I saw an ad for a CD titled "Ocarina of Time Hyrule Symphony" in the back of an Electronic Gaming Monthly, back in the summer of 1999. The advertisement was from a store called "Gamecave". I called them and they told me to only buy soundtracks by EA, because they are cheaper. I didn't know what EA was, but the prices were $10 cheaper, so I bought them. I later discovered that Ever Anime versions were copies of Japanese releases.
Shortly after finding that ad in the back of the magazine, I found soundtrackcentral on the internet. And then I found out there were many game music CDs, which shocked me considerably. Trying to obtain them was an even bigger surprise. I learned all about the term "OOP" and that was not a pleasant experience. It was a very costly experience.
I didn't understand that those CDs were made strictly for the Japanese market. Apparently, the Japanese didn't understand that some people outside of Japan would also like to buy such things, and thus, the print runs must've been quite small. In my opinion, music stores, like Best Buy, should have a vast section of shelving dedicated to video game soundtracks. But that's not reality.
So I learned several hard lessons. Video game music becomes unavailable very quickly and if you're late - you pay dearly. Or - you trade. Or - you download. I paid dearly, I traded, and I downloaded. I didn't stick to any one method of obtaining this music. If I could buy it, then I bought it. If I could trade for it, then I traded, etc. Some of this music is so incredibly difficult to obtain that one must be very opportunistic and flexible.
I used to take great pride in owning the "originals", of which, I have owned more than 900. I eventually realized that a shelf of originals is like, umm, a lot of money. It's money sitting on a shelf. One must understand that game music is not like normal music. This stuff is worth a lot of money. It seemed very wasteful to me to let 400 originals sit on a shelf. That money could be used for food or making car payments. So I sold them all, and anything new I sold as well. If these CDs were cheap, say $5 each, there would be little to no motivation to sell them. 400 originals at $5 each amounts to $2000. To me, that is affordable. But 400 originals is more like $12,000. That's not affordable; it's crazy. And that's the way I was. I let $12,000 or more worth of music just sit on a shelf like I was a rich man or something.
As for "why" I collect video game music, this can be explained largely by nostalgia. I have good memories of playing video games and the music was an important part. I used to spend a lot of time listening to sound tests. I used to dream of having the music on CD or hearing it played by an orchestra. Those very things were happening in Japan as I was thinking about them, unknown to myself until many years later. Nostalgia soon became supplemented by reading the opinions of others. For example, I had never played a Final Fantasy or Ys game prior to age 24, so I had never heard the music. But people were claiming those games had good music. I wanted to know why people were speaking so highly of that music, so I bought some of their music CDs. It turned out their opinions were most agreeable and I started to take more opinions seriously. I later discovered that there are hundreds of games with music, almost literally, to die for.
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