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Games Entertainment

Arcade Remixes And The Six Million Dollar Cabinet 79

Posted by emmett from the dig-dug dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Some guy has mucked about with the background music of old arcade games. Also, this site proves that some arcade games are built to last." Hey, I know that arcade games are built to last; I'm a VAPS member! :)
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Arcade Remixes and the Six Million Dollar Cabinet More

Arcade Remixes and the Six Million Dollar Cabinet

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  • better than a load of the stuff on mp3.com :-)
  • This is what .NSF files are for; the only problem is that you need to be an expert at 6502 assembly, since NSF files are chunks of code ripped from the ROM with a few subroutines highlighted. The nice thing is that if you have a good NSF player, it sounds just like the real thing AND you can play a given song as long as you want without sound effects.

    --
    Your friendly neighborhood mIRC scripter.
    if (ismoderator(reader)) hidemessage(this);
  • I didn't think anyone could echo my sentiment any more perfectly... There was such a spirit of discovery in early synth music that I can't get over -- the sort of spirit of ingenuity that only comes around when there is some newly emerging field.

    -- nath
  • It looked like cinderblocks to me. Foam rubber would be completely ineffective at breaking the fall. Cinderblocks work alot better.

    I wanna see them drop the unit into a swimming pool and then see how well it works (esp with the extension cord shorting into the water).

    "3.141592653589793238462642795028841971693993751 0"
    -- nath
  • Denver International Airport has already widely embraced this style of music. On the train that runs between the terminal and the concourses, whenever you reach a stop it plays this little burst of music that I *swear* has to be a cut from some original Nintendo game. There's also an accompanying voice-over that says "Welcome to Concourse __" that would strongly benefit from a James Earl Jones-esque "This... is Concourse __" a'la CNN. Think about it - how did those pirates fit 16 men on a dead man's chest?
  • Power Pill does a Pac-Man Remix that is actually fun to listen to...i got mine from mp3spy, dont know where to find it these days...
    "They think its sexist"
  • I met the guy who dropped the arcade machine off of a 2 story building at Comdex in Chicago this last year. They had the machine there and they were looping the video of it over and over. They are touting their arcade PC's that CAN be dropped and still run. The machine was still running afterwards. Pretty cool stuff. The box looks like it'd make it out of nuclear holocaust.

    ------------------------------------------
    the amazing bc
    latin/funk flugelhorn & trumpet
    webnaut, music junkie, sysadmin from hell
  • Hope that wasn't a vintage cab, or I'm gonna have to go down to r-cade and...

  • I'm not terribly impressed (review of tunes) (Score:4)

    by Spiff28 ( 147865 ) on Friday July 14, 2000 @03:47AM (#935159)
    DISCLAIMER: For an idea of what I like: Jungle (Dieselboy, RAM Trilogy, right up to LTJ Bukem), Goa/Psy (Astral Projection, Hallucinogen), Hiphop (Herbaliser, DJ Shadow, DJ Krush), Minimal (_rohformat [rohformat.de]), Rock/Alt/Metal (Radiohead, Incubus, Esthero), Triphop (Massive Attack, Lamb). I'm finnicky about mixing quality as well.

    OK, I've had time to check out everything on that site. End result: you get some nostalgia, and a lot of iffy music.

    Basically it's a lot of videogame related tunes that fall into all sorts of traps.

    • MIDI-fied (I prefer the bleeps, thanks)
    • Drumloop repetition ("I'll add the Amen to this track, and just loop it! That'll make it cool!")
    • Drumloop repetition phobia ("I can never have the same drum sequence or loop twice" aka schizo drums)
    • Samples you've only heard 497 times before
    • Where's the Treble?
    • Where's the Bass?
    • I Must Use Every Effect Known to Man

    You basically find:

    • MIDI-fied tunes
    • The old song sampled with a "New and Improved!" beat over top of it
    • A smattering of samples from the game layed down over an attempt at a song

    That being said, there are some songs that are pretty decent, some novel ideas, and some that if nothing else make me think of making a longer version.

