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Brand New Old School Video Game Music

by Chris Remo, Sep 27, 2005 9:30am PDT
Related Topics – Games: PC

1UP has a feature up detailing the current scene of enthusists creating new music by way of old video gamey methods. It begins with a description of the Commdore 64's venerable SID chip, and goes on to spotlight the various current groups of artists making music using software and hardware such as SID emulators and Game Boys.

The artists who use games as instruments tend to focus on the old and lo-fi, with good reason: the better and clearer the sound processor on the equipment, the closer you are to working with standard tools. The sound may be primitive and the range limited on those older machines but the primitive sound is all the more distinct and unique for its primitiveness, and the limits of the range are less of a barrier than a challenge to see how far those limits can be stretched.
As a musician and composer, the evolution (or at least progression) of music in games is an interesting phenomenon to me. I've never experimented with the methods described in this 1UP article, but I have a great appreciation for the game composers of yore. These days, game music in many cases has reached film music in terms of fidelity and orchestration, but I often feel that becoming film music's lower-budgeted cousin has come at the expense of a certain degree of uniqueness and creativity. Certainly there was a lot of crappy video game music when we were hardware-limited to three or four simultaneous channels, but on the other hand the most memorable gaming tunes are still drawn from that era, and games had a clear distinct musical style even while spanning a range of genres that many gamers probably don't even realize was being spanned. For example, contrast the Ragtime-influenced melodies of many of Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. pieces with the instrumental rock of Castlevania 3 with the Pirates of the Caribbean-meets-reggae of Michael Land's Monkey Island. To be sure, there are some great composers working in the industry today, but I can't help but feel that with technology enabling it to sound like more "legitimate" entertainment-industry music, video game music has lost some of its identity.


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Comments

28 Threads | 86 Comments
  • #38
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    By: Fred Garvin x
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    I think that older videogame music is like older music in general. If you are into it that's good for you, but otherwise it's just nostalgia and kitsch. It's like 80's synth rock, there is some good stuff from back then, but so much of it sounds too dated to be on my regular playlist. When I saw Nobuo Uematsu at GDC this year he said that he actually liked the limitations of the older consoles because it challeneged him. However, he also said that composers should still push themselves to make music that will help bring a game to life no matter what the technology (or at least that's what I took away from it, they had spotty translation).
    Sep 27, 2005 12:17pm PDT
  • #21
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    By: mr.sleepy x
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    The technology availible now for music creation for video games is pretty much unlimited. One can do whatever he/she wants in terms of musical creation for games. So, with the better technology, more creativity should be expected.

    In America many VGM composers just throw heavy metal music in their action games. Or anything that's just "standard". It is stupid and I assume most everyone turns that shit off, or get pissed off wishing they could. A lot of Japanese VGM composers are guilty of the same, but I think they more often "get it right" than American VGM composers. The music in Japanese games matches the atmosphere more often in my opinion. I don't know how they do it. It's very arcadey, but contains genius chord progressions and "hooks" throughout. It's not shallow like most American VGM tunes.

    A recent example would be Katamari Damacy. There are a lot of quirky and spontaneous samples that seem out of place which adds to the gameplay which is quirky and can be spontaneous. Or there's the jazzy pieces that move marvelously with the game. The first time I played through that game, I really just did not know what to expect musically from level to level. Katamari Damacy's soundtrack is fucking awesome.

    In Mushihime-Sama the leads move along smoothly like the player does with good drum beats not off-tempo with the gameplay. Mushihime Sama has fucking awesome music too. As do all of Cave Corp's games (composed by Manabu Namiki).

    The stuff that the 8bitpeoples do is awesome but the music is not that good at all. I mean, I can use an amount of VST's on any instrument or sample, call it "Old school video gaming music", and get a good reaction from an audience. I can throw a fat chorus ontop of that and make everyone cheer. Then I can throw in an amen break behind it and get the whole audience to dance to "old school video game music". I mean, the idea is great but those guys still aren't very musically creative.
    Sep 27, 2005 11:02am PDT

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