How did you discover video game music existed outside of video games?
 

I was 14 or 15 when, like everyone else around that age with an Internet connection at that time, I had Napster.

Of course, I downloaded mainstream music. But one day I browsed somebody's files and found the music to a Mountain Dew commercial. ("Mountain Dew commercial.mp3") This made me wonder what other things besides mainstream music Napster users had. So I started searching for random things like TV shows, TV channels and then single keywords like "commercial," "speech," etc. And then...I noticed my Nintendo 64 next the TV.... "Nintendo"....

OMG.

The limited-to-100-results came back almost instantly....Mario Kart 64, Super Mario 64, Zelda...etc.

I remember the first track I downloaded. "Nintendo - Mario Kart 64 - Rainbow Road.mp3" I started playing it and was amazed that I could download Nintendo music from other Napster users. While Napster was running I downloaded every single track I could find to every single game I had ever played. I downloaded more Nintendo music than mainstream music.

During this time I wondered how the music got into MP3 format. I assumed somebody just recorded the music through their computer's sound card and shared it on Napster. (I didn't specifically call it, nor know of "game rips" then.)

I encountered another VGM fan on Napster and he told me they came from "soundtracks." I didn't know video games had soundtracks! I did a little bit of searching online and found some OSTs on www.gamemusic.com.

But around that time Napster went under and I started using Gnutella and then Kazaa. But by then I had had a job and started buying them from that site with money orders. Disgusted with Kazaa, I started using Audio Galaxy and downloaded an MP3 that had a URL (I think) to Gamingforce Audio...which in turn led me to this message board and it's massive amount of FTPs with VGM.

So, how did you discover video game music existed in a different medium other than just the game cartridge/CD/DVD?

When I was in upper level grade school I was in band playing saxophone and around that time Donkey Kong Country was out. I was really into it and I liked the theme song so much I wanted to play it on my sax. I never did learn it but I think that's when I realized that video game music can be played outside of the game.

My next step would be getting the Killer Cuts CD with Killer Instinct on the SNES. I listened to that alot when it first hit. Finally in my freshman or sophomore year of high school I discovered OCRemix which showed me that video game music can sound awesome in various genres.

I believe my first exposure to video game soundtracks was on this site, though I might've known about it previously from import ads in my old issues of EGM.

The Cardigans - My Favourite Game. Gran Turismo 2, if I'm not wrong, and then it Chrono Cross's Dream Shore For Another World.. haha. Those songs, made me looked on the internet.

At first I was darn sceptical about finding those songs, but, I was proven wrong. From the cardigans, I was led to a few sites, and from those sites, and eventually, here. HAHA

Whenever I learned to play instruments (sax, flute, tin whistle, piano, in that order), the first things I'd learn how to play were usually game music pieces that I'd teach myself. I vividly remember turning on Final Fantasy 6, taking my party out into the field, and just leaving the game alone and letting the music endlessly loop while I sat there with my flute learning to play the tune. Even if there was no such thing as game music outside of games, I still would have been playing it myself. Hell, when I took piano lessons, I'd pretty much always choose game music when I got to choose my own pieces. The first piece I ever played decently on piano was Realm's Theme (FF6), and over the course of the time I took lessons, I played Coin Song (FF6), The Oath (FF8), and Another Aruni (Chrono Cross) at recitals.

Anyway, when we got the internet, I was actually an avid fan of midi files early on. Many (well, most) of which were game music. Other than my own playing, they were probably my first exposure to game music outside of the games. I had most of the FF6, FF7, and Chrono Tigger soundtracks in midi, and I'd constantly listen to them (and play along with them) as if they were the real thing. So by the time I discovered MP3s, I was already well versed in the fact that game music existed outside video games.

Well before I got the internet my dad brought home a bunch of floppies of video game midis (which I really liked) I was curious as to why they didn't sound like the originals. So a few years after we got the internet (I got the internet when I was 10 then, 20 now) I looked up Chrono Trigger and found a bunch of "Chrono Cross" songs with them. Now of course I downloaded both and learned 2 things: Mp3s are the real deal, and Chrono Cross is another game in the series... so that means soundtracks come out before the games come out in the US? Neat! So I learned all kinds of stuff the day I got the internet. Oh and by the way, the program I used was called Scour Exchange.

Mt brother handed me a CD and told me that if I liked Final Fantasy VI, I should listen to it... It was a slippery slope :(

Usually I just download the main theme (Eyes on me, Melodies of Life), I met zophar.net and enjoying several game rips. Afterward I become a real VGM lover after I listen to Dragon Quest IV on piano. I met Gamingforce meet the people who share similar interest, and eventually VGM becomes my main genre of favoritsm.

Some years ago I stumbled across Gaming.FM. While this site isn't able to satisfy my claims when it comes to Game Music anymore, it probably was my springboard into the fascinating world of VGM and therefore Gamingforce. I can't remember the date where I got introduced to this site, but I didn't had DSL back in those days, so it should be more than three years ago.

I always was an avid gamer ( began playing SNES games with two or three years ), so the music itself wasn't even that new to me. There were a lot of songs during my years of gaming experience which sticked in my mind and discovering the 56 kilobit stream of VGM on Gaming.FM was just amazing. Every day there were new tracks, one better than the other, but I suddenly lost the interest in the site due to the extreme buffering all the time.

