Video games and Music

[Anonymous No.5100387]

Let's have a thread about times when the video game world got interwined by the music world and vice-versa.
Anything goes: Musicians who did video games OST, artists who got their own video game, artists who in some way or another had something to do with a video game, be it promotional songs, advertising, whatever.
Also, I'm aware by default every video game composer is an artist and a musician, but I mean musicians who were actually doing music and had released their own work, not exclusively video game composers.

Pic related is the Famicom game of Seikima II, one of Japan's most legendary metal bands, often called the Kiss of Japan (they're actually better than Kiss).
They also got an MSX version.

[Anonymous No.5100393]

[Anonymous No.5100396]

>>5100393

[Anonymous No.5100401]

>>5100393
>>5100396
This is all I can think of off the top of my head. The entire soundtrack for this game is from Green Jello's 2nd album, just turned into bleeps and bloops.

[Anonymous No.5101368]

>>5100393
>>5100396
>>5100401
Cool stuff, didn't know that about Maximum Carnage.
Here's a weirder one; many people remember these weird goombas and other enemies from the rare SMB All Night Nippon, which were modeled after the real hosts of the radio show of the same name.
The skinhead, sunglass wearing goombas are based on Nakano Sunplaza, who is a musician himself and a performer, but more of a personality. He's collaborated with a bunch of indie bands in the 80s, he sort of became a legend on his own.

[Anonymous No.5101374]

>>5100387
Holy shit, I've been wanting to talk about this game but I've never seen a tbread where it felt appropiate. The game is nothing amazing but I think it's somethings fans of Monster Party and similar games would like. It's bat shit insane with shit like you going to heaven and hell to find your lost band mates and fucking Jesus being the final boss.

[Anonymous No.5101378]

Carmageddon 1 and 2

Moonwalker

[Anonymous No.5101383]

Obligatory mention of Bad Day on the Midway, which was scored by the Residents

[Anonymous No.5101385]

>>5100387
Not entirely related but you may find Otocky interesting. It's a famicom shump where you make the music as you shoot stuff, pretty interesting game.

[Anonymous No.5101389]

>>5101374
Seikima II are all about demons and shit, fitting for this time of the year I guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e6gJ04KmBQ
By the way, Nakano Sunplaza who I mentioned above also collaborated with Seikima II a number of times. He's kind of collaborated with everyone though.

[Anonymous No.5101410]

>>5100387
Keiichi Suzuki, one of the composers for the first two Mother games, has a band called the Moonriders. In Japan he's known mostly for composing for some notable Japanese films but in the west the Mother/Earthbound series is his main claim to fame.

[Anonymous No.5101456]

>>5101410
Good one, Suzuki is actually a giant artist and he's done so much work, he's a living legend in the japanese music scene. He influenced a lot of artists, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say he's more or less on the same level as the YMO guys. In fact, he has a band with Yukihiro Takahashi from YMO.
In Japan he's more famous for his work with Moonriders and his work as a producer, rather than his film score. He's actually more famous in the west for both, his Mother soundtracks, and his movie soundtracks like Zatoichi, which are all great, but in Japan, those are just a couple more of the many many other works he puts out.
Suzuki has actually made another soundtrack besides the Mother games, the Kenji Eno sound novel "Real Sound: Kaze no Regret" for Sega Saturn (and Dreamcast later). Suzuki wrote music along with Akiko Yano (ex-YMO member, ex-wife of Sakamoto, and a great solo artist overall).

[Anonymous No.5101486]

>>5101456
Interesting, thanks for the info anon. I haven't looked too much into his career but most English info on him cites his film works above all, sorry for the misinformation on that part. I'll have to check out those sound novels, never been interested in VNs or similar games but sound novels sound pretty cool.

