Quick Look: “Skyrim Main Theme” by Tay Zonday

Tay Zonday, YouTube personality known for the “Chocolate Rain” video, covers the main theme from Skyrim, “Dragonborn”.

Adam Nyerere Bahner (born July 6, 1982), better known by the pseudonym Tay Zonday, is an American actor, singer, musician, announcer, voice artist, comedian and YouTube personality. He is well known by listeners for his baritone singing voice.

– From the Tay Zonday Wikipedia page.

Zonday became famous on YouTube in 2007, when his “Chocolate Rain” song became one of the first viral videos on the site. He has also done covers of many other songs on his YouTube channel (not all video game related, but still worth checking out!)

Rockage 2.0 Celebration in San Jose, Ca.

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Indie music and video game lovers in the San Jose area might want to mark their calendars — Rockage 2.0 is coming, February 8th-10th. Produced by Grand Fanali Presents, Rockage is an annual celebration of indie music and retro video games. The lineup includes DJ Mr Smith, Curious Quail, and Urizen.

Rockage 2.0 will be held February 8th-10th, at the San Jose Women’s Club, in downtown San Jose, California. Tickets are available for purchase now.

If you’re interested in attending, you can check out the official Rockage website for more information, and follow Rockage on Twitter. Also, you can watch the promo video for Rockage 2.0.

Nerd 42 releases White Materia Mega Ran Mashup Album

DJ Nerd42, who’s brought us some great video game music mashups in the past, is at it again. This time he’s mashing up songs from Mega Ran’s Black Materia with other popular rap and hip-hop tracks in what he is calling White Materia.

In 2011. Mega Ran dropped “Black Materia” with beats by Lost Perception and lyrics that told the epic story of Cloud Strife and his AVALANCHE allies battling the evil Shinra Inc. and Sephiroth from the classic 1997 role-playing game, “Final Fantasy VII.” In 2012, it was followed up with, “Black Materia: The Remixes” with even more original awesomeness featuring many guest appearances from all over the nerdcore hip hop scene. Now, in 2013, you get to hear the same crap that’s been recycled at this point about three times, cause we just can’t let it go!! Hooray! 😀

 White Materia joins Nerd 42’s catalog alongside other great mashup albums including Deltron 3742, a mashup album of the popular hip-hop album “Deltron 3030” with the Final Fantasy VII OST. You can download or stream all of White Materia on Bandcamp.

RoeTaka releases Chrono Ark Soundtrack

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The year is 2009, and Alex Roe (or RoeTaka as he’s known on OverClocked ReMix) is working with a small team on Chrono Ark, a fan-made sequal to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. As the years move on, the team grew too busy to complete the project, but RoeTaka had already completed a substantial amount of the soundtrack. How much of the soundtrack was completed? 100 tracks worth. You read that right: he completed 100 tracks, over 4 hours of music, before calling it quits. Having now moved on, he’s released the full soundtrack on Bandcamp.

Chrono Ark was a fan game being made by a small team of people that was going to be a sequel to Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Unfortunately the team including myself have discontinued working on it for various reasons, mostly because we are all too busy with our lives and new work prospects. Now that we have moved on I can release the soundtrack I was making for it. I finished most of the soundtrack in 2009 and was adding to it here and there as time went on. Although I wasn’t able to finish it, it is pretty much done and enough was completed for me to release it.

Chrono Ark had planned to follow a new cast of characters separated between time periods looking for a way to get back together. Many familiar characters where to show up along the way and the soundtrack offers familiar themes and motifs throughout. While the game will, unfortunately, never see the light of day, at least part of it will live on. RoeTaka is staying pretty positive about the whole thing:

I wish I could reveal more about what happened and what the game was about but it is not my decision to do so, The team wanted me to release my work which I’m really thankful for. To help understand more about the game each track has its use or general use in brackets and hopefully with the music you’ll get a feel of where things were going. Our concept artist has agreed to include some of his newer art pieces and I included some of his older ones so you could see what some of the other characters looked like as well. He is also working on an art book which I will surely link when it is ready. And the sprite artist has let me show a little of her work too.

The Chrono Ark soundtrack is available as a pay-what-you-want album on Bandcamp, with a direct link coming soon!

Hotline Miami Soundtrack On Steam Now

If you like your video games full of action, guns, and with a pumping soundtrack to match, then you’ve probably checked out Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital‘s Hotline Miami.

And now, the soundtrack is available on Steam, as a DLC for those who already own the game!

The Hotline Miami Soundtrack is a collection of over 20 different tracks from 9 outstanding artists. These selections are just a sampling of these fantastic musicians’ work and Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital encourage you to explore more of their amazing music.

Artists featured include M|O|O|N, El Huervo, Scattle, Eliott Berlin, and more.

You can buy Hotline Miami on Steam, and download the Hotline Miami DLC soundtrack on Steam as well.

The Arcade Interview with Ben Briggs

Gameboy interviews Ben Briggs on The Arcade show, Saturday January 26th. Ben talks about his new album The Briggs Effect, as well as Nedarpalooza 2012, MAGFest 11, his experience in the community, his new video game livestream, and more.

Creating music since he was 14 years old, he has become a great part of the community — you can check out Ben’s video game remixes on ReMix:ThaSauce, and more of his music on his OCReMix profile.