    • Doom E1M1 remix - Yeah, I like the original FM sounds too, but this has a great idea going. The drums could use a bit of work, and the whole could be more massive, but it's a really great take.
    • Dune Arrakis (Wormsign remix) - I've never heard the original, but I like this. The strings are not overpowering (SEE? SEE HOW GREAT THIS MELODY IS!?), the beat and samples all sound like they fit, and the song is actually going somewhere with a consistent them. Slightly better mixing would've made this a total winner.
    • Ghosts 'n' Goblins Instant remix - The bass is slightly out of tune, the treble's gone missing, and the bass/909hihat is hardly original. But what counts is that for once, this complements the original tune, and sounds like it fits as opposed to being a beat laid overtop.
    • Gradius Medley remix - Sticking true to original form, but very clean and crisp. I want more ;)
    • Marioland Millenium remix - YES. This is very much worth having. The original tune basically untouched in sequencing, but it gets nice and chewed up by filters playing around here and there, and the drums are good.
    • Megaman II Flashman Flashfire remix - This has an amateurish sound to it, I think because the samples aren't all quite together (eg: drums sound like they're not from the same set, etc.). But the sequencing and melodies are very well done. This is a great portrayal of the original.
    • Metroid AmIEvil Bluebase remix - Short, reverbed piano.. why do I like this? There's some background ambiance that gives this the haunting feel the tune has. Also this is really inspiring me to go out and redo it ;)
    • Zelda64 Ocarina Boogie remix - YES. Don't ask questions, just go get it.
    • Paperboy Dead Guys remix - Good idea of what it wants to be, the drums and that distorted bassline-ish lead sound are good to carry you along while you can listen to the little piano ditty. Ambiance in here too.

    Now I know I left out an awful lot. There are tunes that are close, but no cigar. These were just the few that had that special something to them (to me anyway). You might also note that none of these tunes are by DJ Pretzel.. sorry man, but your sound is not quite there. The Mario Jazz thing is close, and pretty unique, but I prefer my jazz on the real thing, not sequenced...

    Well.. hope someone puts these opinions to good use anyway...

  • Tho, Chris has his own mp3.com site with a HUGE ASS 6.4MB MP3 of the T2 title song, which r0x.

  • Yep (Score:2)

    by Spiff28 ( 147865 )
    Those are some really cool trains. You'll note the music actually corresponds to a terminal (It was either that or it corresponded to stopping/starting, I can't remember which).

    The best part was when someone was blocking the doors, and the voice would say "Please move away from the doors, you are delaying the departure of this train." For some reason people would alwyas feel like they'd just been singled out, and everyone would inch in closer to the middle of the train. Hilarious ;)

  • I work at Arcade Technologies and it was cinderblock that the Arcade machine fell on. Also, it was the corner that hit, which ended up throwing the PC down towards the ground itself. Trust me, there was plenty of shock. None of us here actually expected the thing to really work, but it did, and scandisk didn't even find any errors. Branin

  • Wow (Score:1)

    by drwiii ( 434 )
    That marioland remix is excellent.. Definitely recommended.

    Now all we have to do is wait ten years for someone to remix Sega's excellent Jet Set Radio [min.net] soundtrack. Although, there's at least one song in the game that I'm sure won't make it to the US.. (:

    Emerald Coast from Sonic Adventure [min.net] wouldn't make a bad remix either.

  • I'm pretty sure if you dropped your Optiplex, while running, off your desk onto the ground, it would stop working. Nothing is doctered, and there was tremendous amounts of shock on the PC. I have a video I could send you if you wanted (although it's quite large). Branin
  • The ArcadePC is indeed for use as a coin-op in an arcade, with specially written software and a few ports. For instance, there is a Quake 1 arcade game that has been modified a little bit to support quarters and trackballs better that is running off of a PC. A (relatively) new game that uses ArcadePC's is HydroThunder by Midway. There are literlly thousands upon thousands of these machines out there. It's purpose is for Arcade Game Developers to have a known, good (state of the art componenents) platform to publish games on. Branin
  • It's actually a state of the art PC (running Windows in the machine that was dropped) that was dropped. A desktop PC probably wouldn't survive a 3 foot drop, while running (which the machine that was dropped was). Branin
  • This is true. We take the arcade box that was dropped (what remains of it) to all the major trade shows and play a video loop of the box being dropped. Never fails to get a crowd. Branin
  • Actually, it was an industrialized version of Windows 98, that had had many modifications made to it in order to be reliable and rugged. Branin
  • Don't worry. It was a trashed cabinet for a relatively old game. Branin
  • Wow, it's really freaky. I read Overclocked regularly, but I never went to the remixes page. Took a look today and boom! Right there, staring back at me was the Arrakis song remix from the original Dune game for PC.

