Showing posts with label video game soundtracks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video game soundtracks. Show all posts

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Chiptune Album Review - Souleye's "Adventure"



About a month ago, Magnus "Souleye" Pålsson released his album Adventure. If the name doesn't strike a bell, he should be well known as the composer of VVVVVV. As a short review, that should be enough reason for you to purchase it immediately, because it has more of that outstanding style of chiptune music which channels the Commodore 64 SID chip while sounding both cleaner and with more compositional depth.

Adventure isn't an album for any specific game, but rather a compilation of various works. Much of it is remixes for a rhythm game called Pulsen, which I haven't played. A number of VVVVVV's tracks appear remixed here, including one of the versions that was added especially for the 3DS port. While I'd generally prefer new music, the new arrangements are very well done, often expanding the songs, adding layers or kicking up the tempo. Some songs have changed significantly, like Pressure Cooker, and I think I might actually like this version of Predestined Fate a little more than the one in the game. It also includes the two new songs that were added to the V2.0, Paced Energy and Piercing the Sky, which aren't as well known because they're only heard in the level editor or user levels, but are still two completely excellent songs.

The rest is a handful of shorter tracks and bits that have appeared on other compilation albums. Some are original, others are arrangements, like a song from Super Meat Boy, as well as a rendition of the Zelda II battle theme, whose orchestral theme doesn't quite match the chiptune sound of the rest of the album, but is a good piece nonetheless. My favorite piece of these is Phat Flying Duck, which is from Bitejacker, and is easily as good as any of the tracks found in VVVVVV.

Reiterating what was said in the intro, if you're even remotely a fan of chiptunes, Adventure is an absolutely essential purchase. It's available in digital format on Souleye's site for $10 as a digital download, or $10 plus shipping for a CD copy. The full breakdown of tracks is available at VGMDB.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Best of Western VGM Poll Pt. 2

More cool songs and Youtube embeds ahead!

Deus Ex Human Revolution - Sarif HQ Intro Combat


Deus Ex: Human Revolution probably has the best video game soundtrack released this year, only really challenged by Xenoblade (even though it's technically a 2010 game.) It's a shame about how many people seem to be playing this game super stealthy, because that means they'd be missing out on all of the amazing combat themes, of which there are several based on your location. This one here, the best of the best, is right in the prologue, before you even properly begin the game. It's a shame that both the Augmented Edition and official soundtrack releases are missing such huge chunks of the music.

Command and Conquer Renegade - Command and Conquer



Did I post this song the last time? I don't remember. Westwood's Frank Klepacki put out some of the best music on the PC back in the mid-90s.

Universe at War - Modern Design



Klepacki's work on Universe at War is also excellent, much truer to the roots of Command and Conquer than the actual modern Command and Conquer.

Neotokyo - Tachi



I got turned onto this soundtrack in the last poll and immediately bought the soundtrack. I don't think this track in particular got any votes, but it's one of my favorites.

Return All Robots! - Roboballad



I only barely know what this game is, but the soundtrack was included in that awesome Indie Music Bundle over the Thanksgiving weekend, and has quickly become one of my favorites of the bunch. My favorite part is around the 2:30 mark, which reminds me of bits of the Ducktales NES soundtrack.

The Binding of Isaac - Sacrificial



I don't know if I like Team Meat's newest game, sort of a rogue-like combined with Zelda and a twin stick shooter, but Danny Baranowsky's soundtrack is aces.

Ocean Loader 2



To anyone who asked if loader themes counted, because they weren't tied to any specific game, the answer is yes, largely so rad tunes like this one can be accounted for.

Mass Effect - M4 Part 2 (Faunts)



We've been playing fast and loose with the "no licensed music" rule, which was mostly done just to disqualify rhythm games and playlist-type sports games, which major sites seem to call "video game music" even though it really isn't. Still, we've been allowing certain cases, usually for alternative bands, like Canadian space rock band Faunts, in this instance. The guitars in this remind me a lot of the following song...

System Shock - Intro



For being pretty basic from an animation standpoint, I've always REALLY loved this intro.

Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Burning Town



A remixed version of the first level theme from the original GBC game. Remarkably catchy. It was released on the iOS awhile back if you can stand the touch control pad.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Best of Western VGM Poll Pt. 1

We've got another video game music poll going on, this time specifically for Western music, since they were largely skimmed over in the all-encompassing poll. Based on the number of votes so far, it probably won't reach anywhere near 1000 like the last one, but more votes would definitely be appreciated!

At any rate, here is the first group of cool songs I've picked out from the ones voted on so far, as well as others that deserve some attention:

Unreal Title Theme



I really like the unique sound of the Unreal music engine. It's technically just another tracker format like MOD and S3M, but like the SNES SPC sound chip, it's quite distinctive.

Turrican 2 - The Wall



This poll should be largely dominated by Chris Huelsbeck and Turrican music, because it's some of his best work. I picked this one in particular just because I hadn't heard it before, but the soundtracks to all three games (and even their Genesis and SNES counterparts, Mega Turrican and Super Turrican) are really damn good.

Acid Tetris - Tearing Up Spacetime



I think this game had to change its name to "Acid Brick Breaker" or something to avoid the name infringement. But I remember it being a cool freeware game back in the mid-90s with support for tracker formats. This pre-loaded song is really excellent.


Barkley Shut Up & Jam Gaiden - jonathan taylor thomas



This song got a lot of love in the last poll. Like the game itself, it encapsulates the cliches of RPG battle themes while at the same time being really damned awesome.

Sleepwalker - Zoo



The only thing I know about this game is that it apparently obtained the Eek the Cat! license when it came to the SNES. Issues like that interest me, but in the meantime you'll have to make do with the rad music.

Starcraft - Terran 3



I only ever played the Terrans in Starcraft because their music was awesome.

Jets n Guns - Death from Above



If you like the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World soundtrack, this is well worth checking out, as it combines Commodore 64 music with heavy metal.

Shadow of the Beast - Welcome



Dig the flutes on this whole soundtrack, really.

One Man and His Droid - Theme



This is another song which I'm embarassed to admit I've never heard before, but is amazing. It's hard to pinpoint the exact point where it becomes awesome because it happens at least four times.



Friday, October 7, 2011

Rom Cassette Disc In SUNSOFT CD Review



The title of this album is terrible. Rom Cassette Disc In SUNSOFT? What the hell does that mean? And what on earth is going on in that cover? But in the spirit of not judging a book by its cover, let's explain this album actually is - it's a two disc (plus bonus disc) compilation of all of the music for all of Sunsoft's Famicom cartridge releases. The "Rom Cassette" part distinguishes it their Famicom Disk System games, which is a separate album and none of which are worth mentioning.) The first CD's track list don't suggest anything anything particularly worthwhile - Super Arabian, Route-16 Turbo, Ikki, Atlantis no Nazo, Madoola no Tsubasa, Toukaidou Gojuusan-tsugi, Shanghai, Ripple Island and Maharaja. None of these were released in the US, and in spite of a few alright tracks, the music is not really all that great, although the extensive speech synthesis in Toukaidou Gojuusan-tsugi is impressive.

Near the end of the first CD, the list of amazing games starts up: Chou Wakusei Meta Fight (AKA Blaster Master), Batman, Raf World (Journey to Silus), Gremlins 2, Dynamite Batman (Batman: Return of the Joker), and Gimmick!. (The linked samples aren't directly from the CD, they're just whatever I found on Youtube at the moment.) Sunsoft isn't as widely discussed as Nintendo or Konami when it comes to amazing NES music, but they really should be, because their sound programming was absolutely incredible, resulting in some of the most standout soundtracks on the system. All of the games listed in this paragraph are essential to fans of NES music. Even the lesser soundtracks (relatively speaking), like Battle Hunter (Super Spy Hunter), Hebereke (Uforia) and Nantettatte!! Baseball (unreleased outside of Japan) utilize the same synth and sound pretty decent. It is missing Fester's Quest and Platoon, however, since neither was never released in Japan.

Although the back of the album implies that each game only has a single track medley for each game, each song does indeed have its own track. And there's a lot of music here - 99 tracks on the first disc, and 89 on the second. Of course, many are quite brief, and most don't loop. While there's no a huge advantage to listening to this over NSFs, it's cool that these tracks are in one convenient place, and those who are sticklers for authenticity will approve of the recordings as well. The tracks from Gimmick!, which used an extra sound chip in its cartridge, sound every so slightly better than the emulated versions.