With the era of DSL everything changed - My interests changed, my looks changed, my whole personality changed. Suddenly I was interested in classical music and then someday someone I knew pointed me to Gaming.FM again. Wahaha, those few months before the discovery of Gamingforce and my turning away from Gaming.FM were gorgeous. With StreamRipper, a Winamp plug-in, I ripped over eleven GB worth of VGM.

However, some day this wasn't enough for me anymore and I found my way to Gamingforce. My interest in VGM woke up during the age of twelve, the big ripping took place while I was thirteen years old and after my fourteenth birthday Bobo's little universe was opened for me. Limiting the whole purpose of Gamingforce to the My Stuff forum and its FTP servers, I leeched stuff all the time. Together with a MSN buddy I always listened to those OSTs at the same time and discussed with him about them.

Sadly, my appetite for VGM decreased steadily and nowadays I only download soundtracks from time to time. It's not like I don't listen to them anymore, actually they are probably the only thing I listen to, but My Stuff is somewhat annoying from time to time and in addition to this, I'm not that pleased with the recent Game OSTs. That's one of the reasons why I'm eagerly awaiting the upcoming Best Song Contest 2006. Not only for getting known to new music, but also to have a good change to discuss with like-minded people.

All in all, the little discovery of two websites changed a lot in my life. While you sometimes feel like an outsider, since there's most likely nobody around here who listens to VGM, I'm actually pleased with my sense of taste. I may not think like others and I may not like what others like, but I guess that's what makes me special.

The End~

I was about 13 or 14 when I tried out my first P2P program after getting a computer of my own. I remember looking for only one song with the word "fantasy" and the results brought up music from Final Fantasy.

I later found GFA when it was still up one summer, but didn't sign up for the forums until much later.

Just got on the computer one day when I was 12 and looked for music from Zelda and Golden Eye and as I played more games (including rediscovering Final Fantasy VII) I looked for more music. Lol

To be totally honest, I wanted to get hold of some of the tunes from the Suikoden soundtrack and some search engine action eventually led me to Gamingforce.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Got the internet in early 1998, looked up some games and it lead me to Soundtrackcentral, where I learned about game music albums and downloaded a few choice samples available (in mp2, no less!). June of that year, I made my first CD order. Also, there was another small site run by someone named Kyasao (something like that) which talked about some interesting albums and provided track downloads. That was where I discovered j-pop (from Another Sun from Megaman Legends/Rockman Dash and the Neo Geo Gals Vocal Collection) and also the Marvel vs Capcom and Rockman 2: The Power Fighters OST's.

I don't really know. I somehow stumbled upon Gamingforce (probably through some sort of search engine). This was in the days of the HTTP downloads. I signed up for the forums and leeched. Then I eventually started becoming an active member of the community.

I was using WinMX about a year or two ago and did a random search for Nintendo music. I came up with some SSBM music and some music from other games. The other half of my story, as quoted from another post of mine on another forum:

Someone on VGmp3 pointed me to Gamingforce in about June/July last year, so you know the rest.

My first introduction was the Killer Cuts CD I got with Killer Instinct. Shortly after I got into college, I ran across the beloved Napster and found a few things on there. It wasn't until 2000 though when I came across "Gamingforce Audio" and its humongous MP3 collection (courtesy of i-Drive storage) that my collecting began.

Oh man, Audio Galaxy! I remember that site. I got lots of VGM from there back in the day. I was pretty young too, well, maybe 15-16. I loved the music to Chrono Trigger so much that I played the game whenever I wanted to hear the music. I decided to search online for it one day (probably on Napster) and I found some of the songs and downloaded them all (took about 20 minutes a song with a 14.4K modem, lol). I thought having these songs was the best thing ever and was extremely glad to find gamingforce when I did, a long long time ago.

I guess that Kairyu was the one to introduce me to video game music outside of playing the game, when he showed me some songs from OCremix. After that I was hooked into going to VGmix almost daily.

This would be about 2-3 years ago

When I had a C64 I used to love the music of some of the games (Ghosts 'n Goblins, Driller, Bubble Bobble, etc). I once bought a CD with an emulator and lots of ROMs (I don't think it was quite legal, in fact ^^; ). One of the utilities on it was able to play SIDs, and thus I got my first intro to gamerips.

Then when I used the internet for the first time I remember that I searched for Transformers, Saint Seiya, stuff like that... my very first downloads were soundtracks ^^;. From then I progressed to game soundtracks through SID and SPC rips. I also played my very first Final Fantasy (V) around that period, and I loved the battle themes.

I was almost speechless when I discovered that in Japan you could actually buy game soundtracks ^^;. Where I live it's sometimes difficult to find even QUEEN CDs, let alone something so niche.

I got into VGM pretty much when I started getting into Video Games. My first console was PC/ PlayStation, and I got Final Fantasy VII off my cousin. I remember liking the battle themes.

School was my first and only internet connection - shit, because it had so many restrictions. I started downloading MIDIs at first (sad now I look back at it) - but that was before I knew of the existance of the soundtracks.