    I have the game, and just love the music. It has that nice tribal/ambient quality to it. Unfortunately the game was released in '93, and in game music is all FM-Synthesized. Virgin released a soundtrack CD to the game, with all the songs professionally recorded, but it went out of production in '94, and is now almost impossible to find. (It's sought after by many dune afficianados, and I would love to get my hands on it, or at least some MP3 tracks. Email me if you can give me any info on it.)

    So imagine my surprise when I find one of the songs from the game, remixed with top-notch quality and very true to the original.

    Oh, happy day! :)

    levik@levik.com [levik.com]

  • I just got a Nintendo again from e-bay, and I've been playing Metroid, but I also have Megaman & Megaman 2, Ninja Gaiden III, and a few other games. So I must say...

    It's so much better playing the games on the real system! :)

    After I didn't have my Nintendo anymore, I used to try to delude myself into thinking that emulators were just as good, and I must say, back when I was running DOS, Nesticle was pretty good. I dumped the intro music from Zelda with it, and I was hard-pressed to tell the difference. (not that I had a real copy of Zelda nearby...)

    But I don't think it would really be the same unless I had a working TV-out on my monitor, two Nintendo controllers wired up, (hey, at least there's driver support for it...) and a perfect NES emulator... (they're getting better, but I'd want close to SNES9X's quality--for the Nintendo, of course! :) And even then... maybe it still wouldn't be the same. :)

    However, since sound emulation is one of the areas most lacking on the NES emus I've seen for Linux, I'm going to sample what I can both from a real Nintendo and from some emulators wherever possible. I don't think I'll store them as raw .WAV files, though; I think I can live with a little .mp3 distortion.

    (audio zealots--encode them by a factor of 2 more until no one can tell the difference; if bigger than .WAV file, use .WAV file instead. ;)

    ...now I need to check out that site. I've heard a techno remix of Flashman's music that was ok, but my favorite was Quickman's stage. Also, I've said it before, but the music for Simon's Quest rocked!

    Man, now I need to get all my Nintendo games all over again; Simon's Quest, Final Fantasy, Zelda... All gone! :|
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • These are pretty neat; anyone remember all the great music on the Genesis? I'll always remember the music for Thunder Force II and Herzog Zwei, which at the time was the closest thing to a RTS, and a freaking awesome 2 player game!!!

  • the MiniBosses! (Score:3)

    by nutty ( 70104 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @09:18PM (#935173) Homepage

    http://www.minibosses.com/ [minibosses.com]

    These guys kick major booty. Check out such greats as Contra, Castlevania, Metroid, and more! All up in Mp3 for your listening pleasure.

    I saw this over at ArsTechnica [arstechnica.com] a while ago. Once again, they kick ass. And they even play shows..!
    /nutt
  • When I was younger I saw the original pong for sale for $300 Canadian. I had the money to by it at the time, but thought "what the fuck do I want PONG for???" I wish I had bought it now... That was in the late 80's.

    I now have the opportunity to buy an Atari game that I loved in the 80's (I won't name it, lest someone else find it and beat me to it, but it was not that popular anyhow...) I am not going to miss this chance again.

    Amazingly this system is in ok shape, and only $600 Canadian. I say "only" because I spent more in quarters on the damn thing when it was in my local arcade.

    I don't know if I like the trend of throwing arcade machines off of buildings as funny as it may seem... I just found out about an AS 400 that was thrown away at work. (There is a second one about to be turfed, but I managed to get dibs on it...)

    What will eventually happen to these machines is what happend to pong. In the late 80's I thought pong sucked (I still do), but its a collectors item now. A very rare game indeed. So, I will preserve the atari coin-op and the AS 400. Maybe they will go up in value? Maybe not... Still, I will enjoy hanging on to them, and keeping them on the ground floor.
  • Sexual frustaration? That is pretty and tasteful! It looks like a picture I might have on my desk of my cousin. Is that really the best you can do? Although I dont think it would be appropriate to have something porongraphic (although it wouldn t surprise me),I think something tasteless, or at least with some kind of geek injoke, would be better for Slashdot. Get to work, y'lazy scurvy dogs! I want to see Ntalia Portman, with a light saber, chopping off Bill Gates head, and then putting his head in a big ball of maltomeal!