First printings (or perhaps all, it's hard to tell) have a bonus third CD, whoch include two long arranged tracks from Madoola no Tsubasa and Dead Zone (the latter OST does not appear on this set since it's an FDS game.) They're recorded straight from a very old cassette tape, so not only is the quality somewhat iffy, but it's very late 80s. It's not great, but it's an interesting obscurity.

The album can be bought from seller champ_des_pins on eBay, or much cheaper from Otaku.com. I went the latter route, and while the SAL shipping took a good three weeks, I can vouch for them being an excellent vendor. There is also a remix album scheduled to come out later in October, although based on the characters on the cover, it seems like they may focus on the "nostalgic" Famicom games rather the ones any of us are likely to care about.


Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Japan's Top 700 Video Game Music of All Time



Fairly recently, various sources (2ch and Nico Nico Douga, I presume) polled gamers on the All Time Best Video Game Music - 700 songs in total! - and put the results up for everyone to hear. Intrepid Youtube user Gestriden has ripped them all and uploaded them into one big Youtube Playlist

I've no idea what the full list is, since they bunched together all of the songs except for the Top 50. It's an eclectic list, to be certain, I've broken out the top 50 per below, although I'm not entirely clear on all of the games or track names.

50 - Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver
49 - Cleopatra Fortune - Shinin Queen
48 - Ys 7 - Vacanat Interference
47 - Romancing SaGa 3 - Four Demons Noble Battle
46 - Mamatoto - Running to the Straight
45 - Sora no Kiseki - Light Feud
44 - Xenoblade - Gaul
43 - Wild Arms - To the End Of Wilderness
42 - Hello Goodbye - Shousha
41 - Nier - Song of Ancients
40 - Trauma Team - Bloody Rose
39 - Ys vs Sora no Kiseki - Get Over the Barrier - Roaring Version
38 - Battle Theme Part I - Last Armageddon
37 - Romancing Saga - Final Decisive Battle
36 - Ys Oath in Felghana - Valestein Castle
35 - Wild Arms (??) Blazer Battle
34 - Lost Odyssey - Departed Souls
33 - Ys VI - Mighty Obstacle
32 - Xenosaga - Final Battle
31 - Hello Goodbye - Encounter
30 - Tales of Legendia - Chasing Shirley
29 - Monster Hunter Tri - Bonus Song
28 - Ys Origin: Tension
27 - Tales of Vesperia - Cutting off the Amibition
26 - Shadow Hearts Covenant
25 - Dragon Slayer - Stopper
24 - Legend of Heroes - Silver Will
23 - Mana Khemia
22 - Baten Kaitos Origins - The Valedictory Elegy
21 - God Eater - Merciless Lord
20 - Tekken 6
19 - Darius Burst - The World of Spirit
18 - Ace Combat X2 - Fire Youngman
17 - Donkey Kong Country 2 - Stickerbrush Symphony
16 - Mamoru-kun wa Norowarate Shimatta! - Yokai Disco
15 - Ys Origin (Super Arrange??)
14 - Persona 3 - Battle for All People's Souls
13 - Space Invaders Extreme 2
12 - Sengoku Rance - Battle on Edge
11 - Ys II Chronicles - To Make an End to Battle
10 - Venus and Braves - Waltz for Aria
9 - Legend of Heroes - JDK Band album (??)
8 - Xenoblade - Mechanical Rhythm
7 - Ninja Warriors - Daddy Mulk (Mega CD)
6 - Halo 3 - Finish the Fight
5 - Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon
4 - Ace Combat Zero
3 - Ys Seven - Legend of Dragons
2 - Ys Seven - Final Boss
1 - Okami

As with any list polled from a wider variety of sources, this is sort of questionable. I mean, there's some good stuff on there - great stuff, even - but I'm at a loss to explain Japan's love affair with the semi-obnoxious theme song from Ninja Warriors. I do approce of the many Ys songs, at least. There's a good chunk that I'm either not familiar with (God Eater) or have simply never heard of (Hello, Goodbye?) The only ones I'd stick on my list is the Ys II Chronicles To Make An End to Battle, Persona 3 - Battle for All People's Souls, Ys VI - Mighty Obstacle, Ys 7 - Vacanat Interference, and maybe Wild Arms - To the End Of Wilderness.