My cousin got Final Fantasy VIII, X, IX and Kingdom Hearts OSts within the span of a few months - they effectivly were my first soundtracks, (the first soundtrack I bought legitamatly was Vagrant Story)

So basically I went on a massive hunt to find as many soundtracks as I could - some of my first downloads were xenosaga ep.1, star ocean 3, eternal arcadia off two random websites, and then emuparadise before finding VGMP3, gamemp3s and then GFF. The rest is history :P

Argh, you "my first console/game was PSX/FF7" people make me feel so old.

First time I ever really took notice of VGM was the dropship stage on the C64 version of "Aliens." Simplistic MIDI, to be sure, but it sounded so cool. Actually, now that I think about it, the whole game had some pretty decent music.

Anyway, my first exposure to VGM online was VGMusic.com's massive MIDI archive. I downloaded these motherfuckers like crazy. On my old IBM PS/2 I had about 20 floppies full of them. My friend razzed me all the time about it, saying I should be getting MP3s instead. I had never used MP3s before, and very quickly found out that my humble little PS/2 was simply too asstastic to play them (This was around the Pentium 2 era...yeah).

Shortly thereafter, my father bought my brother and I a new system running a 466MHz Celeron. Not powerful by a long shot, but it did boast a then-impressive 10GB HDD. More than enough to load up on the VGM. Since my mum never did anything but surf and check E-mail, and my dad lived (lives) out in PA, the box was pretty much mine and my brother's. 'Twas then that I discovered FFnet.net during my very short stint as a Squaresoft fanboy (yes, it's true, I once held loyalty to that sorry organization). FF8 soundtrack comin liek wut. Took me days to get it over my 56k line, but all of their MP3s would eventually wind up in my collection.

I noticed that they had links to buy the soundtrack, which needless to say intrigued me. I don't recall exactly how, but I somehow wound up on GFF during the iDrive era (WTF "Farbles?") and leeched the Saga Frontier OST. I was still wondering about purchasing soundtracks, though, and not having a credit card at the time, as well as being a paranoid n00b about ordering over das intarweb, I started hitting every music store in the area.

No dice.

I looked at the online stores again and found out that with one or two extremely rare exceptions, they all had to be imported. Well fucknuts. Then I remembered that right by my mum's office there was a little indie game store that had all kinds of weird action figures and posters and other cool shit I never saw in mainstream game boutiques. I also remembered that many of them had packaging on which Japanese text was quite abundant.

Jackpot, bitches.

I bought the FF8 soundtrack off the shelf (SonMay bootleg, but did I give a shit? Nooooooo... Still don't) and tried to get the SF soundtrack. They could't get SaGa, but I'd go on to order a good 20 or so soundtracks through them, most of them Ever Anime bootlegs with a few official prints thrown in here and there, and that was that: my VGM geek cred was made official.

When I went off to college, I had a girlfriend who demanded assloads of my time and attention, so my acquisitions dropped sharply. Luckily I had gone batshit-crazy enough in my last year of high school that I had enough albums to tide me over. College netadmin tried blocking downloads, but through connections (literally, hrhrhrhr) to my workplace's Citrix server I remote-controlled my box at the office and downloaded them there, crypto-zipped them, and E-mailed them to myself. Own3d, Dominican U. Put that in your crack-pipe and smoke it.

After I left my first college for Illinois Tech, I discovered GFF FTP. That got me a lot of new soundtracks, but then we got broadband and about the same time I discovered Direct Connect. Hard disk space minus minus. VGMCentral then banned NMDC (FUCK YOU VGC ops), which was the only Mac OS X client I knew how to use at the time. I muddled my way through with DC_Gui until I got a laptop and ran dee cee plus plus, a client which, despite its advantages, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth due to some hub ops' apparent love-affair with it. At any rate, I was back in business with DC and downloading like a madman. 60GB laptop HDD was reduced to 12GB in a week. And at that time I had no DVD burner. I still have all my "DCDownload" CD-Rs in a cakebox case in my room. Need to offload them to my 300GB external archive disk at some point.

That pretty much brings us to the present, where I use a mixture of BT, DC, HTTP (for OCR) and FTP to DL VGM to my PC FTW ZOMG LOL.

Overall, I'm most partial to DC, but the GFF tracker may change that quite rapidly. Time will tell.

Now that I have a credit/debit card, I order most of my VGM from CDJapan/GameMusic/etc.

While playing "Super Mario RPG," which, incidentally, was my first RPG as well, I thought that some of the tunes were rather catchy. I considered taping them directly from the TV, but I remembered my previous failures in that regard, and decided to do a 'net search instead.

As a result, I found out about the Japan-only OST at Soundtrack Central. Determined to hear the music anyway, I downloaded a batch of MIDI files, starting with "Forest Maze" otherwise known as "Beware the Forest Mushrooms." It was several years before I realized that those MIDIs weren't the actuals songs I heard in-game :)

It started when I watched my cousin play Final Fantasy V. The battle music is so catchy, it stayed in my head for quite a while. That also was the start of my obsession with RPGs but anyway...

In 98 we got the Internet and navigating a bit trying to search on how to get Cloud in Final Fantasy Tactics I found a site with the FFV battle music in MIDI format. And from there I downloaded more and more MIDIs until I found Xenogears mp3s after. Ah the good old days of modems. I remember sitting and watching the download dialog slowly reach 100%. Each track I got made me so happy.