  • Richard James also did another arcade sampler that you will know as well, but maybe didn't know it was him: Pacman: 'Powerpill' on FFRR... Remember that? Yes, that was him, he had just been given a portable DAT recorder by Warp (or maybe R&S) and he went down the arcades...



    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

  • asdf
  • My favorite has always been "Valkyrie needs food" in a high pitch tone just like the first game.
  • or does the guy throwing the game off the roof look a lot like Castro?!
  • Zophar's [zophar.net] has a whole slew of original NES .nsf files that contain the original songs and nosefart [nofrendo.org] does a fine job of playing them. Try playing the original and then the remix to compare. Really neat stuff.
  • You're not alone. It always depresses me when I actually have to EXPLAIN what I meant when I mutter Gauntlet phrases.
    --
  • Looks like the classic Nintendo games never die...they just get resampled ^_^

    I'm actually glad to see someone taking an interest in breathing some life back into some of my favorite game tunes--especially since most of the remixes I find are merely MIDI's, and not nearly as exciting to listen to if you don't have a decent sound card for MIDI voices (like my AWE64 gold or a Live128).
  • Most NES freeware developers on the Internet use LoopyNES, available at Zophar.net [zophar.net]. It's for DOS, but it'll probably run in DOSEmu. It offers nearly perfect emulation of the NES CPU and PPU (helluva lot better than Testicle) with only two problems I've found: 1. no wave logging, and 2. a bug in the sample playback code (yes, the NES had a compressed sample channel) that sometimes loops or drops samples. (NESten is the best Windows-based emu currently.)
    <O
    ( \
  • On Napster, you can find Tetris remixes up the proverbial ass.
    <O
    ( \
  • Just use some of the old tracking software like Fastracker or Modtracker or Protracker. It'll take some getting used to if you want to create that type of music - ahh the old Amiga days. I wonder what's been going on with that company recently? And just rip the sounds off any cd etc.
  • See, Windows 98 is not as bad as you lino-heads try to FUD us Windows users about. Why else would this company choose Win98 for a rugged impact survivable arcade machine?
  • Without him actually being polygraphed whilst answering I don't think we are likely to find out, but I was told this by two different sources, one of whom used to DJ at the Cornwall parties, and the other is someone that claimed to know his gf pretty well, and certainly knew enough about him to justify this to me, even though she had no interest in techno.

    But as is obvious from what I have said, sorry, but I can't make it gospel for you!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

  • whoops...i think i knew that at one point but have since forgotten...good call.
    "They think its sexist"

  • illegal mp3 warning! (Score:4)

    by Floyd Tante ( 210193 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @08:18PM (#935190)

    Don't bother looking for those songs on Napster; I've already replaced them with cuckoo sounds...
  • i think this is a bad idea and it makes me sad. we should leave the old tunes as they were! nuff said!!! :(
  • even a retard like you should know it all depends on the BOX it's in!

  • Does it run on linux? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Has anyone checked Linux's reliablity when being dropped down two stories? I'm especially looking for comparisons to BSD.

    I've heard that OpenBSD [atheos.cx] won't even let you throw it off a building.
  • I've been wondering for YEARS when someone was going to get around to sampling Mega Man.. that stuff is just BEGGING to be integrated into some new techno.. -_- Most of that early nintendo/super nintendo stuff is just without compare in newer games [Zelda 64 was just sad.. especially the music in the big field in the center.], and it's amazing how little of it has been mined by the DJ/techno community.. seemed like nintendo games was the one thing as of yet untouched.

    of course now the downside is, whenever i get around to learning how to make music, i can't sample MegaMan and be totally original. Ah well.. whatever.

    I have some deeper, very relevant comment on the tip of my mind that i can't quite summon into being because it is 1:16 AM. Too bad. Goodnight.

    (P.S. If anyone knows where i can get hold, legally or otherwise, of a recording of the song from the video game "Earthbound" that they played when you were fighting the atomic spherical robot things on the way to the final battle, could you let me know where i could get it? :) THAT was a good song. And if i do ever actually get around to learning any musical instruments, i want to try to make a version of it with slap bass done on an actual guitar.. -_-)
  • I'll start hearing the Dragon Warrior music, and it won't go away. (or Mega Man, or Final Fantasy, or any of a couple dozen video games that I can pick out from the outlines of the main character sprites burned into my retina)

    I love those old songs, but I never want to hear anything like them again!

