Hacker News Reader

Comment by b3b0p | Hacker News Reader

I found this article nigh impossible to get through with it's weird scrolling and transitions. I had to give up.

I listen to Video Game music while I work. Mostly via rainwave.cc [0] or OCRemix Albums [1]. It's pretty much the only non-vocal music I can tolerate for longer periods of time that don't bore me, but help me maintain focus and block out externalities.

The Final Fantasy soundtracks and their similar epic AAA games from most notably Square Enix (Xenogears, Chrono Cross/Trigger, Kingdom Hearts) as well as Nintendo (Zelda, Mario) are often heralded as some of the best. But, I find the 3 Donkey Kong Country and earlier Sonic music (the 3 Sonic Genesis titles up through Sonic Adventure and the anniversary collection) to be my absolute favorites.

There are also tons of excellent albums and chip tune on Band Camp. Way too many to list.

[0] https://rainwave.cc

[1] http://ocremix.org/albums/

View on HN

I agree - lots of game soundtracks are superb coding music for me. I tend to find if the music has vocals that I understand (eg in English) then I listen too hard and get distracted.

My favourites st the moment for coding to are the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 soundtracks, but I also use Pokemon soundtracks for this a lot, and the Zelda Breath of the Wild soundtrack too - unlike older Zelda it’s a lot more subtle and less overpowering.

Donkey Kong does have some of the best music I've heard in video games.

If you haven't seen these rock covers on YouTube, you might enjoy them: https://www.youtube.com/user/BurningIdolmusic/videos

Those are really good!

Have you heard PPF's or SmoothMcGroove's DK covers (or really any of their VG music covers)? PPF tries to exactly reproduce every channel in the original MIDIs with real instruments (and often jerry rigged contraptions), smooth mcgroove does all the channels acapella. Pretty amazing variety.

If you like the music from the Sonic the Hedgehog games, and you like to hear arrangements of video game music, I suggest you take a listen to Opus Science Collective's album Zoned[0].

It's basically a concept album based on Sonic's music, full of arrangements, mash-ups and tidbits of interviews about the Mega Drive and the Sonic games layered upon the music.

I recommend taking the time to listen to it in full, but if you don't have the time, my personal highlights are tracks number 3 (Sky High), 6 (Hydrofunk), and 8/9 (My First Experience With Funk/Back in the Yard).

Really, the first time I forked money for music in a long while.

[0] https://opussciencecollective.bandcamp.com/album/zoned

completely agree, this would have been much nicer if it was simpler.

The scrolling and transitions makes it kinda impossible to follow through for me too.

As a counterpoint, I very much enjoyed the presentation and felt the transitions were well done. I also enjoyed the example videos.

I enjoyed the transitions (big phone) but the videos weren’t available because of where I live..

No Mega Man X? Blasphemy!

Spotify also has a lot of video game music.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com