Metal Gear Solid Theme by Tappy Iwase stolen??

[Shadow Wolf]

I love MGS, and pretty much know the game and the story back and forth...

That's what I'm sayin... I love MGS, I've beaten it at least 4 times, AND I downloaded the OST. I don't remember ever hearing it.

[Liontamer]

Let's just assume (note: assume) for this hypothetical that Tappy knowingly used "Troika" as the basis for the MGS theme, but also knowingly chose not to give credit. Would rearranging "Troika" then not be considered plagarism, because some aspects aren't copied over from the old theme to the new theme?

That would be like any OC ReMixer rearranging any video game theme with some additional original ideas and claiming they wrote the entire piece on their own without direct interpretation. Would you then claim there's no instance of plagarism?

I'm just trying to understand why some people come across as believing that Troika and the MGS Theme having differences somehow means that the practically 1-for-1 similarities are somehow irrelevant to any claims of plagarism.

[OverCoat]

I'm just trying to understand why some people come across as believing that Troika and the MGS Theme having differences somehow means that the practically 1-for-1 similarities are somehow irrelevant to any claims of plagarism.

Much like a research paper for school, you can quote passages from sources but the whole paper overall is definitely not plagiarized. In this case though, there's no bibliography page. Tappy gets a C+

I never liked doing the bibliography pages.

[Shadow Wolf]

ZOMG Tappy r teh flunkhax nd faild English 111.

[Trenthian]

Much like a research paper for school, you can quote passages from sources but the whole paper overall is definitely not plagiarized. In this case though, there's no bibliography page. Tappy gets a C+

I never liked doing the bibliography pages.

More liek tappy gets expelled.

All joking and trolling aside,

I love the MGS music, and always have. Regardless of plagerism. and I love the original russian piece a LOT. Saved.

[Solid Krono]

That's what I'm sayin... I love MGS, I've beaten it at least 4 times, AND I downloaded the OST. I don't remember ever hearing it.

It's not. I believe the first appearance was in VR missions or whatever it was called, unless it was in the nintendo games somewhere (though I don't think so).

[zircon]

Much like a research paper for school, you can quote passages from sources but the whole paper overall is definitely not plagiarized. In this case though, there's no bibliography page. Tappy gets a C+

I never liked doing the bibliography pages.

What the hell school did you go to? At every place I've heard of, if you plagiarize anything, that results in a fail. You don't need to copy the whole paper to get in trouble.

[Nec5]

What the hell school did you go to? At every place I've heard of, if you plagiarize anything, that results in a fail. You don't need to copy the whole paper to get in trouble.

Incorrect. Professor discretion. However, they are fully encouraged to forward it to the judicial council. Unbelievable though it may seem, there's always a handful of students that are unaware of the plagiarism problem.

[OverCoat]

What the hell school did you go to? At every place I've heard of, if you plagiarize anything, that results in a fail. You don't need to copy the whole paper to get in trouble.

I'm pointing out that quoting and referencing != plagiarism.

p.s. I already told you years ago I went to retard school

[Darklink42]

Does anyone have an example of the Russian song that's not got the distracting talking? I'd like to hear without the interruptions if possible.

Outside of that, I hear the similarities but I don't think it constitutes plagiarism so much as a coincidence. Unlike more verbatim plagiarism (see Vanilla Ice for a cliche example) this just has a couple similarities. I can hear the MGS theme in the russian piece, and on the same token, you can hear Sviridov in the MGS Theme. But I personally don't feel like it's a strong enough resemblance to say that it was stolen or even borrowed from. I hear very distinct differences in the two in both style and choice of progression. Perhaps these are certain progressions that TAPPY happened to like. I think he just made a coincidental choice, and these guys just happened to be listening to Sviridov one day and went "You know, this sounds kinda familiar." I do that all the time with songs. It's not fair for people to do that to two different pieces of famous music and call it stealing right out of the door.

By the way, it may just be me but it looks like Hideo is wearing an E3 badge. Anyone else seeing that?

