Welcome to Slightly Dark

When you were growing up in the 80s and 90s, did you play video games? If you did, you will probably have remembered some of your favorite video game music tunes. Did you ever wonder if there were video game music albums? Maybe you recorded some music to tape, CD, or your hard drive just so you can listen to them. At this site, you will find rare, and out-of-print video game music albums for you to listen. These are actual video game music albums that were published in Japan. In Japan, video game music publishing is big business. Unfortunately, a lot of video game music albums are no longer published, so we hope to bring a little nostalgia to you with rare and out-of-print original video game soundtracks and arranged albums.

Note: We do not put up any albums that are for sale by retail channels (i.e. if you can order an album from Animenation or Gamemusic.com, we do not put it up at this site). If any out-of-print album is reprinted, and we have it on this site, we will take it down immediately. Support the albums you like by buying them.

Latest News

Update - Solomon's Key & Mighty Bomb Jack

Posted By Secret Squirrel at Wed 9 Jul 2008, 8:08 PM

Solomon's Key & Mighty Bomb Jack -- K13A-758

This is the special album that I was alluding to last week. It's an ancient LP that Carl spotted on YJA about a month ago. It looked like a perfect update for here, so I bought it and asked Carl to rip the album using his turntable. The Mighty Bomb Jack is a hybrid of game-sounds, electronic arrange music, vocals, and robot voices, while the Solomon's Key track is a straight arrangement (ok, it has robot voices too).

Thanks to Carl for ripping and mastering, and for doing all of the legwork.

More information to be found here:

http://vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=9332

6 Comments

Update -- Eko Eko Azarak Original Soundtrack

Posted By Secret Squirrel at Wed 2 Jul 2008, 9:38 AM

Eko Eko Azarak Original Soundtrack -- POCX-1016

We're in a bit of a lull here, so I sorted through some other stuff that Teioh picked up from Japanese p2p a while back. I think that this album will be of interest because it's composed by Tenpei Sato for a PSX game called Eko Eko Azarak. From the sound of the music, this is probably a horror or survival game, which I think is quite a bit different than her other offerings. I particularly liked the piano piece.

VGMdb info page is here:

http://vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=2865

Some special news. Carl has finished encoding and mastering an old LP that I picked up on YJA, so we'll get to hear that for our next update.

7 Comments

Update - Psychic Detective Series - The Best

Posted By Secret Squirrel at Sun 1 Jun 2008, 4:07 PM

Psychic Detective Series - The Best -- TOCT-6381

Here's another album from Teioh's P2P batch -- an old arrange album from the Psychic Detective Series, which was apparently a game on the Fm-Towns system. I have to say there's something special about arranged albums from the early days; it just seems like a time of unlimited possibilities.

Anyway, enjoy listening to this, and when you do, you can tell me why Shadow sounds so familiar.

http://www.vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=7754

6 Comments

Update - MYSTERY CASE in HI! SCHOOL! / SYNERGY

Posted By Secret Squirrel at Tue 13 May 2008, 8:41 PM

Update - MYSTERY CASE in HI! SCHOOL! / SYNERGY

Recently, I've been noticing a lot of interest in some of the old and difficult to find omnibus albums (compilations of original music by several game composers). Someone on VGMdb asked for some information on the Synergy Records albums (there are a few of them), which appear to include some omnibus albums that pre-date the ones published by Troubadour Records. This album is one of them.

The composer breakdown is as follows:

Hitoshi Sakimoto (1), GONG (2), KID (3), Takenobu Mitsuyoshi (4), Shinji Hosoe (5), CHOBIN (6), NEKOYA (7), Thomas Brown (8), MIU (9), Machiru Suzuki (10), ONION (11), CHEMOOL (12), KAJA (13), ABO (14), HIRE (15)

so there are some composers who are definitely familiar to us.

While I found this on Japanese P2P many years ago, I didn't really know much about it then, and still don't have all the information, but what I do have is here:

http://www.vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=8445

I expect that we'll learn more about this album from all of you, as we always do.

5 Comments

Update - First Queen

Posted By Secret Squirrel at Mon 28 Apr 2008, 6:31 PM

First Queen -- POCH-2207

At SlightylDark, we'll never turn the opportunity to put up another unknown SNES Arrange album. This album contains arranged music from the strategy game First Queen. The composition and arrangement are both by Masaki Sasaki, who hasn't appeared on that many albums, but he did compose the music on the older MUSIC FROM 'DUEL', which we hosted here last year sometime. So if you liked that, you'll definitely want to check this out.

http://www.vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=2811

13 Comments