Looking for some dope rhymes and phat beats laid over the top of classic NES and SNES themes? Look no further, for Random (aka Mega Ran) and K-Murdock have been working on just that! The result of their efforts, Forever Famicom, is dropping to the public on June 1st.

Can’t wait a week? You’re in luck. The album is being released early in digital form to members of the Mega Ran message board who pre-order the album. You can join up and place your order here.

On Random’s official site, you can check out preview clips of all 14 tracks. The music samples lots of memorable tunes from games such as Earthbound, Star Fox, Little Nemo, Ducktales, and much more. If you enjoy nerdcore and videogame music, don’t miss it. And be sure to check out the full version of Dream Master (Little Nemo) embedded after the break.

One of my favorite soundtracks this year was Shatter by an artist I was completely unfamiliar with at the time named Module. Each song is a strange mix of mellow electronica with very sparing guitar. Many of the tracks are minimal, but also evolving. It’s an extremely relaxing album to listen to and it has made its rotation in my car and at work more times than I care to remember.

From today until Christmas, you can buy the entire Shatter Official Videogame Soundtrack for the low price of $1. Since it is through BandCamp, you’re free to choose whatever format you like. In fact, you can even stream the entire album before purchasing if you don’t want to be too hasty with that dollar. When I purchased it, I paid more money than the game itself costs with no regrets. So what are you waiting for? Go check it out!

In the ever growing video game remix scene, one game’s soundtrack remains virtually untouched. Even Overclocked ReMix, the biggest vg remix community on the internet, doesn’t have a single arrangement from the highly underrated soundtrack of Mega Man Battle Network.

The Mega Man Network is making a point to change that. For the first time ever, TMMN is banding together to create an original remix album for the fans. The album will be completely free to download.

Right now, you can visit the project’s homepage and listen to three different samples, including one from yours truly. You can also check out info about all the people involved and keep up to date on the news page. And don’t forget to show your support on TMMN.

"The real DJ Hero was inside you all along."

Rhythm games have really been saturating the market lately. It seems like every other month, there’s a new Guitar Hero or Rock Band game coming out. When DJ Hero was first announced (along with two other DJ games from competing companies), my initial reaction was a sigh of dismay at the thought of more peripherals strewn about homes. As more information trickled down, though, my interest was piqued. In a very short amount of time, my feelings of the then upcoming game turned from apathy to excitement.

One of the strongest points of DJ Hero is that its gameplay revolves around more than just glorified button presses. The controller is divided into two distinct sections, the mixer and turntable. These two sections can be arranged in a variety of ways to suit what is most comfortable to you.

The turntable itself is freely movable. It doesn’t lock into any positions and can spin endlessly. On it are three buttons: green, red, and blue. Though there are button presses similar to the guitar based rhythm games, this is only one aspect of the gameplay. Three “streams” come down toward the bottom of the screen corresponding with each button. The far sides represent two different songs that your are mixing together while the center stream represents a sampler as well as cued clips of the two songs (depending on the situation).

In addition to being pressed, you will often need to hold down the green or blue button and move the record back and forth to simulate scratching. On the medium difficulty (and below), scratching sections only require a very lenient back and forth motion for the duration of the on-screen prompt. But, as you play the hard and expert modes, things will get much more complicated; requiring specific directions and timing with your scratches.

The most important aspect of the mixer is the crossfader. This has three positions. Move it to the left or right and only one song will play while the middle position enables both songs to play over the top of each other. On the harder difficulties, you will occasionally need to perform “crossfader spikes”. This involves quickly flicking the crossfader back and forth to cut out tiny sections of the song. I found crossfader spikes to be one of the most difficult aspects of the game.

Certain sections of the song glow. Performing every command successfully in these sections fills a bar that can be used to turn on “Euphoria”. This temporarily controls your crossfader automatically as well as increasing your score multiplier. Get enough consecutive hits and you will be awarded a “rewind”.

Giving the record a good 360 degree (or more) spin will initiate your rewind (no button presses necessary!). Rewinding increases your multiplier while allowing you to get additional points for the notes you already hit. It can also be handy for fixing mistakes in glowing sections. Performing a rewind feels great on the controller, but unfortunately it ruins the flow of the music more often then not since you are, in fact, rewinding the song.

There are a couple ways DJ Hero lets you add your own touches to the song. Occasionally, there are sections that allow you to turn the effects dial on the mixer. Aside from racking up score, you can perform some nifty cutoff effects that actually fit the song really well if you know what you’re doing. There are also “freestyle” sections where you can hit the red sampler button as much as you want for a short time.

You might have noticed that most of these gameplay mechanics involve two songs. The entire soundtrack (save for a few songs) consists of  “mashups“. Before you cringe, you should know that these mixes were all made by legendary DJs including DJ Shadow, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and Daft Punk.

