually for a request.

    Tune in Friday's at 10pm on the web or on your Claremont radio dial: 88.7

  • The Minibosses also had a really cool contra mix that I could get down to. They did it with live instruments in a pop/punk kinda way. Some downloads at their site to check out:

    www.minibosses.com [minibosses.com]
  • Sorry, but even after 22 years I still cannot get that damned Pac-man opening level music out of my head. I also can recreate every sound from defender,stargate, and defender II (The last 2 are different games I've seen all 3 side by side)For some reason they dont get impressed at management meetings with that ability or like to see it on a resume.

    Super Mario Brothers? HA! By the time that came out they lost the ability to make infectious music.
  • I've run into two bands that do instrumental renditions of NES bands. The Minibosses are very rock band and the now defunct Generic are almost folksy.

    Generic:
    http://www.2xtreme.net/zero-g/generic/sound.htm [2xtreme.net]

    The Minibosses:
    http://www.minibosses.com/ [minibosses.com]

    Guitar Tabs courtesy of Generic:
    http://www.2xtreme.net/zero-g/generictabs/ [2xtreme.net]

    BTW, If you want to hear the rest of the Generic songs ... they're not up because they're looking for webspace. Hint hint, nudge nudge.

  • There is a player for the original music from Sinclair Spectrum and Amstrad CPC games, called ``aylet'', here [beeb.net]. There is an XMMS plugin being developed for this too, here [ntlworld.com].

    Mmmmmm, Bubble Bobble.... doo doo doo doo dooooo, doo doo doo doooo...

    ;)

  • I can't believe noone has pulled out this quote... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bquinn ( 305600 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @08:40AM (#3064509)
    "Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

    -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989 (supposedly, see here [erowid.org] for details)

  • C64 music, too... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TurboThy ( 550002 )
    If you're really into nostalgia, head over to the Press Play On Tape [pressplayontape.com] home page to sample some of the nifty old C64 tunes remade by 6 danish geeks...

  • NEW 8-bit sounds... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @09:43AM (#3064786) Homepage Journal

    There's also a community of people who make NEW songs in the style of the 8-bit NES. I don't mean dancetechno unh unh unh unh remix stuff, I mean square waves and sawtooth waves and noise-shaped drums. (Some call this "chiptunes".) For instance, you could check out my project, "Tom 7 Entertainment System":

    http://mp3.com/tom7/ [mp3.com]

    There's also a small radio station there called "8 bits 4-ever" that has tunes from other MP3 artists who do similar stuff. =)

  • so I might as well throw in a few links:

    Everyone [dyndns.org] - a vg music tribute band.
    Evil Adam [mp3.com] - Check out "Zerg Must Die" & "Evil de Chocobo"
  • I converted the end game music for Karateka into music notation and made a midi file.

    Email me if you want it.
  • Duke Nukem 3D has the best theme music, hands down.

  • I've heard of a band called 'stratosphere' or something in SF, CA, that does video game covers. Can anyone tell me about them? I don't think I have the name quite right.

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