Forward a little more, I saw some soundtracks on gamemusic.com and decided to buy some from a store (no credit card...). Picked up Final Fantasy Tactics and had no idea it was a bootleg for a long while. I still have it as a token of my first VGM purchase.

My first 'exposure' tp VGM occured during the SNES era. Games such as Star Fox and Bubsy had some catchy music that I actually recorded the music onto a tape to take with me.

Fast forward several years when I discovered FFVII MP3s. I thought the music was awesome (they make my ears bleed now) That's when my interest really took off. I started DLing lots of MP3s, mainly from Gamingforce (Ha!). GFF. I thank you.

I bought the Killer Instinc for snes,it comes with a cd,the killer cuts.
That was the day i discover the music of videogames.
That was my favorite cd for weeks !!!!

I was about 15 years old, and had stumbled upon Video Game MIDI's on the internet. I was rocking out to a bunch of my favorite tunes in that format, and then after I got to college, I learned of Gamemusic.com, and started patronizing thier services. Awhile after that, I stated using Napster (back when it was free) and scouring the local networks for Mp3's - and that's how I found this webforum (which is also my home page.)

I've never looked back.

I never thought about the question?

Maybe that was because I saw OSTs available on sales before I even came into contact with video games? Oh yar, not to mention that the first 3D video game that I officially played with was Final Fantasy VII and I kind of took it for granted that there was an OST available (hey, music for Final Fantasy VII rocks! Especially the piano tracks! <3 them!)

So yup, I didn't exactly discover a video game music world outside of video games, I took it for granted right from the start!

Thought long and hard about this, but I honestly don't remember. At some point I came into possession of the FF VII soundtrack. I suspect I asked my parents to buy it for me when they went to Japan... at which point in time I must've known about the soundtracks, of course. I just don't know. I probably just learned about it on-line. ;)

It's all thanks to Gamingforce!

In the beginning, I just searched the internet and found simple FF music for the piano, I wasn't impressed. So I went in the direction of Anime music, but the searching wasn't efficient enough.

Then once I discovered Gamingforce I came in contact with the FF piano collections, soon I found out about FTP libraries and had an urge to get to know game music.

By coincidence I discovered Saga Frontier 2 and with that Hamauzu. When searching this composer over the net I found the site squaremusic.ffworld.com, blue laguna's site and that would keep me up to date.

Well actually, I discover game music way back since my childhood. But at that time I've only got PC-XT 8088 and Atari as my console. And being a fan of adventure games, I fall in love with Sierra and Lucasfilm (now LucasArt) games and it's music. And when later got Sega Genesis console, I loved soundtracks from major Sega games such as Bare Knuckle (Street of Rage), Golden Axe, & Space Harrier. Also love Street Fighter 2 themes since it got ported to Genesis too, especially Chun Li's theme.

About half 90's later when emu was introduced in my life, it was the first time RPG was introduced to me by playing Chrono Trigger. The game was really mind-blowing fun with really deep storyline but the soundtrack although some was really good, didn't really capture my heart yet. It is when I've touched Final Fantasy 6 that change my whole perspective about music. While the game itself also great plus the storyline was a masterpiece, it is the soundtrack that I instantly fall in love into. Soo orchestrated and yet feels more depth than movie themes I've know so far. And by that time that my hunt for vgm mp3's began, replacing the old-near obsolete MIDIs. :lol:
And because of RPGs that my knowledge of vgm broaden until today. And it still growing...

Gamingforce was a later part that I've joined before this went down along with previous boards that I've joined too. And it took several years before I rejoined this forum again since this is the only vgm forum I know that still active. :lol:

Back in 1992 when I started buying Videogame Magazines (the German "Video Games" in particular) I read an article about japanese game soundtracks (Ys Perfect Collection and Actraiser Symphonic Suite were listed, as well as some Castlevania Albums), they even mentioned Sega S.S.T. Band and printed guitar tabs for After Burner.

Apart from recording several tunes (from Megaman 2, Actraiser, Castlevania IV and other games) on tape in the early nineties I started collecting VGM in 1998 when I discovered the realms of the mighty internet the first time. While I found only some crappy midis at the beginning, after a while I downloaded my first mp3 files - the samples at Soundtrackcentral. Actraiser Symphonic was the first album I burnt on CD in 1998, and it wasn´t until last year when I listened to S.S.T. Band music the first time (and watched their live video, thanks to Slightly Dark), so I fetched my old VG magazine to read the article again, funny isn´t it?

I've had a great love for game music almost all my life, especially boss battle themes. I always loved the dramatic quality of it. It really started on the Sega Genesis, with Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I loved Robotnik's theme, the Chemical Plant Zone theme, Emerald Hill, and so on. I would listen to the sound test as I fell asleep most nights. My lullaby was the Aquatic Ruin Zone theme. But there was one song from one game that awoke my love of game music: Ice Cap Zone, Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It was possibly the most beautiful song I had ever heard at the time. I would drive myself insane trying to successfully input the debug code for the game so as to access the sound test. My obsession with that song knew no bounds. Then one fateful day, my friend got a new computer with a free 1-year internet subscription. Through this, I discovered the wonderful virus-ridden whore that was Kazaa, and though that found mp3s of the song I loved so much. Time passed, and I found more songs to love from games such as Super Mario RPG, Super Metroid, Megaman 8, Wild Arms, FFVII & VIII, and many more. Though it wasn't until I found the Gamingforce forums that I realized the possibility of downloading game soundtracks en masse. Mesmerized by this idea, I immediately downloaded a trial version of WS_FTP and made myself known on the forums (my first true forum experience, to be honest). In fact, I can honestly say that this forum paved the road for me to truly experience what the internet has to offer. A little cheesy sounding, but true.