The game features over 100 licensed songs mixed into 93 unique, never before heard mixes. Almost all of these mixes are excellent. Several of them managed to take two songs I didn’t even like and mix them into a mashup that I can’t get enough of. Each time I played DJ Hero, everybody in the room moved their bodies to the music in one way or another. The music is easily one of the game’s strongest aspects and, in the rhythm genre, that is a very important thing to get right.

There are a select few “DJ vs. Guitar” songs. You can play these with one player on the DJ Hero controller and another on a guitar controller. It’s a novel idea, but unfortunately those few mixes feel much less interesting than the rest of the game.

"While playing as DJ Jazzy Jeff, I was always on the lookout for Uncle Phil."

While there is no character creator, there is a good variety of both real and fictitious DJs to play with (including the three mentioned above). Most have a few costumes to choose from as well as headphones. You can also choose from a wide variety of decks, each with lots of additional design variations.

Once you’ve got your character all set, you can choose a sampler pack for the freestyle sections. Unfortunately, most of these packs were difficult to use in the song without sounding out of place, but there were at least three packs that I was able to have fit with most songs. There are also a variety of unlockable stages, but like the characters, this is purely aesthetic.

The better you perform on songs, the more stars you’ll earn. Rather than using them as currency, it’s your total star count that will determine what is unlocked. I really enjoyed the absence of a store. Unlocking things automatically allowed me to spend more time enjoying playing songs instead of deciding what to buy. The whole experience feels very streamlined and well thought out.

DJ Hero is a very fun and competent rhythm game that manages to feel completely different than the sea of other game’s currently releasing in the genre. Unlike the band based rhythm games, you won’t be able to jump in with a group of four people. DJ Hero does not have the party game appeal of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The maximum number of players for both local and online multiplayer is two, and with the $120 price tag only coming with one controller, DJ Hero seems to be geared more toward a singleplayer experience.

There’s also a problem with familiarity to the average player. While everybody knows the basics of how a guitar works, DJ equipment is more of a mystery to many people, and as a result, DJ Hero‘s learning curve is a bit steeper.

DJ Hero is definitely not for everyone. If you have any interest in it from seeing the game in action and hearing its music, you will probably fall in love with it. The quality of the game is undeniable. But if don’t like the concept of playing an arcade simulation of DJing in the first place, playing it probably won’t change your mind.

"An OverClocked ReMix solo album by Joshua Morse"

Less than two weeks after the release of Humans + Gears: Xenogears ReMixed, OverClocked ReMix has already released another album. While previous albums featured a variety of artists,  Castlevania: Sonata of the Damned shatters the tradition by only having a single artist: OCRemix veteran, Joshua Morse.

Also setting it apart, Sonata of the Damned focuses on the Castlevania series as a whole rather than a single game. This includes tracks from both before and after Michiru Yamane took the “driver’s seat” in the franchise’s music. You’ll hear songs from games as old as the first NES entry all the way to the recent Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.

The album itself is only a bit over half an hour (spanning seven tracks), but what little is there is top notch. Each track is full of funky fresh energy that you’ll want to listen to again and again.

Castlevania is one of the most remixed videogame franchises out there, but Joshua Morse justifies additional coverage by both the quality and originality of his arrangements as well as a few unique choices of source material.

Like all OverClocked ReMix albums, Castlevania: Sonata of the Damned can be downloaded free of charge on the album’s homepage. Let’s face it, you just can’t ever have enough Castlevania remixes. The series has such great music. So hop on over to the site and show Mr. Morse some love by downloading his album and spreading the word about it.

"An OverClocked ReMix Album"

The folks at OverClocked ReMix are at it again. Fans from the OCR community have once again banded together, this time bringing us Humans + Gears: Xenogears ReMixed, an album that pays tribute to one of Yasunori Mitsuda’s less appreciated soundtracks, Xenogears.

Interestingly, the album is broken up into two distinctly themed discs. Songs on the “Humans” disc contain a variety of acoustic instruments (and patches emulating them) including guitars and string ensembles. By stark contrast, the “Gears” disc is mostly made up of electronica.

Dividing the music in this way makes each disc feel like its own coherent, self-contained album. The idea is well executed for the most part and allows each half to have its own respective flow that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

Like all OverClocked ReMix albums, Humans + Gears: Xenogears ReMixed can be downloaded for free on the album’s homepage. What are you waiting for? Go download it!

Pictured Above: Michiru Yamane

It’s no secret that I am obsessed with videogame music. I even remix it in my spare time. Working a desk job, I end up listening to soundtracks throughout large portions of the day, and I enjoy sharing music with others who might otherwise not hear the songs I love so much. But there are far too many fantastic composers for me to cover in a single article. So to remedy this, I’m going to focus on my one true love… the ladies!

