I still fail to see the big resurgence in vinyl? I bring this up since I noticed that Hyper Light Drifter is releasing a vinyl album

http://vgmdb.net/album/59025

along with a cassette

http://vgmdb.net/album/60139

Well, OK, I guess you're all 80s retro, but seriously why? If someone gave me a cassette it's not as if I have anything to play it on. I wonder if many of these vinyl albums are simply sold to consumers (at a pretty hefty price, by the way) simply because they can sell it as a "limited collector's" item. It's a fad as far as I can tell. The rumor that the quality is better is just that, a rumor (i.e. not true)

http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-m … yl-5352162

"As long as you can measure the difference, the CD will be better than the vinyl, absolutely...But if you say the whole experience — just like smoking cigars with friends — [is better], well, do it. Enjoy smoking cigars with friends, and drink beer and brandy and enjoy listening to an old-fashioned record player. But don't say the sound is better. You may say it sounds better to you. That's OK. That's a subjective matter."

Myself, I'm a bit annoyed, because I do like CDs and a physical CD is something you can pass down to family and friends. Also, it doesn't weigh much nor take up much space, unlike 4 vinyls. Lastly, if you're going to release a soundtrack on cassette and vinyl, is it seriously that hard to release a CD?!

Haha, a topic I dabble in both ways.

I'm looking to grab this for a friend: http://vgmdb.net/album/59957

(Will probably be more common than the CD release)

But I own this:

http://vgmdb.net/album/56914

and this

http://vgmdb.net/album/56750 (yes, it's a bootleg but it's way too cool plus screw Konami)

That Castlevania vinyl is a freaking beast. Great selection of tunes. If Konami made a comparable product I would buy it.

The Mega Man vinyl is somewhat of a mess. No Mega Man 3 picks (I'm serious) and Mega Man 1 & 2 tracks are copied from the crappy masters on the ECan/Rockman Sound Box 2 so those tracks sound damn horrible,

The Mega Man record was originally released at Hot Topic, a store that leaches off hipster.nostalgia BS.

As for your question, I kind of get the allure of doing this. But yeah, very niche thing.

Edit:

I guess I should add if you gave me the choice of format I'd still go with CD; but if the album was on both and I'd liked it enough I'd get the vinyl as well.

Vinyl these days is making a resurgence both as an audiophile thing (if you're into that) and as a collectors / special thing. VGM falls almost exclusively into the latter category because putting 8/16 bit sounds on vinyl is not giving you any better audio fidelity. VGM moreso and physical music these days in general is more of a collection hobby than about the actual music since you can download it or stream it and that's how the majority of people consume music. Even CDs are going that direction.

It's not so much that people are actually consuming music that way. It's much more likely they're buying it out of nostalgia/appreciation/deep reverence/limited and sticking it in a shelf of other similar things and saying "look at what I have". After all, that's what most of us do anyway.

The resurgence of vinyl and cassette is something like the resurgence of older gaming systems, due to the combination of curiosity and nostalgia. I'm actually curious about the cassette format now because I always had low quality tape decks when I was younger. With better technology, I'm sure cassettes would sound very good. Vinyl interests me due to curiosity, nostalgia, and the fact that those releases are essentially works of art, due to their large size. But I won't buy either of them, because I'm making efforts to dematerialize my habitat.

I know that some audiophiles prefer the sound of vinyl over their modern-day counterparts.  While I don't have a turntable myself, I'm willing to believe that if you have a REALLY good vinyl rig, it can indeed sound amazing.

For albums which used an analog master, an upside of vinyl is that it prevents the music from ever being converted into the digital domain.  For VGM, which is inherently digital to begin with, this would hold less true.

In my case, I'll buy a vinyl album only if it was never sold digitally.  An example is Super Mario Bros. Original Soundtrack:

http://vgmdb.net/album/507

But generally speaking, I have no desire to buy and store doubles of albums in different mediums.

Screw you scalpers! Yeah boy:

https://www.amazon.com/Castlevania-CAST … ania+vinyl

I don't care if the reprint is just black vinyl, I wasn't going to pay a $100+ for this thing anyway.

Damn do I love the music of the original CV.

I was watching this one too...there is a different 'print' and limited edition of the one that was sold at Comic Con from what I understand.  (I think the actual disc is like a different 2 tone color?) My dispensable cash funds are a bit low tho, but they are releasing other CV Soundtracks and I I would like to get all of these from Mondo at some point.