It does almost make me want to run a similar poll for non-Japanese gamers, if I could figure out a way to manage such a gigantic project. I might not really hear ear-to-ear on the final results, but it's cool to see what the fan culture as a whole has to say. What say you all - would such a task be worth undertaking?



Sunday, May 8, 2011

Korean RPG Music sampler

A bit late this week...

I always wanted to include soundtrack samples with the Korean article in some form, but uploading and linking files for a few hundred different games seperately isn't very feasable to do.

Well, I finally got something together and uploaded a package of 49 tracks from various (non-online) RPGs. I chose to start with that genre as it's among the most impenetrable without language knowledge. Some games are already covered with text and screenshots in the article, eventually all of them should appear there in the future.

Mind that the first dozen or so tracks are directly recorded with dosbox, and there's a few midi conversions later, so don't expect the highest fidelity from those.

https://rapidshare.com/files/460881649/HG101_Korean_Game_Music_Sampler_vol.1_-_RPGs.zip

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

We *heart* FM synth - Tree of Knowledge release plus awesome FM shooter music


Last month we mentioned about the impending release of Tree of Knowledge, a tribute album to PC-98 eroge with some absolutely fantasy FM music. Well, it's now available to order at http://yogurtbox.com/, complete with mocked up pictures and a cool sample interface. You can buy it at Bandcamp, with $10 for a digital download and $12 for a CD. Original Sound Version also has a review.

To celebrate, I'm posting a handful of other rad FM music, although these are all from shooter games - different genre, technically, but still some excellent stuff.

First up are two tracks for Revolter - not technically all that great of a game, but it's the first with music by Hitoshi Sakimoto, who's also joined by Masuhara Iwata.

Revolter - Midnight Chaser (Stage 1) - Masaharu Iwata



Revolter - Guitar BURIBARU (Stage 2) - Hitoshi Sakimoto



Next up are three tracks from Flame Zapper Kotsujin, a rather excellent PC-98 doujin shooter (expect an article on both of these in the near future):

Flame Zapper Kotsujin - Sky is Well With Supplied The Scene (Stage 1) - (composer unknown)



Flame Zapper Kotsujin - Ray Future (Stage 2) - (composer unknown)



Flame Zapper Kotsujin - Into the Last Battle (Stage 5) - (composer unknown)



And finally, we're cheating a bit with two tracks from Eschatos - it's actually a fairly recent shooter (it was released last month in Japan for the Xbox 360) but it's done in the class FM style.

Eschatos - Silver Lining (Area 1-4) - Yousuke Yasui



Eschatos - Silver Lining (Area 6-11) - Yousuke Yasui


Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 OST - Mostly Complete



A couple months ago I recorded a few songs from Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, assuming that a more complete rip would surface. That hasn't happened to my knowledge, so I decided to do it myself...kind of.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6OHDRVFT

(Megaupload keeps giving me "file not available at this moment" messages, but I assure you it's there! If I can dig up my Mediafire account I'll see about posting it there, if it becomes an issue.)

This is not a complete rip - it's missing a few tracks, like the menu theme, the map theme, and some of the ending songs and cutscene bits. They're also improperly and inconsistently titled, because I neglected to catalog them properly when recording them. But I didn't get to complete it last time I had my PS3 hooked up to my computer and I just don't have the time at the moment to hook it up again to complete it, so I figured this was better than nothing, considering it was originally done just for my own sake. It should have all of the level themes, at least.

It's a great soundtrack - Simon Viklund is not only a great arranger but an excellent composer as well (though many songs are variations on themes from the original game.) It's almost as if the SID chip never went out of style. It's also rather unique from a cultural perspective - Bionic Commando is a Japanese property, but Viklund brought the feeling from the Commodore 64, a very Western (and particularly European) sound that is probably alien to the game's home land.

