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Computer and video game music
Music Sound
Computer and video game music
Chiptune | Gametrack | Interactive music | Music disk | Music video game | VGM
Outrun (1986) is an arcade game with an integral soundtrack.Video
game music is any of the musical pieces or
soundtracks
from
computer and video games.
History
8-bit machines and chip music
Super Mario Bros. (1985) for the NES is widely known for its music.
Sample
Arcade games in the 1970s often contained
music of some
sort, but it was typically monotonous and so indistinct that it was easily
dismissed and parodied. Often this music was simply folk songs which were
transcribed by the programmers, who might have known little about music. This
trend continued in arcade games well into the
1980s, and in early home consoles and computers until the release of the
Commodore 64 and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Previous game systems
and home computers had for the most part continued the beeps and boops of early
arcade games (except for the Magnavox Odyssey, which was silent). There were
some exceptions however, and arcades often generally led the industry in
technological innovation. For example some early games played fully sampled
soundtracks from tapes, and many games by Exidy featured fully sampled digitized soundtracks.
The capabilities of the Commodore 64 and NES (not to mention numerous other
8-bit gaming computers and consoles of 1980s) were not up to what most people
today would ever consider listening to, but the ability to play multiple tones
simultaneously (effectively multiple instruments) at higher quality than had
usually been possible before allowed composers to be much more creative with
their music.
Sanxion (1986) loader music on C64, Thalamusik, is one of Rob Hubbard's many hits.
On the Commodore 64 it was composers such as Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway
who started to compose video game music with catchy and profound melodies. Some
people consider Hubbard's wildly spirited music for Monty on the Run (1985) as
the beginning of profound computer game music. Martin Galway's music for Rambo
II (1986) is another early milestone that relies on a strong melody. The C64's
SID chip was highly advanced when the computer was released in 1982 and it
took years before programmers (such as Hubbard and Galway) learned to fully
utilize its capabilities.
Many melodies originally composed for the NES have become classics, notably
music from the Super Mario Bros. (1985), Legend of Zelda (1986), Dragon Quest
(1986), Castlevania (1986), Mega Man (1987), DuckTales (1989), Fire Emblem
(1990) and Final Fantasy (1987). One of the most important NES-composers was
Koji Kondo, who wrote themes for Mario and Zelda.
In the field of arcade games that were often played in noisy atmosphere, the
quality of music got less attention with some notable exceptions like music by
composer
Hiroshi Miyauchi who wrote soundtracks for Out Run and Afterburner.
One notable case during this period was
Atari's POKEY sound chip, which was used in 8-bit Atari computers such as the
Atari 800 since 1979. The chip was highly advanced -excelling in the playback of digital
samples in comparison to the SID, but no game composers tried to utilize its
potential and the music of 8-bit Atari computers remained of low quality while
able composers concentrated on the Commodore 64. The chip remained unused until
the 1990s, when amateur composers started to explore the possibilities of the
Pokey chip and compose music for it.
16-bit machines and digitized sound
Shadow of the Beast (1989) on the Amiga, famed for its graphics and
music.
The Amiga
featured digitized sound in 1985
The first computer to feature a digital sound processor was the
Commodore Amiga released in 1985. Until the appearance of the Amiga, video game
music often sounded characteristically "bleepy", (although some home computer
sound chips, like the Commodore 64's SID, partly ameliorated this). This was due to the use of basic sine wave
synthesis instead of FM Synthesis or digitized sound.
The Amiga's 8364 "Paula" chip featured four independent 8-bit D/A converters.
This gave the Paula four mono audio channels, or two stereo channels when two
channels are combined. This meant for the first time a computer could play
digital samples from memory without heavy CPU usage by using clever software tricks.
