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Melfice

How did you get game music when you were a kid?

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When I was little I loved Sonic music, so I took a karaoke machine, went to debug/soundtest mode on any of the games, and then put the microphone up to the TV speaker and put it on record.

What sucked was my mom babysat kids at that time :P So I always had to try and round them up and get them to shutup long enough to get the song...until I released it pretty muchly went on forever in the Soundtest Modes. Oh yeah and they were on casette tapes. Ugh.

I think the main reason I was doing it was because I had Sonic toys from McDonalds, and I always use to sit there and play with them like I was in the game (sonic jumping up and hitting Robotnik's eggship). Haha I use to make new mecharobot type things for Robotnik all the time (like big ones for a 'final battle') and then end up playing with that and my crappy McDonald's Sonic toy for a few hours before he beat Dr.Robotnik...and then I built another 'machine.' lol.

I did the same thing for music from Doom64 the first time I played it (well, in Watch Your Step anyway).

Ah the memories...

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I never like game music when I was kid. Now I got 20 gigs of random music on my comp. Mostly doom,quake2 and castlevaniea music.

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Looking back on my life thus far I can see that my life has been full of games...hell...sometimes I wonder if my life is a game...who knows...the world is full of reality which use to be fictional (in other words, stuff that use to be thought impossible, fantasy, or the stuff in movies)

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I never really tried to get it from the games because I played video games almost constantly as a kid :)

These days, though, game music makes up a fairly large chunk of my music collection (~2500 out of ~18,000 mp3s), and I try to get a lot of stuff that'd be hard to find otherwise (I went to GREAT lengths to get the mp3s from Glove On Fight and Alice, as well as to get some of the music from FF3j). I also have a bunch of stuff from VGMix.com, a site dedicated to doing covers/remixes/arrangements of video game music, and have contributed a number of my own to the site as well (mostly of NES games that don't get a lot of coverage, like The Guardian Legend).

Also, NSFs and SPCs are the best thing to happen to game music ever. :D

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We ripped PSX Doom and Doom64 music by hooking the system up to the computer via it via AV cables and Goldwave. Good times, good times...

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Microphone to my speaker for the Rott midi's when I only had an equivilant to a SB-16. Found soundtracks to Sonic, Vectorman, Comix Zone, Toejam & Earl, and XMen 2- The Clone Wars on cds in a box set (Kurt Harland of Information Society did the original, as well as the enhanced soundtrack on the cd, for XMen 2...).

After I got a good synthesizer/keyboard, I learned how to put it through the Line-in jack and make mp3s. This eventually led to me writing music, but that's another story...

Other than that, I didn't listen much. I did used to carry my Gameboy around with headphones, though, to listen.

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I have no other way to get game music than to play the game that has the music I seek :)

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Usualy had the game sit there, and the best music is usualy in the credits, so heh...then I learned that a lot of games had music on the CD that you could play with cdplayer.exe. Descent 2 was a personal favorite, especialy track 3. Also, I used to play Civilization endlessly, and since it had no music, I'd take one of my mom's CDs then put it on, have it play on repeat, then start playing Civ. I learned to like a lot of good bands that way: Jimmi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Sting, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, whatever...

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Bloodshedder said:

1.37 GB of game music, mostly remixes, and that's not including the 751 MB of Doom music and remixes.


3.48 GB here :)

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Yes, always loved game music. Growing up in a family of musicians gave me access to many wonderous recording devices, I still have casette tapes of Sonic CD/Ecco teh Dolphin CD and the 16-bit Sonic games soundtracks in perfect quality. I also recorded many of my old C64 games and other shit...And Doom tapes, yes Doom of course. But that was a long time ago. Today I have a few recordings I made on my computer of recent game soundtracks, like Soul Calibur and Shadowman. Yes they are great quality.

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Heh, I jacked up the music of games like Sonic and Mario games when I was a kid, I specificly remember dancing to the Dr.Mario themes all over furniture and jazz with several other people. It was a party. :D
I used to tape music from games and play them when in the car drivng somewhere. :D
Of course as of now I only listen to game music, I havent listened to normie music for several months and dont plan to soon. I've been listening to Sonic music for the past long time, made a few CDs of them and stuff. :)
24/7 My Sonic Music is a playin' :)
I love game music. :)

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Ubik said:

I never really tried to get it from the games because I played video games almost constantly as a kid :)

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Game music rocks - in some cases just as good as normal music. The only ones I ever taped was the Lemmings 2 tunes using an old tape recorder with built-in mic. Then I discovered wav files and cd burners, so I now have a 30-minute cd with the 14 tracks on it. Good as any album at times (especially as the tunes play faster than they did originally).

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I once got my talkboy and set it next to the tv speaker when I beat Vectorman...Damn, that game had a cool ending song!

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When I was a kid, I basically had 3 choices:

A) Use the game's built in jukebox, if possible,
B) Put the game on pause and hope the music still played,
C) Try to get the character into a safe place and listen to the music then.

Nowadays I use sites like VGmusic for the most part. I also found a program that would rip certain music formats (midi, mod, and a few others) from a game's data files, and got some tracks that way, but the program doesn't seem to like Windows XP.