[Anonymous No.5101784]

Kerry Minnear and Ray Shulman of Gentle Giant did the music of Azrael's Tear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06EcGwpuak8&list=PL8-5KmO_TALnUTSiYlF4xZNjmJ8WvpkXc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GI1GQeFhIU&list=PL8-5KmO_TALnUTSiYlF4xZNjmJ8WvpkXc&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTX0-G53-R0&list=PL8-5KmO_TALnUTSiYlF4xZNjmJ8WvpkXc&index=10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asIE1HHpiA0&list=PL8-5KmO_TALnUTSiYlF4xZNjmJ8WvpkXc&index=11

There's also Tengai Makyou or Far East of Eden Ziria which music is done by Ryuichi Sakamoto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5evUWXZ95bE

Rob Zombie did the music of Nightmare Creatures II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvFG0-dQC9o

Holy Diver of Dio has a NES game

Quake's music was done by Trent Reznor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVOHTGYoM6E

Quake 2 and 3's music was done by Sonic Mayhem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY6yBTYxLko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bHAgiuiL4o

[Anonymous No.5103152]

David Bowie - Omikron
Ryuichi Sakamoto did the Dreamcast startup sound

[Anonymous No.5104316]

Can't have one of these threads without mentioning /ourguy/ Mana.

[Anonymous No.5104319]

Ice Cap Zone from Sonic 3 was based off of this unreleased Jetzons song - Hard Times. One of the members from the Jetzons worked on the soundtrack and used this song since at that time he probably thought this would never be released I would assume.

https://youtu.be/H2OWC5Hosv8

[Anonymous No.5104338]

>>5104319
The composer also worked on some of Micheal Jackson, which explains why Ice Cap Zone also sounds like a sped-up version of Who Is It. That guy must have really, really liked the song.

[Anonymous No.5104373]

Obligatory.

[Anonymous No.5104375]

Not to mention MJ was a huge video game fan and had an arcade center in his mansion.

[Anonymous No.5104394]

>>5101410
Amazing. I'm saying this because i'm probably the only one here that did know Moonriders BEFORE Earthbound; and knowing that Keiichi has done something for a well known videogame wasn't unthinkable, but i didn't know about it. My favorite song from the band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA_JizCx1kY

[Anonymous No.5104404]

Yeah, this was a actually a thing that came packed onto the CD and was part of a competition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4wEszVNqA

[Anonymous No.5104406]

>>5104394
>i'm probably the only one here that did know Moonriders BEFORE Earthbound
Count me as well, I've been on the look for Moonriders stuff ever since the late 90s when I got Sadamoto's "der mond" art book and he included a cover art he did for a Moonriders CD, mentioning it was one of his favorite bands.
I couldn't find anything by them until the mid 00s though.
I actually got into Earthbound because of Suzuki (and because I was also familiar with Itoi, he wrote lyrics for some Suzuki songs).
Good song and good album by the way. Hard for me to pick just one favorite song by them, but I really like "dynamite and cool guy".
But lately I'm very into No Lie-Sense, have you listened to them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlMu-G7kV10

[Anonymous No.5104439]

>>5104406
OT: What's the chance of finding another one that knew them before said game? Wow. By the way it's not exactly that easy to find new gems here and there on YouTube, because often the most dated stuff are either unfindable or absent at all. The kanji system doesn't help either if we just think that using said ideograms will result in thousands of other entries that won't share anything alike if not the use of the same symbol. My point is, no. I don't know about the group you mentioned because it's not so easy to find japanese groups to begin with. Luckily there's websites like JPOP80s that give me that sort of archive i'm searching for! In fact, i've fallen in love with this band: https://hearthis.at/all-about-jun-lee-74/voice-/BSn/
i just thought that if you wanted to recommend me something, you should expect the same! So that's all, thank you for the nice reply.

