VGMdb
About Us
Welcome to VGMdb.

Our mission is simply to provide a comprehensive set of resources for researching video game music. While there are plenty of other resources on the web, both in English and Japanese, none of them tackle the whole problem, and only a few of them are actively maintained and growing. VGMdb aspires to combine the best features of the other resources, along with a robust set of new improvements. The central resource is the game music database, cataloguing game albums, composers, tracklists, cover scans, and a variety of other fields, all of which are searchable via a powerful advanced-search capability. A fair number of peripheral tools build upon the database core, allowing a user to, for example, create a wish-list or display his collection of original albums.

One of the main goals of VGMdb is to catalogue every video game music album ever released. This goes well beyond the albums released by traditional record labels to include promos, bonus and preorder CDs, and even Doujin albums (fan creations). Particular emphasis is placed on accuracy, and as such, the VGMdb staff includes some of the world's leading game music experts. However, the true expertise exists out there in the collective masses of our audience, so all of you are invited to participate in growing and shaping this database so that it might reach its full potential. VGMdb includes a submission system to allow any registered member to add and edit information for any album. There is also a moderation system, to allow staff to inspect user edits and revert any that are incorrect or not up to standard. This is all done seamlessly.

The purpose of this site isn't to replace any of the other VGM fan sites that catalogue and present information about music. In fact there are some future tools under development that will enable other fan sites to access our database in a more automated fashion. With this in mind, we don't claim to own any of the information contained on this site. It's owned by you, the game music fan community. You are free to use any album information -- tracklists, scans, etc -- for your site if you'd like to, the only request being that you credit the original translators for track titles, or the site origin for the scans. We are all working together here.

I would like to offer some specific acknowledgements:

Chudah and the staff of Chudah's Corner
Chudah's Corner was one of the first truly accurate sites, presenting information, tracklists, lyrics, and scans for albums that many of us had only seen mentioned in a few text lists. In addition, Chudah is also an advisor to VGMdb, and has been active during site planning. We are particularly indebted to Chudah for sanctioning some of the initial seeding of the VGMdb database with information, accurate tracklists, and scans that she and her staff have contributed to the community.

Mik of Game Music Revolution Online
GMRonline is the database site that was the standard for much of the 2000s. We are grateful that Mik has agreed to share the information from his site, as well as to serve in an advisory role.

Ramza of RPGfan
Ramza serves, among other roles, as the chief soundtrack editor at RPGFan, and over the years, he has purchased many RPG soundtracks so that he could share information and reviews with the public. Ramza worked closely with us during our transition from the old site, and also gets credit for coming up with our name.

bysmitty of PC Game Music Soundtracks Database
While most VGM fan sites were covering Japanese console music, bysmitty created a site to provide accurate information about his passion - PC Game music. Historically, it was notoriously more difficult to find accurate information (or even verify the existence) for PC Game soundtrack releases, many of which were enclosure items, but his site solved that problem, cataloging a large number of Western PC soundtracks. We'd like to thank bysmitty for permitting us the use of his tracklists and scans.

Staff and VGM Fans from Gamingforce Forums
While this project has come a long way, and has changed its focus and home, the site owner at GFF was the first to offer a platform for pursuing this project, and developing the initial code designs. In addition, it is home to a number of experts who have contributed information and translations for use at VGMdb.

And finally Koshiro Fumiaki of J.G.M.L.
Although we've never spoken, I can say that this Japanese fan has probably had the most impact of anyone, since he single-handedly maintained the Japanese Game Music Library, which is the ultimate origin for much of the information that we have now, and has provided us all with titles and tracklists in a form that online Kanji dictionaries can handle directly.

I'd like to add that some of the tracklists and scans that originate from these sources haven't been fully credited yet, so we would like to encourage the public's assistance in helping us determine what came from where.

Also, I'd like to thank everyone who's ever bought, researched, or translated an album and shared the knowledge with the VGM fan community.
Secret Squirrel and the VGMdb Staff & Advisors
VGMdb Beta Launch
16 September 2007