History Of Video Game Music Explored

Thanks to GameSpot for its feature discussing the history of video game music as an artform, as they point out: "Once an afterthought in terms of game design and overall pop-culture consciousness, video game music is now a legitimate industry of its own." The feature goes on to chart game sound from 1972's Pong ("The sonar-blip sound that's generated as a digital ball is batted back and forth is the first true video game sound effect"), through the 1980s and Tetris ("...millions of glassy-eyed players endure endless loops of vaguely martial Russian Muzak playing in their heads"), right up to new titles such as Frequency ("notable in that it reduces visuals to a near-abstract level... and provides a gameplay experience that is primarily aural.")

Oldfield's "Maestro" music game

[AtariAmarok]

Don't forget video games that are initially inspired by music, such as Mike Oldfield's new "Maestro" [mikeoldfield.com] exploration game.

Frank Klepacki

[Anonymous Coward]

Frank Klepacki, who did the music on the Command & Conquer series of games (amongst others) is a genius. I love his music and think it's a great shame he hasn't released more stuff.

Ignored earlier on?

[metroid composite]

Some of my favourite pieces of music are from NES games. Don't get me wrong, more tracks and more musical instruments offers higher potential, but the NES music that was good really hammered down a tune which I often couldn't get out of my head. And I will say outright (as I am playing both presently) that Final Fantasy 6 (III) has much better music than Metroid Prime (despite the fact that I do like Prime's music too...).

Music crucial to a game

[evil-osm]

I always found Ultima music to be top notch, mind you it required a decent midi enabled soundcard (Roland MT32), which was one of the best midi cards out there. Music has a huge potential to make or break the game, if the music is too repetative the player turns it off (if possible), same if it is too annoying. Turning off the sound is also not an option (you would them miss out on all the snd efx). A game without music that suits the setting can really ruin the experience as well.

Looking through the article, it reminds me how some of the games did such an amazing job on the music with the technology that it had at the time.

Good job folks

Re:Star Control II

[Deraj DeZine]

The MOD format is essentially the same idea as MIDI except that the samples are customizable and distributed along with the song. Other than that and a few miscellaneous features, there is no reason why MIDIs should not sound as good as MODs.

Of course, that's just theoretical. In real life, MIDI samples are hideous synthesizer-derived aural abominations. I blame Creative Labs.

Re:Star Control II

[NanoGator]

"Other than that and a few miscellaneous features, there is no reason why MIDIs should not sound as good as MODs."

Well you pretty much nailed the difference between them. .MODs carry along all they need to make the song sound right, .MIDIs are dependent on the playback hardware for how they're interpreted. Kinda like the difference between HTML and .PDF. Heh.

Re:Music crucial to a game

[leadfoot2004]

I couldn't agree with you more. To this day, I still refuse to turn off the music/sound when playing Super Mario Bros. It is also interesting how players react to certain musical queues. In games such as Super Mario Bros, Bubble Bobble, Puzzle Bobble (and probably thousands of other examples), when little time is left to complete a stage, the music increases in tempo, which causes the player to panic and subtly affects their gameplay.

Regrettable omission: Commodore 64

[jvmatthe]

I skimmed the article yesterday, so maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything about the venerable Commodore 64. Any 30-something who was a Commodore user knows that that personal computer was often less of a productivity machine and more of a game playing machine. Along with those games came some GREAT music, including my favorite of all time, Capcom's Commando [c64.com] with music by Rob Hubbard. There were many more, including Skate or Die, California Games, and Ghosts 'n' Goblins.

With its advanced SID chip for making sounds and music, the Commodore 64 was an incredible machine for video game music. It's nearly criminal that it was left out.

Re:Ignored earlier on?

[Pxtl]

That's only because for a while, they were unique in attempting epic, classical soundtracks. Those days are long gone. Besides, the Megaman games have always easily had as good music as the Final Fantasy games. Ditto StarFox. Its just you notice it more in Final Fantasy because the game has so much quiet wandering time.

Then CD audio came and since then any game can have awesome music. IMHO, my award for best orchestral soundtrack goes not to the myriad ff games but to Total Annihilation.

Re:Obligatory Link

[May Kasahara]

OCRemix is quite good, I agree :)

Another obligatory link: GamingFM [gamingfm.com], an excellent radio station featuring all game music all the time (including the occasional remixes and Minibosses tracks).

Re:Music crucial to a game

[WWWWolf]

I always found Ultima music to be top notch, mind you it required a decent midi enabled soundcard (Roland MT32), which was one of the best midi cards out there.

Noticeably was. Ultima VII music through TiMidity (in Exult) sounds far better than the MT-32 version in my opinion. Even playing the MIDI files with the bundled crappy 8-meg GM soundfont on SoundBlaster Live sounds better. (And with a custom sound bank, the music sounds just plain mighty...)

MT-32 might have been great at the time (maybe, maybe not), but, well, there are better MIDI synths these days.