#Game Music

[koboldfactory]

New music time:

this time it's a track for the bird game I should be working on more often lol

[2mello]

I'm in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk!!

I've been holding this back for a long time--INCREDIBLY EXCITED to say my song "I Wanna Kno" was chosen for the Bomb Rush Cyberfunk soundtrack. Grateful to director Dion Koster for seeing something in the track and letting me help color the game world of New Amsterdam. I still can't believe I'm part of one of the coolest games ever in a music lineup like this. Out now on PC/Nintendo Switch, coming to consoles soon after!

[kystral]

[fieldsofmistria]

Enjoying Fields of Mistria's music? 🎶

Check out our full soundtrack on YouTube and listen whenever you want!

🎵 Music by Hidehito Ikumo and Catton Arthur

🔗 OST Playlist Link

[alphachromeyayo]

Nearly finished Umineko When They Cry... phew, what a wild ride 🧙‍♀️

Here's a little taishōgoto version of some of my favourite music from it 🦋

If you dig this, maybe check me out on Bandcamp! 💖

[ranchstoryblog]

Field Reporting: Winter

Alright, there ya go. Remind me to check it out again when Spring rolls around.

[meglosthegreat]

I just listened to the Veilguard soundtrack top to bottom (for no reason other than I thought I might find something worth using as tabletop background tracks) and like, I felt absolutely nothing???

Even if I don't like or feel particularly strongly about a game, listening to its soundtrack usually elicits some kind of response in my brain. Like "oh, I remember that from this bit" if nothing else. But I don't even remember most of these from the actual game? They somehow made a soundtrack so forgettable that I was listening to this music and feeling like I was hearing it for the first time!

Then there's this like... techno-western track? That I think was meant to be Varric's theme?? Like whoever composed this (and let's be real, it almost certainly wasn't Hans Zimmer himself) took one look at Varric's character design, thought "oh yeah dude looks a bit like an old cowboy" and went ahead without a second thought. It sounds like it was ripped straight from Borderlands, it has so little in common with any of DA's musical landscape. And I'm singling this one out but really the whole soundtrack feels like absolutely zero thought was put into it. Like they churned out some vaguely high-fantasy melodies, spiced them up with some synths, and called it a day.

Idk this is far down on the list of grievances I have about Veilguard, but in all my years of playing games, I have NEVER opened a game's soundtrack and not remembered a single piece of music from the game (the only exception was the Emmrich theme, because in keeping with most other Emmrich content it actually had a modest amount of flair). I mean come on, games having great soundtracks even if paired with mediocre gameplay is practically a meme at this point. I do not know how Bioware managed to fuck this one up so badly.

[arconinternet]

Whopper Chase (ZX Spectrum/Amstrad CPC, Erbe Software, 1987)

You can play this game, which was originally sold with Burger King Whoppers in Spain, in your browser here.

Tip: After the ZX Spectrum version finishes loading and nothing appears, press any key to start the game.

[smileyface098]

THE MURDER OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (GAME ASSETS)

HELLO. I extracted all of The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog game assets. You can find sprites, backgrounds, audio files and other stuff here (no credit needed) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CCZy4UllhMBWPC7tco5gE-wCUoxCQJ6x?usp=sharing

EDIT: I uploaded the animations and other stuff I don't quite understand (I know nothing about coding) and also a link on how you can extract the assets yourself. I hope it helps. If you do something using these please share, I'd love to see. Thank you!

[afloofwithmultipleinterests]

album cover by by bud: @danixthefenix

If Dandy's World had an official soundtrack, this is what i think the lobby theme would sound like!

TWISTED FRENZY!

An Unofficial (FAN) Dandy's World Soundtrack! Lobby

I have a lot more songs already completed! The only thing i have left to do is video edit and render, and also complete ONE MORE song to have the entire fan soundtrack released! I made this out of love for the series and i can't wait until the game is complete! If anything, this music was a personal project, and for funsies!

