Older News - April to June 1999

Wednesday, June 30

And the survey says...

       Squaresoft added a new survey section to their website on Monday. The first survey relates to the Final Fantasy Anthology, and asks which songs from Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI people like the best. This, combined with the knowledge that the Final Fantasy Anthology will have a music CD in with it seems to indicate that this is how they will choose the tracks.

So, get voting! :D

(Powerlord)

Monday, June 28

Whew!

       Sorry for delaying the update for so long. I tried getting it through yesterday, but it was a bit overwhelming. At least it's up now! There might be some errors that I have overlooked, so please let me know if there are any problems! Another thing, the update totals 563! This is quite assuredly the largest update this site has ever experienced. My next task is to clear out the very large New-Files directory. I apologize to some whose MIDIs did not make it to this update, either by being left behind in the new-files directory, or deleted altogether. I try to get the best MIDIs in here, and sometimes have the help of a third party, but it doesn't always work. If you think there was a mistake, please contact me properly, and please do not insult the staff members. Please enjoy this update. I'll try not to be held up two months anymore. Thanks! `^_^´

                                                                              Yours truly - -
                                                                                                  Princess Toadstool (Peach)

Thursday, June 24

Greetings VGMusic Fans!

       As your new Quality Control Manager, I'm pleased to be a part of VGMusic. I hope to be able to work my hardest here, right up to and through the 1 million hits mark. I'd like to thank all the other staff members for their excellent work they do here, and I hope to settle in here very quicky to really be a part of them. Thanks to everyone who has made me feel welcome too.
Long live VGMusic!

(39ster)

Tuesday, June 22

New VGMusic Staff Member

       39ster has been picked to fill the new Quality Control position. We hope to have him working on updating the ZIP files soon as his first main objective.

(Mike Newman)

Sunday, June 20

Sistersite logos

       I removed two of the sister site logos because they have been asked to be removed. The official sister site list over on Cloud's Villa has links to all 8 sistersites and their message boards. Applications to become a sister site can be made to CloudV.

Wednesday, June 16

I'm Back!

       I'm happy to say that I've finally returned from my...unpleasant...vacation. For all those who have been wishing me well or praying for me, I thank you. I am much better now, although not completely recovered from the emotional part. My next task is to handle that massive New-Files directory finally. Please give me some more time to sort out all these files (7 - 10 days). This won't be so easy. Thanks! `^_^´

                                                                              Yours truly - -
                                                                                                  Princess Toadstool (Peach)

Sunday, June 13

750,000! / Staff needs more time to go through applications

       The website's front page counter hit 750,000 yesterday. So close to the million mark. I hope I remember how to add digits to the counter. :^) Thanks to everyone who has visited this website!! You can help us get more traffic to the website by putting up a link to us. Check out our How to Add a Link Page for banners. Text links are fine too!

In other news, the VGMusic staff is currently going through all the applications we got for the Quality Control position. We got approximately 40 applications (some duplications in there because some people double clicked the submission button). It doesn't seem like we will pick someone this weekend. We need some more time in order to pick the right person. We hope to have a new person filling the position by next weekend. But hopefully sooner. Thanks to everyone who applied. This form system worked out very well!

(Mike Newman)

Friday, June 11

Applications for Quality Control Position Closed

       Well, it seems we didn't shut down the Application page until today, two days later than planned. As for you who turned in an application after that point, count yourself lucky!

The Open Directory

       The Open Directory, the site that feeds Netscapes Open Directory, Netscapes What's Related, Lycos, and HotBot, now has a Games: Video Games: Music directory that was created the 6th (we are marked as a cool site on it, if it sounds familiar). It has now been subcategorized and it is suggested that anyone with a music site please register it! While you are there, you can peek around the rest of the site and see if there are any categories that you would like to edit!

There are also unclaimed (and uncreated) music subcategories that need positions (such as SPC, WAV, and RA), I would suggest sending in applications for them.

Video Game Music Fan Club

In other news, I was informed of a new Video Game Music Fan Club that has been formed. Go visit it!

(Powerlord)

Tuesday, June 08

Money Can't Buy You Love...

       ...but it can help Project Majestic Mix (which just recently moved its website to Xoom) get its first CD release out sooner. Stephen Kennedy, who is the head of this project to make a legal tribute CD to Nobuo Uematsu's music, is looking to raise $3,000 by September. Check out their Fundraiser page for details. Also check out their FAQ page to learn more about the project. A small donation will make a big help if numerous people contribute.

(Mike Newman)

Monday, June 07

We're a cool site... according to dmoz.org

       It almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit here in Connecticut today. On a hot day like this, its nice to know there are cool things around, like this website! dmoz.org, better known as Netscape Open Directory, has designated us a "Cool Site". Yippee! Check out our listing at: Open Directory - Games: Video Games: Music



(Mike Newman)

Thursday, June 03

Unfortunate Delay

       Many people have been wondering, "Where's Peach? Why has she not been updating the site?" or "Why is the new-files directory piling up so much?" Well, to my dismay, I have been struck with a cold and don't quite have the energy yet to put in hours of my time into another update. Also, I am going through some traumatic emotional suffering, so I won't be able to do anything for about two weeks from now. I'll try to keep everyone posted, but until then, please understand my condition. Thanks.

