The Sound of Awesome

Do you want to know what nostalgia sounds like? It sounds like a video arcade in 1982.

Actually I never visited a video arcade in 1982, what with being only two years old, but it's pretty much the same experience as a video arcade in 1988, which, coincidentally, also sounds like nostalgia.

I say this because someone excellent at coinopvideogames.com took it upon himself to record himself playing games at various arcades between 1982 and 1988, on audio cassette (itself almost prehistoric), and then, more than two decades later, convert those cassettes into MP3s that you can listen to through your web browser.

This is even more awesome than it appears. You may have forgotten that arcade games were loud, and you can hear every sound effect coming out of the machine clearly, including the surprisingly catchy theme to Jungle King. If I had these on a CD I would play it as the background music to my house.

Go check it out! (And thanks to Dinosaur Comics for the heads-up.)

Straight Outta Compton

"Straight Outta Compton" by N.W.A, rendered as an introspective acoustic femme-rock ballad by Nina Gordon. Unmissable.

UPDATES: While we're talking covers, and while I'm ripping content from Copy Cats, who's heard Sean Connery doing a cover of The Beatles' "In My Life"? Hilarious! Very much in the style of the musical outings of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, but Scottish.

Also, Greg Laswell does "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" as a depressing Eternal Nightcap-esque suicide ballad.

Zak & Sara

Too caught up in New Year's stuff to blog for real today, but rather than post nothing I give you c_click's fan clip for Ben Folds' song "Zak & Sara", which I like. Enjoy, and have yourself a good Calendar Rollover Day.

Phantasy Star Music

By the way, if anyone wants to do me an electronic Xmas present, you know what would be awesome? Instrumental renditions of the score to the original Phantasy Star. Which is, of course, hands-down the greatest 8-bit JRPG ever made.

By way of reference I offer links to MIDI files of the two stand-out tracks: the Cave theme, and the Motavia overworld theme. Also, while we're on the topic, the Phantasy Star 3 Main Theme, which I have fonder memories of than possibly any other piece of gaming music.

For some reason Phantasy Star 2, 3 and 4 are all out on the Wii Virtual Console but they've yet to release the original. What's up with that? I've still got my copy in its original packaging but that's not much use without a Master System to play it on.

EDIT: Those links above go to vgmusic.com which has some sort of a "don't link to our files" policy, so when you get there you'll be dumped on a message page that you need to click on from to get to the musicz. Setting it up so you don't have to do that would take time and I'm sure you're all capable of navigating a splash page. If anyone wants to download the MIDIs and host them, I'll change the links.

Kirby/Snoop Dogg - Drop It Like It's Hot

Apologies to those who have seen it before.

Apologies to those seeing it for the first time.

Press The Start Button

Icon may not have been as good as previous DefJam games, but it's good to see Ludacris is hard at work on the soundtrack for the next installment. Apparently.

Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Highlight

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is that United States institution where on Thanksgiving some big floats roll down a street and there's people and... anyway, this is why we can't have nice things.

Thanks for watching.

Disco Stick

"Let's have some fun, this beat is sick. I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."

Worst. Song. Ever.

I blame Laura for this. Also for this, which is the reason that we should all look at ball-jointed dolls as if they are odd.

Real post to follow shortly.

Prince of Persia Trailer

The world owes Valve and Jonathon Coulter a debt. Ever since the runaway success of Portal and its excellent closing music "Still Alive", it's like the game industry woke up and realised that a killer theme song is worth a year of development.

Here we have the Tokyo Game Show trailer for the new Prince of Persia, and by golly it's a thing to see. There is no possible way that playing this game can be more enjoyable than watching the trailers for it. A quick search has failed to turn up the artist / track info for the music but if anyone knows it drop me a comment and I'll update.

Also - and I've had some experience with the previous games - this still feels less like Prince of Persia than it does a free-running version of Ico. I'm intrigued. Intensely intrigued.

UPDATE: The artist is Sia, the track is "Breathe Me", and you can hear it in full on YouTube (link). Thanks Chris!

Mirror's Edge Theme

Anyone want to hear the theme from upcoming EA/DICE free-running title Mirror's Edge? Here it is: "Still Alive" by Lisa Miskovsky, set to a fan footage compilation. Nothing to do with the similarly titled, and somewhat more awesome, theme from Portal.

Hey - how weird is it that EA are making original intellectual property that I actually want to play?

The Music of Simlish

Katy Perry doing her song Hot N Cold in Simlish as part of the trailer for Sims 2: Apartment Life. For those not in the know, Simlish is the fake language used in the Sims games, which helps give them their international appeal or somesuch. I'm not sold on Ms Perry as a particularly wonderful human being but this is one fine, fine trailer. Almost makes me want to play The Sims again.

While we're on the subject of Simlish-meets-singing, I thought I might direct your attention to some other gems of game-related re-recording that you may or may not have been aware of. By and large they don't run to my tastes in music but almost anything can become listenable in Simlish. Check 'em out:

Black Eyed Peas - Let's Get Retarded

Lily Allen - Smile

Pussycat Dolls - Don'tcha

The Veronicas - When It All Falls Apart

Datarock - Fa-Fa-Fa

They Might Be Giants - Take Out The Trash

LHC Edutainment. Word.

It's time we all learned a little something about the Large Hadron Collider. A little funky something.

Here we see workers at the Large Hadron Collider being careful not to cause a resonance cascade dropping some fresh beats, or somesuch. It's good to see the under-representation of the Higgs Boson in modern music being addressed.