    It only takes a mention of one of those old games to get me humming its theme music for a week, if I hear new ones I'll eventually have a complete set of rotating video game music in my head. That would be a fate worse than death, worse even than getting a Muzak ear implant.
  • And I thought that I was the only one who does that...

    I do it routinely up at school and nobody realizes what I'm saying.

    Sigh... still looking to buy an old Gauntlet arcade machine...

    Wizard shot the potion...

    Elf needs food badly...

  • You know you're getting old when... (Score:3)

    by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @08:41PM (#935197) Homepage Journal
    On the way to a restaurant with your "peer group" you utter the immortal words:

    "Wizard needs food badly"

    ... and everybody just stares at you like you're checking the propane level with a with a lighter.

    If this can help the new generations better appreciate my 80s-centric humour, I'm for it.

  • The tune was Megablast by Bomb the Bass and it was this tune that was remixed for the game and not the other way around.
  • Anyone who has played mortal combat, Street Fighter, Double Dragon, or Super Mario Brothers, should know that they've made movies themed to these games and the soundtracks are all remixed. Also does anyone remember how mortal combat became one of the largest dance songs around?
  • Some things cost more in electricity than justifies their usefulness.

  • "wierd noises that you just don't _find_ unless you're programming a bad sound api or echoing patterns of numbers to /dev/audio ..."

    MAN OH MAN, thanks for the suggestion. Try
    $ cat core > /dev/dsp
    ... bonus points if you can debug your apps by listening to them. ;)

  • NESticle allowed you to capture the speaker output as a .wav file. However you'd get the sound effects in the recording as well.
  • Xenon 2 was surely a classic Amiga game? I mean OK it got ported from Amiga to the PC, but in those days you might or might not have a sound card, like a year or so ago you might or might not have 3D graphics hardware. The Amiga was a (relatively) static platform, so the developers got the most out of it, and knew that everyone would get to hear the music.
  • amazing how little of it has been mined by the DJ/techno community

    "Powerpill Pacman" by Aphex Twin. 'Nuff said.
    -Antipop
  • Okay, this is almost getting to the point of offtopic, offensive threads that I expect from Slashdot, especially at this hour of the night. But I am ashamed that more people didn't join in, and that noone accused Jon Katz of being a Nazi, or posted anything in 14|\/|3r...now get to work you lazy /.ers!

  • core is interesting, but the COOLEST is

    cat /dev/hda1 > /dev/audio

    seriously, sometime i'm going to tape about half an hour of my LinuxPPC partition, drive it down to the local college radio station [ktru.org], and ask them to play it during the ambient music show.. :)
    /dev/hda1 (or your corresponding equivilent) is great, though, especially if you come across any _sound files_ on your drive saved in a lossless format-- they just play at random and then disappear back into the soup.

    and, for the record, you _can_ make some pretty interesting stuff just by writing very simple programs.

    unsigned char n=0; /* this will result in some wierd rollover problems, which are left intentionally unfixed. to fix them, change to an int and typedef to unsigned char when you cout */
    char i = 1
    for(;;) {
    cout << (n+=i);
    if (n>=255) i=-(i+1);
    if (n=0) i=-(i-1);
    if (i==0) i++;
    }

    I don't have physical access to a linux box with sound right now and i haven't compiled the program above [it was just the first example i could think of off the top of my head], so i don't know what it sounds like, but messing with that kind of pattern can give you some really trippy shit.

    Or find some large databaselike data files with a lot of repetitive structure but varying information interspersed, and you get something that vaguely approaches the quality level of Coil.. :)

    Can ANY non-unixlike operating systems claim that they come with a built-in industrial music generator? :)
  • I really don't have time to download and listen to a dozen crappy remixes, a question to those that do - which ones don't suck? Bearing in mind I *do* think it would be very cool to have a decent dance tune based on an arcade classic. I like house / trance / techno. :)

    Thad

  • I'm a collector of video game music. I have music of everything from the original Zelda game music to the newest Parasite Eve and Chrono Cross soundtracks.

    There is some great stuff, and you can get hooked on the music for days. I strongly suggest that anynoe who's interested in finding out more about video game soundtracks purchase the Chrono Cross Soundtrack ($35 for 3 discs and a poster of the chick in the game - sweet :) or even Chrono Trigger ($30 for 2 discs). Also, look to Soundtrack Central [soundtrackcentral.com] for reviews and track listings.

