06-29-2012, 11:36 AM
I searched a bit and found some posts, which though were old, so I don't dare reply to them in fear of hearing "forum necromancy". But I started a site, which I'll link now which I hope you won't get mad about (since it's my first post and all).
What it's about is how to extract music from computer games, the actual CDs, and pirated probably won't work anyway since (back in the days at least) they removed the music since it took too much space.
But my idea (and I'm doing it myself) is you should go to second hand stores and the like and find old computer games, and you'll look at the site how to play the music from them, either if it's CD Audio (just skip the first track then and it's playable on all cd-players) or some weird file format, which needs tools to extract, which I have information about. Or you'll join the site (since I did it as a community) and add information, which would make me really happy, but is probably a fat chance, but I know there's lots of knowledgable people on this site, so, maybe.
Right now I only have information about 3 set of games, the Diablo ones (thereby posting here), Command & Conquer ones, and Unreal engine ones. But my dream is to have information on 1000s of games, and then when you look through your old games or find some game at some place, you can use your smartphone and quickly look up if it's possible to listen to the soundtrack without actually playing the game.
I'll also note that some soundtracks are available on iTunes and spotify, and for the Diablo II soundtrack it's available for free on the arreat summit (that you probably know), but some don't like mp3 (arreat summit's is 128kbps) or don't have a lot of cash to buy it online, and it's often not the whole soundtrack you get for your money, so the only recourse is extracting from the game.
That reminded me actually, there's a webradio which has the songs recorded from the actual games for higher authenticity, it's almost all Commodore 64 games, and is called Kohina, check it out if you're into that, it's something like 70 hours in total. Even if you weren't born back in those days you'll still find some masterpieces in there, and there's songs from this millenia as well, as people still make music on it.
Oh right, I'll also note that even though I've listened to these soundtracks on the like of 100s or 1000s of hours when playing the game I'm not tired of them, and some are just as good as ordinary commercial music. Remember the Blade Runner soundtrack (ok, not a game)? Best thing Vangelis ever made.
What it's about is how to extract music from computer games, the actual CDs, and pirated probably won't work anyway since (back in the days at least) they removed the music since it took too much space.
But my idea (and I'm doing it myself) is you should go to second hand stores and the like and find old computer games, and you'll look at the site how to play the music from them, either if it's CD Audio (just skip the first track then and it's playable on all cd-players) or some weird file format, which needs tools to extract, which I have information about. Or you'll join the site (since I did it as a community) and add information, which would make me really happy, but is probably a fat chance, but I know there's lots of knowledgable people on this site, so, maybe.
Right now I only have information about 3 set of games, the Diablo ones (thereby posting here), Command & Conquer ones, and Unreal engine ones. But my dream is to have information on 1000s of games, and then when you look through your old games or find some game at some place, you can use your smartphone and quickly look up if it's possible to listen to the soundtrack without actually playing the game.
I'll also note that some soundtracks are available on iTunes and spotify, and for the Diablo II soundtrack it's available for free on the arreat summit (that you probably know), but some don't like mp3 (arreat summit's is 128kbps) or don't have a lot of cash to buy it online, and it's often not the whole soundtrack you get for your money, so the only recourse is extracting from the game.
That reminded me actually, there's a webradio which has the songs recorded from the actual games for higher authenticity, it's almost all Commodore 64 games, and is called Kohina, check it out if you're into that, it's something like 70 hours in total. Even if you weren't born back in those days you'll still find some masterpieces in there, and there's songs from this millenia as well, as people still make music on it.
Oh right, I'll also note that even though I've listened to these soundtracks on the like of 100s or 1000s of hours when playing the game I'm not tired of them, and some are just as good as ordinary commercial music. Remember the Blade Runner soundtrack (ok, not a game)? Best thing Vangelis ever made.