Demoscene

Chip Music, Demoscene, Featured

The Legacy of KeyGen Music: A Look at Tunes of the Key Cracker Era

January 16, 2019 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on The Legacy of KeyGen Music: A Look at Tunes of the Key Cracker Era Share this

The vast majority of us have been horrible people at some point or another and pirated software or at least emulated games on our computers at least once in our lives. Getting past the morality of it, it’s safe to say we all know the process of downloading an installer alongside a key generator that would help us get to our elicit activities, or an emulator with which to play the ROMs of import games we didn’t get in the states.

If you’re one of those ilk, then you are likely familiar with keygen music, or at least have had an encounter with the niche genre but didn’t pay it much mind. Maybe it was simply an annoyance on the way towards the goal of cracking your ill-gotten software, or maybe it’s a fond memory of the age of Napster, Limewire and pre-torrent times. Having attended MAGFest recently and become more interested in the demoscene, I’ve decided to revisit this.

So what is keygen music?

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Demoscene, Experimental, Game Music

Grab some free Soundtracks from the PlayStation Store

December 28, 2017 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Grab some free Soundtracks from the PlayStation Store Share this

While keeping an eye out for PlayStation Store deals over the holidays, I decided on a whim to search for “soundtrack” and sort by “price: low to high”. Surprisingly, I turned up a handful of free albums that anyone can grab right now as long as you’ve got a PlayStation 3 or 4.

From 2012 is the 18-track soundtrack from Datura, Sony’s trippy PlayStation 3 experiment that came out of the Polish demoscene. From 2013 there’s the massive (and massively chill) soundtrack from Knytt Underground on PlayStation 3. To celebrate the launch of inFAMOUS Second Son in 2014, Sucker Punch released the game’s 29-track soundtrack from Marc Canham (Far Cry 2), Nathan Johnson (Looper, Brick) and Brain (Tom Waits, Primus) as a free app on PlayStation 4. And most recently in 2016, 505 Games released the 7-track soundtrack to Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf from Francesco Libralon and Lorenzo Scagnolari on PlayStation 4.

The search page also makes for a handy reminder for anyone who pre-ordered Bloodborne or The Order: 1886 as they both came with free soundtracks that you can still download. Ndreams’ The Assembly also has a free 13-track album waiting for anyone who purchased the PlayStation VR game since its release in 2016.
Chip Music, Demoscene, Game Music

Avant-garde, Metal, Chiptune: Master Boot Record and VirtuaVerse

December 13, 2017 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Avant-garde, Metal, Chiptune: Master Boot Record and VirtuaVerse Share this

MASTER BOOT RECORD, who claims to be an old 486 PC “processing avant-garde chiptune, synthesized heavy metal & classical symphonic music” has revealed that he’s also responsible for the upcoming cyberpunk adventure game, VirtuaVerse. The game is from the three-man studio Theta Division, with MBR behind the story and music, and also marks record label Blood Music’s first foray into game publishing.

“The soundtrack of VirtuaVerse is in fact how the MBR project spawned in [the] first place. After writing it, and inspired by demoscene vibes and the cyberpunk worlds of our game, I added more synthesized metal and classical music and then ultimately created the sound of MASTER BOOT RECORD.”

To celebrate the announcement, the team have released the first glimpse of the game in the trailer above. VirtuaVerse isn’t expected until sometime in 2019 but if you like the sound of MASTER BOOT RECORD’s tinny, synthesized metal I’m happy to tell you there’s loads more to hear while you wait. Over the last year he’s released seven albums of original synthesized, chiptune metal music on Bandcamp as well as a growing collection of similarly styled video game covers.

You can listen to his treatment of classics including DOOM, Mega Man, Ultima, Flashback, LOOM, Duke Nukem, and many others on SoundCloud. You might even score a download of the album, titled WAREZ, if you buy some of his music or add it to your Bandcamp wishlist.
Chip Music, Demoscene, Indie Music

Get to Know Cracktros with this 8 Hour Playlist

January 27, 2016 | Shawn Sackenheim | 2 Comments Share this

Whether you grew up with a computer in the ’80s, pirated a copy of Photoshop in the 2000s or ran a benchmark on a video card last year, you’ve come into contact with a cracktro in one form or another. Also called a Crack Intro or Loader, these screens were first appended to pirated software in the late 70s and early 80s by the groups that cracked them. They served as digital graffiti, a way for the cracking “crew” to stake their claim, brag about their accomplishments and shout out to friends and rivals.