This was another evolutionary step in the progress of video game music
technology, but a critical one that made it much easier for developers to put
music that sounds like "real music" into their games. However, it took some
years before Amiga game designers learned to wholly utilize digitized sound
effects in music. In the early years of Amiga there was just few games (a
notable case being the title music of text adventure game The Pawn, 1986), that
used well made digitized instrument samples in their music. Also, by this time
computer music had already begun to form its own identity, and thus many music
makers intentionally tried to produce music that sounded like what was heard on
the Commodore 64, which resulted in the
chiptune
genre.
The release of a freely distributed program named Sound Tracker by
Karsten Obarski in 1987 started the era of MOD-format which made it easy for
anyone to produce music based on digitized samples. MOD-files were made with
programs called "trackers" after Obarski's Sound Tracker. This MOD/tracker
-tradition continued with PC computers in 1990s. Good examples of Amiga games
using digitized instrument samples include David Whittaker's soundtrack for
Shadow of the Beast, Chris Hülsbeck's soundtrack for Turrican 2 and Matt
Furniss's tunes for Laser Squad. Richard Joseph also composed some theme songs
featuring vocals and lyrics for games by Sensible Software most famous being
Cannon Fodder (1992) with a song "War has never been so much fun" and Sensible
World of Soccer (1994) with a song "Goal Scoring Superstar
Hero." These songs used long vocal samples.
The Amiga's arch rival,
Atari's own 16-bit computer the Atari ST, utilized the Yamaha YM2149 sound chip.
Though many professional musicians used Atari ST as a MIDI device (ST was
notable for having built-in midi ports), the computer's own YM2149 chip was not
revolutionary. In some respects it was actually less advanced than the C64's SID. Of course, this did not mean that Atari ST music was bad - as many good
tunes were composed for the ST. Although the ST's hardware was not designed for
digital audio playback, programmers later learned to get digitized sound out of
ST, but at the expense of processor time. Digitized sound was seldom heard on ST
games. Towards the end of the ST's production, programmers were able to emulate
the unique sound of the SID, again by using CPU intervention.
The
SNES (1990) brought digitized sound to console games
Final Fantasy IV on Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) (1990).
In the field of game consoles, the
Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis was a huge step forward in sound quality from
previous game console systems, but still had a limited variety of sounds due to
its use of FM-synthesis. The SNK Neo Geo was also a big step forward, but its
capabilities were less noticeable because it was primarily an arcade system, the
home version of the Neo Geo failing to sell well due to its price. Nintendo's
16-bit console SNES finally brought music used in game consoles to a level of
audio fidelity that most people would accept. With its Sony SPC700 chip, the
SNES brought digitized sound effects to game consoles, spawning the modern age
of this field of applied acoustics as exemplified by games such as the later
Final Fantasy titles, Chrono Trigger, Castlevania IV, and ActRaiser. Since the
Amiga's popularity was mostly limited to Europe, it was the SNES that brought
digitized music for gamers in Japan and the USA. It was the first game console
capable of producing sequenced audio which could fool an untrained ear into
believing it had been recorded live. As in the case of Amiga, many SNES games
did not utilize the potential of machine's sound capabilities very well, and
thus many SNES games actually did not have essentially better sounding music
than games for competing platforms. The quality of sequenced music on game
consoles has also continued to improve on later systems as sound chips and
increased storage space allow; the advent of CD-based consoles allowed some
titles to include particularly impressive music, such as that found in Final
Fantasy VII on the Sony PlayStation, or Panzer Dragoon II on the Sega Saturn.
The arrival of CD-quality sound
From the point of view of game music listeners, digitized music was not
entirely worthless. The old machines in 1980s had sound chips that produced
personal sounds (see:
chiptune)
that are not heard anywhere else (the
Atari XL is famous for its "metallic" bass-sounds). Despite sounding "bleepy"
to gamers' parents, many gamers themselves liked these kinds of sounds. Amiga
and SNES, though supporting digitized sound, still did not have CD-quality audio
and lacked the large amounts of disk/ROM-space needed to store long pieces of
digitized sound. Thus the music of Amiga and SNES still sounded very different
compared to "ordinary" commercial music most of the time. But when the CD-ROM
era and sound cards supporting 16-bit/44 kHz samples arrived, computer and video
game music started to sound more and more like ordinary commercial music. It is
a matter of opinion whether this is a good or bad thing, but the nature of video
game music changed completely.
