What do you find to be the best music for shmups?

black flag nc · Post by **black flag nc** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:11 pm

No matter how great a soundtrack a game has, after a while you may get sick of it and substitute your own. Example: I've been playing Gradius 3 for 15 years now and found that the Pennywise album Land of the Free seems to go really well with it. American punk and a SNES classic! I played through Metal Black the other day while listening to Dethklok's Dethalbum. Another nice combo, I thought.

Pretty much anything fast paced will work well, I suppose. But then again, I always wanted to try some classical to see if it relaxes the mind while dodging the hordes of the Bydo empire.

What do you guys think?

drboom · Post by **drboom** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:44 pm

I find that 1960's era Herbie Hancock works pretty well for most any shmup I'm playing on my cab. Brand New Heavies work pretty well too. Good relaxing stuff. That being said, when I play Ketsui, I turn the sound up.

pieslice · Post by **pieslice** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:11 pm

Juno Reactor, especially old track "High Energy Protons", makes nice shooter bgm.

Post by **spadgy** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:43 pm

Old school hardcore punk or old skool hardcore rave/happy hardcore!

Two very different very similar genres...

black flag nc · Post by **black flag nc** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:58 pm

spadgy wrote:Old school hardcore punk or old skool hardcore rave/happy hardcore!

Two very different very similar genres...

Yeah most punk seems to work really well. I've gotta try out some Minor Threat (angry strait-edge punk) or some Dead Kennedys (California anti government punk). I imagine the Bad Brains' non-jah stuff would work well, too.

drboom · Post by **drboom** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:06 pm

For old hardcore, nothing beats Cro Mags 'Age of Quarrel'. Never tried playing it while playing a shmup.

black flag nc · Post by **black flag nc** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:23 pm

drboom wrote:For old hardcore, nothing beats Cro Mags 'Age of Quarrel'. Never tried playing it while playing a shmup.

I'll have to check that out. I've only heard a couple Cro Mags songs. They came out of NYC about the same time as Agnostic Front, who I love.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:59 pm

spadgy wrote:Old school hardcore punk or old skool hardcore rave/happy hardcore!

Two very different very similar genres...

agreed...i like listening to some enduser or shitmat while playing...or some dj scotch egg

pretty much any harder drum n bass/jungle or hardcore/gabber is awesome for shmups....even harder, faster trance is ok
i tend not to play music with vocals while i play...i find the vocals distracting a lot of the time

although screamo/metalcore stuff works some times...depending on the game and my mood

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:42 pm

Psytrance is perfect soundtrack for pretty much any action game (perhaps except fantasy/medieval ones

).

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:16 am

I think this is sacrilege. Gradius II/Gradius III really exemplify Kukeiha Sound Club in their prime. What you're talking about is akin to playing Rob Stewart whilst watching the Nutcracker Suite.

DefaultGen · Post by **DefaultGen** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:57 am

Disco of course.

Gungriffon Geona · Post by **Gungriffon Geona** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:59 am

super robot themesongs. those don't have a genre except hot blood

doodude · Post by **doodude** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:16 am

DefaultGen wrote:Disco of course.

hee hee hee

I most like the big extravagant sound of Radiant Silvergun or Ikaruga.

But I also really like the sound of R-Type Leo's opening level. Smooooth...

Id like to get that R-Type Leo soundtrack but am told it has never been released. Can anyone tell me, short of holding a mic up to the speakers, how I can record this myself?

KBZ · Post by **KBZ** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:16 am

screamo

or

mathrock

it290 · Post by **it290** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:33 am

I usually find some minimal techno makes an excellent shooting soundtrack. It has a nice consistent rhythm without all the distracting breakdowns. Playing shooters is really all about executing geometric movements at a certain pace, so mathematically-oriented and derived music meshes well with it.

goutpatrol · Post by **goutpatrol** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:38 am

I usually listen to my music on shuffle so as to not get into a rut (I seem to have trouble listening to a CD from beginning to end without thinking of other songs I want to listen too), but the other day Minor Threat's "Seeing Red" came on and it was almost too much... too much rad to the max that is! What a great combination.

