video game influenced tracks

tom pr

Well-known member
NESkimos do instrumental rock covers of video game tunes- I think they have a soundclick page where you can download them doing the Castlevania theme, Megaman themes, etc..

Horse the Band had a song 'Cutsman', about the Megaman boss- it's utterly twisted, and fantastic.

Drunken Tiger have 'Final Fantasy', which features a theme from FF7 twisted into a hip-hop beat, and I think they have a Street Fighter one around too.

And then I wanna say there's a Foreign Beggars tune that has something to do with Mario, but that might just be my imagination running away with me..
 

mms

sometimes
there was a hit song in the states around the time of pacman called pacman fever, by two guys called buckner and garcia, it was so big they did an entire album inspired by the games and a day on mtv dedicated to them and it!

there were also a several electro records dedicated to the yellow fellow
like pacjam by jonson crew

and that tune -'i'm a pacman*eat everything i can' by god knows i can't be bothered to find the record , plus arcade funk as mentioned

later on 'sonic boom' by aux 88

there is that ram trilogy virus track pacman which is a drum and bass one

also lil louis video clash which judging by the name and the track must have been influenced


load of music links here

http://www.vgmusic.com/

http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/tcworh/
http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/directory.cgi?genre=search&searchdesc=game music

i went on a french exchange at school once and the kid i stayed with loved 8 bit video game music and depeche mode
 
Last edited:

hamarplazt

100% No Soul Guaranteed
There's so many rave/techno/electronica/etc. tracks that are directly (through samples or the title) videogame-influenced, that I wouldn't even know where to start looking for them in my collection. Rather, I'd like to point out that huge amounts of 90s techno, and especially rave styles like gabber, ardcore and trance, was very much indirectly influenced by videogame music. A lot of the young producers starting to make rave music in the early nineties had grown up with Commodore 64, and the game music of that particular computer was some of the most inventive and far out electronic music of the eighties (well, ever, actually). If you compare old C64 game tunes with rave, it's obvious where a lot of the style and approach came from. Some producers started to make music on the C64 before they moved on to the Amiga. And in addition to that, a lot of those who were just raves and not producers had grown up with C64 as well, and was allready, to some degree, conditioned to the most freaked out kinds of rave - they had allready heard something sounding a lot like it.

Finally, I'd like to mention Paric Catani. He made a "cover" (or rather a mash up) of the C64 classic "Commando" (on the Hitler 2000/Attitude PC8 album). I asked him about that once, and he said that he just had to make it, it was one of the most influncial tracks for him, the first real techno he ever heard. The videogame influence is clear in a lot of his music, but most of all there's the Horrible Plans of Flex Busterman-album, a fictive computer game soundtrack, and really excellent. Trashy and noisy but still totally catchy.
 

dsp13

GAMEBWOY
Yeah that klymaxx track is pretty fucked up! great lyrics though. By way of thanks heres the equally bizzarre CAPTAIN FUNKAHO's "MY 2600" from STONES THROW's 7" series. Love the sabbath intro before the crack-funk game namedroppin begins... this is what atari commercials woulda been like if the whole world was on LSD.
http://s30.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=015EKHQ88M6XN2BDJ36Y8IONLV

FLEX BUSTERMAN is a great album... that was the first sid/gameboy sounding music I heard before micromusic and the invention of nanoloop. Patric Catani was always one of my favourite producers but I haven't bought any of his stuff since attitude PC8. 100 dps is a killer. That alec empire nintendo teenage robots album is pretty terrible... supposed to be anti-gameboymusic-music? he's a strange guy.

PACMAN FEVER was the first but maybe the blurst game tune ever... it's borderline country!!! designed to help kids memorize the patterns to beat pacman the concept is pretty ingenious. anyone know if someones covered it?

PACJAM by jonzun crew is definately a classic

I know I have more tunes I've forgotten as well but 3/4 's of my record collection is on the other side of the world. I know I've heard at least 10 - 20 hip-hop tracks with lyrics about games, to be honest there's probably hundreds but it's usually just one line.
 