The first developers of
IBM PC
computers neglected audio capabilities (first IBM model, 1981).
Video game music can be stored in several ways. The two most common are for
it to be sequenced together from stored samples, or from computer-generated
tones; or for the music to be prerecorded in either a standard CD format, or
some streaming audio format. Sequenced music has been around from the start.
Prerecorded music had previously been prohibitively expensive to use in video
games, even in arcade games. When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first appeared in
the arcades, its recorded title screen song seemed amazing. Before that, some
Amiga games had already included commercial music converted for Amiga (most
notably in Xenon 2 by Bomb the Bass and in Gods by Nation 12) but that music,
though sounded almost "real", was made by using long and numerous 8-bit samples
in MOD-files.
The first widespread use of genuinely prerecorded music came with the release
of the
Turbografx 16/PC Engine CD system. This console never really caught on the in
the US, but was very long-lived in Japan. Other companies also released CD-based
systems, which often had music saved in a standard CD format which one could
listen to by putting the discs into any CD player. This Red Book audio format
had a disadvantage in that it didn't allow the consoles of the time to access
other data while playing music, and it took up a lot of space. Eventually, with
the release of the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation, streaming audio formats
were introduced (look for the .XA files on a Saturn or PlayStation disc). They
use much less disc space and can be accessed much more quickly and randomly, and
can contain loops. From early
times, and continuing today, much video game music comes in the form of loops,
music which repeats continually without interruption. This isn't always the
case, and loops saw a particular decline with the popularity of CD-based game
systems. Looped music is deemed necessary by many game designers, due to the
uncertain time constraints in which a game will be played.
Incidental music in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991).
IBM PC compatible computers became a major format for gamers during the first
half of 1990s when Commodore's and Atari's empires started to decline. It took
quite a while for average PC computers to have a good support for digitized
sound. Originally IBM PC was not made for gaming and it did not have any sound
support except an ill-fated beeper gadget called PC speaker. Roland released a
very good synthesizer module MT-32 used in PCs already in late 1980s but it was
too expensive for the home user. The only affordable alternative available was
the AdLib card which produced very acceptable FM synthesis but did not support
digital sound. Soon afterwords, Creative's Sound Blaster cards came out,
becoming the most popular sound cards during the first half of 1990s. The Sound
Blaster had support for Adlib's FM synthesis and support for 8-bit digital
audio. Eventually the Sound Blaster 16 came out (1992) which supported 44
kHz/16-bit sound, giving full CD quality. This happened about same time as
CD-ROM drives arrived to homes. The gap between video game music and "real
music" started to decline quickly - though CD-ROM drives and 16-bit sound cards
did not put an immediate stop for using low-quality FM-synthesis of PC's sound
cards on PC games (for example, the famous Doom game still used FM-music in
1993). Even though the hardware existed for MOD type songs in games and CD
music, many games, especially action games, preferred to use FM synthesis
because it did not waste CPU cycles, which at the time were very limited. With
an increase in CPU power every year, the eventual change for using CD music on
games happened during the second half of 1990s (on Amiga this problem did not
appear. Due to different kind of technology, MOD playing did not waste Amiga's
CPU time and thus MOD format was widely used in Amiga games despite of
computer's 7.14 MHz Motorola processor). The same kind of easy replay was also
possible on PC's equipped with the Gravis Ultrasound, which provided hardware
sample mixing - despite this, however, very few games supported the GUS, most
remarkably those made by Apogee and Epic.
Epic later put the module music into good use again with the release of Unreal
and Unreal Tournament, thus allowing to have significantly better audio quality
than its contemporaries.
