Reviving forgotten 16-bit video game tunes with AI
I have followed OCRemix and Dwelling of Duels for a couple of decades now, 2 communities that share their interpretation of video-game soundtracks of all kinds. The ones I love the most are those which take old 8-bit and 16-bit game tunes and elevate them to what they could have been without the technical limitations of the time (although much of that music is just great because of that limitation).
Unfortunately, not all of the music I used to enjoy as a kid has received a makeover over the years, which means much of it never will and will be forgotten instead. Or so I thought until I came across an AI that can make covers from original material in seconds.
https://suno.com/song/6897cb37-da08-48c4-ae73-ce30eb58c888?sh=pgHZmJaVTl1ddeaJ
The original is from a game called Runark (a.k.a., Growl) that I used to play in my Sega Genesis: Rune & Ark by Zuntata. It is not perfect, but it is good enough and it would not have never been made otherwise. But this is only one of the covers the AI made, I could essentially get as many variants as I wanted, which is crazy.
2025-08-06 · 9 months ago
6 Comments ↓
🚀 stack · 2025-08-07 at 14:20:
How does it work in practice? do you send it a wav file or midi, or do you just tell it the name of the game?
🐙 norayr · 2025-08-07 at 15:21:
heh thank you, i listened to some of tracks from the first channel, and it was fun.
though most of the games are not familiar to me, i only played nome zx spectrum, oric atmos games, and some NES games when i was... not even a kid but teen, it all reached us 10-15 years later (because damn ussr) and became sort of affordable, but not really.
and later i didn't play anything. i ran doom a couple of times to see what is that so that track i knew.
i played nfs 2 on windows 95 in early 2000s and remember enjoying it.
don't remember if there was music.
then linux world and no time for games.
but anyway very cool project and lots of music.
i think that's all. (:
oh, “i thitk that's all” supposed to be above the sentence that starts with “anyway”.
can you recommend some track from ocremix, there are so many!
🗿 argenkiwi [OP] · 2025-08-07 at 21:00:
The way it works is: you upload an audio file (I got some mp3s from downloads.khinsider.com) and then find the Cover option in the 3 dots menu for the file. It will show a form in which you can toggle an option to make in Instrumental and enter a bunch of terms for the music style you are afer. It creates 2 versions every time. You get a free quota of 10 songs (5 cover attempts) per day.
🗿 argenkiwi [OP] · 2025-08-07 at 21:01:
From OCRemix I really like some of the tracks from Juan Medrano (a.k.a. Sixto Sounds), but they upload stuff practically daily, if there is no specific game you are after, you can just listen to the latest in the list to the right.
🚀 RubyMaelstrom · 2025-08-08 at 07:06:
This is great! I used to listen to a ton of OCRemix music like 20 years ago. I had a couple of CDs burned in my car and would have them on loop all the time.
The AI remixes are really cool. If you'd like to see a bit of how they work, and also how you could maybe do a bit of music generation locally rather than on Suno, I'd recommend checking out LaurieWired's recent video about coding her own personal music streaming service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsYPv3CC6Sw
🗿 argenkiwi [OP] · 2025-08-10 at 21:37:
@RubyMaelstrom, that looks super interesting! I would definitely like to do something similar locally if possible. Sound like an amazing rabbit hole to dive into. :D