  • I'd consider LTJ Bukem to be more acid jazz than jungle, at least on the album I've got.


    ---
    Zardoz has spoken!
  • I know, that probably most people won't care, but Freaky Flow did a drum'n'bass track with PJ(called "Mist"). It's uses a breakbeat with the music from the water levels in Donkey Kong Country. trypn0tik
  • How true is this? (You can never be sure with the Aphex...) I love the track to pieces, but I've always assumed he ripped the game sounds from MAME. Confirmation of this story would be lovely...
  • EROS [eros-os.org] will bounce back onto the desk you originally lifted it from!
  • Actually, you can throw OpenBSD off a building; but nobody else can see it falling on the way down. And just forget about taking pictures...
  • the files are ok but,
    most of them are dredfully similar to their originals, using very limited sound ranges and polyphony; perhaps this was the authors intent.

    However, as a musician, I would certainly like to throw some new instrumentation at these charts, and use the new freedom of polyphony thoroughly!

    Also, the midi colors seem quite prevelent; lets hear some real live players milking this stuff up!

    I'm tempted to go arrange some of that MegaMan3 stuff... loved the game when I was kid :-)

  • SPC files under Linux? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A lot of SNES songs are available on the internet as .SPC files. Also, ZSNES (SNES emulator for DOS) has a command to dump the currently playing music to an .SPC file. So you can download the ROM, get that music to start playing, and dump it to a file.

    SPC files record the actual sound data used by the SNES, and the sound-coprocessor must be emulated to play these files. If it's emulated correctly, the music will sound exactly the same as on the SNES (unlike the MIDI versions of some songs that are available). I know there's a decoder plug-in available for WinAMP (possibly from the same place as ZSNES), but does anyone know if it's possible to play (or create) these under Linux? I have a bunch of Chrono Trigger songs that this site just reminded me of :)

  • Dang! wwhats wrong with you people! This site is not yet Slashdotted! I managed to get my download at a good 4.5K\sec...

    Not only that, but there is not Natalie Portman references, even in the Trolls! What is wrong with you people?

  • Re:This sucks. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You gotta get the 5th letter of the third word from clicking on the first banner, and the 9th letter of the last word from the second banner before you can log in.

    And then you find out that all they have is quake3 and Norton Antivirus.
  • I especially enjoyed the Star fox instrumental remix. It really brought the feel of the game back without that god-awful chittering that those computer made "friends" made.

  • The name of the product, and all the sales material on the site suggest that the ArcadePC is for use as a coin-op in an arcade. Does anyone know what you can (legally) run on these and charge money for? OK I see that you could write your own software and run that, but are there some software houses out there producing new arcade games for the coin-op market, that run on a PC? Do any of the arcade game producers commercially license any of their ROMs for use in emulators for use in a real pay-for arcade unit (rather than home use, as I believe Capcom do)?

    OK you could put mame and some downloaded ROMs on it, but that could get you in trouble. Or is that what they are really suggesting it is for?

  • Or, while playing Diablo 2, you mutter to yourself "Warrior is about to die".

    Man oh Man do we need help!
    8-)


    This is my .sig. It isn't very big.
  • I wonder how my PC will survive being dropped from the third floor. I mean their unit was just a simple arcade machine, a desktop PC should survive three stories shouldn't it?

    If you don't hear from me in a couple days you can assume the worst....I must bodly go where no computer has gone before!

    Farewell,
    Brave computer dropper
  • Check out "The Horrible Plans of Flex Busterman" by Patric C. Basically, it's the soundtrack to a mid-80's video game that never existed. You'll swear you've herd it on an Atari somewhere. Check out United Against Busterman [haywire.co.uk]
  • Although I bet 99% of you haven't heard this stuff.

    Aphex Twin - Bouncing Becephaluas (sp?) Ball, has a sample or two from Defender in it.

    Jungle music takes old videogame samples kinda frequently actually. The only things I can think of off the top of my head (aside from 3 bajillion ragga-jungle tunes) are D-Type by Capone (aka Dillinja, it's got some R-Type samples/inspiration), Frogger by Ryme Tyme. There's also some dubplate I've heard mixed by Usual Suspects that has a nice little videogame ditty that I can't place, combined with tight drums. Who'd ever you thought you could make a videogame tune so damn massive.