Recent years' developments
The storage media and file formats which have allowed the use of pre-recorded
music have contributed to a trend towards using the music of well-known artists
in video games. An early example would be Way of the Warrior on the
3DO, with music by White Zombie. A more well known example would be Trent
Reznor's score for Quake. More
recent games, especially sports and racing games produced in the US even more
commonly use not only music composed by popular artists, but previously-released
popular songs of theirs.
There have been games developed in recent years which actually use the music
as a necessary component of the game. The most notable of these is the popular
Dance Dance Revolution series, where players step on arrow buttons on a dance
pad in time to the music. This genre is known as rhythm games.
Also in recent years, a trend towards combining the two approaches has begun.
Games for the
PC such as Republic: The Revolution (music composed by James Hannigan) and
Command & Conquer: Generals (music composed by William Brown) have utilised
sophisticated systems governing the flow of incidental music by stringing
together short phrases based on the action on screen and the player's most
recent choices. An earlier, more primitive use of this sort of technique (called
iMuse) was created at LucasArts and utilised in such games as Monkey Island 2:
LeChuck's Revenge on PC, Amiga & Macintosh, and X-Wing and TIE Fighter on PC.
LucasArts also pioneered a technique in their Dark Forces series which allowed the game to dynamically mix the audio from
"dramatic" and "standby" loops, attempting to mimic the musical cues found in
movies.
Microsoft's Xbox console provided gamers with the ability to copy music from
their own CDs onto the system's hard drive. This feature, called "Custom
Soundtrack," allows users to play their stored music on any Xbox videogame which
supports it, such as Major League Baseball 2k5 or Tony Hawk's Underground 2. The
new Xbox 360 platform also has the Custom Soundtrack feature. Some games on the
Xbox 360 and possibly other future consoles will have the ability to stream live
internet radio during the game if the console is connected to the internet. This
feature will most likely be taken advantage of during racing/driving games under
the guise of a car radio.
Game music as a genre
Many of the games made for the Nintendo Entertainment System and other early
game systems featured a similar style of music which may come closest to being
described as the "video game genre" in terms of musical composition, as opposed
to simply "video game music" for being in a video game or being played on a
video game console. Some compositional features of this genre continue to
influence certain music today, though, game soundtracks currently tend to
emulate movie soundtracks more-so than this classic genre. This genre's
compositional elements may have developed due to technological restraints.
Features of this genre include:
- Songs almost always have main sections or "verse sections" consisting of
chord progressions of four or more chords (similar to much of
J-Pop and
1980's Western Pop), as opposed to the two chord progressions found in most
Western Pop verses. The "chorus" of the songs also often contain four or
more different chords in their chord progressions. Often many songs feature
a chord progression which is extremely popular in J-Pop, which (in the key
of c) could be given as: F minor, C minor, G major, C minor, with C major
quickly inserted before the series repeats again. Overall, there would be
generally a higher number of sections of a song than a comparable pop song,
as this helps to reduce the repetitive aspect of the music, which was
generally played as a continuous loop. This also sets it apart from even
J-Pop music or most other forms of popular music.
- Songs feature a heavy amount of synchronization between instruments, in
a way that would be difficult for a human to play. For example, although the
tones featured in NES music can be thought of emulating a traditional four
piece rock band (triangle wave used as a bass, two pulse waves analogous to
two guitars, and an affected white noise channel used for drums), and
although video game music was influenced by rock or pop music at the time,
composers would often go out of their way to compose complex and rapid
sequences of notes. That has been compared to music composition during the
baroque
period, where it is believed that composers compensated for instruments such
as the harpsichord (which do not allow for musical expression based on the
volume of the sound) by focusing more on musical embellishments. Composers
were also limited in terms of polyphony, or the amount of notes that can be
played at once. Only three notes can be played at once on the Nintendo
Entertainment System. A great deal of effort was put into creating the
illusion that more notes are playing. As of the late 1990s, musical groups
covering these melodies have sprung up. One such group is
The Minibosses, who attempt to emulate these melodies as closely as possible
using real instruments. Another such group is The NESkimos, who opt to explore these songs artistically, and create
entirely new songs out of them.
