Classic Video Game Soundtracks?

[kamikazekeeg]

I've downloaded a bunch of modern remixes of songs from OCRemix, mostly to have a playlist of stuff for local game events I participate in, but I was thinking of getting classic original songs from the 8 and 16 bit days, so I was wondering if anyone knew an easy way to get hold of them?  Couldn't really find anything at a glance, but figured there would be people that knew here.

[aliensstudios]

A lot of older games have official soundtracks on CD, lots of OST's can be downloaded online I'm sure (though I have no idea where, since I've never downloaded a VG soundtrack before. If you find the song you wan t on YouTube just put the link into a YouTube to mp3 site, it'll convert it and then you can download the song and put it into iTunes.

[tripredacus]

I know that Sega released game soundtracks on CD called Sega Tunes. I have one, X-Men 2 Clone Wars.

PS: egad, I didn't know these were expensive.

EDIT: Oh you can find some sites that have uploaded video game music tracks. One I used to get tracks from was Hardcore Gaming 101.

[abe]

Lots of stuff on CDJapan. Amazon.co.jp now ships worldwide as well. They're a decent option as well for some things as long as they're shipped from an fulfilled by Amazon.co.jp. Not a huge amount of the old 8 and 16-bit stuff, but still a pretty good selection of music from older games. Not 8 or 16-bit, but here's a Caslevania SoTN soundtrack as an example.

[maximo310]

You have to mostly import them for physical copies; some can be found online like khinsider which has a ton of  arcade soundtracks that are hard to find elsewhere (mp3 only) , and youtube( expect a bunch have been made not available in the US thanks to Youtube Red) and physical stuff can be bought from ecrater, amazon.jp, cdjapan etc.  Itunes has quite a bit of digital releases for new soundtrack and new rereleases of old soundtracks such as Namco's Assault, and Rayforce Original PCB Version from when I checked last; you may be able to find more.

All of Falcom's soundtracks for Legend of Heroes, Ys, etc. can be played for free on Spotify as well.

[badATchaos]

Check out WiiGuy on Youtube. He's posted hundreds of soundtracks, along with download links. He even converts NES games to stereo so they sound amazing.

[telly]

Like maximo said, khinsider has a lot of video game soundtracks to download. I'm not sure of the classic to modern game ratio though...

[kamikazekeeg]

Check out WiiGuy on Youtube. He's posted hundreds of soundtracks, along with download links. He even converts NES games to stereo so they sound amazing.

That one is perfect with all the download links for 8 bit stuff.  I don't want to use youtube rippers if I can, because the quality is usually not as good and if I have to get a number of songs, it takes forever.  Gonna check out khinsider as well. Thanks for the help folks.

[telly]

Check out WiiGuy on Youtube. He's posted hundreds of soundtracks, along with download links. He even converts NES games to stereo so they sound amazing.

That one is perfect with all the download links for 8 bit stuff.  I don't want to use youtube rippers if I can, because the quality is usually not as good and if I have to get a number of songs, it takes forever.  Gonna check out khinsider as well. Thanks for the help folks.

The problem with khinsider is that you have to register and I think pay a fee if you want to download a whole soundtrack album at once. Otherwise you can only download one song at a time and it can take a while. But there is a ton of content on the site to peruse through

[maximo310]

Khinsider changed it rules awhile back, so yeah it sucks that can't do a whole soundtrack at once. However, it does have a lot of quality soundtrack downloads, especially since some companies like Victor Entertianment and other companies put bans on any of their music shown in Youtube U.S., which means even a replay of a old Namco arcade game can get a copyright strike just because of the music.

Emuparadise has some soundtracks as well; there was another forum called ffshrine where I got a ton of soundtracks. You have to register for the site ( downloads should be free), but theres a ton of stuff available, including a thread for shmup soundtracks; there quite a bit of stuff in flac format as well. 

http://forums.ffshrine.org/showthread.php?t=64743

[kamikazekeeg]

Yeah just noticed that.  I might only use them for single song stuff I want since I'm not really interested in donating 20 bucks and would be better for what I can't get that is 8 bit through Wiiguy/8BitStereo as I downloaded like 2 dozen albums from there I think lol

[maximo310]

Yeah that's true. I mostly use khinsider for obscure arcade stuff that I can't find easily elsewhere, otherwise I look for higher quality stuff if it happens to be in lossless format.  That Wiiguy channel does have a lot of good 8-bit stuff there, so I decided to subscribe. His psuedo stereo method does work pretty well.

[metshael]

I usually use this site:

http://www.ost-center.com/ost/jeu-video/

It's a French site, pretty simple to use but there is one little problem, you need to create an account (everything is free) and be logged to see the links to download (usually 4shared or Uptobox link, i pick them up directly with Jdownloader and let that program do all the work). It's where i found all the (overpriced ) Ar Tonelico OST and those .Hack// i couldn't buy  .

[HarvestDude]

If you don't mind about having a little work, i'd suggest this:

Step 1: Some sites are specialized on extracting music from roms and making them as a single file. Download those files. Some of them are .nsf (NES) and .GYM (Genesis).

The WinAmp (yeah, i'm old and i still like WinAmp) have plugins that support the playback of some of those files. Install them.

Ok, now you can listen to the original soundtracks as they were playing on the original consoles.

Step 2: Get into the WinAmp options and set the audio out as .WAV. That way WinAmp will open those .nsf or .gym (or any other plugin you might have installed) and record .wav files with each song.

.wav files extracted, all you have to do now is convert them into mp3.

I did this in some Sega Mega Drive files i had (such as DecapAttack soundtrack, i love it) and it worked perfectly.

But that was a long time ago. I assume there are easier ways to do that nowadays.

Here you can find a few players and files. http://www.emuparadise.me/music/ 

But i don't know if they can extract into .wav or .mp3

HarvestDude™

[kamikazekeeg]

Far too much work for me, but thanks for the input lol  Actually using MusicBee now since Winamp I think is just too old now, despite using it up till the past month or so.  Just started to have some issues with it that were driving me nuts.  I know, Winamp was good times.  Many years using that over anything else.

MusicBee is essentially like Winamp, but it has better editing capabilities which is way helpful when downloads have things that need to be mass altered.