Computer and video game music
Encyclopedia
Video game music is any of the musical pieces or soundtrack
s and background music
s found in video games. It can range from a primitive synthesizer tune to an orchestral piece, usually such that the older the game, the simpler the music. In recent times, many games have had complex soundtracks similar to those of movies, and sometimes even interactive soundtracks which change in order to create an appropriate atmosphere, based on what the player does. It is also much more common for video game soundtracks to be commercially sold or even be performed in concerts that focus on video game music. Music can also be an important gameplay element in certain types of video games (like rhythm games).
), music
was stored on physical medium in analog waveforms such as compact cassette
s and phonograph records. Such components were expensive and prone to breakage under heavy use making them less than ideal for use in an arcade cabinet
, though in rare cases, they were used (Journey
). A more affordable method of having music in a video game was to use digital means, where a specific computer chip would change electrical impulses from computer code into analog sound waves on the fly
for output on a speaker. Sound effects for the games were also generated in this fashion.
While this allowed for inclusion of music in early arcade video games
, it was usually monophonic, looped
or used sparingly between stages or at the start of a new game, such as the Namco
titles Pac-Man
(1980) composed by Toshio Kai or Pole Position
(1982) composed by Nobuyuki Ohnogi. An early example of video game music was the opening tune in Tomohiro Nishikado's Gun Fight
(1975). The first game to use a continuous background soundtrack
was Tomohiro Nishikado's Space Invaders
, released by Taito
in 1978. It had four simple chromatic
descending bass note
s repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and interacted with the player, increasing pace as the enemies descended on the player. The first video game to feature background music
was Rally-X
, released by Namco
in 1980, featuring a simple tune that repeats continuously during gameplay
. The decision to include any music into a video game meant that at some point it would have to be transcribed into computer code by a programmer, whether or not the programmer had musical experience. Some music was original, some was public domain music
such as folk songs. Sound capabilities were limited; the popular Atari 2600
home system, for example, was capable of generating only two tones, or "notes", at a time.
As advances were made in silicon technology and costs fell, a definitively new generation of arcade machines and home consoles
allowed for great changes in accompanying music. In arcades, machines based on the Motorola 68000 CPU and accompanying various Yamaha
YM programmable sound generator
sound chip
s allowed for several more tones or "channels" of sound, sometimes eight or more. The earliest known example of this was Sega
's 1980 arcade game Carnival, which used an AY-3-8910 chip to create an electronic rendition of the classical
1889 composition "Over The Waves" by Juventino Rosas
. Konami
's 1981 arcade game Frogger
introduced a dynamic approach to video game music, using at least eleven different gameplay songs, in addition to level-starting and game over
themes, which change according to the player's actions. This was further improved upon by Namco
's 1983 arcade game Dig Dug
, where the music stopped when the player stopped moving. Dig Dug was composed by Yuriko Keino, who also composed the music for other Namco games such as Xevious
(1982) and Phozon
(1983).
Home console systems also had a comparable upgrade in sound ability beginning with the ColecoVision
in 1982 capable of four channels. However, more notable was the Japanese release of the Famicom in 1983 which was later released in the US as the Nintendo Entertainment System
in 1985. It was capable of five channels, one being capable of simple PCM sampled sound. The home computer Commodore 64
released in 1982 was capable of early forms of filtering effects, different types of waveform
s and eventually the ability to play 4-bit samples on a fourth sound channel. Its comparatively low cost made it a popular alternative to other home computers, as well as its ability to use a TV for an affordable display monitor.
Approach to game music development in this time period usually involved using simple tone generation and/or frequency modulation synthesis
to simulate instruments for melodies, and use of a "noise channel" for simulating percussive noises.Some latter games started to use triangle/square tones for bass/snare noises. Usually with the noise. Early use of PCM samples in this era was limited to sound bites(Monopoly), or as an alternate for percussion sounds (Super Mario Bros 3). The music on home consoles often had to share the available channels with other sound effects. For example, if a laser beam was fired by a spaceship, and the laser used a 1400 Hz tone, then whichever channel was in use by music would stop playing music and start playing the sound effect.
The mid-to-late 1980s software releases for these platforms had music developed by more people with greater musical experience than before. Quality of composition improved noticeably, and evidence of the popularity of music of this time period remains even today. Composers who made a name for themselves with their software include Nobuo Uematsu
(Final Fantasy
), Koji Kondo
(Super Mario Bros.