[Anonymous No.5104467]

>>5101383
it was also designed by them... they got a penchant for strange cg animation in the 90s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr-I6-gxecg

[Anonymous No.5104473]

>>5104439
>OT: What's the chance of finding another one that knew them before said game?
Same here, it's a rare chance indeed.
I guess I actually might have known about Earthbound, at least partially, due to Ness on Smash Bros. But in reality I had no clue about the game he came from back then, so not really.
As for finding japanese music, I now know a bit of japanese, enough to be able to search stuff and read a little bit. I was able to find the entire Moonriders discography on an old japanese forum called "kyo music city" back in 2007 or so, it was really amazing, but sadly it was taken down a long while ago.
I also remember some other western blogs having some Moonriders stuff later on, I don't remember if Jpop80s has any, probably it does.
You can also find Moonriders stuff in Soulseek, even some FLAC stuff. But that's today, back in the early 00s I remember it being almost impossible to find anything Moonriders, I remember getting some random results searching for them back then. Also, Youtube helped a lot, there's a lot of Moonriders footage there.
As for No Lie-Sense, it's a duo by Suzuki and Kera, who is a legendary guy on his own and had actually worked with Suzuki back in the 80s. They released 2 alums and a live album. I still need to buy the live album because so far I couldn't find it illegally online.
>In fact, i've fallen in love with this band: https://hearthis.at/all-about-jun-lee-74/voice-/BSn/
This is actually pretty good! Thanks for this anon. I can actually recognize that art-style on the cover, I was certain it was made by Keiichi Ohta, and I swear I will make this on-topic now. Ohta is a great artist who has worked with many great artists, including the aforementioned Kera, and also the band Guernica (which I recommend greatly if you haven't heard them already, just look up Guernica Full Album and you'll get their whole discography on youtube).
(cont)

[Anonymous No.5104480]

>>5104473
Okay, On topic now: Keiichi Ohta actually made the illustration cover for a weird Famicom game called Toho Kenbunroku. I haven't played it yet, it seems text-heavy and it's an adventure style game, but the cover alone makes me want to play it.
Anyway again, thanks for recommending me this Voice band, it sounds really good.

[Anonymous No.5104505]

>>5104473
>>5104480
Thanks to you for your in-depth explanation! You cleared up every interrogative i had and even expanded the topic further. There wasn't any need but you did it anyway, even managing to stay on-topic with the second post.
By the way we're talking about Japan here, it's not unthinkable to have some great musicians work for something like 'videogames', which are probably still looked with a certain stigma over here in the west, contrarily to what happens there; i didn't know about that duo, thank you for enlightening me. I'm recovering some very good stuff from them, indeed. You're also right about what you said about Keiichi Ohta, because when i've known about Voice, his name promptly popped up.
Thanks again. It's anons like you that make 4chan still worth visiting, at least imho.

[Anonymous No.5104564]

>>5104505
I'm a big nerd when it comes to music, more than video games lol. Kind of fascinating how a lot of times video games and music get intertwined, for example that Keiichi Ohta thing, I forgot about that Famicom game, and it made me remind of it. And yeah I instantly recognized his art style, those naval-type letters and symbols on the Voice album cover look just like guernica's stuff.
Ohta was also the designer of the Nagomu Records logo, a legendary independent label that was very prominent in the 80s (and came back recently in the 2010s, in fact No Lie-Sense is under Nagomu); the label president is Kera, he's done a lot of different works but surprisingly never with video games, at least that I know.
However, some bands that started on Nagomu Records went on to become very popular major artists in Japan, and some of them did works for video games in one way or another.
One of them is Kinniku Shoujo Tai, some people might be familiar with their frontman, Kenji Ohtsuki, because he did songs for some anime like Welcome to NHK or Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, but before all that, Kinniku songs were used for the TV commercials of Street Fighter II on Super Famicom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6vb6-Swcb0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6wIAkLCaiI
(cont)

[Anonymous No.5104568]

