Do you listen to VGM?

[jeremysart]

I was curious how many folk from here listen to Video Game or Video Game Inspired (chip-tunes, remixes, what-have-you) music.

I dont really use CD's too often these days now that I have an Mp3 player, a decent stereo system and a double ended audio jack, however, of the 800 songs on my media device, about 100 of them are from video games, or remixes of video game music.

 

What video games do you enjoy the music from?

 

I have a lot of remixes from Kirby games, F-Zero, Yoshi's Island, the SMB series, and Doom. There are tons of great revamps of classic game tunes out there on Youtube, and if I like one enough, I usually grab it with vid2mp3 and put it on my playlist.

 

My favorites:

F-Zero: Big Blue and Mute City

Kirbys Adventure: Grape Garden, Yogurt Yard and Green Greens

SMB3: ALL OF IT!! Especially the end theme

SM64: Dire Dire Docks

Heretic: The Docks

Yoshi's Island: Athletic Theme, Cave Theme, End Theme.

[Arkhan]

I love video game music

 

I blast MSX/NES/PCE/Genesis tunes all the time!

 

 

I have a ton of Konami and Capcom stuff I drive to. So epic.

[Metal Ghost]

I guess for me it depends on the game, same as if I was listening to the radio: if I like the genre, etc., I crank it up. Otherwise the radio gets turned off. Same type of thing with game music.

 

Now with modern games though, personally, I almost never actually turn the game music so far down I can't hear it (or really never completely off), becuase that's when I know I'm going to either miss some ambient sound that's important or some NPC dialouge, etc. Not so much of an issue with classic games though.

[Chuplayer]

I enjoy some of the guitar remix albums. F-Zero X Guitar Arrange Edition, Rockman 20th Anniversary Guitar Edition, and Contra 4 Rocked and Loaded.

 

I'm also a big fan of the music in the Guilty Gear games. I bought Isuka just for the music.

 

And of course there are just plain good songs in certain games. The Saturn and Dreamcast had a lot of good guitar stuff. Worldwide Soccer, the Let's Go Away remix in Daytona USA CCE, three of the songs in SEGA Rally, and the marquee three songs in Ferrari F355 Challenge with Genki Hitomi singing. I actually damaged my ears while listening to some of the Saturn music back when I was 14.

[The_Laird]

I love video game music, especially chip tunes, and quite often just sit and listen to my favourites on YouTube. My favourite sounding sound chips were the Yamaha ones, Pokey and Suzy (Lynx). I have a few CD's of game music also but I feel VGM lost alot of its magic when it went over to be CD based as alot of music just became very generic or they used real music.

[+save2600]

Yep, I crank up Amiga demos and game music on my hi-end audio rig once in a while. Shadow Warriors has an especially kick ass intro:

 

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...and from waaaay back in the day, I made a tape of some SNES stuff I fire up once in a while. R-Type. Actraiser, Castlevania IV, Contra III and some Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger. Love the music from those games!!

 

Now that I have an Everdrive, will have to check out the MOD's available for play on it. Just received a stereo A/V cable for the Genny, but the output still sounds distorted compared to other game systems and especially the Amiga or SNES.

[iswitt]

I have a Nanoloop cart for my GameBoy and I just make my own video game music. But if I had to pick a favorite game tune it would be the opening music for ShadowGate on the NES.

[jeremysart]

Haha, so far the poll goes 0,1,2,3,4. Thats great!

 

Good replies so far, its interesting to see what other people are listening too, and what got you started.

@ Save2600, thanks for the youtube posts!

 

I agree with a lot of you that VGM went down hill a little after the advent of CD based games. Most games these days just make use of ambient noise.. especially the FPS genre.. what ever happened to some good ol' rock while mowing down enemy hordes?

[Sonic R]

I'm going to show my nerdness here…

 

I love video game music. When I was a kid, I had a micro cassette recorder (was supposed to use for school) I used to record game music. I would start many games and let them rest while I recorded the musics. This was back in 1988-89.

When I got my Genesis, the sound test option was the greatest thing put into games. I would go to the options and listen and record music from the sound tests. I had about 10 micro cassettes of music from many games. Some I recorded over to record newer games.