                                                                              Yours truly - -
                                                                                                  Princess Toadstool (Peach)

Wednesday, June 02

AOL Buys Out Winamp!!

       In another smart (yet disturbing to me) move, AOL buys out the software maker of Winamp and Shoutcast, Nullsoft, for an estimated $400 million stock deal. First they bought ICQ (bet you didn't know that) and now this. Yikes! Click here for a press release about it.

In other news, the application for the Quality Control position will be up until next Wednesday (June 09). After that, we hopefully should be able to select someone by the end of the following weekend (June 12-13).

Also, there are now over 200 registered users on the VGMusic Forums. Try it out today! Over 30 messages posted every day.

(Mike Newman)

Monday, May 31

Apply for Quality Control Position

       We are now taking applications for the Quality Control Position. Please fill out the form on our Positions page.

(Mike Newman)

Tuesday, May 25

News Release: Doom Add-On Music at Mp3.com

Here is a news release I just received by email today:

David Shaw (Tolwyn) and Mark Klem's work has been listened to by thousands in the Doom community when their music work appeared on many of the most popular Doom add-ons.

Not too long ago that music was made available on CD Audio. Now, finally, they've made the move to MP3.com. You can download a 2 minute sample of the Impulse One and Impulse Two CDs as well as check out other works by the artists at .

The CD was split into 2 CDs due to the fact that MP3.com places the *.mp3 files on the CD as well. Cost for each CD is only $5.99.

Their work has been featured on Doomworld and reviewed by Planet Quake. The music compliments Single Play and deathmatch alike in your favorite First Person Shooters or any game that supports either the playing of *.mp3 files or CD Audio.

Says Tolwyn, "The choice to go with MP3.com was a natural migration for us. We can now reach a broader audience and take advantage of the convenience and incredible small file size and excellent sound quality of the Layer 3 audio format." Tolwyn continues, "We also can bring back to life some of our older work and mix it the way the music was intended to be heard; finally leaving the limitations of the General MIDI sound set behind us."

Tolwyn and Mark Klem remain actively involved in writing music for games and game add-ons including Team TNT, Domus, and other projects.

(Mike Newman)

Monday, May 24

Follow Up to "Name That Tune..."

       Earily this month, someone asked me to identify this game music in this Real Audio file, game.rm. Unfortunately, I have no clue. The only guesses I got from people was that it might be from a Mega Man game. The sender thinks that its likely that someone independently made it and it is not in a videogame.

But here's a midi file that someone else wants identified: zhqdestiny.mid If you have any clue, please let me know. I'm sure this will be easier to identify. The tracknames simply say it is "Destiny" made by "TK".

Nevermind, that Destiny file is from Zelda Headquarters. Its specifically "Destiny, also created by Nils Breunese. It's Zelda Headquarters' theme song". Thanks to Joe Hellmuth for suggesting the file might be from "zhq.com" even though he didn't have a soundcard to listen to the music! :^)

(Mike Newman)

Sunday, May 23

Shorter Front Page

       The Recent Addtions section has been moved to its own page at http://www.vgmusic.com/updates/ This should help reduce the front page loadtime somewhat. Significant additions will be mentioned on the front page in the news section. You can also check right below the Total Midi Count in the "Music Archive" section below for the "Most Recent Addition" date and the respective link to the Recent Additions Page. I have also removed the F-Zero picture, since it will no longer be present in the new front page design.

(Mike Newman)

Tuesday, May 18

700,000

       I'm taking a brief pause from my long overdue vacation to point out that the website has just officially hit 700,000 total visits from its start in December 1996. With over 50,000 hits a month now, the website is really on a roll! Gotta get off my old 486 now. I'll be back this weekend in full force (on my Pentium 233) to working on the website.

(Mike Newman)

Tuesday, May 11

New Forum system is up!

       We mentioned before that our new message board system would up soon... well.... it's here! Go on over to the VGMusic.com Forums.

The old message boards will be kept running for a few days, then pointers to the new system will be set up.

VGMusic.com Staff

Monday, May 10

Name That Tune...

       Someone asked me to identify this game music in this Real Audio file, game.rm. Unfortunately, I have no clue. Please let me know if you know what it is.

(Mike Newman)

Sunday, May 9

New NES Sound File Format: NSF

       Now NES music lovers can rejoice: According to Zophar's Domain:

There is a new music format, similar to C64 .SID and SNES .SPC. Dubbed NSF (NES sound format), this new format is remarkably small (a single 20KB NSF, for example, could hold 10 songs, 20 songs, or more!), so you won't have to waste time download logged WAVs of tunes, when you can download the MUCH smaller NSF! NES music enthusiasts, rejoice!

