A Vinyl Collector’s Dream: The History of Releasing Game Soundtracks

These days I see all kinds of people on Instagram collecting vinyls of video game soundtracks. I collect vinyl myself, but I didn’t realize until recently that game soundtrack collecting was a thing. Now that I know, I should definitely start adding some to my collection. These days you can find soundtracks to several games for sale and to stream, but that didn’t seem to always be the case. I remember as a kid listening to movie soundtracks, since those have been released for several decades. There didn’t seem to ever be soundtracks released for games, however. If the soundtracks for the games I had played were released on cd do you think I’d have bought them? YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE I WOULD’VE!!! This is why I’ve wondered why releasing the scores wasn’t as common, yet has become a more regular thing. I’m going to go through the history of releasing soundtracks.

I previously wrote about the first video game soundtrack, Space Invaders, which was just 4 notes that would continue to get faster. Soundtracks for games were so short at first, that if they were released they’d be a single. They were also much simpler sounding at the time. Why they sounded the way they did could be an entire subject itself, but basically the buzzing was all that computers could produce at the time. Considering there was not much to the soundtracks, it seems like there wasn’t much need to release them officially.

The best people would get was game sounds being sampled in other songs. Sampling video games goes far back, such as Pong being sampled in the beginning of this song in 1975.

However, it got better towards the late 70s. Yellow Magic Orchestra were an electronic band from Japan who sampled the game Circus in a song from their first album.

Yellow Magic Orchestra were pioneers in electronic music, and music from games was entirely electronic at the time, so it seemed like a good place for inspiration. The sampling of video game music became even more relevant when many started to experience a fever.

In 1980 Pac-Man was first released. If you’ve been to about anywhere with an arcade then chances are you’ve seen it, if not played it before. It became one of the most iconic arcade games ever, and this hit song from 1981 describes it quite well.

Just the music from the game may not have been as exciting to listen to, but sampling it in the beginning of this catchy song payed off. While they were considered a one-hit wonder for Pac-Man Fever, Jerry Buckner & Gary Garcia released an entire album based off of popular video games from the time, such as Donkey Kong. With the video game craze of the late 70s and early 80s, songs like this had better luck at being hits. Unfortunately the video game industry crashed around 1983. That is another whole subject that can be its own post, but let’s just say that a certain extra-terrestrial played a big part in it.

That wasn’t the end, however. If you were born after 1983 and you’ve played video games then you probably know that. Haruomi Hosono, who was a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, released an album simply titled Video Game music in 1984.

It featured extensive audio from Namco video games such as Pac-Man and Galaga.

This can be considered one of the first soundtrack albums, as in it was an album that consisted entirely of video game music. The album was released on Yen Records, and they even released a sequel called The Return of Video Game Music, though without Hosono this time.

Other countries were a bit slow to catch on, but as you can probably tell from Yellow Magic Orchestra, Japan was ahead of the curve in the 80s (Nintendo is from Japan, for example). Quite possibly the first music label to be devoted to VGM was G.M.O (Game Music Organization) records.

They released a variety of game music compilations starting around 1986. For instance, they released Famicom Music which included the Super Mario Bros theme (I know, crazy sounding that Nintendo music got released, but they actually have released their music in Japan).

GMO also released Sega Game Music Vol. 1 (pre-Sonic).

Other labels followed soon. Soundtracks were released for games such as Dragon Quest

Also a shooter game called Gradius

In addition Double Dragon got a soundtrack.

As soundtracks for games got more advanced, the desire to release them got bigger. Japan was practically the master of game soundtracks, but during the 90s other countries started to catch on. The soundtrack to the racing game Wipeout 2097 was released in 1996, for example.

It is one of the biggest rushes of 90s techno you will ever experience. It includes artists such as The Future Sound of London, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, and Daft Punk. I can’t think of a better selection for a futuristic racing game.

That same year Star Wars also got a soundtrack in. While John Williams’ score for the movies can’t be beat, Joel McNeely created and released his own score for the game Shadows of the Empire.

These were just some examples, but the releases have continued to grow through the years. By now releasing soundtracks for games has become a common practice. If you don’t live in Japan then you may be wondering “why hasn’t Nintendo released their soundtracks?” The answer is they have, but only in Japan. Unfortunately, due to their copyright laws the soundtracks can only be released there. For instance, the soundtrack to Super Mario Odyssey has been released, but it’s only available for import from Japan.

The release of VGM has improved over time, and hopefully it will continue to improve. Maybe some day we’ll get Nintendo’s music on Spotify, but until then we’ll have to settle for YouTube (as long as Nintendo doesn’t take it down). More and more soundtracks continue to be released on a regular basis, and I can’t wait to hear what is yet to come.

I hope you enjoyed this brief run through of VGM releases. I enjoyed learning more about the subject and getting to write this post. To finish, there was a song I found that I would like to share with everyone. Do you remember Buckner and Garcia who sang Pac-Man Fever? I mentioned that they released multiple songs based off of popular games from the time. A song that I found to be even catchier and more of an earworm was this right here. As you leave, it’s time to do the Donkey Kong!