[xjippirambles]

[Love and Deepspace]

🪙 "KENDRICK! DROP ANOTHER DISS TRACK, AND MY LIFE... IS YOURS." 🫴✨️💸✨️

🪙 Love and Deepspace has such top teir songs/backtracks/music. Pleasseeee give us them official releases, infold. 😭

[boltcutterparty]

I have THOUGHTS on Ifan's Theme. Mead Gold and Blood is a masterpiece and if you haven't seen Borislav Slavov's talk about his composing process you absolutely should (it's on YouTube), but hear me out:

+Spoilers under the cut+

His theme is divided into three acts. At first we get the flute - maybe a bansuri, but I'm not sure - lively and light-hearted, but slightly dissonant, which perfectly mirrors how we're introduced to him as a character. He's charismatic, he's nice, cracking jokes and enjoying himself even under dire circumstances. But there's a layer of darkness to him he won't reveal (yet). We know pretty early on that he's an actual contract killer, and definitely hiding some shit. Ifan's sweet side is not a front, but it's not all there is to him, either.

Then, in act two - after you get a brief piece of the main theme, which for me signals his connection to the divine, but maybe I'm reading into it too deep - the flute keeps going, but it gets MORE dissonant, in contrast with the strings rising in the background. It's hectic. There's a sense of danger and despair, and this part always makes me think of Ifan running through the forest to deliver the rift portal to the elves.

Then, the third act. We've got brass, and the flute stops, it sounds triumphant, there's a sense of overcoming that despair that we have in part two. It's the perfect soundtrack to him getting his revenge, placing his trust in himself and his friends instead of the leader that doomed him, and giving divinity back to the people. That part also plays after he kills the lone wolves, he's changing as a person, breaking free from his past, and he's choosing a different path like he does at the end of the game (at least, as a companion with high approval.)

And I know people think differently about this, but for me, that's his "good" ending - and deeply tragic that it isn't canon, that he makes one more misplaced sacrifice in Lucian's name, and the cycle goes on.

Man idk. It's such a banger.

[adam-sadmon]

Something I really like and noticed upon re-listening to the Elden Ring soundtrack is the harpsichord and guitar in Mohg, Lord of Blood. At least in comparison to the medieval aesthetic of the world and most of the OST the use of more 'modern' instruments really help set it apart and ingrain the idea of a coming age, beyond the medieval realm of the Lands Between, a new Dynasty.

[acquired-stardust]

Game Spotlight #17: Telenet Music Box (1989)

Acquired Stardust is back with another spotlight! Need something to read to get your mind of recent world events? Been hunting for some new music to listen to? Do you just like learning about cool obscure stuff? Join Ash for a look at one of the most obscure things as of yet featured on the blog in 1989's Telenet Music Box for the PC88!

When thinking about the history of video games, many people of a certain age conjure to mind a beginning marked by the boom that Nintendo's NES (known in Japan as the Famicom) brought to the world. Fewer people will be overly familiar with Atari's platforms or their competitors, and fewer still will likely have heard about the infamous crash of the American video game industry in 1983 beyond being able to regurgitate myths of Howard Scott Warshaw's adaptation of E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1983) bearing supposed direct responsibility.

This pop history approach becoming so normalized to people is frustrating but understandable because it's all around us. Being inundated with countless YouTubers and streamers professing a love for retro games has inadvertently created a narrative that video game history is a straight line through mainstream smash hit consoles and this couldn't be further from the truth - there is a whole world before and around the NES that has gone largely unexplored, particularly in the west, and odds are if you've spent much time on Tumblr you're probably passingly familiar with the subject of this spotlight.

Japan has finally begun to more widely adopt PC gaming (in part due to the phenomenon that is vtubing), with an absolute explosion in market share in the past decade. What you might not know is that Japan actually has a pretty rich history of PC gaming that really blossomed in the 80s and 90s with several hardware manufacturers such as NEC and ASCII offering options that would give the world some early looks at teams and individuals that would come to define the medium going forward.

One such game changer (no pun intended) is Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear debuting in 1987 with its definitive version on MSX PCs and getting an incredible sequel that puts the NES-exclusive Snake's Revenge to shame, and another Kojima title would go on to define the NEC PC98 in popular consciousness with classic sexy adventure Policenauts easily being the most memorable title which would subsequently be ported and updated several times for home consoles such as the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation.

You may be familiar with the PC98 as screenshots from its many games are popular around Tumblr, most often featuring gloriously mid-late 90s anime girls rendered in stunning pixel art that feels like it exists somewhere out of time as things isolated from their origin as video game screenshots. Having been on Tumblr for over a decade (and the internet at large for even longer), it's my observation that the rediscovery of and appreciation for this retro anime aesthetic (and its later PC98 permutation) was really born here on Tumblr before spreading to other platforms to the point that you've probably seen at least one shot cross your dashboard before. But for this spotlight we're going even further back to the predecessor of the PC98, the PC88.

