when you're playing videogames do you listen to your own music or the game sdtrk?

i was getting exhausted with persona 4's sdtrk so i made up my "own" by putting together a playlist. i always find i end up doing this with games esp ones like P4 where you can spend like three/four hours playing and listening to the same 15 mins. of instrumentals. the more i think about it i cant really remember i game that i dont end up just playing my own music over. maybe on-line stuff??

also plz share your game-specific playlists. this is the one i made for P4:

z'ev - headphone musics # 1-6 b/w As Is As
oval - 94diskont
tim hecker - mirages and haunt haunt me do it again
ryuichi sakamoto - discord

for a while my roommates and i would get stoned and put on burial really loud and play melee at 1/2 speed

i was pretty rad in college

So Far So Good So What - Megadeth

whilst playing Ace 2 on the speccy. oh times.

Slayer - most albums, whilst using Deluxe Paint II

Becoming X, whilst player Dave Mirra bmx. (possibly has the worst soundtrack ever)

One time I played Gears of War and listened to Joni Mitchell's "Blue".

I've mentioned this before I think, but I played Kraftwerk's Computer World with Super R-Type so many times that I can't bear playing one anymore without the other.

I started a thread on Computer World once, and mentioned the awesome+++ transition from Numbers to Computer World 2. I still associate that transition with me being at a certain point deep into Super R-Type. I swear if you start up Computer World at the beginning of the game, Wizard of Oz/DSOTM style, it syncs perfectly.

depends on the game, donnit. some games the soundtrack is important for gameplay. sometimes I just mute it and play in silence. I've also listened to NPR while playing.

Most games, game sdtrk. Sonic and Rare games, anything but the game sdtrk.

geeks who love the soundtrack of final fantasy 7 will be disgusted to hear that I played the shit out of some Incubus album (lol, being 12 and lame) while playing that.

I also rinsed Endtroducing by DJ Shadow while playing Tomb Raider II.

GTA games I never fuck with any other music but the game's music, I've listened the fuck out of most of the stations in those games, only the occasional one I don't feel, e.g. Francois K's shitty frankendance monstrosity on GTA4 (although the wicked Lagerfeld disco station made up for it in the dance music department, SUPERNATURE).

usually the game soundtrack b/c I'm lazy but back in the day it was Doom + Underworld and it was very awesome.

I can't imagine playing a game and not listening to its soundtrack, that idea just seems crazy to me - it's always been part of the work.

I totally disagree. I would never want to play Braid or Shadow of the Colossus or Super Mario Brothers without its soundtrack, but when you're playing MLB 2K6 and you hear the same Avenged Sevenfold song for the 80th time, adding your own soundtrack becomes more a necessity than a luxury.

I can't imagine playing a game and not listening to its soundtrack, that idea just seems crazy to me - it's always been part of the work.

Yeah this, for the most part. I guess I'd have some exceptions, like sports games* and multiplayer games when I'm with a group of people at the atmosphere is conducive to having your own music on. But usually I just stick to the game's own music.

*I don't really play enough sports games for this to be relevant, although I can't hear any of the songs from Tony Hawk 3 without associating them with that game. And I would probably associate most of the Fifa 09 soundtrack with that game because it's constantly being played in my house, although not by me.

geeks who love the soundtrack of final fantasy 7 will be disgusted to hear that I played the shit out of some Incubus album (lol, being 12 and lame) while playing that.

what the hell at this. you need to play it again.

//geek

Played I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream a couple years ago, but the soundtrack to the game didn't work on my computer. So I listened to Yorke's Erasur while playing and I swear it made both the game and the album sound better.

I can't imagine playing a game and not listening to its soundtrack, that idea just seems crazy to me - it's always been part of the work.

you don't get sick of them though? the last sdtrk i really liked was boom blox - which tombot made fun of - and even that after awhile wore on me.

I think the way I feel is that the music and game are tied together so much that if the game is that good, generally I'll have even more of an affinity for the music and won't mind it no matter how many times I've heard it (in some cases, even if it was mediocre or bad to begin with). This is why there's so many diehard game music fans of the NES chiptune era, mid-'90s Square games and LucasArts adventures - great games, catchy music, they amplify each other in memory.

Those sports games and Tony Hawk games are a notable exception to this rule, because it's like they intentionally pick soundtracks that will grate on your ears very fast, no matter how good it is on first listen. (of course, many of those songs are also overplayed out in the real world, too) But even so, I'm sure there are a load of '80s rap and crappy '00s radio rock songs from the early part of this decade in my mind tied to Aggressive Inline.

I also think that even games with great music benefit from a break from the game music every now and then. It recontextualizes them in a fun way.

I just started listening to the WoW soundtrack again after 2 years of muting the music so I could play iTunes playlists and I'm surprised at how great most of it is.