I wish I could get hold of the Major Stryker soundtrack, I recall liking some of those songs, in particular the one called "Pressure's On" (the boss music).

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Ultimate DooMer said:

Game music rocks - in some cases just as good as normal music. The only ones I ever taped was the Lemmings 2 tunes using an old tape recorder with built-in mic. Then I discovered wav files and cd burners, so I now have a 30-minute cd with the 14 tracks on it. Good as any album at times (especially as the tunes play faster than they did originally).


heh, i didn't even know the phenomenon of 'music' existed until a few years ago. before then all i heard was dialoge.

i kazaa-ed lemmings last year and suddenly realized what a great soundtrack it had, so much i remixed one of the songs and am putting it on my band's album :)

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Use3D said:

Ecco teh Dolphin


Tim Follin is the motherfucking MAN.

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a small digital recorder my dad use to use in an office, i hijacked it one day(hey it was priced at $250 and the moron never knew it was gone) anyway may favorites included metriod II and doom. plus the recoreder added effects, slow motion by 5% made a metriod song sound relly good

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I can't get over the title music to Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn (my latest game purchase). It loops oddly, but otherwise it kicks all other fantasy music's ass. Nothing on even the LotR soundtrack is as good...well, except maybe perhaps that one track THAT THEY FORGOT TO PUT ON THE DAMN FOTR CD AND THUS I SHALL NEVER BUY IT. But anyway, its damn good, probably even better than the Torment theme. But I have this big thing for sweeping scores.

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Ubik said:

Tim Follin is the motherfucking MAN.


Hm, perhaps you are refering the Genesis version? For the Sega CD version has the soundtrack done by Spencer Nilsen, same dude responsible for the American Sonic CD soundtrack. Apparenty he has a big solo career too but I've only run into a few tracks here and there.

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A testament to how damn memorable videogame music is: I remember when I first played Sonic the Hedgehog. I loved hearing the second level music (Marble Zone) and the Bonus Zone. But in those days I sucked at 2D platformers, so I didn't get too far. Fast-forward eight years later, in the year 2000. A younger cousin who had been underprivileged for some time bought a used Sega Genesis and some games at a flea market. I went to his house and took turns playing some games. He puts in the level select cheat in Sonic and tells me to listen to the music on the level he selected (Starlight Zone). I swear, it was as if a wave of nostalgia washed over my consciousness. I had never heard the song before, but it evoked a twinge of heartbreak, a longing for the carefree days of childhood, in me. Now it has come to symbolize a lingering regret within me, an old scar being pricked with a pin.

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A testament to how damn memorable videogame music is: I remember when I first played Sonic the Hedgehog. I loved hearing the second level music (Marble Zone) and the Bonus Zone. But in those days I sucked at 2D platformers, so I didn't get too far. Fast-forward eight years later, in the year 2000. A younger cousin who had been underprivileged for some time bought a used Sega Genesis and some games at a flea market. I went to his house and took turns playing some games. He puts in the level select cheat in Sonic and tells me to listen to the music on the level he selected (Starlight Zone). I swear, it was as if a wave of nostalgia washed over my consciousness. I had never heard the song before, but it evoked a twinge of heartbreak, a longing for the carefree days of childhood, in me. Now it has come to symbolize a lingering regret within me, an old scar being pricked with a pin.


I did the same thing not too long ago. For my PC, I bought the CD for $10.00 that has Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles on it. I played my way through, and I think around the Sky Sanctuary Zone, when I heard that music, I just felt incredible. I felt like a kid again. Heh, in today's day and age it's hard to feel like that at all. Since then I've been finding myseld donwloading OC remixes and everything under the sun. I also had a wave of nostalgia when I played Sonic Adventure when it came out, then SA2 when it came out later. I really hope they come up with a SA3 :) Just so I can go back to that nostalgia again.

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I remember I hooked up my PC to a mixer and went into the music menu of Red Alert and recording onto tape. Ahh, those were the days :)

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Trasher][ said:
http://remix.overclocked.org

Game music remixes. I recommend the Mazedude stuff for sure.

I never tried to get the music from games much when I was a kid. Nowadays is different.


OCR is, for the most part, glutted with generic techno remixes done in FruityLoops, and 90% of the tracks you'll find there are boring or mediocre. vgmix.com isn't currently in full operation, but it will be again soon, and THAT is where the really high-quality, innovative video game arrangements/remixes/covers come in. Especially the ones by virt, mv, Beej, Ailsean, HSA, Russell Cox and zyko.

(a bit of shameless advertisement since I contribute to the site myself ;)

As for Tim Follin: He did the Ecco: Defender of the Future soundtrack and one of the previous Ecco games, Plok, and a number of NES games (including the incredible soundtrack for Silver Surfer). He's one of the most criminally underrated game composers out there, almost matching how overrated Nobuo Uematsu is. :)

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I ran Hifi cables thru the VCR and into a stereo and put them on casette tapes at first. Actually, no, At first I used the same method that you first mentioned with a mircrophone. The I moved on the the methond I just mentioned. Then I moved on to HiFi cabes right into my computer and capturing the sound that way. I still do it that way cause I find I can get optimum quality. I sample them at Ridiculous sapmle rates before I convert them to Mp3s, but they sound great that way. also, this way I can get them to play as long as I want them to play.

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