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?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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

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

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.

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

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~

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

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.

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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

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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

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

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 speaking idiomatically.

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:

Quote:

My first VGM downloaded from a website was the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 soundtracks, on SonicStadium.net. That was over a couple years ago and I had them burned onto CDs.

In March/April last year I had been playing Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and the music sounded spectacular to me. So I searched endlessly around the internet for any music possible - I found shadowlink56's gamerip posted on MarioTendo.com for a brief period in April 2005, but they were taken down shortly after, I don't know why (probably legal issues). But shortly after in the same month I found VGmp3.com where the music requests were being held, and they had three mp3s up (specifically Cortez Battle, Doopliss Battle and the Underground Theme). I took a listen to the Cortez Battle, and... well you can probably guess what happened then. :P

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

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Joe Wiewel

Disgusted with Kazaa, I started using Audio Galaxy...

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.

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

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

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

How ya doing, buddy?

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

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

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.

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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

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

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 !!!!

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

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.