A tiny, tiny rip this time ! Me and my brother used to play that game a lot, and as such it deserved a rip hehe. Probably won’t interest those who didn’t play it, but I think many people got this back in 1990 ~
Enjoy !
When I was about 8 years old, my dad often give me a coin to play Arcade Machine on sunday. The nearest Arcade Machine near my home was Toki, also know as Juju Densetsu in Japan.
I loved this game even if it was very difficult to me.
Years later, I trie Toki on Megadrive/Genesis but this version is far away from the Arcade version (too far, crap I mean).
I now will take my revenge on this game, buying the Jamma version for my beautiful New Astro City! ^^
Musics are from Yukihiko Kitahara for the Jamma version, the Megadrive version was adapted by Pierre-Eric Loriaux from Ocean French team and he make a great job, but it’s not exactly the same taste to me.
Hope you enjoy this piece of my childhood memory .
I never played Novastorm. I’ve been familiar with some of it’s music for years though, via the French magazine game music CD I posted a while back. Having re-listened to it recently, I decided to finally seek the complete soundtrack for it, convinced from the quality that I would find a CD-DA redbook easily. Mistake ! Turns out the game’s audio is embedded into some complex compression system and that there’s no way to easily rip or even record it ! Player One Magazine must have received master tracks from Psygnosis themselves when they made that CD in 1994.
Anyway, searching around on the web, you soon notice that this soundtrack left a strong impression on those who played it. Youtube gameplay videos are full of music requests and lamentations over the lack of an official soundtrack. Among these, I noticed a person called Bobske who was claiming he actually recorded the game audio and could send it to anyone wanting it. And he did ! This is his work I am sharing here.
Sadly, I soon noticed the recording contained many skips and clicks. When I asked him about it, here was his answer:
“Yeah, that’s the problem with running old games on new hardware. Had to use DOSBOX to run the game. It works, but it isn’t perfect. The game had some slight delays and little distortions. I edited out most of the audible distortions but unfortunately, I couldn’t fix them all.”
So that’s it ! This version is pretty much the best it can get, unless someone goes through the trouble of running the game on an old ’94 PC, or the master tracks are finally released by Psygnosis and Rik Ede, the composer.
Anyway, great music. Techno-ish sci-fi atmospheres, both epic and hypnotic, quite typical of the old European game music scene. Level 4 Stage 1 remains one of my favourites. Really too bad they didn’t choose CD-DA support !
Many thanks again to Bobske, and enjoy the music ~
!!! edit: Dricks has since then completed a high quality game rip ! Get it >> here <<
I recorded this tiny rip from a nicovideo.jp sound test video. The music is by Hitoshi Sakimoto, and there are indeed neat melodies here and there. And hey, it’s a Game Gear RPG ! That alone made it deserve a recording …
Enjoy !
More Wizardry Gaiden ! Ripped recently this time, from Kingshriek‘s GBS archives.
Compared to episode 3, the first 2 Wizardry Gaiden games stand less by their beautiful melodies than by their kickass battle themes. It always amazes me to see the power and passion some composers could pull from a couple primitive wave sound channels. I definitely encourage you guys to find the arrange albums for these series. In fact, basically anything Ikuro Fujiwara is worth getting. :3
edit: “Actually, the rips were done by anonymous 2CH ripper (and later reripped from GBR to GBS by ugetab). Kingshriek did the GBS from Wizardry 1-3 remakes, not the gaiden ones.” Thanks Knurek !
Been a while, heh ? This one is an old rip of mine. I’ll just quote the nfo:
I never played this game, except for the tiny part that became required when ripping the music. The reason I ripped this game is the arrange album based on it: “Wizardry Gaiden III ~ Scripture of the Dark” (COCC-11006) which was arranged by Ikuro Fujiwara himself and is simply wonderful. It was a pleasant surprise to find that the greatness of this album wasn’t due to extra melodies like it’s sometimes the case, but rather to the fact that the original game music it is based on is good to start with.
