This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
Editor’s note: I decided we all could use some good gaming tunes as we recovered from holiday feasts and Black Friday spendathons. I’m looking forward to making vats of turkey soup while listening to selections from Rygar and Castlevania. Don’t forget to leave your suggestions for future Bitmob Community Jukeboxes. I’m suggesting Super Mario World with bassoons. That’s right, BASSOONS! -Jason
A mountain of schoolwork prevented me from posting the Jukebox on time…. Sorry, everyone!
This week we have an eclectic collection of songs from a variety of different genres. Also, make sure you check out Alex Cronk-Young’s utterly ridiculous selection.
Click below for all the sweet bleep-bloopy bliss!
Newer newcomers should make sure to check out the latter portion of the post for submission instructions.
You’ve got two ways to listen to The Bitmob Jukebox
Method 1: Pick and Choose
My Selections
1) Castlevania — Vampire Killer
2) Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island – Intro*
3) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time — Gerudo Valley
5) Kingdom Hearts — Fragments of Sorrow
7) World of Goo — Brave Adventurers
Community Selections
8) Ratchet and Clank — Metropolis* suggested by Evan Killham
9) Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved — Main Theme suggested by Lance Darnell
10) Skygunner — Merveilleux ~ Departure suggested by Tom Heistuman
11. Darkstalkers 3 — Fetus of God suggested by Daniel Feit
12. The Granstream Saga — Arona* suggested by Travis McReynolds
13. Daytona USA — Let’s Go Away suggested by Alex R. Cronk-Young
14. Stubbs The Zombie — Strangers in the Night by Cake suggested by Aaron Rivers
15. Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection — Main Theme* suggested by Jasmine Maleficent Rea (++good)
Method 2: Let It Ride
(Click here to listen in a separate window.)
For all you newcomers, here’s how it works. Even though I wrote a Meet the Mob post, you should know something important 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 younger Bitmobbers, a Rolodex is an archaic device that people used to keep important contact information. I guess it’s sort of like an abacus at this point.)
Because of this, every Monday I post 15 well-known and not-so-well-known video game songs for the Bitmob community.
It’s got a catch, however — I don’t provide all of the songs. If the community doesn’t fill out the roster of 15, I fill it out. Most of the songs come from you — hopefully, they’re pieces that I have never heard — and only a few spring from my mental Rolodex.
Ultimately, I’d like enough suggestions that only five — ideally, just one — come from me, thus truly making this the Bitmob Community Jukebox.
It’s important to note that community members receive credit for providing submissions.
The only guidelines are that any submission must be from a nonmusic 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, but Guitar Hero and Rock Band songs are not. If licensed songs become too prolific, however, I may stop taking them as submissions.
Also, I will try my hardest to find the original names of every submission, 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, but I do list community submissions at the end.
Each week, I choose my favorite submission, The Double-Plus Good Pick of the Week. The winner receives exactly nothing, other than his submission is the last song and gets the “++good” notation next to their entry.
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 feature 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 this enough: All submissions are welcome.
As an added bonus, I 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 per person per each edition of the Bitmob Community Jukebox. That way I’ll have less to parse, and you will be able to submit for an extended period of time. If you submit multiple requests, I will not listen to any of them.
Again, only one submission response per person per post.
James D., read at The Sophist and heard at Sophist Radio
P.S. Double sorry to everyone who listens to the Jukebox regularly. I know your Monday morning was much drearier without it.