They are? That sounds awesome. I'd be up for some II, III and IV action. Hell, even if they did Belmont's Revenge on the GameBoy I'd sign up.

Still, as a collector I'm not worried about first prints when it comes to vinyl.

If I were a real oldschool DJ using two turntables, I'd kill to have legit prints of VGM to mix against ... other stuff. It'd be super awesome.

As for cassette tapes, my minivan has a tape deck that, for whatever reason, chews up and destroys tape-to-1/8inch converters (allowing me to use iPod). So I'm limited to FM radio and tapes. Having Sufjan Steven's "Carrie and Lowell" on cassette, as well as the Sword & Sworcery OST on cassette, makes hour-long drives bearable.

Got the record. Interesting bit of release news on the OBI.

Coming soon from Mondo:

Simon's Quest
Dracula's Curse
Super Castlevania IV
and Symphony of the Night.

We knew about the first two.

Yeah I got it too - pretty cool - but short...which I guess is how the tracks were originally written, but a few more loops of each would have been fine?   Slight reverb on the production, but generally sounds pretty cool.

Actually, I'm kind of put off with this myself. I wish there would have been a way to place the entire score on a single side of the vinyl and just duplicate that on side B. However, given track times and how much a record can hold given sizes/speeds I don't know if that would have been a viable option.

Note:

I thought I should note this. This appears to be taken right from Dracula Best 1 because Walking On the Edge has the sound effects mixed in. I actually like that... but this probably means Dracula's Curse is going to be in medley form when it reaches vinyl.

Hmm, if that's true, I'm a little disappointed with 'Mondo' 's method of sourcing the music...if they're just taking from an existing CD - that's not ideal

Another vendor, "Data Discs" (who have produced Streets of Rage, and Out-Run, among other) soundtracks on vinyl have gone to great lengths to source the material from original composer hardware (NEC Hardware that Yuzo Kushiro used for Streets of Rage for instance)...it may be more a marketing gimmick, but I rather appreciate the attention to detail as well as efforts of to master the music in line with the benefit of vinyl.

That said, don't get me wrong - I think the Mondo Castlevania release is pretty impressive and a cool collectors item.

Exactly, this is why the Mega Man 1~10 vinyl is suspect.

Edit:

However, I will say I thought this sounded better than the CV I~IV bootleg, which should be expected.

But isn't that to be expected from Western labels? They're taking advantage of the hipster trend of buying vinyl and just buying licenses for already existing releases. Didn't they do a MOTHER 1 vinyl kickstarter earlier this year that was a complete copy of the 90s album that has been available years?

I wasn't really thinking of this release (and future releases) like this, but yeah, when you think about it such cynicism probably is warranted. These aren't being released to truly "celebrate" anything, it's all about money.

Still, I can't wait to pick up SotN for my friend when they get around to that one.

Yeah, I get the skepticism , absolutely...The realm of anything deemed a  'collectable' - should absolutely be evaluated (by the interested few . . .)

And certainly a new 'officially licensed' vinyl of Castlevania should be subject to scrutiny.  Anecdotally, an un-official vinyl of Castlevania was previously produced, and is probably equally 'collectable'

W/R/T this Castlevania release by Mondo, they have been marketing the artist who designed the cover artwork, heavily.  I had no idea who this person was, however I will attest that the artwork is excellent.

As for "it's all about the $$", I don't think it's all about that for 'Mondo' ...They were offering the limited run of the albums during the San Diego Comic-Con, and then another run with a different design, via their website (and temporarily through Amazon).  If you were among the lucky few to approach their booth at S.D.C.C the price was around $25.  Same with the print on Amazon.

Honestly I had no interest in attending the S.D.C.C...I missed out on the web/Amazon availability of the 2nd press LP.  So I ultimately ponied up $60 approx for an Ebay listing of the S.D.C.C. print

Maybe it came out wrong, but wouldn't you agree taking your master from an already existing digital album and pressing it to vinyl is not the ideal; unlike brandonk mentioned with the DataDiscs example. That's like transcoding vbr mp3s to flac and turning around and selling it as a lossless release. I thought the whole reason people preferred vinyl was to retain the fidelity of the original sound?