- The bassline of a large percentage of tunes during the 8-bit period
consisted of notes played in the rhythm of a quarter note followed
immediately by two eighth notes on most beats. The particular note played
would often be the root of the chord.
Fan culture
The Final Fantasy series, including the Kingdom Hearts series, has some of
the most popular music of any modern video game series, especially the pieces
that are part of the work of Nobuo Uematsu, and it has been widely recognized
for its soundtracks. Japanese game companies routinely make CD soundtracks,
called OSTs (Original Soundtrack), for their games as they do with anime, and also
make sheet music books for their games. Like animé soundtracks, these
soundtracks and sheet music books are usually marketed exclusively in Japan.
Therefore, interested non-Japanese gamers have to import the soundtracks and/or
sheet music books through on or offline firms specifically dedicated to video
game soundtrack imports. There are plenty of such firms, mostly online.
The Original Poster of the first Video Game Music Concert Dragon Quest in
Concert (Family Classic Concert) held on August 20, 1987 at Suntory Hall, Tokyo,
Japan. Composed and Conducted by Koichi Sugiyama, Dragon Quest Suites I&II were performed
The Dragon Quest series music has one of the largest following in Japan.
Every year there is at least one Dragon Quest Concert, conducted by Koichi
Sugiyama. The Dragon Quest music has been performed by various orchestras,
including the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony, and London
Philharmonic Orchestra. There are more albums of Dragon Quest music
released in Japan than those of any other video game series worldwide.
Some of those firms also offer animé soundtrack imports. Listening to video
game music outside gaming, especially Final Fantasy music, along with
animé music, is getting more and more popular among non-Japanese gamers.
Final Fantasy has, in May 2005, become the first Japanese series to mass
market music to the US (some soundtracks have had limited runs in speciality
stores), offering its soundtracks on iTunes, and performing a series of live
concerts. Video game music is performed by orchestras around the world, such as
the London Symphony Orchestra or the FILMharmonic Orchestra in Prague. Final
Fantasy music is enjoyed not only by gamers, but also by music lovers. The video
game soundtrack market is growing and may extend to overseas markets. Many
games, such as Fire Emblem, have a special feature, the Sound Room, where players can listen to
unlocked game music.
Video game soundtracks are frequently "ripped" electronically through
emulation in formats such as NSF, GBS, SID, HES, VGM, SPC, PSF, and PSF2, and
can be played through modern media players like Winamp. Modern
video game music is traditionally done in classical orchestra or techno music
genres. A number of video game critics are known to prefer digitized recordings
of orchestrated music in games as opposed to
synthesized music. An example of orchestrated classical music in video games
can be heard in
Super Smash Bros. Melee, with its score performed by the aptly named
Orchestra Melee.
On November 17, 2003, Square Enix launched the Final Fantasy Radio on America
Online. The radio station has initially featured complete tracks from Final
Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XI: Rise of Zilart and samplings from Final Fantasy
VII through Final Fantasy X. Inclusion of video game music on America Online Radio
network, iTunes or on other online radio stations may contribute to the increase
of realization of video games as a form of media or artwork.
Several video game music concerts have taken place. Five
Orchestral Game Concerts were performed in Tokyo, Japan, from 1991 to 1996. In
August 20, 2003 the first event of the European Symphonic Game Music Concert
series took place at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig in Germany, performed by the
Czech National Symphony Orchestra. This sold-out concert appeared to be the
first of its kind ever to occur outside of Japan. The concert was repeated in
2004 and 2005 as part of the Leipzig Games Conference.
A
Final Fantasy concert was scheduled for the first time in the United States, and
it was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at Walt Disney
Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, on May 10, 2004. The concert was a
one-day sell-out: all seats were sold out on a single day. That popularity led
the concert, "Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy", to be performed at
various cities across the United States. On July 6, 2005, the Los Angeles
Philharmonic Orchestra also held a "Video Games Live" concert at the Hollywood
Bowl. This concert featured a variety of video game music, ranging
from Pong to Halo 2. It also incorporated real-time video feeds that were in
sync with the music, as well as laser and light special effects.
