Let's share some game music

𝔞𝔷𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔤𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔫 𝔨𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔞𝔫

Oh, the texture. This is so uncomfortable. It’s great.

𝔞𝔷𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔤𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔫 𝔨𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔞𝔫

Made it to the synth theremin. This was a good choice.

(Maybe that’s a warbly organ. Either way, this thing is all texture. Often very contrasting.)

𝔞𝔷𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔤𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔫 𝔨𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔞𝔫

𝔞𝔷𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔤𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔫 𝔨𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔞𝔫 Oh, this oompah-NYERP piece is something new.

Pasokon Deacon

Time for me to do my duty.

Let’s start with some later Toshiharu Yamanishi work–mainly, his contribution to SEGAGAGA.

And now, the best cut from Tatsuhiko Asano’s work on Doshin the Giant.

(Yes, these are just the most notable tracks I once uploaded.)

Let’s cap this with some of my latest J-PC tune picks.

vmu_beep

June Chikuma’s work on the Bomberman series is consistently mind blowing, and she has a pretty active Soundcloud as well:

mcc

Here are some of my favorite game soundtracks

World of Goo: I feel like, maybe, people have forgotten about this game a little? But it did so many good things mechanically and storytelling-wise and the audio threaded into the game so perfectly (everything felt so absurdly heroic!). Track I like: “Are you coming home”

Hero Core: This was a Daniel Remar game (remember Iji?) with a Brother Android soundtrack and the soundtrack basically my favorite chiptunes album ever. Track I like: “Natural Caves”

Sonic Spinball: The Genesis actually had an unbelievably powerful FM synthesis chip in it, it was made by Yamaha and is a sister chip to the one in the infamous DX-10? Sonic Spinball I think is overlooked in exactly how hard it pushed the chip, that and Toe Jam and Earl 2.

“Ufouria” by Sunsoft has a decent soundtrack by the same composer as Blaster Master but what really makes it important is that there was a bug in iNES 0.9 for Mac OS 9 that resulted in the noise chanel playing much too loud and turned the entire thing into a terrifying industrial sludge-a-thon that I have never been able to forget

𝔞𝔷𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔤𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔫 𝔨𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔞𝔫

mcc This is how it should sound. The universe knew better than the original coders.

BustedAstromech

mcc Hero Core: This was a Daniel Remar game (remember Iji?) with a Brother Android soundtrack and the soundtrack basically my favorite chiptunes album ever. Track I like: “Natural Caves”

I love this one too, it’s one of my favorites to pull temp tracks from, especially if I need the mood of cold sunrise. Has Brother Android done more game work since then? There’s an album but I’d hope people would commission them and they’d be able to steadily provide warbly square waves for pixel games

brooks

there’s no way trials of mana has better arrangement than sd3

BustedAstromech

exodus

exodus While we’re on the mega drive subject, I was just listening to the Demolition Man soundtrack. It’s done with the much-maligned GEMS driver, but you can tell composer Nathan Grigg knew what he was doing.

well that’s interesting, these days I work with Nate; he’s been at Monolith for, something like ever

exodus

oh, I’d like to talk to nate on a podcast some day BustedAstromech, let’s get in contact!

lotta hot tunes in here

@Pasokon Deacon, really feeling this doushin the giant track - gonna have to listen to the whole dang thing now.

and @vmu_beep totally agree on June Chikuma - she was really ahead of her time, and worked on these kind of very “forward” mixed songs that have this real lush tone in the mid range. I keep asking vince to write something explaining to me how it works, ha ha. Did you get her album that came out recently? It’s neat and weird, and shows her earlier inspirations. https://bleep.com/release/126464-june-chikuma-les-archives

Facewizard

In this time of plague, I’ve been listening to this remix of the (very nice) Machinarium soundtrack on repeat! Floex does incredibly good shit for all the Amanita games.

BustedAstromech

exodus yeah, let’s kick the tires on this site’s private message function and see if we can set it up

exodus

btw @Pasokon Deacon, really feeling this doushin the giant track - gonna have to listen to the whole dang thing now.

exodus

OH!!! I have to add to all the synth madness with this absolutely bonkers track from Star Cruiser:

the whole soundtrack is amazing, but this one is like - it communicates directly with my soul or something. also everyone should learn about star cruiser creator and big time inspiration to all humans Kotori Yoshimura: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/kotori-yoshimura-and-star-cruiser-how-twitter-revived-a-piece-of-japanese-gaming-history

Pasokon Deacon

exodus I haven’t had a lot of contact with Yoshimura (unlike a certain someone), but I’ve known of her exploits and work at Arsys/Tecno Soft for almost several years now. I really need to get started on my X68000 playthrough of Star Cruiser (now in English) and get back to slamming my head against WerDragon and/or WiBARM or Reviver.

Regardless, Toshiya Yamanaka studied under jazz guitar greats like Kazumi Watanabe, and it shows in his intricate compositions/arrangements. Excellent bass lines, chunky FM-synth orchestration, and a flair for unusual chord progressions–he’s got it all. His early work before Star Cruiser isn’t super remarkable, but 1988/1989 was a great period for Yamanaka.

u_u

i like this song, idk why. please enjoy it

exodus

u_u I totally get it - this has a pretty modern hangouts vibe actually, doesn’t feel like it’s from 1993 - it feels like somebody referencing a dreampop song from 2006 in 2020 using the famicom soundchip.

𝔞𝔷𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔤𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔫 𝔨𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔞𝔫

u_u Want to say it’s only in the last couple years I even realized there was a sequel to Solomon’s Key. (It’s recent enough that I first played it on a smartphone NES emulator, and I got my first smartphone about five years ago.) And, it’s kind of neat! It feels weirdly recent, mobile-ish in its design.

Dunkr

u_u

@u_u#12

u_u A Song of Fire and Ice

jdm0079

u_u I really like the sound of the entire Fire ’n Ice soundtrack, iirc. Though this is def one of the best tracks.

Fire ’n Ice has the rare distinction of being something I lusted after in Nintendo Power when I was a child, then played in my late 20s finally and fell in love with.

BustedAstromech

@exodus, either email me at brettacutler(at)gmail or ping me on twitter through ‘@BrettACutler’, we lack DM functions here

formulasofsexuation

my husband and i collaborated on a 112-track youtube playlist of our favorite videogame music, which can be found here. no order, hit shuffle

𝔞𝔷𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔤𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔫 𝔨𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔞𝔫

aivi & surasshu have been posting semi-regular teasers of their music for an upcoming game called ikenfell, usually with some explanation as to the ways they tried to communicate ideas through the composition.

“You meet a boy who’s more interested in books than conversation. His favorite book? You probably haven’t heard of it. You’re not sure how to groove along to his theme song.”

On Twitter, aivi went into more detail about how the use of meter was meant to frustrate getting a handle on the character until the moment it locks into 4/4, which was to correspond with a sense of Flow.

u_u

exodus I also like that it has a lot of different “instruments” but they are all pretty distinct. In general something I really like about the soundtrack to that game is that it really layers the sounds, but still leaves room for little microseconds of silence. A lot of 8-bit music is impressively written, but ends up being exhausting because so many composers are just imitating metal. It’s overwhelming!