>>5104564
Similarly, another band that started on Nagomu Records and went on to become a major artist is Tama. Unlike Kinniku Shoujo Tai, which did hard rock/heavy metal (but with a really quirky and zany approach), Tama is a folk band, they share the same zany vibe, kind of a Nagomu trademark.
Tama were featured on the commercial for Kirby's Adventure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-8db508yrE
Tama's own Chiku Toshiaki speaks at the end too.
Another artist/band that became very famous and started on Nagomu was Zin-Say, this one is more of a techno pop/synth pop outfit, and probably one of Nagomu's craziest bands. Zin-Say eventually led to a new band, Denki Groove, which became one of Japan's most famous synth pop bands, and even got kind of big in some places of Europe due to performing in various electronic music festivals in Poland and Germany. Takkyu Ishino (the main brain behind Zin-Say and Denki) also performed as a DJ in Love Parade a couple of times, and he's on par with japanese techno legends such as Ken Ishii (who, by the way, did some music for the Dreamcast game Rez, so there's another connection).
Takkyu Ishino produced the excellent soundtrack for the PS1 Ghost in the Shell game. He wrote the title track, but the other tracks are actually mostly german techno producers who were friends with Takkyu. The GITS game soundtrack is very, very interesting. I remember reading on an interview that Takkyu was approached by a Sony executive about making the music for the game, since Denki Groove are signed to Ki/oon (a Sony subsidiary). Takkyu accepted, but asked if he could get collaborators from Europe as well, and Sony accepted somehow. It resulted in one of the best electronic soundtracks in any video game I've heard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWYt-P7yJ1k

I could go on but I guess that's enough for now.

[Anonymous No.5105743]

Rise of the robots 2 has music by Brian May (Formerly of Queen)

[Anonymous No.5105745]

>>5101368
Nakano sunplaza is a concert venue if I recall correctly

[Anonymous No.5105751]

>>5105745
That's right, but the guy named himself after that hotel/concert hall, don't know the full story but his last name is also Nakano, maybe that's why.
Here's his discogs profile
https://www.discogs.com/es/artist/1667157-Sunplaza-Nakano

[Anonymous No.5105924]

What a time to be alive

Best band in games coming through

[Anonymous No.5105971]

Frankie Goes To Hollywood had an extremely strange tie in C64 game. It's a bizarre mixture of open world exploration with surreal minigames and a murder mystery. I personally never got into it but it was quite well received.

[Anonymous No.5106007]

[Anonymous No.5106265]

>>5100387
wipeout 2097 is featured in this music video by fluke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdL8UbLBUDM

[Anonymous No.5106314]

>>5104473
>kyo music city
holy shit my nigga i miss that place so much

[Anonymous No.5106458]

>>5104319
I ain't exactly a fan of 80s synthpop but this song sounds incredible. It reminds me somewhat of City Hunter if that makes sense.

Not sure about this but didn't Megadeth work on a few /vr/ games? I know they did a cover of Duke Nukem's theme from Duke 3D but was that everything?

[Anonymous No.5107773]

Eminem x Pac Man

[Anonymous No.5108061]

>>5107773
Aphex Twin x Pacman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjEDX-2M7Qk

[Anonymous No.5109035]

>>5100387
Good shit anon, those gooks make really fucking good glam metal. I was big into Loudness and Anthem back in the day. It was a pain in the ass to get import tapes in LA back then. All you'd find was popular thrash and shitty Strip bands.

How has no one mentioned this masterpiece?

[Anonymous No.5109078]

Sheena Easton is Annah in Planescape: Torment for some reason.

[Anonymous No.5109083]

pasted from wiki
"Set in 2052, players compete in the F3600 anti-gravity racing league, piloting one of a selection of craft in races on several tracks around the world. Unique at the time, Wipeout was noted for its futuristic setting, weapons designed to both stall and destroy enemy opponents and its marketing campaign designed by Keith Hopwood and The Designers Republic. The game features original music from CoLD SToRAGE, with tracks by Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers and Orbital appearing on some versions. The game was critically acclaimed on release; critics praised the game for its originality and its vast "unique techno soundtrack". However, it was criticised for its in-game physics. Wipeout managed to spawn several sequels to critical acclaim."

[Anonymous No.5109263]

>>5109083
Salty as to why the included a crappy remix of Afro-Left when the original is so good. The Cold Storage tracks are really great. Wipeout 2097 and 3 have some great use of licensed music as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqO89zUdQGs

[Anonymous No.5110014]

>>5109035
>How has no one mentioned this masterpiece?
>>5103152