I'm also disturbed to realise that the scientific community has still not learned its lesson about giving things acronyms that form girls' names, particularly where said things are involved in giant cutting-edge research installations.

Red Alert 3 Talent Remix

I'll be honest - ever since I first played Starcraft I just haven't been able to enjoy a Command & Conquer game, despite an abortive flirtation with Tiberian Sun.

But if someone had told me that Red Alert 3 would have giant samurai robots I probably would have been more excited. It's all in the context of the excellent "Hell March" remix above, which should be seen and enjoyed. Still not sold on Jenny McCarthy as Tanya, though.

Also, the code to embed a GameTrailers video on my blog is as long as a freaking novel. What's up with that?

Said The Raindrop To The Seed

If you'll allow me the brief indulgence of going off-topic, I'd like to draw your attention to the above video. It was featured on YouTube a few days ago so I'm hardly posting from deep in the music underground, but that doesn't stop it from being rather good. Granted my tastes run naturally towards solo female vocalists but give it a listen. Her name's Jess Chalker and she posts on YouTube as as alleycat82.

Halo Theme On Animal Emergency

Spotted on tonight's episode of Animal Emergency on WIN TV: music from Halo.

During the segment about the dog with the infected eyeball, the producers apparently selected portions of Martin O'Donnell's score for Halo 2 as their background music (it's the track that plays over the game's main menu). It's presumably chosen for its poignant and emotional qualities but it wouldn't surprise me if most of those involved had no idea where the music was sourced from.

Another sign of our gaming Australia.

Great Gaming Music

Great games are very often made by great music. Over the past few days I've highlighted some of the best single tracks in the rich history of videogaming. Here, in no better order than the one in which I posted them, are all twenty. Click the links to see the post.

1: Kiss Me Sunlights
From Zone of the Enders

2: Sanctuary
From Kingdom Hearts 2

3: Halo Theme
From Halo

4: One-Winged Angel
From Final Fantasy VII

5: The 7th Guest
From The 7th Guest

6: Metal Gear Solid Main Theme
From Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

7: Max Payne Theme
From Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

8: Silent Hill
From Silent Hill

9: The Secret of Monkey Island
From The Secret of Monkey Island

10: Still Alive
From Portal

11: Katamari On The Rocks
From Katamari Damacy

12: Hymn Of The Fayth
From Final Fantasy X

13: Overworld Theme
From The Legend of Zelda

14: Theme 4
From Lemmings

15: World 1-1 Theme
From Super Mario Bros

16: Type A
From Tetris

17: Legacy
From Full Throttle

18: Atom Bomb
From Wipeout XL

19: Bubble Bobble
From Bubble Bobble

20: Hell March
From Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Great Gaming Music #20: Hell March

As this series of Great Gaming Music posts nears its end, people have not been shy in offering opinions about what classic tunes I've missed out. I was initially prepared to ignore them all and treat you to the main theme from the original Wing Commander but sadly YouTube hasn't been able to come up with the goods.

Therefore I'm instead caving to popular pressure and directing your ears to Frank Klepacki's scores to the Command & Conquer games. Featured here is my personal favourite, "Hell March", which is the opening theme to Command & Conquer: Red Alert. It's a game based on the premise of Hitler being assassinated by a time-travelling Albert Einstein, and Hell March manages to convey the simultaneous ridiculousness and awesomeness of that concept.

Vegas-based Klepacki has produced the score for a number of games by Westwood, its contemporaries and successors, including The Legend of Kyrandia, Dune 2, Blade Runner and Universe at War.

By the way, those under the misconception that "Mechanical Man" is the superior piece of C&C music can find it here, but while they listen to it I'll be quietly scorning them.

Great Gaming Music #19: Bubble Bobble

Bubble Bobble may not have the most powerfully moving soundtrack in gaming history, but considering that it storms through a hundred levels using only a single 45-second loop of sound, the fact that it doesn't drive players screaming from their computers is a minor musical miracle. In fact, I often find myself humming this even when not attempting to trap critters in floating bubbles.

Featured above is the theme from Bubble Bobble as it appears in the Amiga version of the game.

Great Gaming Music #18: Atom Bomb

The Wipeout series is known for delivering thrilling high-speed futuristic anti-gravity racing. While superficially similar to Nintendo's F-Zero games, Wipeout distinguishes itself through an extreme sense of speed and a history of trance soundtracks featuring big-name artists, including Orbital, The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Prodigy and Fluke.

The soundtrack to the Psygnosis-developed Wipeout XL was heavily promoted in partnership with Red Bull Energy Drink. Stations running the game were set up in nightclubs and an extensive marketing campaign was set in motion. The soundtrack album spawned a single, "Atom Bomb" by Fluke (featured above) which reached #20 on the UK charts. "Atom Bomb" also appeared on Fluke's fourth album Risotto and represents one of their most successful creations.

Great Gaming Music #17: Legacy

This is Legacy by the Gone Jackals as featured in the opening to Lucasarts' Full Throttle. The music played an integral part in selling this biker-themed point-'n'-click adventure to a skeptical audience. The hard rock and hillbilly soundtrack helped smooth over the occasional rough patch in the game's pacing and allow players to experience the frequent moments of genius on offer.

The Gone Jackals released three albums between 1990 and 1998; Legacy is featured on their second album, Bone to Pick. Despite attempts in 2000 and 2003, sequel projects to Full Throttle entitled (respectively) Payback and Hell on Wheels have never gotten off the ground and as of today no attempts to continue the franchise are on foot.