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The Australian Music Studio Giving New Life to Gaming’s Most Famous Songs

Based in Australia, Good Knight Productions' video game soundtracks are an instant shot of nostalgia.

Video game music can be pretty awesome. It can represent any mood or feeling, ranging from anger to serenity to sheer excitement. Decades of mainstream access to the internet have brought a slew of excellent video game music resources, from sites like Overclocked Remix that dedicate themselves to remixing video game music, to YouTube where one can see pretty much any version of a favorite video game track they desire. One man, however, has made his hobby and love of video game music into his own business.

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Good Knight Productions is the work of Darren Iannotti, who runs the studio in his home country of Australia. While he has no musical abilities of his own, he uses the studio to hire freelancers who come in and compose their own versions of memorable video game tracks for him. He started the business four years ago when looking for the right business to start up.

Good Knight Productions' All-Star Collections Vol. 3

"I wanted to do a business of some sort and that it would be good to do something that follows my interests or things I have a bit of a passion for," he told Motherboard. "I thought mainstream music is so easily accessible, on the radio, on iTunes, and yet popular video game music is not."

While not recording the music himself, Darren does go out and obtain proper licenses from big time publishers like Nintendo and Sega in order to sell and make available Good Knight Productions' work through iTunes and Spotify. When comparing his business to sites such as Overclocked Remix, which goes a bit further with their remixes than Good Knight Productions, which focuses more on straight covers, Iannotti explains that what he puts out goes a bit deeper when it comes to the actual album subjects.

Good Knight Productions' All-Star Collections Vol. 2

"I think what might be unique is that we often dig much deeper into the game or series and do multiple volumes of a tribute album," he said."The first series we did was Donkey Kong Country which had four albums comprising a total of a little over 80 tracks; our Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog series both have three volumes to them."

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His goal when creating his own business was to create a hub where people can go and purchase whatever kind of video game music they enjoy. And there's a ton of music listed on Good Knight Productions' website to enjoy, ranging everything from light fare like Final Fantasy, Kirby and Mario to more brooding soundtracks such as Resident Evil, Castlevania and Doom.

Good Knight Productions' All-Star Collections Vol. 1

Iannotti told Motherboard that with he'll be taking a break from managing the business early this year for an indefinite amount of time. However, he is happy that the hobby that he's been cultivating for the last four years has not only been successful (this has been his main line of work for the last four years), but has gotten positive feedback from video game music fans.

"It's rewarding in the sense that I'm so familiar with what I'm doing because I've lived it and have the experience to talk about games and themes and actually discuss and relate about something I enjoy," Iannotti says. "I've had jobs where I had to promote things I didn't fully understand or care much for, which is more of an empty experience."