Also notable is an a capella music group from the University of Wisconsin
known as Redefined, who performed (and acted) an a capella medley of songs from
popular Nintendo games including Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Mortal Kombat, and
The Legend of Zelda. A video clip of the entire performance was widely
circulated on the Internet in 2005.
[1]
Video game music is so popular that online cultures have been created,
dedicated to bring new life to both old and new songs. These scenes vary from
people who transcribe video game music to midi along with other scenes who remix
video game music and release
MP3 files. There are
several websites (listed below) which serve this community.
Video game music timeline
- 1980: Sega
releases Carnival, the first game to have continuous background
music. Previously, some games used prerecorded cassettes for music.
- 1983: Exidy
releases Crossbow, the first game to feature fully digitized sounds
(no music).
- 1984: The recording company known as "Yen" releases the first album with
game music ever. Video Game Music contained music from various Namco games,
including Pole Position, Xevious, Pac-Man,
New Rally X, amongst others. This compilation of original Namco
arcade music was released on LP (YLR-20003) and CT (YLC-20003).
- 1985: Yen, the world's first company to release a game music album, was
discontinued after only two releases. The sequel to
Video Game Music was released by Alfa.
- 1986: Game
Music Organization was formed as Yen's successor. Abbreviated to G.M.O., it
was the first major label recording company to release only game music. They
released many albums for many Japanese developers, almost all with titles
along the lines of: [company] Game Music (vol. #). Example: Sega
Game Music Vol. 1.
- 1987: The first video game orchestral concert is taken place at Suntory
Hall, Tokyo, Japan. Named Dragon Quest in Concert, it is conducted by
composer Koichi Sugiyama and features music from Dragon Quest I and Dragon
Quest II.
- 1989: Game Music Organization is put to an end and Scitron becomes its
successor. Scitron was put under Pony Canyon, instead of Alfa, as Game Music
Organization was. Scitron didn't keep all the companies Game Music
Organization had control over; Falcom and Konami went to King Records, Namco
used Victor more and more, and many smaller development houses used King
Records instead. Before, the game music industry was centered around Game
Music Organization only, but now started to spread out. DATAM, Polystar's
label for game music was also established now. KOEI creates
the world's first in-house game music recording company.
- 1991: The first Orchestral Game Concert takes place in Tokyo, Japan,
with music performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert is
repeated in 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1996. The series of concerts features music
from games such as Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Mario, The Legend of Zelda,
Chrono Trigger and many more.
- 1993: Mortal Kombat II is released with the DCS soundsystem, featuring the
highest-quality music and sound effects in the arcade environment at the
time.
- 1997: The Lost World: Jurassic Park is released on PlayStation with the
first ever fully orchestral soundtrack in a video game. The first Sakura
Taisen game featured some orchestra earlier, and Heart of Darkness was developed earlier, but not released until
later.
- 2001: Accomplished Hollywood film composer Harry Gregson-Williams is
hired to score Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
- 2003: The first Symphonic Game Music Concert outside of Japan takes
place in Leipzig, Germany, with music performed by the Czech National
Symphony Orchestra and conducted by video game composer Andy Brick. The
concert is repeated in 2004 and 2005. The series of concerts features music
from games such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Mario, Silent Hill, The
Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, ActRaiser, The Elder Scrolls III:
Morrowind, Turrican, Shenmue, Hitman and many more. The concerts feature
special performances by Shakespearan actor James Walker, piano virtuoso
Seiji Honda, the rock band -123min. and percussionist Rony Barrak. Composers
such as Nobuo Uematsu, Yuzo Koshiro, Akira Yamaoka, Jason Hayes, Chris
Huelsbeck, Rob Hubbard and many others attend the concerts.