Michiru Yamane

An obvious choice to highlight is Michiru Yamane. Though the first Castlevania title she scored was Castlevania: Bloodlines, it wasn’t until Symphony of the Night that she became known as a crucial element to the franchise itself. You just can’t have a modern Castlevania game without her music.

Michiru is a talented pianist who takes her inspiration from composers such as Ravel and Bach. These classical influences are very apparent in her work. Her ability to seamlessly change time signatures so many times within a single song while maintaining a perfect sense of flow never ceases to astound me.

Kumi Tanioka

I was first introduced to the works of Kumi Tanioka through Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. The world music styles throughout the game reminded me of Yasunori Mitsuda’s ever famous Chrono Cross, one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. Needless to say, it clicked with me.

But before Crystal Chronicles, Kumi made some very notable contributions to Final Fantasy XI. Years later, she performed in The Star Onions with Tsuyoshi Sekito of The Black Mages (among other musicians) on the game’s widely diverse arrange album, Music from the Other Side of Vana’diel.

Yoko Shimomura

It’s hard to even know where to begin with Yoko Shimomura. Her discography is huge and full of hits. In her early career, she composed nearly all of the Street Fighter II soundtrack and even performed arrangements of the songs from it and other games in Capcom’s in-house jazz band, Alph Lyla.

As time went on, she has focused more on RPGs than anything else. By the time she worked on the Mana (Seiken Densetsu) and Kingdom Hearts series’, her style had become very established, often featuring rapidly sweeping piano accompanied by choir and string ensembles. In fact, her style became so recognizable that I was able to guess that the Smash Bros. Brawl rendition of Tetris A was arranged by her without looking it up.

Akari Kaida

Akari Kaida spent most of her career working for Capcom. Her jazz piano roots show forth in her score for Breath of Fire III.  What I like about Akari though, is her versatility. The very underrated soundtrack to the original Mega Man Battle Network is among my favorite scores on the Game Boy Advance platform. The combination of chip tune sounds and electronica infused beats mesh together perfectly.

But the variety doesn’t stop there! Akari also worked on the Okami soundtrack which was made in the vein of traditional Japanese music from ancient times. The music in Okami was beautiful, perfectly complimenting its breath-taking visual style.

Ayako Saso

Finally, we have Ayako Saso. While trying to dig up all the arrange albums Yasunori Mitsuda worked on, I unexpectedly found that my favorite track on each of them ended up being Ayako’s. Thanks to that unusual discovery, I had found a new artist to follow.

Though she started learning piano at an early age, she later studied the Electone, even winning Yamaha’s Electone Festival contest before finally joining Namco and working on titles such as Ridge Racer 2. What draws me to Ayako is the hybrid style of rock and electronica that she often uses. Her Chun Li remix on the Street Fighter Tribute Album is a perfect example of this.

Despite all that, what actually gives me the most respect for Ayako is her arrangement of “Big Blue” found on the second disc of the F-Zero GX-AX Original Soundtrack. I’m a big fan of the F-Zero franchise, but as much as I love “Big Blue”, the theme is sadly done to death. Each remix I heard, while adequate, had the same “paint by numbers” arrangement. Ayako took the overdone theme and created one of the best videogame remixes ever made. Give it a listen, you won’t regret it.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of every female videogame composer of note, but it does contain some of my personal favorites. I hope this article introduces more people to the fantastic music they made over the years. Did I miss somebody you’re especially fond of? Feel free to comment below and let us know who!

When I was first told of “The Protomen”, I was skeptical. The band’s first album was described to me as a rock opera based on the classic Mega Man series. Though I am a huge Mega Man fan, I just couldn’t see something like this actually being executed well. To my surprise, I loved it. In fact, I was so fond of it that I feared their next album wouldn’t be able to live up to it.

Fortunately, my fears were dashed to pieces. Not only did the album turn out great, it actually surpasses the quality of the first! The album is approximately twice as long as the previous one (which isn’t hard to do), sounds much more “refined”, and kicks the “epic level” up a notch or two.

Though the title says “Act II”, this album’s story is actually a prequel. The last album focused on the origins of Proto Man and Mega Man, taking place in an Orwellian-style city under the control of Dr. Albert Wily and “the watchful eyes” of his robots. The Father of Death takes a step back and gives us a glimpse of how the city got the way it is.

It starts with Dr. Thomas Light recounting the death of his father who worked himself to death in the mines to provide for his family. In an effort to prevent this situation from ever having to be repeated, Light is determined to build robots, with the help of Wily, to perform such dangerous jobs in the place of humans.