As such they rapidly evolved into ever more elaborate feats of visual programming until some coders detached their efforts from the shadier side of things. By 1986 the movement became known as the Demoscene and would later inspire benchmarking software to find dazzling ways to tax computer hardware. The legacy of the cracktro would also be carried on beyond the 90s in the form of keygens; tiny programs that generate serial keys for pirated software.

Wrapped up in that thirty year history is the music that accompanied the illicit cracktros, trainers and keygens, some of which outmatched the games they were attached to. While crews have left their calling cards on virtually every platform, this playlist (which can’t be embedded here) by YouTuber Zeusdaz features solely the Amiga. So prolific was the cracking scene back then that even this incomplete collection clocks in at an astounding eight and a half hours. It serves as a great intro to cracktros, offers a time capsule-like glimpse into the scene and it was even captured directly from a real Amiga. No emulation from Zeusdaz! It’s also a convenient playlist to pop on for quick audio/visual party ambiance.

Tracking down the coding composers behind these tunes is an even more daunting challenge and one I’d like to dig into… someday. For now I’ll point curious parties to Wikipedia, Cracktros.org, SceneMusic and Kestra Bitworld to see how deep the cracktro hole goes. I can’t remember any by name but there are definitely some cracktros and keygens I would repeatedly load up just to listen to. What about you? Any memorable crack or trainer tunes? Do you know another good source for even more cracktro themes? Let us know below.

Disclaimer: Original Sound Version does not endorse software piracy for the sake of listening to cracktros, no matter how cool their music might be.
Chip Music, Demoscene, Experimental

5 Games, 9 Albums and Bananas in latest Groupees Bundle

July 7, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on 5 Games, 9 Albums and Bananas in latest Groupees Bundle Share this

We’re all familiar with the likes of Humble Bundle and the Game Music Bundle but there are a handful of other bundling sites out there. Groupees is especially noteworthy as it regularly bundles games, music, graphic novels and digital art collections. Sometimes it’s a game and its soundtrack, other times the collections are curated by a game’s creator or even left to you to pick and choose individual items.

Debuting this week is the Badass Banana Bundle curated by eccentric electronic musician, Remute. The bundle includes nine games, five albums and access to a livestream on July 13th where Remute will mix a bunch of his favorite 16-bit game music. Giving the bundle its name is You Are Not a Banana, a humorous, pixelart audiovisual experiment that includes its own chiptune soundtrack. Other highlights include Remute’s 2009 album Grand Slam, a collection of Frederic “Elmobo” Motte’s demoscene tracks from the late 80’s/early 90’s and his entire soundtrack to the Amiga game, Fury of the Furries.

You can get all of that for a minimum donation of only $2.00 but you can give as much as you’d like. The bundle is scheduled to end on July 15th.
Demoscene, Featured, Music Production

From the Expert – MODs and the DemoScene

May 9, 2015 | Alexander Brandon | 4 Comments Share this

Music has many forms, and music production has probably at least as many forms as well.

I first started writing music on a computer in 1987, and nearly 30 years later I realized how important simple, fundamental things really are. My youngest son is five, and was taken by a 25 key synthesizer I recently acquired (the Korg Triton Taktile 25). He wanted one too, and I told him “you can have one, but you need to learn at least a little music first. This is no toy.” And with those words I realized the same words were just as true for me.

So with that in mind, with this bit of writing I’m going to talk about MODs, and the Demo Scene.

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Chip Music, Demoscene

Demo Album “The Blossoming Years” by MmcM Released

April 16, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | 1 Comment Share this

If you’re a fan on the international chip music and demoscene, you’ll be pleased to know that earlier this month saw the release of “The Blossoming Years” album by Russian demo artist Sergey “MmcM” Kosov. Composed entirely on the ZX-Spectrum computer using a Yamaha YM2149F sound chip in ProTracker 3, the album features music from the height of Kosov’s career composing between 1999 and 2001. This is his first release since his 2012 eletronica album “Detuned”, and further expands his repertoire of demo and chip music, which has gained him a long-standing following.

The 18-track album has been released by our friends at Ubiktune and is currently available on Bandcamp, Loudr and Amazon for around $5.

“The Blossoming Years” by MmcM – Ubiktune