“Green Hill Zone” from Sonic the Hedgehog. “Pioneer 2” from Phantasy Star Online. “Magical Sound Shower” from Outrun. The main theme from Shenmue. “Go Straight” from Streets of Rage 2… I could go on. The point is, quite a bit of the most memorable music in gaming comes from Sega titles. A long-running passion for creating excellent music and multiple generations of talented musicians give Sega a rich history of fantastic soundtracks.

No one is more aware and passionate about this fact than the folks over at RadioSEGA. RadioSEGA’s origins trace back to 2006, when it was just a Shoutcast playlist for founder Mark and a few friends. RadioSEGA as we know it today, with not only a stream but actual themed shows with hosts as well, began in 2009 and has been getting better and more varied ever since.

There are plenty of ways to rock/geek out to hot classic Sega jams over at RadioSEGA. If you want a truly random listening experience at any time, just pop the playlist feed into your favorite listening program (RadioSEGA supports everything from iTunes to Winamp to VLC to the Wii) and enjoy! In the past hour or so that I’ve been listening while writing this, I’ve heard tracks from NiGHTS, Bayonetta, Alex Kidd, Phantasy Star 0, Yakuza 4 and more; the randomness and sometimes obscure tracks that show up (Virtua Quest? Whoa!) make it a fun and even educational listening experience. While listening, I constantly find myself clicking over to iTunes to check track/game titles, and then searching Google for more information (turns out Fumio Ito was the Virtua Quest composer. Huh!).

If you want your listening experiences a bit more regimented and themed, RadioSEGA has you covered there as well. They have a plethora of focused shows such as Sega Ages (Sega History), Sword of Sega (Sega RPGs), Late and Live (late night weekend show; lots of remixes, dance, and rock tracks), and Foreversonic’s Random Hour (OK, maybe not all the shows are that regimented). What’s great about these shows is that they are live, with a host introducing and discussing the tracks- but don’t let this scare you off. These hosts aren’t cheesy DJs that make you want to smash your speakers; they are passionate and knowledgeable Sega fans, just like us.

In addition, these shows are very community-focused, oftentimes taking requests from fans on the RadioSEGA IRC chatroom. Again, don’t worry- the RadioSEGA community has great taste. The best part of these shows is that they are also available to download, not unlike a podcast. This is great for us fans not in Europe, who find the schedules of the live shows all kinds of disagreeable to our daily schedules. Although download listeners miss out on the interactive part of the show, they are still getting an extremely well-crafted product, complete with breaks and art for each track.

RadioSEGA offers an incredible amount of excellent and professional content for fans of Sega music, in a variety of forms, 24/7. If you have been listening to them over the years, you already know this and if you haven’t, I’m sure you will enjoy their work as much as I do. I would sing their praises even more, but I’m loving this track from Border Break that is playing right now and I really need to go find out who the composer is…