I love it when I say “I wish I had this album” and then I immediately find the album the following day.

Famicom Music (Complete Album Download Link)

As I mentioned in a post from a few months ago, Famicom Music was the third release by GMO Records, the game music-centric label started up by Japanese electronic-pop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra. It was the first of their developer-specific compilations, with releases focused on Konami, Data East, Taito and just about every other important Japanese game developer from the 80s following suit.

The early GMO releases are different than a lot of other game music albums that came after because they would often incorporate the gameplay sound effects into the tracks. Sometimes this is rather annoying (I’d rather hear the Yie Ar Kung Fu theme without punch effects) but sometimes it worked to great benefit. The Mario Bros theme track uses the block smashing sounds in some interesting ways, and the 12″ single “Xevious (Hardcore Mix)” (which I will feature here someday) really uses sound effects in an interesting way that expands on the original music.

Also of note here are the arrange versions (arrange means remix) of themes from two classic Nintendo games, Super Mario Bros. and Balloon Fight. In an era before CD-quality game audio, FM synthesis or anything remotely resembling dedicated audio boards, these arrange versions were usually the only way to hear what the composers of the games had probably had in mind when creating the music for the games. In the case of the Mario Bros. one, it’s almost like a portent of what the game’s music would eventually become in the 16-bit era and beyond.

As this is some of the earliest game music around, this CD is kind of  a mixed bag when it comes to music you’ll actually want to listen to. Obviously the Mario and Zelda themes remain timeless classics, but Wrecking Crew, Donkey Kong and a lot of the others included here are more sound effects than music. Still, they’re interesting from a historical perspective, and will probably trigger massive waves of nostalgia for anyone who grew up on these classic games. Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2014 at 7:36 am and is filed under Complete Albums, Game Music, soundtrack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.