The A.V. Club's Best of the Decade: Films. Performances. Scenes. Bad Movies. Books. Short Story Collections. Comics. Video Games Music. Metal. Electronic Music. Comedy Albums. Television Series. Television Episodes. Reality Series/Competitions. Made-For-TV Movies/Miniseries. Late-Night Comedy/Talk Shows. One-Season Wonders. And the orphans.
posted by Navelgazer on Dec 3, 2009 - 68 comments

Os Gameboys are a band from Brazil who play only music from classic videogames. They are really, really good. (via waxy: "the best live Mario cover I've ever seen")
posted by joshwa on Oct 27, 2009 - 26 comments

Zombies Vs Beatles (slyt)
posted by Artw on Sep 12, 2009 - 30 comments

Ethnography of Rock Band Bar Night. The Rock Band video game (and the similar Guitar Hero) are more than video games where players try to earn points and some are exploring the deeper meaning of such games. [more inside]
posted by k8t on Aug 10, 2009 - 16 comments

Final Fantasy IV remix project. This week the videogame music rearrangement site, OCRemix.org, released a new project covering Nobuo Uematsu's soundtrack to FFIV (originally FFII in the US). FFIV's was the first game soundtrack I fell in love with, back in 2nd grade. Maybe you feel the same. [more inside]
posted by grobstein on Jul 22, 2009 - 19 comments

the doyouinverts sings songs about old friends who don't play videogames anymore, Edge Magazine's scoring system and a love song to an imported Japanese videogame. They are a regular feature on British videogame radio show/podcast One Life Left.
posted by The Devil Tesla on Mar 1, 2009 - 4 comments

Street Fighter II. It basically created the 2d-beat-em-up, and invented the combo, the special move, a wide roster of diverse, playable characters who people grew to love, and all the other things that gamers have taken for granted for years. It spawned a whole series, none of which ever quite captured the original's charm or had the same influence. This was a game that people obsessed over - bands were named after its special moves, rappers cited it in their lyrics, and even Premier League footballers weren't immune to its charms. Poor Raul Julia's final film was this masterpiece, and a new version's headed straight to DVD very soon. Now, 17 years later, Street Fighter 4 is about to be released in Europe and the nostalgia machine is going into overdrive. The game's producer's been talking about its links to Street Fighter II, reviewers are getting misty-eyed , and even musicians are getting in on the act with Akira the Don making his very own Street Fighter-themed track. Apparently it's pretty good. Hadouken!
posted by muggsy1079 on Feb 19, 2009 - 79 comments

Little Big Star (free software, currently in beta - video) it's the first guitar rythm game with support for real instruments. In the next months two more products of the same kind should be released, Disney Star Guitar and Guitar Rising. [more inside]
posted by darkripper on Jan 14, 2009 - 16 comments

Fredrik Larsson (Freddie25) presents: Für Elise, Mega Man 9: Rock Medley and Wind Waker Unplugged.
posted by defenestration on Dec 28, 2008 - 8 comments

LittleBigPlanet, the highly anticipated create your own platformer game by Media Molecule, originally set to release next week, has been recalled. The reason? Apparently one of the music tracks used in the game, "Tapha Niang" by Grammy Award winner Toumani Diabate, contains verses from the Qur'an. As it's a no no to mix Islamic holy text with music, Sony has pulled the game after complaints. The problem has been fixed, but no new release date has been announced.
posted by yellowbinder on Oct 17, 2008 - 61 comments

CNet's Music site is one of my favorite sources of often surprisingly good independent music. As I write this, I'm listening to Zo Wanti Music's Lost Ship, a mellow New Age environmental piece that is very nice and relaxing. They have an enormous selection of music here, but one of the oddest and sometimes most rewarding to pick through is the game soundtracks/musical scores section. The artists listed here all compose music for video games (or have in the past). It's strangely fun to listen to some of their pieces and wonder what game that could belong to.
posted by Reverend Robbie on Oct 7, 2008 - 0 comments

Arguably the most addictive song on the formidable 214-song GTA IV soundtrack is "Schweine" by Russian singer/actress Glukoza ("selling music without sex since 2003"). [more inside]
posted by jbickers on Sep 24, 2008 - 37 comments