[Global-Trance]

To hear the MGS theme in the first MGS, you're supposed to play through it and get one ending, save, replay and get the other ending. The music is supposed to change in the credits I believe. I don't know if this is retained in The Twin Snakes version though.

I thought someone would have answered this question by now.

Edit: The music change should play Metal Gear Solid Main Theme (1997 Edit) from the OST, which is track 20 on the CD, I believe.

[Strike911]

Thanks Global-Trance!!

@DarkLink : If you look around the internet a little you can find some downloads. They're very good songs imo.

Incorrect. Professor discretion. However, they are fully encouraged to forward it to the judicial council. Unbelievable though it may seem, there's always a handful of students that are unaware of the plagiarism problem.

Really? Everywhere I've been to has the same campus-wide policies for plagiarism where even copied sentences or phrases are considered plaigarism and are subject to student expulsion and possible legal action... (??)

<offtopic>

I'm so glad all my English courses are done with. F-you MLA, APA, Chicago Style and whatever the hell other styles there are.

</offtopic>

So I guess in this situation regarding Tappy's music, it's all a matter of intention ... (??) ... and that's ridiculously difficult to prove ...

Hmm... well, I just wonder if we'll hear the theme in MGS4.

[Sil]

Here's a version of Sviridov's Snow-Storm on amazon.com, you can sample the first track on the CD:

http://www.amazon.com/Sviridov-Snow-Storm-Choral-Georgy-Vasilevich/dp/B000003WA1/

I transcribed the theme (called Troika) by ear into a midi sequencer, and then took the horn part from the Alternate Ending Music at vgmusic.com:

http://vgmusic.com/music/console/sony/ps1/msgending.mid

...and played them separately at first, then together at the same time to see how similar they are. The results are pretty self-explanatory considering I didn't transpose anything.

download

They stay in harmony and hit many of the same notes for EIGHT measures. Again, no transposition needed.

But still, I've seen worse...

[I-n-j-i-n]

Kudos to that reporter. Even Kojima seemed taken aback and that says a lot more than I can.

I'm just glad the original source was fleshed out and made public. Reminds me of the Michael Jackson/Sonic thing, but much, much more blatant.

Then again, another great war themed soundtrack in Call of Duty outright plagiarized movie compositions too. Sometimes to a tee.

Also, if this is a case against plagiarism, then it's a good one. Even Yoko Kanno, the great anime composer had her share of plagiarism accusations (mostly right, from listening to samples and comparing). It's good that the MGS and other composers found ways to remake it on their own style. Even if it's plagiarist. There's both some praise and blame to be had I think.

[Fishy]

Classical composers based a lot of their work on arranging and writing variations to their favourite composers of old. I'm leaning towards it being a homage, or he heard the music a while ago and didn't realise why he had the melody in his head. Steve Vai thought he wrote Bankok from chess and wrote a 9 minute suite on it, Uematsu accidently ripped of The Rock soundtrack, this stuff happens.

Sviridov's orchestral work Snow-Storm (which Sviridov called 'musical illustrations' to Alexander Pushkin's story of the same name) was taken from his score for the 1964 movie Snow-Storm and received heavy airtime on Soviet radio.

I love how similar Pushkin and Pliskin sound. I'm surprised this hasn't been noticed so far, unless they don't have MGS in Russia or something.

[The Legendary Zoltan]

Oh man! Even Yoko Kanno who writes CRAZY stuff has plagiarized something? What the hell is going on here? Even if you give credit, and even if you arranged the heck out of the original, if you didn't ask, it still counts as plagiarism doesn't it?

[Shadow Wolf]

Actually, I'm pretty sure the name Plisskin was a tribute to a Kurt Russell movie. I can't remember the title for the life of me, but I was at Wal-Mart one day flipping through the 5 dollar DVD rack, and I found some old early 90's movie starring Kurt Russell with a mullet, and his character's name was Snake Plisskin. He was also a special agent. I shit you not. That's just too close to be complete coincidence to me. The name Snake of course came from Metal Gear (It's a popular fictional codename anyways) but the Plisskin thing... come on. I'll IMDB it and see if I can find what it was.

