It has been revealed that some of the most popular pop music of the ’80s and ’90s was used as a soundtrack for classic video games like Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, and Chrono Trigger. While recent orchestral compositions like those in the Uncharted series and Super Mario Bros. are instantly recognisable, so are many other video games’ classic themes, which have garnered notoriety for their music throughout the years. Sampling is a widespread practice in the music industry, in which a musician takes a section of a song and reworks it into a new composition. This may sound like plagiarism, but as long as the samples are paid for and the copyright owners have signed a legal agreement, artists may typically get away with this.
If the rights to a piece of music have expired, as they often do with older music, then it is possible to sample it for free in specific circumstances. YouTube star thejahni has made a series of movies showing how popular songs from the 1980s and 1990s sound very similar to music from classic video games like Chrono Trigger. It’s not uncommon for video games to use music from other artists, such as Led Zeppelin for Mega Man Zero 2’s Gravity or Black Sabbath’s Iron Man for Ninja Gaiden, or Rick Astley for Chrono Trigger’s “Robo’s Theme” for the first time. To date, the comparison films of his tracks to their samples have garnered hundreds of millions of views every video.
For example, Mick Jordon employed chainsaws and lawnmower blades in his DOOM and DOOM Eternal soundtracks. Sampling isn’t always about using preexisting music; it can also be used to include noises into a piece of music. Even if the basis is another song that’s just as appealing, clever use of audio sampling like this can help generate a memorable piece of music. Despite the ever-changing regulations surrounding copyright, sampling has been used for decades and will no doubt continue to be so in the years to come. People enjoy seeing where composers get their ideas from, even if it can be a little distracting from the final product. It’s now possible, thanks to sampling, to make a laser-welding robot sing along to the tune of a popular pop song like ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’