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An Ode To Gaming Music
1up.com's never ending flow of excellent features has turned up a piece celebrating gaming music at its finest. The article delves into the past of gaming music and talks about the realities of today's soundscape. From the article: "Along with Space Channel 5's tracks, Katamari Damacy is one of the best examples of what musicians are doing with compressed audio today. Each song is lengthy enough so as not to repeat itself during the 5 to 6 minute stages in the game, and composer Yu Miyake let his imagination run riot, running the gamut of musical styles from introspective electronic music to big-band swing to power ballads to lounge singing. Just like its namesake, the disparate styles all clump together to form something awesome that's worth experiencing even outside the context of the game. "
I could listen to the OST to Final Fantasy 6 for hours. Same for Chrono Trigger. Those games had rich soundtracks. It's good to see some modern games still have "the touch" when ti comes to making great gaming music.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
... gamemusic ... especially old games. sid tunes et al. always nice, if nectarine is playing giana sisters. :)
All four have the best soundtracks in any game I've played. And the iMuse system is excellent.
I'll probably come across sounding provincial, as I know that just because I've never heard an expression before doesn't mean its not real, but is that a valid phrase? Shouldn't it be run wild?
What gets to me sometimes is a game with really solid music, which just plays the same songs from the soundtrack over and over again until you learn to hate them, or turn the music off.
That being said, things are definitely improving, especially towards rules about how many times a given song should play.
I'm kinda suprised that article had such a large bit on the side for Koichi Sugiyama. As a North American Dragon Quest fan, I really do find his work is extremely under-apriciated. Most of it is absolutely beautiful stuff. In fact, I was playing Dragon Warrior 7 one day and my... less then half-senile grandmother was extremely impressed by the music of the game.
Perhaps I'm being a bit hard on whoever wrote this article, but I don't think someone who doesn't truly know the history of video game music should be writing an article on video game music.
The first multi-channel sound chip was not that of the NES, it was of the C-64. In fact, the 64 was the first machine to really call attention to video game music, and it was the first to form a following of video game composer celebrities, such as Rob Hubbard and Ben Daglish.
90% of you don't care, but I find it just silly to write an article on game music without mentioning the SID chip
http://www.kohina.com/ - old school gaming music.
"Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
IMO the best music I have ever heard in a game came from Jeremey Soule he did the music for Neverwinter Nights.
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
I can't get enough of the soundtrack from the game The Neverhood. Anyone else with me? I first played that game about 5 years ago after getting it from the library and the songs stuck with me day after day, but after looking in to purchasing the game off of eBay (it was out of print even back then), I realized I wasn't willing to spend so much money for it, let alone buying the soundtrack (which was going for about $60). A couple years down the road, the artist made a compilation CD with The Neverhood, Skullmonkey's, and BoomBot's soundtracks all on two CDs. For $20! Aaaah... glorious!
I have to say my 'soundtrack favourite' vote still goes with Kingdom Hearts right now, but the old repeating tracks from the Sonic games on the Sega have a special place in my heart. Metropolis Zone, anyone? Mystic Cave? Also great to DDR to, if you've got the equipment and the files.
Music from the 80s Bard's Tale trilogy were classics. And you could even choose. This was from a time when music was rare on PC games. (Before Adlib/soundblaster came out.)
On a more recent note, I enjoyed the industrial cuts from C&C, KKND2 and Quake. The terran themes from Starcraft are also cool. I sure wish AAA gaming companies regularly came out with soundtracks that accompanied their titles, like OSTs for movies, so I wouldn't have to go thru the extra step of painstakingly trying to extract them.
(Once in a while, I drive people crazy here at home by playing the background music of the Sims over and over. Makes the real thing seem like a game.)
Jeremy Soule also composed the music for Secret of Evermore for the SNES. Very excellent stuff, despite what you think of the game (I happened to love it!).
Here's a site that lists a bunch of torrents for the complete soundtracks to various console and PC games: http://www.emuparadise.org/soundtracks/
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
You can get plugins for media players like WinAmp from the same site.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
They are a very popular band at the clubs here in Phoenix:
http://minibosses.com/
They even have some MP3s you can download.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Yes, vg music is very important to create the game atmosphere, but sometimes silence and some sound fx are enough...
I'm thinking on Half-Life I, sure it had an occasional music between stages, but for example the first monster scene (the tentacles), with the metalic sound of the beatings and the chewbacca-like roars were enough to keep the tension up.
Another example is duke3d. When I installed it I didn't set up the midi output, so I didn't know it had music during the game. It was not necessary at all.
Anyway, these two games are examples with good quality sound effects (echoes at closed rooms when shooting, ambient effects...). Maybe sound effects can replace music in FPS games, while in RPG games music can be more important.
I also enjoy video game music, but usually in a "different" form. A lot of people (myself included) are quite smitten with the SPC chip inside the Super Nintendo/SFC. I dont know why, but the music created with it, however limited, is something that people find attractive. I would take an SPC over a symphonic rendition of a song. Perhaps it is nostalgia...
Some of my favorite soundtracks (in no order):
Sonic 1, 2, 3, S&K
Megaman X(1)
Super Mario 64
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy 3U/6J
Super Mario RPG
Castlevania: SotN
Kirby Super Stars
have you or an acquaintance found success making music for video games?
The Tetrisphere soundtrack by Neil Voss is awesome stuff. IIRC he did the audio engine for it (the standard N64 libs weren't up to the task), as well as the composition. I'd buy an album of it in a heartbeat.
Had great CD music for gameplay. Stuff that I could listen too offline. Which btw came out in 1989 beating their examples.
What I see interesting in the music front is the different approaches taken in the mmorpg front. WOW does not play the music in combat while other games seek to "enhance" combat by adding music. Situational music is less of an enhancement to me as it tends to get repititous too quicky. Yet assigning music to areas works because it gives the player yet another method of identifying where they are (UO did this and subsequent games as well)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Songs on the radio become hits simply because we hear them over and over. We might not even like them at first.
What effect does hearing these same songs over and over while we play make us actually like the music. I mean, if you DIDN'T play the game, but got the soundtrack, would you find it as enjoyable?
I think my alltime favorite game music is the Dungeon music from Ultima VI. I figured out how to play the melody on the piano and pissed off my Mom by playing it all the time. Anybody know where a torrent of such a thing would exist? I feel in the mood for some nostalgia.
-Pinkoir
TA's music was great. It would change as the action changed, and really big battles seems to result in really cool orchestral numbers blasting out of the speakers.
:-)
Homeworld's music really seemed to add to the atmosphere. Not just the stuff that Yes wrote for the game, but the spooky space sounds and stuff made things seem really empty and echoey and kinda peaceful...until those damned enemy destroyers popped up out of nowhere and started splashing my harvesters with those big deathray things! Die, die, you bastards! Clickclickclickclick!
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I usually turn the music off in games because it annoys me, but there is one game I always leave it on for - Arcanum.
The music is absolutely perfect - I often find myself da-da-da-da-da-da-ing it when I'm not playing the game.
Myths I and II, Interstate '76, The Operative: No One Lives Forever and finally, an old-school choice: Super Mario World.
Anyone played Star Control 2? Came out in 1992 and had some great music made by some well known MOD music composers. I still listen to it sometimes... brings me back. It really added a distinctive atmosphere and feel to the game that it wouldn't have had otherwise.