Furthermore, I submit that they're plagiarizing two legged Arabian jumping cows for the next game.

Edit: Pardon me, it was spelled Plissken. Here they Are:

Escape from New York (1981): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/

Escape from L.A. (1996): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116225/

So I saw the sequel, I didn't know about the first one. Maybe even the name Snake was a tribute. Or MAYBE, it was STOLEN.

But a word like Snake can't be copyrighted. So it's cool.

Another Edit: Holy shit, he only has one eye too. This is getting weird.

Just for giggles: From a plot synopsis of Escape from LA on Wikipedia: "Cuervo also knows the secret "world code", (which is 666), that can activate all the satellites and knock out power for the entire Earth." Is anyone else thinking Spaceballs? That sounds like the combination to some idiot's suitcase!

More from Wikipedia: Initially, Snake refuses to get involved, but to ensure his compliance, Snake was secretly infected with the man-made Plutoxin 7 virus which will kill him within hours. If he completes the mission, Snake will be given the antidote. cough FOXDIE hack cough....

.....Snake sneaks into the city with a nuclear-powered mini submarine.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_L.A.

This is here because a.) It looks just like Snake from MGS, and b.) The patch is over the other eye and I find that amusing.

[Global-Trance]

Thanks Global-Trance!!

NP. If the method I mentioned doesn't get you the theme in MGS1 during the credits, then it might require a third playthrough in the tuxedo (which is after you get both endings).

[Strike911]

@shadowolf

Escape from New York was used a lot in MGS1... A LOT of references that Kojima has gone on record giving tribute to... after playing MGS1 go watch it. The little sub especially, a lot of scenes are tributes to the movie, snakes personage too, because Kojima was a fan. its hilariously awesome.

Seriously, for a MGS fan its real cool. MGS2's Plissken was also a reference like you had up there. I dig it.

[Moguta]

Here's an awfully relevant story that, in the interest of full disclosure, I found posted in response to a similar discussion:

Melancholy Elephants

[AMT]

As for the where the original MGS theme appeared, it was also prominently featured in at least one of the E3 trailers for the original game.

[Armoured Priest]

Definitely some very obvious similarities. Yeah, not all of the MGS theme segments are present in the Russian piece, but there are numerous melodic motifs that are copied nearly exactly. Minor rhythmic variations. I wouldn't say it's a 1:1 rip though, and it COULD be purely coincedence; after all there are a limited number of possible melodies in the world, and the MGS theme isn't that complex to begin with.

Agree with you here. I know, on a personal level, how aggravating it can be to have a song you wrote as an original sound like another song (a much, much more famous song). As an example: a song I wrote about 12 years ago entitled "Seeking the Ancient Wisdom." (Sorry, this is a project recording so, frankly, the "production" if you want to call it that isn't very good. I never recorded a cleaned-up version of the song.) You get a hint of the more famous song at 0:34 - 0:59. That hint repeats, and then in the chorus, at 2:27 - 3:50, you get the full effect. Both sections repeat throughout the song. I'm not going to name the famous song here (it shouldn't need me to when you hear it)

Keep in mind, at no point am I accusing the original song writer, James Horner, of plagiarizing my work (I wrote it about 9 months before the "famous" song started to receive airplay). It is quite simply impossible for him to have done so, only a handful of people had heard the final product at that point, and I can say with full confidence that none of them would have been able to (or wanted to) bring the motifs that I used to Mr. Horner's attention...

...doesn't make it any less frustrating, though.

it's one of the reasons I never did a more complete version of the song.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SXNNM4KT

[BardicKnowledge]

I don't think it's purposefully done, nor was there any intent of drawing from the Russian source. However, the comparisons are very easily made.

With that said, I agree with DJP -- I'd like to hear what the composer has to say about it. Referencing classical music shouldn't be a problem in any case.