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Video game music (VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led to the style of music known as chiptune, which became the sound of the first video games.
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Shoji Meguro is a Japanese composer, guitarist, and video game designer. Formerly an employee of the game company Atlus, he is best known for his work in their Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series. His music spans several genres, such as rock, electronic, J-pop, jazz, and symphonic. Meguro has also designed indie games and was the creative director of the PlayStation Portable remakes of Persona and the Persona 2 duology.
Jake Kaufman is an American video game music composer. After starting out creating arrangements and remixes of video game soundtracks, he began his commercial composing career in 2000 with the score to the Game Boy Color port of Q*bert. He continued to compose music for games for the next couple of years, working primarily with handheld video games. In 2002, he set up the website VGMix, which hosts video game music remixes, and continues to administrate it. His career began to take off over the next few years, resulting in him transitioning jobs into a full-time freelance composer by 2005. Since then he has worked on several big-name projects such as the Shantae series, Contra 4, Red Faction: Guerrilla,DuckTales: Remastered, Shovel Knight, and Crypt of the Necrodancer.
Derek Yu is an American independent video game designer, video game artist, and blogger. Yu has designed and co-designed several award-winning games, most famously Spelunky, Aquaria, and Eternal Daughter. He is also notable as a blogger and custodian of the influential TIGSource blog/community about independent video games. He has been called an "indie superstar" and a "genuine icon" of the video game industry.
Vlambeer is a Dutch independent video game developer based in Utrecht. Founded in 2010, the studio was composed of Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman. The studio is known for the games Super Crate Box (2010), Serious Sam: The Random Encounter (2011), Ridiculous Fishing (2013), Luftrausers (2014), and Nuclear Throne (2015), as well as for their stand against video game cloning.
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Keiji Yamagishi is a Japanese video game music composer. He is known for his work on Tecmo's late 1980s and early 1990s NES titles, such as Ninja Gaiden. Yamagishi has been considered a pioneer of chiptune music, producing the soundtracks of numerous titles in the 8 bit era.
Tiago Lopes, better known as Tee Lopes, is a Portuguese-American composer primarily for video games. He is best known for his contributions for the Sonic the Hedgehog series beginning with the 2017 video game Sonic Mania.
Jukio Kallio is a Finnish video game composer known for creating the soundtracks to Minit, Fall Guys, Nuclear Throne and Luftrausers. He started making music in 2011 and created chiptune music on his own. He then met game developer and co-founder of former Dutch game studio Vlambeer, Jan Willem Nijman. Kallio collaborated with Nijman to develop and create the music to various titles made by Vlambeer. Kallio then collaborated with Daniel Hagström in 2020 to create the soundtrack to Fall Guys.
UFO 50 is a video game collection developed and published by Mossmouth for Windows on September 18, 2024. It features 50 unique games of varying genres and length. The games are a collaborative effort by six developers over the course of several years, similar to a long-form game jam.
References
- 1 2 3 Williams, Mike (March 26, 2013). "Talking Shop: Freelance Composer". GamesIndustry.biz. Archived from the original on October 27, 2016. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
- 1 2 jeriaska (August 29, 2011). "The Weblog PAX 2011 Q&A: Derek Yu and Eirik 'Phlogiston' Suhrke on Spelunky for XBLA". IndieGames.com. Archived from the original on May 12, 2016. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
- ↑ Pitcher, Jenna (December 24, 2013). "Spelunky, Ridiculous Fishing composer offering 'pay what you want' for albums". Polygon . Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
- ↑ Dotson, Carter (August 4, 2016). "'Downwell' Soundtrack to be Released on Vinyl". TouchArcade. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
- ↑
- Cavalli, Earnest (December 23, 2013). "Spelunky, Ridiculous Fishing, more soundtracks now 'pay what you want'". Engadget . Retrieved June 7, 2017.
- ↑ http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-07-spelunky-downwell-and-more-indie-devs-announce-retro-game-anthology-ufo-50