Viva la Gamingforce.

Like everyone else, Final Fantasy VII.

Loaded the game up, heard the fance new version of the Prelude, instantly fell in love. After scratching my itch with my new-fangled internet connection -- well, here we are.

it just came natural for my ears and that of my bro's Kaleb G. We started out with shit like recording every song from Secreat of Mana strait from the TV to our tape recorder then listing to it later on. We did that with a lot of old games like Spin dizzy worlds, street fighter... and well.

We would also just catch ourselfs stopping in game to listen to songs that we enjoyed. its the just a natural sence of good taste in music.

I actually figured it out when I played Secret of Mana for the first time years ago. I went to the local import shop at the time, and omg, there was the soundtrack! They had a whole backshelf dedicated to the stuff. After seeing that, I searched the Internet daily for stuff.

I am completely new on the videogame music genre.

For over a year or so, EuroNews TV Wheaterreport has this really loungy
tune on the world wheatermap on.
One day I asked myself; what kind of music is this?
It was soothing, happy and loopy but not booring.
The combination of the map and the tune made me sudenly remember
SimCity2000. Yes! the old game I played so often. It had that kind of
music in the game!

I never even thought of this as a stand alone music genre.
I now have the SimCity music. I twas just wat I wanted. So lately I a'm
searching for this kind of music every evening, 7 days a week, on the
internet. Very rewarding too by the way.

This is what I am very happy with so far:
SimCity 4+rush hour.
Katamari Damatchi.
We love Katamari.
Silent Hill 1+2.
God of War.
awaiting; sound and space, by OneUp.

I always liked game music, I used to record stuff from my Kirby games and Donkey Kong Country and listen to it all the time.
I didn't get on the internet until around '97 or so. At that time, I was into the Myst series. We found that there were soundtracks for the two games that were out at the time, so we picked them up.
I also had just played Chrono Trigger, and I searched around fansites and found MIDIs of the music. Those served me pretty well at the time.
I then looked for my old Kirby stuff, found some MIDIs of that, as well as a few MP3s.

I didn't really start getting into it until a couple years ago, when I found GamingFM. I listened to it all the time until it went down last spring. That's when I started hunting around for places where I could download soundtracks, gamerips, and such.

Joe Wiewel's story pretty much sums up how I found vgm outside of a game. But I was humming videogame tunes since the days I was playing the first gradius arcades (1989 or so.) Only difference really was the fact that I first stumbled across the music at vgmusic.com in midi form. It was a exciting day for me knowing that I didn't need to play through a game just to hear my favorite tune. And it was even more exciting to know other people enjoyed that kind of music =p.

Then around that same time a friend of mine actually traded me the FFVII soundtrack for a couple new age cds I didn't much care for. I honestly thought I was getting ripped off, I must've paid at least 8 dollars for those cds. And for vgm? What was I thinking! But after playing the game myself I was quickly proven wrong. Of course I then scrounged for more of this music via napster, then aimster, audio galaxy, kazaa, and finally GFA.

Thanks GFF, now I have enough music to start a radio station :tpg:.

I started recording music on a little tape player I hape back as far back as I can remember playing games. I held that little thing up to the speakers of my small TV while playing nintendo favorites... Lufia... Zelda... a few others come to mind...

I continued this practice into high school - was recording Crono Trigger, Arcana, Final Fantasy III (VI) at the time then.

A friend of mine heard one of my recordings once and said - dude I can get that for you on a CD. At the time I was just getting into mainstream music and I shocked that anyone else liked game music. I was kind of embaressed that it was the only kind of music I listened to at the time.

Later in college I found I wasn't so strange... :)

^ I used to do the same thing when I was younger, I'd record music from off of the game.


How I discovered that VGM was actually released on CDs:

I was sitting in the 4th floor computer lab of Wayne Hall @ West Chester University.

For the hell of it, I type in "gamemusic.com" in the URL box for no apparant reason.

My life changed forever.

Prior to that, my only concept of VGM being on disc began and ended with Nintendo's "Killer Cuts" CD.

I can't remember the true origin, but I remember that VGMusic was my earliest foray into the genre. I think I somehow got there sometime after looking around Nintendojo, or some other page with links to places, but I didn't know about search engines back then. I was excited to hear all the midis.

As for mp3s, there was DJ Bad's site (now dead), which I somehow stumbled onto looking for keyboardmania music. Then I really picked up steam when I found Gamingforce a couple of years ago and was already excited at being able to find the Wild Arms 3 OST. I started to use ftps and found Galbadia Hotel just last year.

Now I edit my downloaded collection quite vigorously.

