Some quick VGM suggestions due out this month!
TURRICAN SOUNDTRACK ANTHOLOGY (Chris Huelsbeck)
That amazing Terminator-meets-Magic The Gathering art up there? That’s ol’ Turrican, one of the shooter/platformer greats of the early 90s. I mostly know Super Turrican (SNES) but its INCREDIBLE soundtrack has made me a Turrican OST fan for life. Composer Chris Huelsbeck just posted the four-disc anthology to Bandcamp late last month, so check it out – particularly Second Floor!
FINAL FANTASY VII VINYL (Nobuo Uematsu)
Hey, you Europe folks. Apparently you can see this but I can’t – a page on Square’s storefront for a limited edition FFVII vinyl collection! They’re picture discs (I hear vinyl enthusiasts don’t care for ’em) but IMO the novelty and prestige of owning VGM on a record beats out the potential drop in audio quality. More on the countries and music via this Reddit thread. You can check out more FFVII in our four-part FF series!
ASSASSIN’S CREED IV (Brian Tyler)
More than 50 swarthy tracks from this sea-soaked adventure. Haven’t heard it but I assume there’s a lot of cinema-quality themes in here. Available digitally on Amazon and iTunes.
DEVIL MAY CRY SOUND BOX (Various artists)
Four-disc set featuring tunes from the first four games. Expect lots of shredding guitar and KMFDM-esque riffs! You gotta import, but hey, welcome to VGM collecting. Same goes for the Mega Man X sound box.
SONIC CD: TEMPORAL DUALITY (OC ReMix)
A FREE homage to my favorite Sonic the Hedgehog game, Temporal Duality spans three “discs” and honors both the US and EU/Japan soundtracks. Plenty o’ VGM folk love to turn up their nose at the Spencer Nilsen US OST (which Sega of America used to replace the original Japanese OST), but I maintain it’s quite good, and there’s certainly room for more good game music – no need to trash one just to elevate the other.
While I abhor the idea of altering games, I have to admit that, as standalone musical works, I think the American Sonic CD soundtrack blows the Japanese one out of the water. The “Sonic Boom” theme is cringe-inducing, but the actual in-game music is consistently amazing on the U.S. version.
Aw man, they didn’t call it Vinyl Fantasy?
CLASSIC! 🙂
The name “Vinyl Fantasy” is already taken (http://teamteamwork.com/downloads), though it’s certainly questionable how much of a role an unofficial remix album actually played in influencing Square’s choice of name.
FF7 VINYL?!!!That’s dope. Would love to get my hands on that!Could come up with some new breaks…..Definitely want to check out the OCRemix Sonic CD joint too. Idk why folks don’t like Spencer Nielsen’s cuts.They’re pretty damn great. Sonic Boom was actually my first CD ever. Oddly,I won it at a state fair scavenger hunt.
It was my first CD, too! I got it when I pre-ordered Sonic 3, but I wouldn’t have a CD player to play it on until my family got our first computer a year or two later.
Brett,
Not necessarily on-topic, but have you considered doing a Technosoft episode? I may be projecting my own nostalgia here, but we could all do with a little more Herzog Zwei tunes. Seriously, one of the most slept-on soundtracks to one of the most slept-on games ever. Not to mention, the Thunder Force series(including Lightening Force) is amazing.
Try Sniper( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMNTaGOeA10&list=PLD2409E5806DFEFA6 ). But they’re all awesome. Thunder Force 2 is similarly wonderful.
I would love to hear Gyriss the NES game on one of your episodes. It could be used for a Konomi episode, or even games that have classical (composers or otherwise) music influences. All I know is that the very first song that you hear gets me going every time. Peace out!
I backed OC Remixes Final Fantasy VI Balance & Ruin because that’s pretty much the biggest and only, played a little of a few others in the seires, FF game I played and loved. Can’t recommend it enough and yeah I checked out their Sega homage album too, badass.