While Light wanders the streets, wondering whether he made the right decision, Emily Stanton (his “beloved”) walks into his apartment only to find Wily going through Light’s belongings. After she rejects him, he has her killed by one of the newly created robots. He then frames Dr. Light for the murder and takes control of the quickly developing city under the guise of making it a better place.

One of the great things about The Protomen’s storytelling is how they use different genres of music to perfectly fit the events unfolding. The first half of the album feels reminiscent of a “Spaghetti Western” film. As the old mining town steadily grows into Dr. Wily’s own personal metropolis, the music shifts from the western vibe it originally had to that of eighties synth rock.

Dividing the two halves is the instrumental “How the World Fell Under Darkness”; a song with a heavy string focus that seamlessly transitions itself into synthesizer pads. You can actually feel the time lapse of what must be decades from the way it plays out. Though this isolated moment is my favorite transition of all, the whole album moves brilliantly from track to track. This album would lose a lot of its appeal played out of order despite the individual songs’ strengths.

We may be moving to the digital age when it comes to distribution for music, but this album should really be purchased as a physical CD. Along with the fantastic cover art (partially featured above) is a booklet that contains not only the lyrics, but an expansion of the story. There are extra paragraphs of narration in both the vocal and instrumental tracks that help to flesh out the whole experience even further.

I must make it abundantly clear that you don’t even have to know what Mega Man is to love this album. The music is completely original (not remixes of songs from the series) and the story is the band’s own unique take on an origin story that’s never really been told in the first place. You can find the album on protomen.com for ten bucks.

Skip going to see the next crappy movie that comes out in theaters and buy this album with the money instead. Then bask in the glory of your wise decision.

"An OverClocked ReMix Album"

Over the years, the community for fan remixes of videogame music has not only grown substantially, but has also been putting out higher quality work than ever before. It is becoming increasingly common for fan projects to have the impressive polish of professionally produced albums.

I first started feeling really strongly about the quality of the albums released by OverClocked Remix when “Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream” was released. That is not to say that the albums before were lacking in quality. After all, when the very first album, “Relics of the Chozo: A Super Metroid Musical Collaboration“, came out, I basically wore out the ogg files from playing them so much.

Voices of the Lifestream, however, seemed to take the idea of fan made arrange albums to a whole new level of professionalism that just hadn’t been seen yet. “Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption” is no exception to the trend of increased quality.

The album is comprised of four discs. The first three are listed as “acts” while the fourth disc is made up of bonus tracks. There is a pdf file in the torrent that gives a break down of each point in the game’s story with each song on the album corresponding to a scene in the act. It’s an interesting way to both give the album context to those not familiar with the original game, as well as provide an extra helping of nostalgia to those who loved it.

The whole experience spans over forty-six songs (not including the bonus tracks), over thirty different artists, and lasts over two-hundred minutes. In other words, strap in for a lengthy, but satisfying, musical adventure!

Because so many different artists worked together on this album, there is a huge range of musical styles covered. With everything from orchestral, rock, trance, and even drum & bass, there’s bound to be something for everybody here.

My personal favorite track is “Survival Instinct“, Audix‘s take on Final Fantasy IV’s “Battle 2″. It reminds me of Pendulum, a drum & bass group that has quickly become one of my favorite artists in the past few years.

Like the thirteen OCR albums before it, Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption is available for download absolutely free. You can find the official site here. Watch the embedded teaser below, download the album, and spread the word to the rest of the world about this wonderful gem.

"My Mom Helped Me"

On a very special twenty-third episode of Barrel Roll! – A Video Game Podcast, we are joined by special guest Mustin from the amazing video game music related band, The OneUps.

As per usual, we have a discussion revolving around the games we have been playing. Jesse has now committed to “Mega Man Star Force 3: Red Joker”, and tells us his trials and tribulations revolving around his Brother Band. Mustin has gone back to “Final Fantasy VI Advance”, in a quest to unlock that version’s extra content, while Jonah has been busy bustin’ Ghosts.

We then have an in-depth interview with Mustin, where he shares all the various projects he is working on, how they got started, their influences… you know, the usual interview stuff. We have a fun time talking music and video games.

Mustin was also kind enough to share two brand new songs with us that we played on the live feed, and you can now hear again in this edited version of the cast. The first is “Mario Circuit” from The OneUps upcoming Mario Kart album, while the second is from CHRONOTORIOUS and is titled “BAMF”.

In the news we discuss the final piece of Fallout 3 DLC, Mothership Zeta, Doc Louis’s Punch-Out!!, Valkyria Chronicles 2, Dragon Quest IX DLC quests, Wipeout HD: Fury and much more.

Finally, in “Let’s Talk About Stuff”, we talk even more about video game music and why it is awesome.

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Show Links:
The OneUps
Mustin.net
Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption
The Video Feed (note: I forgot to hit the record button until a few minutes in)