The show aired live on the 91.1 KLSU FM website, but you can still listen to the full, uncut The Arcade’s interview with Benjamin Briggs, and don’t forget that Ben’s new album The Briggs Effect is also available for purchase!

halc Releases Chiptune Album Legitimacy

The last time we talked about him, we were announcing pre-orders for halc’s Pixel Perfect. And, now, we’re announcing his newest album!

This time, though, it’s no whistles, no bells, no effects — just pure chiptune goodness. This is his latest effort, Legitimacy. About his goal to create a true chiptune album, he says.

I’m proud to finally present my first true chip album, “Legitimacy”! This entire EP was composed in MIDI using trash80’s awesome mGB interface, and recorded line out from a single prosound DMG Game Boy with no external EQ or effects.

A chiptune/electronic composer and arranger, halc is also the founder of 9-bit Records, a non-profit netlabel for electronic music.

You can buy halc’s Legitimacy on Bandcamp, and check out more of halc’s video game remixes on ReMix:ThaSauce, as well as on his OCReMix profile.

Radio Nintendo Presents bLiNd’s NESteryears

Radio Nintendo Presents bLiNds's NESteryears

This Saturday, January 26th, Radio Nintendo will host the listening party for bLiNd’s NESteryears album.

NESteryears is bLiNd‘s first full-length work, debuting after over a decade of remixing experience (you can check out bLiNd’s OCRemix work.) His first solo effort features 11 tracks, all remixes from classic NES games, such as Super Mario Bros., Castlevania, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The album was released to great reception was MAGfest11.

Be sure to tune in to Silver’s Saturday Show on Radio Nintendo, January 26th at 11am PST/1pm CT, to enjoy some awesome music.

You can also purchase NESteryears at Gamechops, and find more of his music at bLiNd’s official website.

Minibosses and Others Melt Faces and Blow Minds Masterfully

8BitSF held another show on June 1, except unlike the last one in March this one featured The Minibosses. As usual, crashfaster was part of the lineup and Matthew Joseph Payne kicked the night off. The night was a blast, despite the small venue, but it was well worth the $10 at the door.

Matthew Joesph Payne, as mentioned above, was the first act of the night; his fusion of vocals and chip elements with either banjo or electric guitar was great. He also kept us warmed up between songs with some nice humor, even saying he was no Danimal during his fourth song. Before the third song, he mentioned getting into an internet argument and wanting to wrestle someone. Which he did, playfully, with a couple of audience members, while some battle-like chip music played in the background. He also had us sing along during the fifth song, which was in 13/8. He was also selling download codes for his Bandcamp page, which I highly recommend checking out.

crashfaster came on next; it was their first show with a new singer, Keiko. They played a new song about halfway through their set in commemoration of their inclusion on the upcoming Chiptunes=WIN compilation, releasing Monday. They also played a few songs that I’d heard at the March GDC show along with others. The last song was a cover, and small mosh pit of four or five people formed during it; Matthew Joseph Payne ran from the back of the room to the front just to join it. All in all, a good set. They’ll be playing at the DNA Lounge in July, so keep an eye out for that.

Finally, the Minibosses took the stage. They started early purely for the purpose of playing more songs (and they still ended up playing later than they should have). They kicked the night off with Kid Icarus, and went right into requests after the lengthy track. It is interesting to note that they played the Ducktales theme song on four separate occasions during the night, something Disasterpeace noted on Twitter after the show. Naturally, I also sang the entire theme song each time. Between the Ducktales reprises, they played favorites such as Punch-Out, Castlevania 2, and Mega Man 2. A mosh pit formed during the Mega Man track, and another even bigger one during Contra, which followed after Ducktales. Zelda was immediately after, which created yet another even larger mosh pit during the Temple section. The final song was Metroid, which had a mosh pit so large it almost knocked several folks (myself included) over due to spreading out.

After the show, they brought out the CDs and shirts for sale, and those who weren’t buying anything had to leave because it was afterhours. All in all, it was a phenomenal show and one that I had a blast at. I’m sure all who went did as well, seeing as it was probably impossible not to. If there’s another show, which there invariably will be, I’ll be sure to go, and you can be sure to read about it in a summary such as this one not too long afterwards. Until next time, game on!

Or would rock on be more appropriate here?

Get Cheap Dinosaurs’ S/T with Indie Royale’s Graduation Bundle


Established by the creators of the leading independent video game editorial site IndieGames.com and online download service Desura, indie game bundle website Indie Royale releases game bundles every two weeks to help get the word out over games that are worth playing and support developers that are typically passed over in mainstream media.

With cap and tassel tosses fast approaching, the folks behind Indie Royale have recently released the Graduation Bundle for the sake of all you graduates out there (congrats, by the way), with awesome indie releases like The Void, Dead Pixels, The Ship, 1000 Amps, LaserCat, and AirMech. In addition to all these awesome games that you get for various platforms, you’ll receive even more bonuses for just a $7 minimum donation —  Cheap Dinosaurs’ acclaimed self-titled chiptune-rock album is yours for the taking.

The Cheap Dinosaurs S/T sounds  promising, as the project is explained by low-bit composer Dino Lionetti when he states, “Composed on a Nintendo gameboy rigged with a sequencing cartridge, the album expertly moves from jazzy bit-scapes to algorithmic grooves that are equally suited for adventure, research- and romance. The suite of nine songs are at once challenging and rewarding, propelling Cheap Dinosaurs own brand of chip-music to the forefront of experimental pop.”

With less than five days left, make sure to subscribe to Indie Royale’s newsletter for future deals and buy the bundle today!