Free video game music is widely available, but not all game soundtracks are legal – especially if the music is already available for sale online. Depending on the era and genre of game, music fans can either find free remixes or pay for official soundtrack releases.
The Birth of Video Game Music
Game music first became a recognized sub-genre in the 1980s, with the rise of console gaming. Early hits from Nintendo, Sega, and Atari used simple chiptune melodies, which, though crude, became part of popular culture. Koji Kondo's iconic tunes for Super Mario Bros. are just one example.
Early console music could only be composed of a limited number of notes, looped repeatedly. When fans look to download game music, it is usually a more sophisticated remix of these old tunes, or music from the modern era of video games, after game music's technical sophistication matched that of conventional instruments.
Official and Semi-Official Video Game Soundtracks
As console technology improved in the 1990s, video games featured high-quality soundtracks consisting of complete songs or composed symphonic music.
Tempest 2000 (1994), for the Atari Jaguar, was one of the first games to have its own, separately released commercial soundtrack. Nobuo Uematsu's original scores for the Final Fantasy games were also released as albums in Japan and can still be purchased.
Series such as Need for Speed and Grand Theft Auto, as well as many sports games, began, by the mid- to late-1990s, to feature current and classic pop music. Such games' songs are widely available – but not for free. Grand Theft Auto IV, for example, even links in-game to Amazon.com MP3 downloads.
Games with their own custom songs are more rare. House of the Dead: Overkill, for the Nintendo Wii, has a soundtrack with parody songs in genres ranging from rockabilly to funk. Lacking an official release, fans of the game's music have made their own bootleg albums distributed via torrent files.
Download Remixed Free Video Game Music
The most comprehensive source for video game music remixes is OverClocked ReMix. Founded in 1999, OverClocked ReMix is a peer-reviewed site that hosts free video game remixes across all genres and game platforms. Quality is uniformly high, as contributors are all talented amateurs, or even professional musicians.
OverClocked ReMix is also known for arranging full albums of remixes based on classic games. Their first was Relics of the Chozo (based on Super Metroid), and their latest is Serious Monkey Business, based on Donkey Kong Country 2. That album even featured input from original DKC 2 composer David Wise.
There are other album projects done by remixers as one-offs not necessarily affiliated with any site or group. Games from the Legend of Zelda series have proven particularly popular. Zelda Reorchestrated has long continued to create Zelda-inspired tracks, while Essence of Lime, focusing exclusively on Zelda games for Game Boy Color, is among the latest to remix the series' music.
Those looking to download free video game music would do best to stick with these and other remixes, which apart from not being pirated, are often acoustically superior to their source material.
Luke Arnott - Luke Arnott has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Western Ontario, where he is currently enrolled in the ...
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