Game Music Revue – Sound Mario Bros.
- Credited Composer: 16-Bit Scrollers, Koji Kondo
- Released May 25, 1986
- Label: Japan Record
- VGMdb Information Page
- Discogs Information Page
Man, living in Japan in the 80s must’ve been dope as shit. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: Famicom/Namcot Game Sound Museums
- Credited Composer: Various
- Released 2004
- Label: Scitron Digital
- Discogs Information Page: Famicom Series, Namco Series
When I moved to Japan a few years back, my game music collecting habit really kicked itself into overdrive. And whenever I would go out looking for CD soundtracks of my favorite classic titles, I would occasionally stumble upon these strange tiny CDs of Nintendo game audio. I would pick one up whenever I saw them. They were cheap, and many of them were for some of my favorite games of all-time, so why not?
Next thing I knew, I had over 30 of them. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: Rez Infinite (iam8bit Edition)
- Credited Composer: Various Artists
- Released February 15, 2017
- Label: Nippon Columbia
- VGMdb Information Page
The Rez soundtrack is the dopest shit.
It’s the soundtrack to the future, if your present is the mid-90s. It’s what you listen to when you’re in The Matrix. What you put on your headphones if your Angelina Jolie in Hackers. It’s the top 40 radio of the Ghost In The Shell universe. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: The Legend of Zelda 30th Anniversary Concert
- Credited Composer: Koji Kondo with additional artists
- Released February 15, 2017
- Label: Nippon Columbia
- VGMdb Information Page: Deluxe Edition, Standard Edition
Last year, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo held a short concert series featuring orchestral arrangements of Zelda tunes performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Now, less than six months later, the concerts have made their way to CD, and in a swank deluxe edition to boot. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: Toy Music – Dancing Super Mario Brothers
- Credited Performer: Akihabara Electric Circus
- Released September 15, 1988
- Label: Eastworld/Toshiba
- VGMdb Information Page
In 1988 a group by the name of Akiharbara Electric Circus released two arranged game music albums. One featured nothing but reworked version of music from Super Mario Bros. 3. It’s a weird record.
The other is this, Toy Music: Dancing Super Mario Bros.
It’s fucking batshit. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: Ghost In The Shell Megatech Body Co. Ltd (Playstation Game Soundtrack)
- Credited Composer: Various Artists
- Released July 17, 1997
- Label: Sony
- VGMdb Information Page: 2CD Edition, Single Disc Edition, 2LP Edition
For all its acclaim as an anime action epic, the original Ghost In The Shell film is actually a pretty quiet affair, peppered with only a scant few minutes of solid action. The majority of the film is a drama, that alternates between police procedural and meditative discussions on technology and what it means to be alive in a world where humanity and machine seem to be one in the same. The whole thing climaxes not with a giant battle, but with a conversation between a robot and a cyborg, discussing if life has a point without mortality.
Accompanying all of this is a legendary score by Kenji Kawai, which combines modern technology and traditional Japanese instrumentation with an end result that resembles something that Philip Glass or Dead Can Dance might compose. Just like the film itself, the score to Ghost In The Shell is haunting and beautiful, a work of art that is nearly unrivaled.
Got all that? Good. Because the Ghost In The Shell game that appeared on the PS1 is a third-person shooter where you take control of a tank and blow shit up real good. And the soundtrack is non-stop pulse-pounding techno, all of which has the subtlety and nuance of a jackhammer. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: 8-Bit Music Power
- Credited Composer: Various Artists
- Released January 2016
- Label: Columbus Circle
- VGMdb Information Page
So this is a weird thing. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: iam8bit Vinyl Review Roundup
Late last year, iam8bit jumped into the video game vinyl ring with their release of the soundtrack to Hohokum, a quirky indie title available on PSN. They followed that up big with their release of the soundtrack to Hotline Miami 2, a massive affair that came with the soundtrack spread across three colored discs as well as download codes to both the soundtrack and the game itself. It was a huge success, leading to three printings that have all sold out.
Now iam8bit is following that up with a new slate of releases. Three, Banjo Kazooie, Battletoads and Perfect Dark, are culled from the Rare back catalog, while the fourth, Journey, is the score to a relatively new game that was first released for the PS3 and later updated for the PS4. It’s really good by the way, you should buy it.
It’s ambitious for a company new to the vinyl game to ramp up their production so quickly, and with such big name titles. But thankfully it seems that they’ve done each title justice from an audio standpoint, albeit with a few notable presentation caveats and concerns that hopefully will get addressed with future releases. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: Streets Of Rage (2015 Data Discs Edition)
- Credited Composer: Yuzo Koshiro
- Released September 2015
- Label: Data Discs
- VGMdb Information Page
A few years ago Death Waltz Records opened up shop and promptly took the the record geek community by storm with its high quality vinyl re-issues of classic horror soundtracks, presented with heavy duty sleeves and pressed on creatively-colored vinyl.
Since then, we seemingly become lousy with labels looking to cash in on this sudden re-issue trend. Some, like One Way Static and Invada, have done good by releasing quality soundtracks that sound great and feature amazing art. Others, like the atrocious Waxworks and the flipper-friendly Mondo (who bought Death Waltz rather than compete with them) have often sacrificed audio quality and consumer friendliness in efforts to put out ultra-limited edition items that not only sound horrid, but become impossible to find thanks to their finitely small print runs.
So I was a little skeptical at first when I found out about Data Discs, a new label dedicated to releasing classic game music on vinyl. With the vinyl craze continuing to reach new heights, I feared they were just in it for the money, hoping to snag a quick buck off of hipsters who put presentation and nostalgia over actual audio quality. Still, when I saw that they were releasing the soundtrack to Streets of Rage on vinyl, I had to take the bait and grab a copy.
I was hoping for the best and fearing for the worst – but thankfully I was pleasantly surprised. Continue reading
Game Music Revue: The 30th Anniversary Super Mario Bros. Music
- Credited Composer: Nintendo (Koji Kondo, Hirokazu Tanaka, Kazumi Totaka, Shinobu Tanaka, Mahito Yokota, Ryo Nagamatsu, Asuka Hayazaki)
- Released September 13, 2015
- Label: Columbia/Sony
- VGMdb Information Page