    Chrono Trigger fans could also check out The Education by Vinyl Matt, but I can't remember if it was put out on Tokyo Dawn Records [mp3.com], Theralite, or Mo'Playaz.

    Anyway, just thought I'd say that other people do this too. And it's DAMN fine listening most of the time ;)

  • I was wondering about this myself. Im pretty sure this Optiplex on my desk would survive a 2 story plunge if I slammed it into a cabinet, especially if it didnt hit concrete. However while first reading the page I didnt notice that, good observation. Much like that old dateline thing where they made the ford explode to prove that it was unsafe, but used pyrotechnics to make it look spectacular. Well this is sort of the reverse of that... Ah well.
  • Oh man, I hate iNES....

    Use MESS or DarcNES; I hear TuxNES has gotten better, too. I need to download them all and try them all again. :)
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    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • That in the pictures of the arcade machine being dropped off the building, that they dropped it onto a series of what look to be packing pallettes? Also the cabinet looked like it hit top first. So I would imagine that these two combined factors would act in a similar mannar to collapsable body panels in a car. For those who don't follow : IT'S ABSORBING ALL THE IMPACT ENERGY (SHOCK). If they wanted to prove something, skip the housing and the pallettes. If it still survived, then I'd be impressed. Thoughts?
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  • I am ashamed of you! You had a link that suggested it had something to do with Natalie Portman, and indeed, it was a non-working link, but it was not a link to goatse.cx! You Slashdotters are slipping, aren't you?

  • Whoops, sorry, did i say most? Damn.

    > I'm sorry, but the constat beep, beep, beep in Nintendo games is annoying as hell. Give me a modern game anyday.

    Yes, of course 90% of everything is crap. The point of my post, which probably didn't get into the post because i'm only barely awake, is that early nintendo and most of SNES had this feel to it which is simply absent these days in video game music, and that some of it was simply amazing. Not all; some. And most of what makes it good, or at least unique, had to do with reasons directly related to the fact the composers were very limited by the format of the music.

    > But you're probably one of those people who complains that super mario bros. had the best gameplay of all time. Sad.

    Not really, but i am one of those people who can listen to [to give the most "well-known" example] aphex twin and not hear a single one of the notes because i'm listening to the sonic envelopes. Also perhaps sad.

    I'm not being nostalgic for Super Mario Brothers 1, i'm being nostalgic for the Roland 303 and crappy vinyl records. 8-bit 11 khz sound can produce some truly amazing feels in the right hands, just because you are forced into applying a certain mode to everything, forced into giving everything a certain stylistic tone that makes it ideal for sampling.

    Just because of the limitations of the format, the creators of that music were forced to take wierd sonic shortcuts, do strange things with pure waveforms, produce wierd noises that you just don't _find_ unless you're programming a bad sound api or echoing patterns of numbers to /dev/audio; create music with anything with even slightly higher-level abstractions and those sounds just don't come about. [not to say that everyone who attempted to create low level sound wound up creating something other than crap.] _This_ is why i would want to sample NES music; because it has a feel to it unlike the feel of anything else. What's the music in video games these days like? Just the same old thing that a synthesizer you can buy in a store does, sometimes just recorded music. Why sample that, why not just sample a non-game CD?
    The point of sampling something is because it brings some element to your music which you cannot produce on your own. Current videogame music is just _music_, normal music, and contains no elements that cannot be found elsewhere. Old-ass nintendo music _does_ have elements, feels, that cannot be found elseware, and thus it would make sense to sample them, to assimilate that feel..

    I think my post took it as a given the listener had both listened carefully to nintendo music and had thought a lot about sampling. Those really are dumb assumptions. Sorry.

    [why I love (and understand why most of you hate) minimal techno] [everything2.com]

    SLEEP NOW!!! NOW!!!!

  • Not only arcade games... (Score:3)

    by mav[LAG] ( 31387 ) on Thursday July 13, 2000 @09:04PM (#935229)
    ... but also old classic PC games such as Xenon 2 have had their tunes remixed. It was incredibly difficult to work out where I had heard the MegaBlast tune before since you don't normally associate computer game music with a dance track in the middle of a club...

    Half of me says this phenomenon is remixers getting desperate for new material - the other half says anything to keep the memories alive.

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