Sndtst: 8-bit video game music | Hacker News Reader

Sndtst: 8-bit video game music

sndtst.com

65 pointsfur0n46 comments

Thanks for sharing. Apart from the surge of nostalgia, anyone should listen to the streets of rage soundtrack (1991). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discography_of_the_Streets_of_R... I used to play the game just to listen to the music. It might sound old fashioned now but it was incredible back then.

Streets of Rage 2 is even better, but really, everything Yuzo Koshiro wrote is worth listening to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzo_Koshiro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYGBqmxoLrg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaW4ZYzVHI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foFbN-KokGE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRMfy4ONrr4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP5j7kBJq8o

And he's still at it, almost 30 years later!

F-Zero and F-Zero X are games I used to play just for the music. They are so metal.

There is an excellent album with all the music played on real instruments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I9h7SkZICg&list=PLF1AF918F7...

Mute city, classic.

You should check out the carmageddon tracks.

In the same vein, here is a live speedrun of Mega Man X, accompanied by live music as the game is played. They look like they're having a blast playing this music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnQ7bDGhOLI

I'd often try to get stuck somewhere just to groove to the music while cleaning my room as a kid.

I was just going to recomment that!

I've been listening to those soundtracks lately, and It's awesome how different they are from each other.

SoR1 has a 80's vibe and is the most "normal".

SOR2 is arguably the best, where Koshiro started to explore new grounds. "Go Straight" is a classic, "Jungle base" shows some jungly house and, my favourite, "Alien Power" just evokes weirdness. Also, "Expander" sounds like a preview of the SOR3soundtrack.

In SOR3 Koshiro worked with a partner, and developed a system that uses procedurally generated samples. It sounds a bit more harsh, with some break beats and bit more noisy. While not so pleasing to the ear sometimes, it is features some really interesting composition. I recommend "Fuze", "Cycle I", "Inga Rasen" and the stressful "Bulldozer".

Also by Yuzo Koshiro, check out out Revenge of the Shinobi. For more FM synthesis goodness, try Thunderforce III in op's link.

The artist behind the music is kind of a legend in Japan. There was a time when he used to play his productions at club events. Granted, it was Game Music Events, but he's basically the only artist people remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dOnOKsaQz0

The two giants of 80s game music are Chris Hülsbeck and David Whittaker.

Turrican II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0FaAs4M3d0

R-Type (Amiga): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmEhC91k3MI

Shadow of the Beast: http://retrotracks.net/music/186

Xenon 2: http://retrotracks.net/music/73

And some of David's more esoteric stuff:

Quadralien: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh2TE8VQWZg

Archipelagos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEVFqu8HQZ8

This podcast is a great repository of video game tracks. Though finished now, I enjoyed listening to the interviews and the fact that the episodes have a theme helps them be educational (well, interpreting at the very least). https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/legacy-music-hour-video-...

Originally from this website but I can't find a link (at least on the mobile site) http://www.nerdist.com/podcast_channel/the-legacy-music-hour...

I agree, this is a great sound test: http://sndtst.com/Streets_of_Rage

I really love this version of the Super Mario World soundtrack by Xoc:

https://archive.org/details/xoc_SMW

"OMG my youth!!!" hahaha, great thanks for the link man!

Great sounding. I can only imagine the work behind this soundtrack!

Speaking of versions of Super Mario, one of my favorites...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcKurvm_0oE

Neat site, but most of these games were 16-bit... all these songs are still under copyright though so I worry for the site's longevity...

You know you can google "mario roms" and find hundreds of sites hosting the actual games (not just the music) that have been up for years, right? I think this one will be fine.

You can also find these tracks using Google at higher qualities with proper tags/metadata and a complete set of album art.

Here's hoping :) If it gets shut down then my total time has only been a few days of programming and about $15 in Amazon S3 bills so I still think it's been worth it. Never counted on other people picking it up as much though, that's been very fun. SNDTST has been played in 95 countries in the last 2 months.

I really like the website interface. By the way you can find many soundtracks here (about 5500 individual songs) in the archives located here: http://www.hotdogstorm.com/bucky/GameMusicArchives/ They are in NSFE format which can be played or converted to anything else using foobar2000 and the Game Emu Player plugin.

There are so many fine music pieces trapped in video games, from composers no one will ever hear of (with notable exceptions). Check battle of olympus "name entry" (sic). Ok its a very simple tune, but that reminds me of François de Roubaix. Battle of Olympus is famous for its soundtrack but you can hardly find anything on the composer.

Nice. I made a small page with a dozen or two songs that I'd ripped from games, years and years ago now, and it was one of the few pages on my old site that got regular traffic. People are always looking for a quick handy resource like this and your version is great. Thanks!

This reminded me of aersia.net, it has a few playlists with game music.

http://vip.aersia.net/vip.swf http://vip.aersia.net/vip-exiled.swf

Doom and Doom 2 were 32-bit games...

More and more I've started seeing "8-bit" being used as a synonym for "retro". I don't know how to feel about that.

Also Super Mario 64 was, er, 64-bit

Pretty much half of the games in the list aren't 8-bit.

Yeah the "8-bit" part came from a (really cool) newsletter called The Happening from the Kickstarter employees. I don't think I made a claim like that. My only standard was non CD, I don't know why I guess it feels like I'm surfacing great music that is harder to hear again. The best example of this I can think of is http://sndtst.com/Continuum I had to trick down and build (on OSX) some obscure utilities and libraries to get this specific Amiga MOD rip into a wav format so I could upload it. I've also be encoding these from the the original VGM, NSF, HUE and SPC files with the great library [Game Music Emu](https://code.google.com/p/game-music-emu/) some simple C I adapted https://gist.github.com/jasonsperske/5ce7f90bf591454a08bc#fi.... This project is really my chance to play with HTML5 audio, Python and (very limited) C (and to have something fun playing in my car and while I program :)

Suggestion: Xenon 2 Megablast.

Megablast became Bomb the Bass.

Great version of Assault on Precinct 13 by John Carpenter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_2_Megablast

looks like you could use my bootstra/386 theme: https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386

Maybe not for this project, though I will certainly try, but my goodness I want to make something just to highlight this theme, Great Job!

I think the player interface needs some tweaking. Putting the pause/play button all the way in the bottom right corner is... unconventional.

This is the only one that matters: http://sndtst.com/Mega_Man_III

And this! http://sndtst.com/Chrono_Trigger

Solstice was just added! :)

http://sndtst.com/Solstice

Thank you, this really brings back nice memories for most of us over 35 ;)

And for us over 30 as well :P ;)

No love for firefox? It played on safari, but not mozilla.

Interesting. I had a different experience where it played perfectly on Firefox yet would fail to play on Chrome.

Not working under Firefox for android as well.

Interesting. I'm really interested in learning more about what you are experiencing. I have been developing this almost entirely in Firefox for OSX and haven't had an issue playing music. I also extensively tested it in Chrome and iOS Safari. Anything you can tell me about your setup? Browser version? OS? flash plugin?(jPlayer has a flash fallback, maybe that's causing issues)

Great work. Having a download all link would be awesome.

When a song is playing a download link for the OGG and mp3 versions appears to the right of the track. It's really more of an after thought (I created the site primarily as a music streaming site, but the request came up so much I added it.

Thanks for doing this. :) Awesome selection.

thanks for this. awesome!

Want a fun Easter Egg? Try and guess a game (by URL) I likely don't have it, but if you go there http://sndtst.com/The_7th_Guest you get a page that helps you ask for it to be added (and possibly pester whoever owns the rights to it to let it be uploaded, hint hint The Fat Man)

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