Over Christmas I was lucky enough to receive the Streets of Rage soundtrack on vinyl from my wife. None more hipster maybe but the idea of playing a remastered album from a 1991 Sega video game on an outdated piece of analogue music technology in a time of pervading digital media appeals to me.
The classic soundtrack is by Yuzo Koshiro and at the time was totally different to anything heard in video games, it was a time of trance and dance, when The Orb, The Prodigy and Orbital were getting into the charts. This soundtrack stood out among its contemporaries as it was not the usual bleeps and bloops of video games at the time... It spoke to many youths at the time, it was zeitgiesty and hearing the vinyl now it still feels special.
I've heard the music hundreds of times before, playing the game for months on end but I've never heard it like this. Now I'm no vinyl snob and I don't know which format of audio sounds better but I will say that on vinyl it does sounds different, but in a good way.
I would definitely recommend getting this album and hope DataDiscs continue to release more video game music soundtracks, Sonic 3 and Thunderforce 3 and 4 would be nice but beggars can't be choosers!