I don't exactly remember how, but I'm pretty sure I was looking for something from either the Final Fantasy 6 or 7 soundtrack. I did a google serach , and it brought up a site (RPGamers.net), that had FTP servers with video game music. However, most FTP servers there had like a two user cap, so you rarely got on. I did more searching on google (this was before I knew how to actually use google to it's full potential), and I found Gaming Force.

After this, I just saw people's opinions on various albums and downloaded them, and it turned out to be a fairly decent collection of VGM.

For me it had to be growing up i had all these games. Somehow i lost some of them when i got them back i realized that they werent all that great but the music is what made me like it in the first place. thats what made start to have a collection of vgm

I was so impressed by the music in Chrono Trigger that I wanted to be able to find it somewhere. Shortly afterwards, I fulfilled my desire, picked up more of Mitsuda's works AND discovered ocremix in the process.

Back in 2000, I got an N64 for christmas, after having been deprived from games for about 4 years. That's also when I joined my first forum, based around Donkey Kong 64. Through there I was introduced to this new alien format (at the time), MIDI, and the site vgmusic.com. So for a couple years, I listened almost exclusively to MIDI files when I was on the computer, mostly from games I had allready played, and some original sequences as well. I tried recording some of my own music files from some games, when I couldn't find good MIDI replacements. I also discovered that I could download some songs through Napster, shortly before its demise, which were much better than what I could make myself. Once I upgraded my computer, I put more emphasis in MP3s than MIDIs, used other filesharing networks, and oucassional download sites if I found them, and then I found my first VGM FTP server. Wow, so much in one place, who would have thought? At this point, I started listening to music from games I never played, and sampled some movie soundtracks as well. Then I found this place which has been my primary source since.

I think I was so readily attracted to soundtracks because I've never had a solid foundation in mainstream music. To this day, I have no favorite mainstream bands, and if I do ever look for mainstream music, it's on a song by song basis.

I first started downloading MIDI remixs - mainly rpg music, before I realised they sold VGM soundtracks. Then my cousin got a copy of FF8 OST - then just started looking for mp3s on the net, kazaa etc

Rest is history I suppose ^^

I remember I was 12 and FFIII had just come out for the SNES. I know, it's really FFVI, but America was still far behind. ANYWAY, it was around my birthday and I was asking for my first CD: Kefka's Domain. My mom, bless her heart, scoured the entire las vegas valley for it, and finally found it!!! So, to this day I proudly say that my first CD ever bough/collected was the soundtrack to FFVI. Way to start things off on a high note, no?

I first started to realise VGM when I was 13, I guess? When I was growing up there was no SNES, so I just had a Playstation. My first two games ever were Final Fantasy VIII and Suikoden II. I do believe it was Kazaa who enlightened me (not that I use that horrible program any more); my first two songs are still two of my favourite VGM tracks ever:

"314 The Salt Flats" - Final Fantasy VIII OST
"212 The Fugue ''Praise Be To My Master''" - Genso Suikoden II OST (very closely followed by "412 Gothic Neclord". What can I say, I was a Neclord fanboy.)

And since then VGM has become my favourite genre of music. And that's something, 'cause I listen to metal/hard rock (what have you) a hell of a lot, too.

When I first heard the Chrono Trigger theme in MIDI format and then later on a cd

I always knew I liked it but wasn't aware I could download it until I started using AudioGalaxy. Damn I miss that place...it had great music.

Well, this little story dates back to the times when Expert was releasing Sonic games for the PC. Back then, I was an ardent Sonic fan who wanted all Sonic PC games and one of the first ones I got was Sonic 3D Blast. One day, I happened to leave the CD-ROM in my computer once I had finished playing and by accident I clicked on the CD Player app. Next thing you know, I hearing all the Richard Jacques goodness coming from my computer speakers without having to play the game! w00tness! Anyway, that made me want to search out the music of all games that I had, though I would to wait a good 2~3 years until I finally got an internet connection. After searching MIDI music, I stumbled upon chiptune type files (.spc, .gym, etc.) and it wasn't too long before that led me to finding my beloved VGM albums. Wow, I've come a long way, haven't I?

When I was a kid gaming in the SNES era, the most memorable music for me came from games like Megaman X and Super Metroid. With tunes this good, I think I always knew it just had to exist somewhere. Some years later I stumbled upon some MIDI versions, and while it was good for a while, I still wanted something more authentic.

By then I was really getting into the emulation scene and enjoying games which didn’t get a PAL release (Chrono Trigger), as well as fan translations of SFC titles (Tales of Phantasia, Romancing Saga 3, Dragon Quest VI etc.), and it was brought to my attention that there were more authentic formats like SPC and GYM (Sega Genesis -Phantasy Star IV).

This was mindblowing, but at that stage I didn’t have the knowledge to convert it to burn to a CD, but I found out about original and arranged soundtracks. That hunt led me to the I-Drives of GFA, and VGM in general.

Well, the game music bug bit me when I was very young and used to play with my NES. I especially liked Megaman music, something that still holds true these days.

It was around 1996 that I discovered that game music CDs actually existed. I was reading a game magazine and there were reviews for Squaresoft's latest RPGs, namely Secret of Evermore and Seiken Densetsu 3, and the reviewers commented about how good the music in those games was and how Square used to release the soundtracks to their games.