I searched for a while for a way to rip GBS directly from the ROM and tried the jap utility GBSND that some site describe like GB ROM to GBS utility (they lie or just don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about). After I understood that it’s in fact an utility to convert SND logs extracted with the jap GB emulator DBOY, I gave up on it and decided to record the audio from the game. I fortunately found a code unblocking a Bonus Mode which unlocked a Sound Test and could record the whole thing (enter ” -PIN- ” including spaces in the Training Ground to unlock it).
I then encoded the WAVs to MP3 APS and named the tracks partly after the arrange album.
So yep, that’s it, enjoy the music ~
This one is relatively famous among VGM P2P adventurers … It used to float around under the name “Dragon Quest 3 Into the Legend”. The first 10 tracks indeed are one of the DQ3 symphonic suites, but the next 14 sure aren’t.
It has been established already that it is probably a fan compilation of both VGM and anime songs. A damn fine one, too. I’ll post it here one more time in hope you people can help identify some of those tunes. :3
Player One was a French video game magazine. In the mid 90s, they released a couple videogame CDs bundled with the mag. That one probably was the first VGM CD I ever owned. Well, there was also that DBZ Budokai 3 one, now that I think of it …
Anyway! This CD is quite famous among French video game fans, and I think it actually deserve some international attention. Not only is it a pretty neat compilation of early 90s titles, but it also has some pretty rocking live arrangements. The couple original songs are kinda meh, though.
Unrelated, but the archive for Lord of the Rings pack 2 has been updated with the repaired track 5 provided by Sagi. Many thanks to him.
Enjoy ~
So I could get my hands on this hard to find 1993 CD-ROM version. I was pleasantly surprised to notice it indeed had redbood (CDDA) tracks, and here they are.
They were arranged from Charles Deenen’s compositions by Eric Heberling. The main theme sounds more like the early PC version while the shire theme surprisingly sounds exactly like the SNES version. I’m sad the arrangements aren’t that great too, as they lose much of the atmosphere of the originals by using an almost constant “blaring trumpet” synth style. Well, it’s still pretty cool to have new versions. :3
Most ingame tracks are very long and loop a bunch of times. Track 5 sadly skips a lot, which I’ll try to fix if I can find another ISO. Tracks 6 to 16 contain dialogues.
Enjoy ~
!!! 31-08-2008 edit: Track 5 updated with a repaired copy provided by Sagi ~
And here’s another MMORPG soundtrack composed by the talented SoundTeMP team. While, in my opinion, they never achieve such greatness as they do in Ragnarok Online, all their works have their particular touch.
Enjoy ~
Listening again to Stronghold music made me rip that one. Quite similar to the Stronghold rip, except longer and contains actual medieval/renaissance compositions as well as some more synthy stuff.
Special tracks and medleys anciently accessible online on the game’s official site were added to the tracklist.
Expect something different next time, and enjoy ~
Excellent music to an excellent game. Stronghold is a medieval castle battle simulation, and it looks as gorgeous as it sounds. Very medieval sounds here too.
What’s in this archive are 22khz ogg files converted from the game’s weird raw format. You can also find mp3s of a slightly enhanced version that was edited by Robert Euvino himself at Stronghold Heaven.
Enjoy ~
Listening to the Sega Saturn History first volume, I noticed a pretty good track from Gotha 1. I managed to find an ISO and simply ripped the redbook tracks, which is what you’ll find in this archive.
The music here is pretty classic for an early Saturn game, and only a couple melodies do stand out, including the very nice main theme.
I also found quite amusing that track 10 features excerpt melodies from Camel’s The Snow Goose album, which I happen to like a lot. Only the fans will notice, though ~
Enjoy !
As avid fans of the book, me and my brother bought the SNES version of this in the early 90ies. Offended by both the image it gave of Tolkien’s work and the horrible gameplay, it was one of the few games we actually resold. If one positive thing we remembered though, it was the music …
Years later, internet is here and I’m in my early web scouring moments. I discover the wonderful SPC format, and naturally searches, among tons of others, for Interplay’s Lord of the Rings music. In vain, since it turns out some weird drivers make the game music undumpable.
After a while, armed with a SNES emulator, action replay codes and a wave recorder, I decide to record the game music myself. I’ll go through the game in a couple hours to discover it contains a grand total of 4 tunes, all of which accessible in the first 20 minutes of the game … unless of course the last Moria level featured something new or the game actually had an ending theme, which I doubt. I’ll probably never know since the game froze while entering the Moria. A common bug happening even on true SNES hardware, I read … ~_~
Anyway, the music, while short, is still great especially the main theme. It was composed by good old Charles Deenen, whom I actually discovered at that time by the way.