Logan Sama

BestThereIsAtWhatIDo
hint said:
Diggedy Derek mentioned it - it's Jo, not Shy FX, isn't it?

d'oh! :eek:

yeh it was producer by shy fx though. I was about 16 when that came out tho, correct info wasn't an important part of my life in them days. :)
 

Diaz

Well-known member
omg- you're right, Buick: I was too young for the first appearance of a)video games and b)jungle but i more or less need to hear this rtype track or not only might I die, but my life would be totally nugatory*.

mark n from bloody fist (nasenbluten/overcast/probably a bunch of other nicks) works off of old amigas.

there's also this ep which is under the name Mark VII [google reveals it to be Mark VII Presents Action Replays) which is prrrty good- hiphop mashedup with c64 songs. if you're like me, you'd think commando jackson would be be the best track but I have to give the award to spherical rhymes. while the commando theme is what *I* consider to be protojungle, their mashup feels a little clunky while the spherical (could I appropriate 'riddim' for this?) beat is dorky and flexy enough to hold through for busta.

not to mention something like amon tobin's soundtrack for the new splinter cell, which i haven't heard but i know non-music-dorks kinda flipped out over for a while.


*nugatory is an excellent word, because it sounds like marijuana abuse and Kant uses it. It means 'of no or near no value'.
 

dsp13

GAMEBWOY
Game Over

yo... minikomi, still wouldn't mind checking out that tetris tape if u get around to it. like yr new radio show btw. a bunch more tracks on my blog (link below) if yr interested... first ones are gonna expire tomorrow maybe.
 
C

captain easychord

Guest
also that track jammer produced near the end of roll deep's creeper mixtape, the one with all the heavy strings.

"vega bruv, street fighter 2"
 

nomos

Administrator
Dexplicit's "Victory" totally reminds me of when I used to work in a bowling alley and had to listen to an arcade full of gamesounds mashed together.
 

petergunn

plywood violin
Mac Man- Beanie Siegal


the beat is just the sound of pac man eating... and the turn around is the sound of pac man dying... brilliant...

have to second "arcade funk", that's a classic... yes, produced by Trouble Funk if memory serves...
 

AshRa

Well-known member
PHUTURE - Rise From Your Grave samples ALTERED BEAST (it's the 'rise from your grave' bit).
 

ambrose

Well-known member
slightly different, but to me areal records alsmot entireyl sounds like what would happen if video game music ate big bashing house/techno. sort of slightly crap sounds and ungainly, but good at the same time. sort of. definately video game sounding tho
 

kingofcars

Well-known member
ambrose said:
slightly different, but to me areal records alsmot entireyl sounds like what would happen if video game music ate big bashing house/techno. sort of slightly crap sounds and ungainly, but good at the same time. sort of. definately video game sounding tho


agreed, bassteroid's stuff especially is very video gamey. i picked up a newer 12" by him a few weeks ago that i really enjoyed (can't remember the name or label, tho! wasn't one of the ones on areal)///


a friend of mine produces video game inspired stuff under the name tugboat. can't find his regular site, but check:
http://www.myspace.com/tugboat
or maybe
http://artists.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/Tugboat/index-0.html
he's played w/ 8bit weapon and other la-based videogame-themed acts... some good stuff...
 
Last edited:

dsp13

GAMEBWOY
The Big Reeeeeeewiiiiiiiiind!

So it's been one year since I started my blog and coincidentally...this thread. To celebrate I just re-uploaded the mp3's from my first 3 posts (about video game tracks)... so I thought I'd put the link up here for anyone who missed them a year ago.

This will take you to a savefile project with all the mp3's on it (but you'll only be able to download them 1 at a time) http://www.savefile.com/projects/966239

For more info click the link in my sig & head to the oldest archive link.

While we're here... anyone got anything to add to the list???
 

polystyle

Well-known member
Yes, it was a reeewind to be thinking about Pac -Man,
but my friend Manabu made the connection with NAMCO and we worked up a few tunes by now.
First up was the Pac Man Jam with Ben Jones from Paper Rad which he did for the Anniversary of the Game,
now both Paul Geluso (Producer & engineer) and myself have done 2 more tunes.
Now that NAMCO & Bandai did merge we hope the tunes get up in there , somewhere !

www.greetingcats.com/Pac-Man : The Pac Man Collections should be here ...

Pac Man Jam
Pac Man Mission
Pac Man Industries

Cheers

* Hmm, tried this addy from my ms., but got a 'cannot be found ms',
if you get the same, Please just Goggle www.greetingcats.com/Pac-Man and all will be found ...
 
Last edited by a moderator:

swears

preppy-kei
I can't believe no one's mentioned these two excellent and and highly regarded labels:

Micromusic

8bit Peoples

These imprints tend to centre around original compositions made with obsolete technology like hacked gameboys and NES consoles. Lots of excellent free music as well as CD's and vinyl.
 
Top