NEC's PC88 was released in the early 80s and most models featured a whopping 62 KB of RAM (in comparison to the NES's 2 KB) and many later models featured Yamaha sound chips which resulted in games often being visually and aurally significantly more impressive than you would see in home consoles at the time, in some cases lightyears ahead of the NES particularly in regards to music which is a pretty great thing for the sake of this spotlight. The games themselves were also quite varied in content from everything to the kawaii and comedic to erotic and even plenty of horror, with many standout games more accurately reflecting wider Japanese pop culture of the era than what you'd see on the comparatively sterile NES.

This wild west, edgy punk rock software library that goes part and parcel with Japan's nascent PC gaming scene is one of the coolest elements of going back to explore it. You never really know what you're in for, and you might be surprised (or even disgusted) with some of the unique experiences the platform has to offer. Many of these games (and those on the successor PC98) are completely untranslated and Japanese comprehension helps their enjoyment greatly and while often simple enough to enjoy without it that aspect has certainly contributed to their enigma in the west.

There are a lot of factors that have made PC88 and PC98 fandom and emulation not as glamorous as that of home consoles and some of that is due to limitations of the hardware in how it handles scrolling screens, with a noticeable chug as games scroll. Another factor is the compounding nature of its flaws and obscurity meaning emulators themselves are in Japanese and a bit tricky to figure out how to handle, old PCs infamously lacking a lot of user friendly features we take for granted today.

One such surprise is Telenet Music Box, a collection of then-prominent publisher Telenet Japan's biggest games' music. It's barely even a game and more a piece of software fit for a museum, with minimal activity limited to browsing game albums (a total of 13), choosing songs to listen to and creating custom playlists. Each of the 13 game albums is showcased with beautiful splash art and accompanied by a tracker for the keyboard as well as titles for each song and a timer for the length of songs.

Included in the mix is an impressive slate of Telenet Japan's games that showcase the depth and variety of the PC88's library such as Mugen Senshi Valis and even an early alternate manifestation of Shin Megami Tensei as a top-down dungeon crawler reminiscent of Gauntlet. Each of Telenet Music Box's 13 albums have their standout tracks, with some from Luxor and Final Zone being among our favorites.

Telenet Music Box is not a wholly unique concept and several other similar games were released for the platform (as well as the PC98), but it is an exceptionally clever one who's usefulness is perhaps all the more apparent now almost 40 years removed from its release, serving as a fantastic introductory course to a little understood part of video game history. It's a fantastic time capsule and with plenty to offer listeners of its roughly 3 hour runtime well beyond its value as virtual archaeology worth excavating.

Perhaps its most valuable asset is its ability to highlight the true nature of history. History is not a static thing with a start and an end but rather a living breathing thing that touches our everyday lives. Rare is it that anything begins or ends from nothing, with things instead in a constant state of evolution even when rising from the ashes of something else. One particular example of this is in Wolf Team's Final Zone (which features hilarious commentary in its opening scene that I'm not sure how made it past management - do look it up if you can) and Mugen Senshi Valis, the latter of which having been extremely popular in its time, spawning tons of ports and several sequels, with the team behind it eventually morphing into Namco's Tales Studio, responsible for some of the most beloved JRPGs of all time such as Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia.

While PC88 emulation can be frustrating to work out or find files for, an unforeseen strength of Telenet Music Box's concept of 'game as an album' is how much easier its discoverability is in recent years compared to the more traditional video games it shares a platform with, being far more easy to interface with and experience than the games it itself chronicles, and it can be found on YouTube in its entirety for your listening pleasure alongside plenty of other PC88 soundtracks. I invite you to dip your toes into this little-known scene and hope you come out of it with appreciation for the wide world of games outside what may be familiar to you, and maybe even some new favorite tracks.

A gem hidden among the stones, Telenet Music Box is undoubtedly stardust.

- Ash

[alphachromeyayo]

Some dream pop kinda sounds before I go to bed early 💿✨

Made the visuals in Bryce 3D

Which I'm not great at but hey, it's fun!