I can imagine that back in the day, video game creators never thought that players of their games would actually enjoy the music to these games, let alone listen to the compositions without actually playing the game. Of course nowadays, that thought is by far different, especially considering how many publishers also put out official OSTs for their video games’ music scores.
Since 2009, I’ve found myself listening to various VGM on YouTube, or offline as well. I’ve always had a soft spot for listening to extended versions of certain OSTs as well, especially since I discovered users on YouTube such as 7GamerMinutes and BrawlBRSTMs (now BrawlBRSTMs3, after having been taken down by copyright at least twice). Although I don’t think I’ve ever actually managed to complete extended cuts of VGMs, I like that they exist so that you don’t have to always go back onto the video’s tab and restart if you want to keep listening to the music. Most of my favorite video games still have unofficial uploads of their OSTs on YouTube, so I’m at least glad that they haven’t been taken down yet.
However, because of YouTube’s shitty compression, I don’t often get to stumble across VGMs that aren’t heavily compressed. In 2013, I made a discovery that there are plugins for Winamp that allow for listening of ripped VGMs from ROM/ISO files of the games themselves. With these plugins, you can listen to a video game’s OST (in most cases, in their entirety) without having to deal with any compression loss whatsoever. I have to tip my hat off to Zophar’s Domain as being a primary location in obtaining information on which plugins I’ve needed alongside providing the tracks listed by their actual OST name (and not a random file name ;D). I’ve managed to stumble across video game OSTs for NES, SNES, GBC, GBA, and DS games, which a lot of them are all my favorites (I’m looking at you, Pokémon OSTs 😉 ).
So, how about you guys? Do I have an addiction, or not? 😛 What are some of your favorite video game OSTs?
Right now, here’s what I’m listening to as I finish typing this up…
Guess I went on for too long with a blog post. xD See y’all next time!
Funny, I love the Pokemon OSTs mate, and I’ve listened to quite a few. Castlevania Symphony of the Night is one i quite like.
In case you wanted to know, there are some FLAC albums on emuparadise. Khinsider is also another great resource for VGM albums.
Thanks for reading!