Searching around, I noticed other versions of the game existed, and recorded the C64 and Amiga versions as well. They sound very much alike without being completely similar. They’re also completely ripped off Basil Poledouris’s Flesh + Blood score, unless it’s actually a traditional medieval composition, which I also doubt. Nonetheless pretty awesome too, and included in this archive.
What’s now missing is the PC DOS recording, which could be full of Adlib greatness. And of course the one and only sequel of that intended trilogy: the Volume 2 also on PC DOS.
In the meantime, enjoy ~
Among Falcom’ successful series, Brandish is one of those that gets the less attention. Perhaps the fact it’s actually not a part of the Dragonslayer timeline is to blame ? Who knows …
Anyway, Brandish music, while still having that particular Falcom sound, is a lot more melancholic and dark than it’s fellow trademarks. I personally love the resulting atmosphere and melodies, especially in Brandish 1 which got some of my favourite Falcom tunes (oh Mieko Ishikawa <3).
Those 2 recordings were given to me by a Japanese guy I met on Last.fm. They sound different from the original soundtracks (different hardware I guess) and are actually looped twice.
Enjoy ~
(ps: cover above is actually the Renewal edition, but I think it rawks so heh ~ )
Those are recordings of the DOS versions of Might & Magic 3, 4 & 5. Very atmospheric, melodic, medievalish chiptunes which are perfect to listen to late at night. Personally spent countless hours doing so, at least. 4 and 5 are specially remarkable, and were both composed by Tim Tully.
Those recordings were done by Lord Skylark. Many thanks to him ~
Yeah, we play Ragnarok Online. This is basically a chronological selection of the places we (MPTeam) spent time on. There again, the aim is to recreate the atmosphere of a gaming experience.
Music is by the most excellent SoundTeMP Korean composer team. Should be releasing more stuff by them in the future.
Aaaand here is the Amiga collection. Two of my favorite versions are on this, namely Ghouls and Ghosts and Gauntlet 3. Some of the atmospheres on that last are truly reminiscing of one of his (in my opinion) best work ever: the Equinox soundtrack.
Enjoy ~
Quoting the nfo:
Composed by the famous Yuzo Koshiro, the music from The Story of Thor 2 was never officialy released for sale. There are records on the web showing that a self-produced CD was released by Ancient surely mostly for their own archiving needs, but I believe a few copies made it to some fans collections. Some of the few infos can be found at Ancient’s site itself. (or rather, could)
Reasons for the fact it was never released could be it’s uncommon nature. No loops, no main themes, no or few event music… In fact, the musical atmosphere in SoT2 involves a lot of silence. You’ll walk around and a music will suddenly fade-in depending on where you are, play and then be followed by another silence. The songs themselves aren’t conventionally composed, as they progressively evolve without ever repeating themselves, much like some classical music pieces. Some of the songs, like the Wind Shrine theme, actually make you think of classical symphonies.
Sadly, it is saturn ADX audio compressed at it’s worse, and the sound quality is of course damaged by it. The thing is it was one of the first games for the Saturn and they were probably still experimenting with the sound processor. Ah well… Still another great work by Yuzo Koshiro. ^_^
This rip was recorded from the Saturn via my PC line-in in Cool Edit. As the volume varied GREATLY from one song to another, I then normalized the songs. There are still pretty big differences in audio levels, but I just can’t fix that without remastering the audio, and that just wouldnt be right. The buzz noise you’ll maybe hear in some of the most silent tracks, if putting the volume up, is due to both the analogic recording and the Saturn ADX audio compression. The track names were taken from the game location names for the most part. It can be noted that “Final Battle” is also the 2nd introduction music.
Here’s a short recording of the music from Castles II on the Amiga. It was composed by Charles Deenen, a western video game music composer favorite of mine. Not That I like everything by him, but his most medieval sounding works are truly delightful to my little ears. So yeah, another medieval-ish chiptune release, there.
Enjoy ~
