Topic: Real game soundtracks on ebay are impossible to find.

[Quemaqua]

It's always been a little bad, but it's gotten ridiculous.  98% of what I'm finding out there while looking for stuff today consists of bootlegs from Taiwanese pirate labels or is being sold out of Hong Kong.  The few things I found that didn't outright state their illegitimacy by proudly displaying Miya/SM Records product codes next to their dirt-cheap prices were used items, and the couple sellers I contacted about the validity of said items weren't even saavy enough to know if they were real products or just nice-looking fakes.  What a sad state of affairs.  Even US and UK sellers are peddling this shit regularly now.

Thank God for Play-Asia and Otaku.com which still seem to have some fucking standards.  And actually, you know, have music available for sale from time to time when GameMusic.com seems to think it a better business practice to just never have anything relevant in stock.  Ever.

* Quemaqua goes off to grumble some more about stuff nobody cares about.

[MysterD]

It's always been a little bad, but it's gotten ridiculous.  98% of what I'm finding out there while looking for stuff today consists of bootlegs from Taiwanese pirate labels or is being sold out of Hong Kong.  The few things I found that didn't outright state their illegitimacy by proudly displaying Miya/SM Records product codes next to their dirt-cheap prices were used items, and the couple sellers I contacted about the validity of said items weren't even saavy enough to know if they were real products or just nice-looking fakes.  What a sad state of affairs.  Even US and UK sellers are peddling this shit regularly now.

Thank God for Play-Asia and Otaku.com which still seem to have some fucking standards.  And actually, you know, have music available for sale from time to time when GameMusic.com seems to think it a better business practice to just never have anything relevant in stock.  Ever.

* Quemaqua goes off to grumble some more about stuff nobody cares about.

Oh, so this (nobody cares thing) is a lot like my Gothic 3 Expansion thread then?

......

On the real though, about real game soundtracks:

Retail stores never seem to have these in stock at like Best Buy or any of those places, since they often don't think they'll sell. It is annoying.

I do think Music Soundtracks should at the very least be sold w/ the game in the Collector's Edition of the game.

Me, I would actually prefer if the Music Soundtracks were sold w/ the Standard Edition of the game, myself.

It is cool that some places like Bioware do sell their game soundtracks right on their website to purchase.

Though, I really like when designers release music soundtracks (scores) for free online to download like what Troika did w/ Arcanum; 2K Boston did w/ Bioshock;and Ion Storm did w/ both Deus Ex games.

[Quemaqua]

Well, what I was talking about has absolutely nothing to do with domestic soundtracks.  I was talking about imported Japanese soundtracks (which I didn't clarify, but I thought that was obvious).  It isn't all that often you even see US-made games with a soundtrack as a retail unit.  Sometimes you'll have stuff pop up someplace like DirectSong, sometimes you'll see Collector's Edition disks included here or there, sometimes you see promo stuff, and sometimes stuff is released for free on the internet, but few devs seem to want to actually press a CD over here.  Japanese games, on the other hand, have associated soundtracks available as retail units quite commonly.  So frankly, even if Best Buy wanted to sell any of this stuff, there really isn't much to sell over here in the first place.

[scottws]

Your comments about game soundtracks in the U.S. are very true.  The only game that had a soundtrack that I'm familiar with is Silent Hill 3.   I actually liked that soundtrack quite a bit.  It's a shame other developers/publishers don't put as much effort into the musical aspect of their products.

[K-man]

Hah, this thread helped me discover that a good number of the video game soundtracks I own are in fact bootlegs.

[Quemaqua]

It was pretty depressing to me when I found out that several of my prized Seiken Densetsu disks were SM Records affairs.  I believe my copies of the Seiken Densetsu, Secret of Mana, and Legend of Mana OSTs are all SM crap.  Heroes of Mana, Sword of Mana, Dawn of Mana, Secret of Mana +, and Seiken Densetsu 3 I think are all fine.  But several of the boots are very tough to find legitimate copies of now, and while the only real difference is the intrinsic knowledge that what you have is a ripoff as opposed to the real thing, that kind of hurts when you really put your heart into collecting something.