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:43 am

goutpatrol - that avatar is amazing. What is it?

Master O · Post by **Master O** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:58 am

Any cosmic jazz by Sun Ra works really well with shmups, especially "Space is the Place" and "Rocket Number 9" with any Gradius game.

In fact, any up-tempo jazz works too, but maybe I'm just strange.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:53 am

bcass wrote:goutpatrol - that avatar is amazing. What is it?

I want to know this as well, especially if it's to do with the 20s/30s ;D

Leandro · Post by **Leandro** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:54 am

elvis

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 6:51 am

Leandro wrote:elvis

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:06 am

jailhouse rock in ESP ra.de. - hmm!

FIL · Post by **FIL** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:33 am

MathU · Post by **MathU** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:05 am

it290 wrote:I usually find some minimal techno makes an excellent shooting soundtrack. It has a nice consistent rhythm without all the distracting breakdowns. Playing shooters is really all about executing geometric movements at a certain pace, so mathematically-oriented and derived music meshes well with it.

If we're talking about listening to your own music while playing games, well that's just silly. If we're talking about what works well with shoot 'em ups in general, I agree with It290. I find some good techno can really complement a shoot 'em up's adrenaline rush.

doodude wrote:But I also really like the sound of R-Type Leo's opening level. Smooooth...

Id like to get that R-Type Leo soundtrack but am told it has never been released. Can anyone tell me, short of holding a mic up to the speakers, how I can record this myself?

R-Type Leo has two cool remixed tracks in the R-Type Special CD. Also, if you want to rip the game yourself, just use Audacity and record from your sound card. You could also extract the tracks directly from the game files, but I'm not sure exactly how to do that.

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:19 pm

If you have the R-Type LEO ROM, you can lsiten to all the music in the game using the M1 sound emulator, with the BridgeM1 front-end:

Download M1 here: http://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?page_id=223

Download BridgeM1 here: http://www.e2j.net/downloads.html

indstr · Post by **indstr** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:18 pm

anyone have any tips on how to remove music on games that don't let you turn it off? aside from just turning off the game audio source that is

also, is there some way to disable just the music tracks in MAME? (but keep the sound effects) that would be awesome

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:27 pm

worstplayer wrote:Psytrance is perfect soundtrack for pretty much any action game (perhaps except fantasy/medieval ones :) ).

I don't know about this genre in particular, but I think electronic music in general fits very well with most games. It sets a rythm and does a great job of accompanying without trying to steal attention or something.

black flag nc · Post by **black flag nc** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:22 pm

goutpatrol wrote:I usually listen to my music on shuffle so as to not get into a rut (I seem to have trouble listening to a CD from beginning to end without thinking of other songs I want to listen too), but the other day Minor Threat's "Seeing Red" came on and it was almost too much... too much rad to the max that is! What a great combination.

I love me some Minor Threat. I'm not even straitedge, I just think it's some really amazing stuff to hear from 18-19 kids.

As for all the techno, I'm afraid I'm a bit too American.

indstr · Post by **indstr** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:28 pm

i just got galuda and mushihimesama both last week. i like the games about the same as far as the gameplay, but i've been playing galuda A LOT more because the music is 99x better. mushi's music sucks

and i tried turning the volume down all the way on it, but it still quietly plays

it290 · Post by **it290** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:46 pm

also, is there some way to disable just the music tracks in MAME? (but keep the sound effects) that would be awesome Smile

On some games which use different chips for music and sfx you can press ~ and use the arrow keys to turn down the synth but keep the PCM, for example. Not sure which shooters this would work on, but there are probably a few... mostly stuff from the late 80s and early 90s due to the nature of the hardware I would imagine.

As for all the techno, I'm afraid I'm a bit too American. Laughing

Detroit = birthplace of techno.