Crash Man beats Flash Man beats Quick Man beats Metal Man beats Bubble Man beats Heat Man beats Wood Man beats Air Man beats CRASHMAN!!! (ad infinitum)
posted by Navelgazer on Mar 16, 2008 - 75 comments

Improve your Rock Band drumming technique. Rock Band as in the videogame, that is.
posted by nthdegx on Jan 11, 2008 - 124 comments

With the wild success of the Guitar Hero series, using video game controllers shaped like guitars is nothing new. However, the duo at Modal Kombat actually use guitars as video game controllers. They won't reveal all of their tricks, but you can read a bit about their technology here and at this interview with Urban Guitar. The results are awfully impressive. View the original Modal Kombat here, and their newest installment, the admittedly trippy GuitarKart here. via
posted by Ufez Jones on Dec 3, 2007 - 5 comments

Carrie Brownstein's new band, a. [more inside]
posted by Weebot on Nov 27, 2007 - 38 comments

The dark side of Phobos, soundtrack tunes of the seminal first person shooter Doom from 1993 as an album remade by fans. The project originated at Overclocked Remix, a site dedicated to album endeavors of this sort. Of course there are others doing this as well, the freeware Jump'n'Run Doukotsu Monogatari (Cave Story) for example got this treatment. Not as albums, but SID tunes have been remixed a lot (e.g. here, here) and by Machinae Supremacy. Would you like a radio station with this music to tune into? You've got it.
posted by Glow Bucket on Mar 28, 2007 - 16 comments

Zelda and the Golden Ratio. A fascinating examination of the music from Nintendo's Zelda games, and the recurring appearances of 0.618, the bisection point on a line at which the relationship of the shorter segment to the longer one is the same as that of the longer section to the whole line.
posted by jbickers on Mar 7, 2007 - 24 comments

Super Mario Brothers sound effects. Boing! Boing! CRUNCH! Ding! Ding! Ding! Whoop! Boing!
posted by Robot Johnny on Feb 3, 2006 - 23 comments

Witness the Whiteness as borderline-albino Canadian nerdcore MCs kick it Konami-school [Windows Media/Quicktime; more]
posted by Pretty_Generic on Aug 16, 2005 - 13 comments

SMW - The complete soundtrack to Super Mario World, covered by one man using dozens of instruments. Roughly in game order, faithful to the originals, with some bizarre artistic license thrown around. A private hobby made public. Dedicated to Koji Kondo.
posted by Pretty_Generic on Aug 13, 2005 - 20 comments

VGMix is a site that hosts MP3s made by video game afficionados who have remixed the tunes from their favorite video games, old and new alike. Check out the releases page and try out a few songs. You can also search for songs by a particular game system, genre, specific game, etc. (Unfortunately, search seems broken for me right now, but it usually works!) The users generally provide extensive reviews that will help you sort out the great from the mediocre before downloading.
posted by knave on May 23, 2005 - 11 comments

Kings Quest 9, Leisure Suit Larry 8, and Space Quest 7. Sierra's legendary Adventure Gaming francises are stuck in vaporware purgatory. No new Larry according to Al Lowe, but KS9 goes on developed by fans without Roberta Williams, and Scott Murphy's (of The Two Guys from Andromeda) attempt at SQ7 got cancelled. No word from Jane Jenson on a new Gabriel Knight, Police Quest still lives on, although no longer in adventure format. Of course what I was REALLY researching for was the possiblity of a sequel to The Adventures of Willy Beamish. Oh well, at least you can still rock out to all the old Sierra Tunes. Overall, not a bad legacy for a company whose first adventure game was Softporn.
posted by Stan Chin on Nov 16, 2002 - 31 comments

Do you miss the music from your old NES games? Well if you do, be sure to check out the minibosses. They're a band that only plays the songs to classic video games from the Nintendo Entertainment System. Great stuff. I particularly enjoyed the Wizards & Warriors track amusing, since I was addicted to that game when I was younger. Also, am I the only one who thinks there should be a new console system DEDICATED to only 2D games? 3D games are neat 'n all, but I don't think enough good 2D games are being made anymore. The Gameboy Advance is probably the only system doing that sort of thing right now, but it's just a portable.
posted by kingmissile on Oct 3, 2001 - 22 comments

Did you ever play console games for hours on end? I bet you can recall the annoying MIDI music that went with them. Relive the good old days at the Video Game Music Archive.
posted by mathowie on Nov 3, 1999 - 0 comments