But it wasn't until I seriously got into the Internet, let's say, around 2001, that I finally put my sweaty hands on the real music. At first I could only find some amateur recordings of some games I liked. However, soon thereafter, there I was looking through some mIRC channels, hunting for games never released in Italy, and I happened to find some game music channels too. I couldn't believe it when I actually found those elusive Final Fantasy and Seiken Densetsu CDs I'd been dreaming about.

Eventually I found out about FTP servers and BitTorrent, and the real leeching began (too bad I have a modem that prevents me from forwarding ports, or I'd have the chance to share some of my collection, not to mention that it prevents me from entering a lot of servers) :eagletear:

Starting from 1990 (elementary school) and throughout, a video game theme had never left my mind. It left me in a good mood all day for all of grade school. In fact, I have had a video game song in my mind every day of my life so far. It's like a winamp playlist on random. And right now, for no reason whatsoever, "Final Fantasy 8 - 114 Breezy.mp3" is playing in my mind... and I hadn't thought about FF8 all month.

In late high school, year 2000, I started to realize I liked VGM. Very strange that I never knew I liked it even though I had a song in my mind for A DECADE. I started to crave it and had purposely left songs on the video game and just sat there to listen. VGM started to become substantive to my world. Then I found vgmusic.com and downloaded all the MIDI's from all the games I'm familiar with and made that my primary playlist for a year.

But in 2001 I slowly found mp3 soundtracks and started building a collection. Within a short time I found gamingforce and downloaded more. With gamingforce moving to a forum, I heard about vgmcentral -- a hub on the DC++ program that contained people with VGM and is still kicking in 2007. Because of that I tripled my collection.

In the present day, my highest value is gamingforce.com because of the ability to request rips, make rips, share, and talk about the subject. I would be depressed if GFF was down forever because my collection of rips as games come out would halt.

I actually discovered it about nine years ago when I couldn't stop playing SaGa Frontier and pausing it just to hear the music. I wandered into the local import store and saw that they video game music. I promptly bought Seiken Densetsu 2 and SaGa Frontier. From then on, it was history.

DISCLAIMER: This was typed out ahead of time and, looking back, is way longer than most posts in this thread will be. Additionally, I think it goes a bit outside the scope of the thread, that being discovery of VGM outside of gaming. What I've provided is effectively my history of interest in VGM, leading up to my discovery of published pressed OSTs. This post is long. Really long. I love sharing my love for VGM with the rest of Gamingforce as it's great to have like-minded people to completely geek out with over this stuff, but if you want to read this, bring plenty of spare time.

Okay. That said, here's the post as I originally wrote it.

God, I fucking love these threads. Memory lane is in the middle of a damn fine neighbourhood.

I remember first really noticing VGM in the Commodore 64 version of "Aliens." The title screen theme and Level 1-Dropship Landing theme were what really caught my ear. I also remember listening to them years and years later (only a couple years ago in fact) and realizing that they were ancient, scratchy-as-fuck chiptunes. But hell, I didn't care. Still don't. That was some catchy shit.

After that came Phantasy Star 3. For some reason, the (overly simplistic now that I look back on it) dungeon theme really stuck with me, and I found myself humming it throughout the day in school, much to the chagrin of the girl sitting next to me. (Thinking back on that, I think she was kinda hot...for a 9 year old. And goddamn I hope the pervy police don't read that sentence out of context).

So anyway, pissing off the classmates by humming PS3 dungeon music later gave way to the brilliant idea of making mixtapes of VGM as it came on. This was, needless to say, an imperfect science at best considering that A. I needed to time my recordings exactly so that they would start with the in-game music and B. it consisted of putting a tape recorder up to the monaural TV speaker in my room. Still, kicked ass for the time. I remember recording a whole damn tape of nothing but "Thray" from Phantasy Star IV by leaving the game at the scene in Molcum where you first meet Rune.

After that it was...I admit it...Final Fantasy 7. Did the same thing with "One Winged Angel" as I did with "Thray" due to the sheer novelty factor of bombastic choir music in a game. (Side note: that wasn't the first time I'd heard it, as to this day "Consumite Furore" of Sierra's 1995 horror game Phantasmagoria remains among my favourite VGM tracks, and it used choirs singing Latin lyrics to much greater, more haunting, and more intelligible effect. MORE INTELLIGIBLE. GODAWFUL LYRICS OF O.W.A. I AM LOOKING AT YOU.) I still remember my vacation with my family up to House on the Rock in Wisconsin. Bored to tears by the car ride and still below driving age, I played my 2-sided OWA tape to myself over and over and over.

Hmm, and I wondered why I can't stand that song/boss/game/franchise anymore. GEE LET ME THINK.

After that I was officially hooked on VGM. I'd do anything in my power to get ahold of it in any way, shape, or form. For a good, solid few months this primarily meant downloading MIDI files from vgmusic.com, playing them on my old IBM PS/2 as it was way too slow to handle MP3 (which I didn't even know existed at the time). I still hit that site up once in while, as some people have done some truly impressive things with MIDI that I wouldn't have thought possible.

The year was 1999. The name of the place...was Babylon *ducks tomatoes*

...Five. *ducks more rotten vegetables*.