I love the game itself - I should get a proper review up eventually, but it really got the short end of the stick, for a number of reasons. The changes in the control scheme are off-putting for the first hour or so, but some of the acrobatics you can (and need to) pull off in the final stages make it all worthwhile.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

FM Synth Fans Take Heed - Tree of Knowledge - A PC98 Tribute Album



The landscape of old school Japanese eroge is mystifying to those outside the country, largely thanks to that troublesome issue known as a "language barrier". Still, outside of appreciating them for their obvious qualities (assuming you're down with late 80s/early 90s anime hair/eyes, as well you should be), they generally have some fantastic music, as our recent run in Ryu Umemoto has taught us. (Also check out some music from Misty Blue by Yuzo Koshiro, which isn't an eroge to my knowledge, but is similarly impenetrable to us gaijin.) All it takes is some appreciation for some good FM synth.

Steven "surasshu" Velema and Ken "coda" Snyder, two non-Japanese composers, love this style of music so much that they created their own tribute album, similar to Atsushi Fukai's numerous "Project" albums. Titled "Tree of Knowledge, it comes complete with an authentic late 90s Japanese website at http://yogurtbox.com/, along with a made-up plot, screenshots and character artwork, under the pretense of being a long lost game. The tracklist consists of an opening theme, a couple of general songs, and a theme for each of girls, balancing nicely between the peppy songs and the darker ones. It's quite good stuff, and anyone with a thing for FM synth - if you grew up with a Genesis or an Adlib capable sound card on your PC and dig it - will definitely enjoy it. It can be had for $10 as a digital download or $12 on a CD, and will be releasing on May 1.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Song of the Moment - Sekaiju no MeiQ³ - Battlefield - The First Campaign



The Etrian Odyssey series (or Sekaiju no MeiQ) have always drawn heavily from the minds of 80s and 90s Japanese PC gaming, so it was appropriate that composer Yuzo Koshiro rely heavily on the FM synth used in the PC-8801. The third entry in the series, just released a few weeks ago in Japan, travels the same lines. While I've always dug Falcom soundtracks of the era, for some reason, these always left me a bit cold. Maybe it was because the exploration music was just a bit too laid back, and the battle themes just weren't exciting enough. This entry, though, has a completely bad ass battle song as evidenced above.

It actually reminds me a lot of the 7th Dragon theme, both in general style and structure, which you can listen to below:



Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Case of Wikipedia v. Kinuyo Yamashita



Among video game composers, Kinuyo Yamashita isn't exactly a well known name, although she probably should be. Back in the mid-80s, she worked at Konami and was the composer for the original Castlevania. She also worked on a handful of other Konami games, mostly Japanese-only, including Esper Dream, Almana no Kiseki, King Kong 2, Stinger, Hi no Tori (Famicom version), Knightmare II: Maze of Galious (MSX version), Usas, and a handful of others. She quite after a few years to go freelance - according to a recent interview with Square Enix Music, Konami's refusal to properly credit their developers played a big part. (She shows up under the pseudonym "James Banana" in the ending to the NES Castlevania, although she's credit properly in the MSX2 Vampire Killer, which has the same music.) After going freelance, she did the outstanding Power Blade soundtrack, and worked on a number of Natsume titles, including the SNES version of Pocky & Rocky and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, along with Megaman X3 for Capcom. Her official website documents several other Japan-only games, including many entries in the Medarot/Medabot series, but also notes that she had a brain hemorrhage which left her unable to compose for a number of years. She's recently become for visible on the web, thanks to her MySpace account and here appearance as a guest speaker in Video Games Live!. She has quite an interesting background!

Well, apparently Wikipedia doesn't think so.

I mean, what? The music for the original Castlevania is some of the most iconic in video game history, and is still being rearranged by Konami over twenty years later. Why not delete Koji Kondo, too? (On this note: this Original Sound Version post on the same subject mentions that they've deleted Shinji Hosoe, a veteran composer for Namco and others for over twenty years, for similar reasons. His works aren't quite as famous as Castlevania, but he's still a fairly well known, well documented composer.)