- 2004: The first major U.S. concert featuring video game music takes
place. A Final Fantasy Concert gets presented in Los Angeles, with music
performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master
Chorale.
- 2004: During the 2004 Summer Olympics, the United States synchronized
swimming duet of Alison Bartosik and Anna Kozlova wins the bronze medal
whilst using two songs from Final Fantasy VIII in the second half of their routine.
- 2005: Composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall introduce Video Games
Live, the first U.S. Video Game Concert with playing from various games such
as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Halo, Metal Gear Solid, Warcraft, Myst, Final
Fantasy, Castlevania, Medal of Honor, Sonic, Donkey Kong and many more. the
L.A. Phillharmonic Chorus and the L.A. Symphony Orchestra play at the
concert, and features such guests as Martin Leung (AKA Video Game Pianist), and many more. Most of the
announced 24 concerts get cancelled.
- 2005: The first worldwide videogame concert tour gets announced by the
production team behind the Dear Friends - Music from Final Fantasy concerts.
The name of the tour is PLAY! A Video Game Symphony (Video Game Symphony).
Related music genres
External links
Articles, essays and news about video game music
Composer-related links
Internet radio featuring game music
Remixes
Sources of video game music
Dedicated to particular series
-
SquareSound - Contains album listings, composer information, reviews,
arrangements, MIDIs, and a Weekly MP3s related to all Square Enix games.
-
Metroid Metal -
Metal versions of the songs from Nintendo's Metroid.
-
XOC - SMW -
Completely redone soundtrack for Super Mario World, available in MP3 and
OGG.
-
Final Fantasy Music Online - Contains information about music from the
Final Fantasy series.
Emulator format music
-
ASMA 8-bit Atari computers music archive - players and tunes
-
A Game Music Index - NSF (8-bit Nintendo format music), SPC (Super
Nintendo format music) and SID (Commodore 64 format music).
-
vgpak - A resource cataloging emulator formats, where to obtain music
encoded in them, and Winamp plugins for playing them.
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The High Voltage SID Collection - Commodore 64 music.
-
UNEXOTICA - Amiga game music database - Lots of Amiga game music packed
in LHA -files, use Deliplayer (with Windows) for listening.
-
SMSPower.org 8-bit Music Section - VGM format site, dedicated to 8-bit
Sega music.
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SNESAmp Official SPC700 sound format site, dedicated to Super Nintendo
music in SPC format.
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SNESmusic.org Contains a database of SNES music in RSN format.
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Project2612 Mega Drive\Genesis soundtracks in the VGM format.
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Neill Corlett's PSF Central - information related to PSF, Portable Sound
Format.
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Zophar's Domain Contains video game music in various emulator sound
formats including Sega Genesis/Megadrive and PC Engine.
General archives
Performers
-
The Video Game Cover Band - A rock band that plays a variety of video
game music, old and new.
-
David Hasselhoff Big Band - A Finnish
demoscene
band covering various video game songs.
-
Megadriver - A Brazilian band, focusing mostly on
Mega Drive/Genesis music.
-
Neskimos - A hard rock band that remixes video game music.
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Nintendo on piano - Recordings and sheet music of video game music
played on piano.
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Press Play On Tape - A Danish band covering
Commodore 64 game songs.
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The OneUps - A band that does remixes to all sorts of video game music.
Remixes include hard rock, jazz, piano, Christmas tunes, easy-listening, and
everything in between.
-
SID80s - A European band playing rock covers of
Commodore 64 game songs. The members are well known either from the
Commodore 64 game scene, or the more recent remix scene.
-
Stage 3-1 - A nintendo cover band from Ontario, Canada.
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Game Music Themes - Videos of performances and sheet music of video game
music played on piano.
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The Advantage - California-based NES cover band.
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The Video Game Pianist - Classical piano treatment of several classics.
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vgPiano - Group of individuals who perform video game music on piano.
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Music Sound, v. 2.0, by MultiMedia
This guide is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
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