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

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!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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:

I was speaking idiomatically.

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?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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 .

I was speaking idiomatically.

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...

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

^ 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.

FELIPE NO

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

Most amazing jew boots

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 am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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 was speaking idiomatically.

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?

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

FELIPE NO

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

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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?

There's nowhere I can't reach.