Video Game Music

July 4th, 2007

Almost every hobby has its retro period, where things that were popular become popular again. Video games from the beginning of the history of video games have become popular again, especially as they are easily portable to hand-held and are fun even on the most advanced monitors. (Of course, there is the irony value of playing something that’s basically ancient on modern technology…)

It’s not that hard to find the tracks; in fact, some companies even put out their own CDs and tracks. Also, a number of would-be musicians have found ways to grab the music, and then burn to CDs or post it online on discussion forums or private websites. You can find the background sounds and music for just any game if you look hard enough, and the number of gaming companies that have gone belly-up without selling off the rights to bigger companies has been an advantage (no one bothers going after copyright infringement, and some of the bigger companies actually encourage as a form of marketing).

A lot of music originally found on video games has found a new lease on life through re-mixes, where the music has been mixed with with other music or tracks have been added to it. The most famous re-mixed song has to be the treatment of “Duck Hunt”, which took the music from the game, added it to sound effects from the game, and through in a nifty little backbeat.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have The Black Mages, a band that plays at conventions. The personal band Nobuo Uematsu, the original creator of much of the music found in the Final Fantasy series. The band plays full orchestral music from the games, to standing ovations from gaming fans. Suffice to say, a performance by the Black Mages is likely to be one of the few times that you will see a gaming crowd dressed in something besides T-shirts and jeans; in fact, fans are actually looked down because they show up for a Black Mage concert in just jeans.

As the ability to take audio from a wide variety of sources becomes more readily available to just about everyone, the ability to find music from and based on video games becomes easier, especially given the high interest in it. The only problem is that the files can be in rare formats. Find here how to convert any file to mp3.

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