The argument by the nimrod Wikipedia editors keep shooting down source after source as "unnotable" As noted above, Japanese developers are notorious for keeping secrets - we know that Keiji Inafune didn't really design Mega Man but still aren't 100% sure who did - and trying to source these things in the games themselves is nearly impossible. That's why it's incredibly valuable (and amazing) when places like the Game Developers Research Institute dig up some of these guys to set the record straight. But oh, hey, according to the Wikipedia deletion argument, first person sources are irrelevant, as her apparently her own web page, along with various interviews, don't count, and the popularity of her original songs don't either.

Every once in awhile, there's a tiny part of my brain that thinks that Wikipedia, along with the general wiki format, will overcome the general usefulness of websites like HG101. Then I see instances of stupidity like this, with the Wikipedia editors clearly being small minded know-nothings, and think, yeah, sites like mine have nothing to be worried about.

EDIT:

One of the more recent Wiki folk reupped her original entry here, along with a longer list of her works and more sources.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Intro to the Japanese Doujin Music Scene

It's always fun comparing the fan communities of different cultures. Both Western and Japanese fans have a fairly high creative output, producing web sites, comics, video games, and, of course, music. Which brings us to today's topic - doujin music CDs.

The biggest difference between Western and Japanese fan communities is that the latter can actually sell their goods. America in general is a much more litigious society, but they're willing to turn a blind eye to fan creations as long as the material in question isn't for profit. On the other hand, the Japanese have a whole economy driven by copyright infringement. This mostly results in huge amounts of porn featuring popular characters, as well as unofficial video game spinoffs (see Duo Princess, an action game featuring the characters of Square's Threads of Fate, or Elepaper Action, a beat-em-up starring the girls from Read or Die.) Naturally, this applies to remixed music CDs, too. OCRemix releases its arrangements for free, because they have to, but that doesn't apply to Japanese remix circles. (There have been exceptions with Western groups selling albums, like Project Majestic Mix and its Final Fantasy arrangements, or OneUp Studios releases of some Yasunori Mitsuda and Sega tribute albums awhile back, but they actually went through the proper legal channels to license the tracks.)

Much of the actual content is similar, of course. If you wade through all of the various doujin circles, you'll be overwhelmed by Mega Man, Chrono Trigger, and countless arrangements of Final Fantasy battle themes. It is a good way to find new and interesting stuff outside of the video game music mainstream (yes, such a thing exists!), which is largely what makes the doujin video game music scene so appealing. You'll find that a lot of them have huge appreciation for Romancing SaGa, a series all but disdained outside the country, along with tributes to companies like Sega, Cave or Falcom, or themed albums based on various genres like fighters or shooters. There are also an ABSURD amout of Touhou CDs - it's quite boggling how popular the series is. (I haven't heard much of the arranged music, but the OSTs are quite good.)



Doujin albums are also a lot cheaper than official music CDs, often wavering between 1000-1500 yen, as opposed to the 2500-3000 yen usually commanded in record stores for official CDs. Furthermore, the days of extensive officially sanctioned arranged music CDs of the 90s are long gone, with only an occasional one trickling out, so not only do doujin CDs fill a niche, but they do it quite cheaply too. (There was apparently a case where a Mega Man rock CD called Megalomania was pulled around the time that Capcom was releasing their own similarly styled albums, but I don't know the details or what became of it. I actually do own the album, though, and will probably review it in the future.)



The problem is, finding these CDs for Westerners is often quite difficult. Most regular albums can be found at Amazon.jp, but doujin albums aren't even sold at regular record stores, instead inhabiting conventions like Comiket or anime good stores like Toranoana, who refuse to ship overseas to dirty, ignorant foreigners. So, much like all doujin goods, anyone outside of Japan usually just resorts to pirating them. Occasionally you can find them at places like http://www.paletweb.com/, http://www.himeyashop.com/, or http://www.otaku.com/, and eBay can occasionally yield them too, especially from the seller champ_des_pins. But their selection is spotty and shipping can be killer at some of them. A CD that should be $10 quickly jumps up to $25 when markup and shipping is accounted for.

Now that we've got some background, please look forward to some doujin music CD reviews in the future! Places like http://www.vgmdb.net/ occasionally have tracklists and such, but I've never really found any place that reviewed them, so I'm hoping to fill in the gap, at least a little bit.