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This edition of the Jukebox is a bit low key. And I like that. But before we got too somber, we were saved by three people. Lance Darnell added some pop to the mix, Aaron Rivers some metal, and Evan Killham rounded out the choices with a bit of levity.
Also, I have a very important announcement about the upcoming 10th Jukebox (and every decennial Jukebox to come).
For every tenth Jukebox, I will be doing a special themed edition that will move outside of the purview of the normal Jukebox selections. Normally I only accept official soundtrack video game music, but for the next Jukebox, every song is going to be a remix. Please hit the jump for more details.
(For Jukebox number ten I’m going to be posting electronic remixes of any video game song you love. Please, make sure the submissions are all done digitally. Mash-ups or versus songs are totally welcome, as well as more traditional techno remixes. Also, as an exception to the digital rule, if you can find physical scratched versions, they’d be welcomed too. Please don’t submit song from The Minibosses, NESkimos or their ilk. I will probably do a rock feature eventually too!
Also, the decennial special editions will only contain ten songs each, both as an appropriate number and as a limitation because the songs will probably be harder to find.
And with this first one, I could really use everyone’s help. I know rock versions of video game music pretty well, but remixes aren’t my forte.
Finally, I would like to say thanks to Andrew Hiscock for accidentally sparking this idea!
Anyway, back to the normal show.)
For all you newcomers, here’s how it is. Even though I’ve done a Meet the Mob, there is something important you should know about me.For some reason, over the years, my mind has acted as a sort of a Roledex for great videogame ditties. (For all you youngsters out there, a Rolodex is an archaic device that people used to keep important contact information on. I guess it’s sort of like an abacus at this point.)
Because of this, every Monday I will be posting fifteen well-known and not-so-well-known video game songs.
There’s a catch however; I will not be providing all of the songs; I’ll provide only the remainder of the total fifteen. To clarify, most will be suggested – hopefully songs I’ve never heard – and hopefully only a few will be chosen by me.
Ultimately, I would like enough suggestions to have it so that five, or even one song is donated by myself, thus truly making it the Community Jukebox.
It’s important to note that all submissions will be credited to the community members who provided them.
The only guidelines are that any song chosen must be from a non-music game, or from a music game with original content. Licensed songs are also OK, but they must be from something other than a music game.
This means that Fallout and Grand Theft Auto songs are fair game, whereas Guitar Hero and Rock Band songs aren’t. If licensed songs become too prolific, however, I may stop taking them as submissions.
Also, to note, I will try my hardest to find the original names of every song, yours or mine, but if I can’t, I will give it a name, and mark it with an asterisk. In addition, all songs are set to open in a new tab, so feel free to click away and have them play in the background as you surf Bitmob or get some work done.
Songs appear in no particular order whatsoever, save that community submissions will be segmented from my choices and shown last.
Each week, I will also be choosing my favorite submission, The Double-Plus Good Pick of the Week. The winner will receive exactly nothing, except being last song with this beside their entry: ++good.
As a small guideline, if you’d like to win the The Double-Plus Good Pick of the Week, try to pick something obscure or, at the very least, recent. We all know titles like Mega Man and Final Fantasy had great music in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, and I will be featuring songs like these every week (that’s my bread and butter).
But, in the interest of keeping the Jukebox new and surprising, if you can come up with a great song that I’ve forgotten, or, better yet, never heard, you’ll have a leg up on the competition. Just keep in mind what I said at the top, and if you’ve read my Meet the Mob, the size of my game case.
Either way, feel free to submit whatever you like. Please. I can’t reinforce enough that all submissions are welcome.
As an added bonus, I will also try to add an immediate comment about the awesomeness of the winner commenter’s song and why everyone else should pay special attention to it. This will be an in-joke for those who keep up.
Most importantly, since I hope to keep doing this for awhile, only one submission response per person per post. That way I’ll have less to parse, and you folks will be able to submit for an extended period of time. If you sumbit multiple requests, I will not listen to any of them.
Again, only one submission response per person per post.
Anyway, onto the show.
There are two ways to listen:
Method 1: Pick and Choose
1. Bioshock – Welcome to Rapture
3. Scribblenauts – Peaks Theme*
4. Boom Blox – Tiki Sacred Honor*
5. Tenchu: Stealth Assassins – Execute the Corrupt Minister*
6. Katamari Damacy – Cherry Blossom Color Season
Community Jukebox
7. Skies of Arcadia – Credits suggested by Brian Petro-Roy
8. Actraiser – Offering suggested by Jon Shults
9. Shining Force II – Final Battle suggested by Alex R. Cronk-Young
10. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles suggested by Lance Darnell
11. I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1-Theme Song* suggested by Evan Killham
12. Gitaroo Man – Tainted Lovers suggested by Aaron Rivers
13. Blue Dragon – Waterside suggested by Brian Shirk
14. Super Mario 64 – Dire, Dire Docks suggested by Nicholas Michetti
15. Wipeout: Pulse – Tokyo suggested by J. Cosmo Cohen++good
Method 2: Let It Ride (click here to listen in a separate window)
~James D., read at The Sophist, heard at, Sophist Radio
P.S. Thanks again to Andrew Hiscock for the accidental idea of making every tenth version of the Jukebox special. The double-plus-good tradition will continue in each 10th version, but you guys are going to have to try hard if you want to one-up Andrew’s suggestion and how it affected the Jukebox.