(Look, I really wanted the alliteration.)
Yesterday in Discord I was discussing how the final boss theme from *Sonic Rush* samples a Malcom X speech.
https://youtu.be/MlCK5RWO54E
Somebody else then brought up that the *Xenogears* boss theme samples audio from [Christian Brando's manslaughter trial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Brando#Manslaughter).
https://youtu.be/aDb5WGZQMtY
So, what the hell? Anybody else have any examples of unusual samples in video game soundtracks?
Unable to find whether I've shared this before, but a few years ago I found a page explaining the origin of the samples in a different Sonic track, “Chao Lobby” from Adventure 2. It includes, among other things, dialogue from The A-Team
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaIl-EyhRGg
“Understand the Concept of Love” (of Jet Set Radio fame) is from a Kwame Ture speech (if the timestamp doesn‘t work, it’s around minute 26)
https://youtu.be/cLB6dq2uioc?t=1564
[“Strange soruces for song samples”,“Strange sources for song samples”]
@Mnemogenic wow this rules
I dunno if this counts as strange, but it's striking how much nights “sampled” from home alone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCGAa79_CD0
I'd bet all my money that this happened by sampling Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise", which also samples that speech:
@TracyDMcGrath Civil Rights Leader Flavor Flav!!!
This randomly appeared on my YouTube feed and made me think about this thread:
It mentions the two @Video_Game_King brought up and many more interesting ones too.
This is hardly news to anyone I'm sure and not especially strange as far as sources go! But! Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/pZ6C69ZvW-w?si=P6w_XmYcxNm_cqIL
The Super Famicom mecha action-RPG Front Mission: Gun Hazard samples a voicemail from a ranting neo-nazi that was tacked onto the front of UK worldbeat group Fun-Da-Mental's track “Dog Tribe”(NSFW) during a post-credits scene—it‘s obscured by loud chopper blade sounds and probably wouldn’t have ever been identified if the raw sample wasn‘t still in the ROM, and my presumption has always been that the responsible party just clipped some aggressive-sounding EN chatter from a CD they had without knowing or thinking about what they were clipping, but I don’t think we'll ever know for sure.
On a North American Chrono Trigger soundtrack I bought back in the day (for Final Fantasy Chronicles), track 25 was an arrangement of the title song. I'm 99% sure the first song here is it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6J5skWL9CM
On 2:56, the following sampling occurs: "It's the beginning of a new and excitingly different story." If you look up the quote online, it appears to be sampled by several other artists from a common source. I can trace it back to this from (I think) [the early 1990s](https://www.whosampled.com/Simon-Harris/FX-%26-Scratches-(Vol.-5)/):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCRZUsFYc2g&t=47s
It sounds like something from the 1950s or 1960s, but I can't trace it any further.
Some bored Googling and listening to ZUKI-iN 1995 WINTER has led me to this much more exhaustive Hardcore Gaming 101 forum thread on the same subject as this one. It‘s not as exhaustive as I’d prefer (in particular, it doesn‘t include whatever Vatlva and Aqua Teen Hunger Force sourced their rap from), but beggars can’t be choosers.
Not sure if it quite fits here, but minor stuff I find amusing.
Baten Kaitos 2/Origins GC (JP) has a goofy song that uses a bunch of samples (probably from random sampler CDs):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ftFQ_ToXvA
Around [1:37](https://youtu.be/6ftFQ_ToXvA?t=98) there is a "praise the looord" sample that Nintendo didn't find so funny, so the US version of the song is slightly different with muffled vocals *and* censores that sample to a more family-friendly "hey hey hey heeey":
https://youtu.be/nZx3qc3eE-A?t=97
Now, the remaster (both JP and US) has yet another version of the song without muffled vocals *but* has the censored sample like the US version. Meanwhile the OST (currently on streaming services) include the original, blasphemous JP version. Whew.