Seriously, though, the year was 1999. I was 16. Final Fantasy 8 was released and marked the pinnacle of my now-long-dead-and-buried Squaresoft fandom. I still hold that game's soundtrack in high regard, likely always will. I had just gotten a new computer from my dad. An HP Pavilion--not impressive by any objective means, especially considering the state of HP in the late 90s, but its 466MHz Pentium 2-based Celeron (I know, I know) was a huge step up from the 486 (I assume, I don't even know what that thing was running) and 8MB of RAM in the old PS/2. Best of all was the fact that it had a 10GB hard disk and could run Sonique, which meant...drum roll please...

*drum roll*

Thanks.

Which meant...MP3 TIME!

Conveniently, at just about the same time, I discovered ffnet.net and its then-still-intact MP3 archive replete with the entire FF8 soundtrack, samples from FF9, samples from other games, and more shit I can't even remember. I downloaded and blasted so much of that music while I was closing up shop at night at my first job. Of course, the office had a T1 line and I had shitty 56K at home, in a pre-flash-drive era and with no CD-RW on my work PC and no Zip drive or anything else on my home system. So I wound up sampling the whole OST at work and then downloading the "best of the best" at home when every last kilobyte had to count.

Somewhere around that time I also found this weird site that hosted a bunch of game soundtracks on this online storage service called IDrive. Dunno what that shit was all about.

Finally, the summer before my 4th, final, and most hellish year of high school, I lost my OST virginity. My mom's office was 4 doors down from a small mom-n-pop independent game store. I'd stopped in now and then but was always underwhelmed by their selection of "normal" games. See, my limited and youthful mind wasn't aware of the wide world of imports, boxsets, models, action figures, etc. based on video games. Yeah, I think it too nowadays: dumbass kid.

So anyway, I stopped in one day and what did I see? The tall, slender case of the "official" (Official Hong Kong Edition, that is) Final Fantasy 8 OST. Gold. Motherfucking GOLD. With every last penny I could scrounge up from what I'd earned at my degrading, thankless, soul sucking, but still-really-fucking-good-for-a-16-year-old library IT job I slapped $40 in cold, hard cash down on the counter and snapped that sucker right up. As an added bonus, I found out that it came packaged with a bootleg Samurai Shodown soundtrack and some J-pop singer's CD too. AND Disc 3 was conveniently missing the grating, screechy "Eyes On Me" which I despised at the time (I hadn't yet heard the nails-on-chalkboard Suteki Da Ne and so EOM was pretty horrid for lack of that updated basis of comparison). Bootlegs fucking rule.

I took it home and immediately popped it in the stereo. I giggled like a 13-year-old schoolbitch when Liberi Fatali rang like a carillon bell from my Dad's custom surround-sound speaker system. I was hooked in a whole new way.

From that point I'd go on something of a minor buying spree of soundtracks, all from the local retailer as my mom was seriously paranoid of online shopping at the time and I had no means of ordering online by myself. Of course, the vast majority of what I got from them were bootlegs, but they all had the tracklists intact, so what did I give a shit?

VGM would have a particularly profound impact on me over the course of a hellish 7 months of high school (thank $DEITY for early graduation). It became a refuge of sorts, something that was only mine and that nobody else could taint by association as they were all wrapped up in the latest teen-rock schlock of the era or in Sailor Moon soundtracks to really take an interest in VGM. It kept me sane through the worst parts of the ensuing months--instrumental pieces to form a soundtrack to life as I knew it, a kind of pseudo-escapist psychological defense mechanism by which I could view my circumstances as less than real--and stayed with me after I left my high-school hell and went on to a better job and a college where I was finally a stranger. At that point, it was no longer as necessary for its calming effects and psychological cushioning, but I'll be damned if it didn't make great background music for lonely, dull weekends in the office.

About 2 years later, after I had padded my collection more via online ordering, my good ol' local indie retailer (now closed and out of business, god damn you GameStop), and Gamingforce FTPs, I discovered Direct Connect.

The rest, as they say, is history. And so was the free space on my hard drive.

Me, a lot different.

It started with me first being interested in the music from the Legend of Zelda. I was fascinated by the number of midi files made for it, and after a little bit of playing around, I ended up finding http://www.vgmusic.com/ . So, I stayed there listening to midi files for approximately 2 months or so, before I ended up finding OC Remix and VG Mix, which I was also extremely interested in.

Flash 1 year into the future, and here I am, playing around IRC when I find #gamemp3s and #gamemp3 on dal.net. At around the same time, I end up finding gamingforce audio (when there were mp3 downloads). I end up starting a MEAGER collection of gaming music for about 5 months, before I leave for another 1-2 years.

At the same time I started collecting anime music, I slowly collected more game music again. After another 6 months, I became more elitist in terms of quality, and ever since, I've been collecting as much game/anime music as possible.

I'm also a quality whore... three years and counting, with more than 250GB of anime/game music now.

I was listening to VGM on Nintendo for years, but it wasn't until I saw a way to buy the Secret of Mana soundtrack, did I even know VGM was on CDs. At that point I thought it was some American thing, but I remember the advertisements in the back of of video game magazine. Oh the ridiculous prices.... I made some purchases when I could get money, but then I discovered this place.