A Winamp plugin (which works very well) and a DOS player can be downloaded on Zophar's NSF Players/Utilities Page. Links to two collections of NSFs can also be found at the bottom of that page.

(Mike Newman)

Friday, May 7

Message Boards to be upgraded

       I'm going to be installing a new message board system sometime in the near future, possibly as soon as tonight. The features of this message board include:

• Faster load times
• Customizable Interface
• Auto message removal (after so many posts, I believe)

This makes it much easier to manage, and reduces the load time significantly. The only drawbacks are that you have to create an account for each board, and all the current messages on the boards will be cleared.

(Powerlord)

Tuesday, May 4

FTP Problem Temporarily Resolved

       The links to our PC music collection files, which are the majority of our FTP files, have been temporarily fixed. We hope to have a better script up soon so you won't leave the vgmusic.com domain when accessing in the files.

(Mike Newman)

Monday, May 3

FTP Problem, No Reply?, GYM Player!!

       Our host, Telefragged.com, just got a new FTP server up. That's good! Unfortunately, all our FTP links (mainly only our PC music collection files) now are pointing to the wrong location. That's bad! Please stand by while we straighten this problem out.

       Also, I have a large backlog of email from mid-April till present due to my busy college schedule. My classes (at UConn) will be over soon and I'll be sure to get back to everyone who has written me.

       Genesis music lovers rejoice: According to Zophar's Domain:

Well here is something new. The first ever GYM player. This will play Genecyst .GYM files on your PC (DOS) without converting it first. It lacks YM2612 emulation, so they don't sound too good. But check it out anyway.

GYMPLAY version 0.1.0 alpha can be downloaded on Zophar's Genesis Utility Page.

(Mike Newman)

Thursday, April 29

Note to Sequencers

       I thought we had said this somewhere else before, but it seems we haven't. Sequencers, if you find out that someone has uploaded one of your songs without your permission, or someone is claiming that your song is theirs, please contact one of our staff members immediately!

Our contact information is at the bottom of this page.

(Powerlord)

Monday, April 19

Whew!

Dear VGMusic Fans:

       After over a week, I finally managed to get 375 (a record breaker!) quality MIDIs onto the archive! Okay, okay... I put in a few others as well, to encourage improvement. Please disregard the date saying the 18th instead of the 19th, because there was a little problem which made me have to do the update a day after the "deadline". Please let me know if there are any broken links or other such problems. Thanks! `^_~-

       Yours truly - -
                          Princess Toadstool (Peach)

Sunday, April 18

The dissappearance of the SPCs, The Encyclopedia

       The SPCs have been removed from our archive, permanently. It was approximately 1/6th of the total size of the site, and did not have enough downloads to justify that size.

       The encyclopedia is no longer going to exist in its current form. It will reappear again, as one of the stages of the site redesign.

(Powerlord)

Thursday, April 15

US: TAX DAY, Smaller is better: The story of new-files

       The new-files directory has changed a little: It now splits itself into sets into pages with 100 entries each. This will save loading time, especially if you are just looking for the most recent files. It also dynamically allocates buttons: Only two buttons appear if there are only 101-200 files.

Oops, I just noticed that I signed yesterdays message as "Mike Newman". I fixed that, now. :P Thats what I get for copy, pasting.

(Powerlord)

Wednesday, April 14

Design Changes & Return of the Trackname Analyzer

       VGMusic.com is having a design change that will be unveiled sometime next month, close to our first anniversary at Telefragged... this makes Telefragged the longest consecutive host we've had. :)

       In other news, the Trackname Analyzer and it's pal, Midi-Ditti, are both back online after a long hiatus. They had been offline when Telefragged lost one of it's hard drives near the end of last year and had to reinstall the operating system.

(Powerlord)

Sunday, April 4

600,000 Happy People Served

       The website hit 600,000 on April 1. No joke! :^) I just had an amazing thought: if every visitor has downloaded a couple midis each, that means we have had at least over a million midis downloaded since our founding. Wow! The one million visit mark isn't too far away...

Also noteworthy: if you bookmark any page on this website in Internet Explorer 5, a custom icon should appear on the Favorite File. To learn how to set up this feature on your own website, check out the section called "Brand Your Favorites" at this link.

(Mike Newman)

Friday, April 2

April Fools, and RPGStuff

       April Fools day is over now, but while it was here, we had some fun. We switched front pages with GMN. I haven't put up copies of the April Fool's day pages yet, but they will be up sometime this weekend.

       I thought I posted this earlier this week: RPGStuff's new server went down for a short while, so visit RPGStuff at it's old address.

       If you haven't read the message boards, we are going to do some redesigning of the site. Confirmed so far:

• Shortening the main page
• New Background
• New Navigation System

There are other ideas in the works, but we aren't releasing details of those at this time.

(Powerlord)