 

And I have many of the sound test cheats memorized for many games such as: Ninja Gaiden, The Guardian Legend, Military Madness… I used to play my Turbo Grafx CD games in the family CD player to listen to the musics… many times these days, I will put a game in and not even play, but to have the music play…

[Austin]

I have a rather large collection of videogame music dating back to the early '90s, many soundtracks ripped from old CD-based games I used to have, plenty of OSTs, and music I've recorded from other systems (old and new) that never received original soundtracks.

 

I don't listen to them that much anymore, but I do fall back on them occasionally, particularly the CD-based stuff that emphasized realistic (or actual) instrumentation (for instance, Spencer Nilsen's stuff found in Batman Returns and Ecco on the Sega CD), or the stuff that falls more in line with what I am into now (modern electronic music).

 

Some of my favorites include the Dreamcast Guilty Gear X soundtrack, the F-Zero X guitar mixes (official Nintendo release), Scorcher (done by Jesper Kyd; soundtrack can be listened straight from the PC CD), Quake II (same--right off the PC game disc), Lords of Thunder (Sega CD), Unreal Tournament III OST, Perfect Dark Zero OST, etc. etc. I do still have the habit of jumping into the sound test screen of older games that didn't receive soundtracks as well, games like MUSHA, Undead Line, Iridion II, Journey to Silius, the list goes on..

[jeremysart]

I'm going to show my nerdness here…

 

I love video game music. When I was a kid, I had a micro cassette recorder (was supposed to use for school) I used to record game music. I would start many games and let them rest while I recorded the musics. This was back in 1988-89.

When I got my Genesis, the sound test option was the greatest thing put into games. I would go to the options and listen and record music from the sound tests. I had about 10 micro cassettes of music from many games. Some I recorded over to record newer games.

 

Wow, that brings me back. I used to have a cassette recorder as well. I remember recording music from Kirby's Dreamland 2, Donkey Kong Country, and various other games.

 

 

Some of my favorites include the Dreamcast Guilty Gear X soundtrack, the F-Zero X guitar mixes (official Nintendo release), Scorcher (done by Jesper Kyd; soundtrack can be listened straight from the PC CD), Quake II (same--right off the PC game disc)

 

!! I used to play the hell out of the Quake II PC CD, right on my CD player. Both Quake and Quake II had great soundtracks, but I enjoyed the more metal feel of Quake II.

 

Another one I always liked, the music for the town of Tristram in Diablo.. amazing!

[Arkhan]

Quake II, level 1.

 

Full volume while driving. EPIC.

[Koopa64]

I too love video game music. In fact, it's the only thing I listen to. I don't listen to so called "real" music made by bands and such. The only things I ever use in Winamp are sound files that need emulator plug-ins to work properly.

 

My random VGM pick of the day is Hard Road from Super Hang-On (Arcade). SEGA all the way!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSrN4iuYqOY

[onmode-ky]

I have quite a few video game soundtracks. Most of them are from RPGs (e.g., Final Fantasy, Eternal Sonata, Xenosaga, Valkyria Chronicles, Ys Seven and Ys: The Oath in Felghana). But, I also have the Gradius arcade soundtrack set and the soundtrack from DariusBurst (as well as the remix collection from that). And then there are the soundtracks for Fate/tiger colosseum and its sequel. The kinds of soundtrack music I listen to vary, though I prefer orchestral music in general.

 

The above paragraph refers to official, CD releases. A few years ago, I also manually recorded all (?) the music, by Shin'en, from Sigma Star Saga and created an MP3 soundtrack.

 

onmode-ky

 

Edit: I just discovered that R-Types Retro Game Music Collection EX was released a few days ago. Hmm.

Edited January 30, 2011 by onmode-ky

[Video]

I like Video game music. I got CD's of quiet a big of stuff (mostly SNES era, though I have new stuff too) I've been known to rip music from games and make my own CD's occasionally, like Skull Monkeys has AWESOME music on it...and stuff you won't get, like old Mario or Sonic music...I actually like it straight from the system too