Music has been played and stored on various analog and digital media. While most are recorded and played from streaming services, hard drives, and CDs, there has been a recent interest in older technologies such as cassettes and vinyl. Some may say that having music on MP3 or FLAC makes it more portable and accessible, but there are some who hold their hearts close to magnetic tapes and vinyl discs, because the sound quality feels more personal and warm than the cold and calculating bits and bytes.

We’ll be listening this week to tracks from video games that have been made into vinyl. I’ll give a brief history lesson on this old recording medium, along with some personal experience with it. These tracks and others are available for purchase in the public market; links to various stores are include below.

Sit back and enjoy these tracks. Perhaps you’ll consider investing in a personal record player, buy some vinyls, and listen for yourself, to hear how different it sounds…

 

“National Vinyl Record Day” – Days of the Year

“Vinyl fantasy: how games fell in love with records” – The Guardian

“10 Facts You Didn’t Know About Records” – Ship to Shore PhonoCo. blog

“Interesting facts about vinyl” – JustFunFacts

 

DATA DISCS

iam8bit

Materia Store

Ship to Shore PhonoCo.

 


 

Track Listing

“Streets of Rage Theme” – [Streets of Rage] – Yuzo Koshiro

“Streets of Rage – Title Theme (New Nova Remix) – remixed by New Nova

“End of the Dark” – [Policenauts] – composed by Konami Kukeiha Club (IKA-chan [Masahiro Ikariko], Tappy [Tappi Iwase], Motoaki Furukawa)

“Policenauts End of the Dark” – covered by MrEitzpii (Edwin Glimmer)

“Ol’ Shoshone” – [Firewatch] – composed by Chris Remo

“Ol’ Shoshone Cover” – covered by PanchoEnConcierto

 

YouTube playlist