The death of "synthetic/artifical" sounding video game music

I liked Plastic Mind better.

Also, yeehaw

@Wicked: I have the opposite feeling; the fact that I have something associated with them in my mind makes me think of it when listening to the music.

And later, longer after I've stopped playing the game, but kept on listening to the music, the music takes on a meaning of its own, derived from but sometimes quite different from the source material.

And here's another super-awesome theme:

Konami really has had some insanely good composers.

edited 14th Oct '10 8:32:34 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

One more!

lol embeds

You know, I find it really intriguing how people can find music made of salvaged illegal cuts of other music, or singing over a simplistic backbeat, to be something to celebrate.

[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

It's all music, YMMV past that.

And as for appreciating minimalism: If you're a composer with only three beeping voices, a dumm, a dupp, and a tssh to work with, you'll find yourself focusing a lot more on what you CAN do.

edited 14th Oct '10 8:36:44 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

Doesn't seem that hard to understand to me.

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!

BTW, to people who keep posting chiptunes and stuff of things like old chiptunes trying to do orchestral, that's not what I meant, although those do apply as well. Personally, I was referring to the loss of that synthetic ambient sound that's lost now. It really has nothing to do with choosing a synth orchestra over a real one, because without the soundtype that one got from tracker (or hell, even the SID chip), that entire style of music is gone. That old style of game music was interesting because it didn't use real instruments. The type of music seen in the tracks I posed, like Sky Town or UNATCO, is just something that won't turn up anymore.

Je Suis "Aware"

Nothing can really stack up.

I hear Ivy on being "All epiced out" on the music front.

It's got to the point where the words "Soundtrack by Jeremy Soule" will actually put me off playing a video game, because the man simply has no sense of restraint. Everything is REALLY EPIC SOUNDING, ALL OF THE TIME.

Particularly in the game Morrowind this started to piss me off massively, but since music would give me a few seconds advanced warning of combat, I left it on. And hated it, so very, very much.

Dammit, Att Obl beat me to 'G'. :D

Here's another one from Tamayo Kawamoto, the same composer of that song.

http://twitter.com/raydere | http://raydere.tumblr.com

^^ That's part of the reason why I dislike Western composers. Everything that's not ambience will be OMGOVERTHETOP.

Seems to mainly be a peculiarity of American composers. European ones seem to be able to exercise restraint just fine. The soundtrack to Beyond Good And Evil is wonderfully varied. And this is to say nothing of Swedish game music composers, who are all over that delicious demoscene goodness.

Confucius Rex beat me to Rob Hubbard's the Monty On The Run theme (which also stars in I Wanna Be The Guy).

(Note: Do NOT confuse chiptune composer Rob Hubbard with scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.)

edited 15th Oct '10 8:23:11 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

Great, that image won't go out of my head for a while. Thanks for that.

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People aren't as awful as the internet makes them out to be.

Probably my favorite soundtrack of the PSG/FM era is the original Sonic The Hedgehog. The tracks sound like they could have been on the radio back when the DX 7 was still a hot item (c. 1984-1985), and I'm a sucker for weird digital synths, so...

online since 1993 | huge retrocomputing and TV nerd | lee4hmz.info (under construction) | heapershangout.com

What is the difference between PSG and FM?

I know there's two different versions of the Phantasy Star I soundtrack, one for each system.

edited 15th Oct '10 9:01:57 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

PS Gs are generally limited to square waves and white noise, whereas FM chips use frequency modulation to make new sounds out of up to 4 different sine waves (in the Genesis' case anyway). The Genesis had both types of chips, and you could use them together.

edited 15th Oct '10 9:06:36 AM by lee4hmz

online since 1993 | huge retrocomputing and TV nerd | lee4hmz.info (under construction) | heapershangout.com

Speaking of, whatever happened to Masato Nakamura, anyway? I would've loved for him to have composed for Sonic 3&K. =d

But instead, Michael Jackson did.

Something like this?

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Marble Madness has music that turns an ordinary Nintendo Hard platformer into a grand adventure.

..."grand" is perhaps too corny of a word to describe it, though.

edited 15th Oct '10 11:29:17 AM by mrsaturn

They assed first. I am only retaliating in an ass way. -The Dead Man's Life