, The Legend of Zelda), Koichi Sugiyama
(Dragon Quest
), Miki Higashino
(Gradius
, Yie-Ar Kung Fu
, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
), Hiroshi Miyauchi (Space Harrier
, Hang-On
, Out Run
), Rob Hubbard
(Monty On the Run
, International Karate
), Hirokazu Tanaka
(Metroid
, Kid Icarus
, EarthBound
), Martin Galway
(Daley Thompson's Decathlon
, Stryker's Run, Times of Lore
), Yuzo Koshiro
(Dragon Slayer, Ys, Shinobi, ActRaiser
, Streets of Rage), Mieko Ishikawa (Dragon Slayer, Ys), and Ryu Umemoto
(visual novel
s, shoot 'em up
s). By the late 1980s, video game music was being sold as cassette tape soundtracks in Japan, inspiring American companies such as Sierra
, Cinemaware
and Interplay
to give more serious attention to video game music by 1988.
Near the end of the life-cycle of the Famicom, some game producers at their own expense custom manufactured their cartridges with an additional tone generating chip. These chips added to the existing sound chip in the Famicom, but also sported extra features to modulate the additional channels.
, sounds. Namco
's 1980 arcade game Rally-X
was the first known game to use a digital-to-analog converter
(DAC) to produce sampled tones instead of a tone generator. That same year, the first known video game to feature speech synthesis
was also released: Sunsoft's shoot 'em up
game Stratovox
. Around the same time, the introduction of frequency modulation synthesis
(FM synthesis), first commercially released by Yamaha
for their digital synthesizer
s and FM sound chip
s, allowed the tones to be manipulated to have different sound characteristics, where before the tone generated by the chip was limited to the design of the chip itself. Konami
's 1983 arcade game Gyruss
utilized five synthesis sound chips along with a DAC, which were partly used to create an electronic rendition of J. S. Bach
's Toccata and Fugue in D minor
.
Beyond arcade games, significant improvements to personal computer game
music were made possible with the introduction of digital
FM synth boards
, which Yamaha
released for Japanese computers such as the NEC PC-8801
and PC-9801 in the early 1980s, and by the mid-1980s, the PC-8801 and FM-7
had built-in FM sound. This allowed computer game music to have greater complexity than the simplistic beeps
from internal speakers. These FM synth boards produced a "warm and pleasant sound" that musicians such as Yuzo Koshiro
and Takeshi Abo
utilized to produce music that is still highly regarded within the chiptune
community. The widespread adoption of FM synthesis by consoles would later be one of the major advances of the 16-bit era
, by which time 16-bit arcade machines were using multiple FM synthesis chips.
One of the earliest home computer
s to make use of digital signal processing in the form of sampling was the Commodore Amiga in 1985. The computer's sound chip featured four independent 8-bit digital-to-analog converter
s. Developers could use this platform to take samples
of a music performance, sometimes just a single note long, and play it back through the computer's sound chip
from memory. This differed from Rally-X in that its hardware DAC was used to play back simple waveform
samples, and a sampled sound allowed for a complexity and authenticity of a real instrument that an FM simulation could not offer. For its role in being one of the first and affordable, the Amiga would remain a staple tool of early sequenced
music composing, especially in Europe
.
The Amiga offered these features before other competing home computer platforms. The Amiga's main rival, the Atari ST
, sourced the Yamaha YM2149 Programmable Sound Generator
(PSG). Compared to the in-house designed Amiga sound engine, the PSG could only handle 1 channel of sampled sound, and needed the computer's CPU to process the data for it. This made it impractical for game development use until 1989 with the release of the Atari STE which used DMA techniques to play back PCM samples at up to 50 kHz. The ST however remained relevant as it was equipped with a MIDI controller and external ports. It became the choice of by many professional musicians as a MIDI programming device.
IBM PC clones
in 1985 would not see any significant development in multimedia abilities for a few more years, and sampling would not become popular in other video game systems for several years. Though sampling had the potential to produce much more realistic sounds, each sample required much more data in memory. This was at a time when all memory, solid state (cartridge), magnetic (floppy disk
) or otherwise was still very costly per kilobyte
. Sequenced soundchip generated music on the other hand was generated with a few lines of comparatively simple code and took up far less precious memory.
Arcade systems pushed game music forward in 1984 with the introduction of FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis, providing more realistic sounds than previous PSGs. The first such game, Marble Madness
used the Yamaha YM2515 FM synthesis chip.
As home consoles moved into the fourth generation
, or 16-bit era, the hybrid approach (sampled and tone) to music composing continued to be used. In 1988 the Sega Mega Drive
(Sega Genesis in the US) offered advanced graphics over the NES
and improved sound synthesis features (also using a Yamaha chip, the YM2612
), but largely held the same approach to sound design. Ten channels in total for tone generation with one for PCM samples were available in stereo
instead of the NES's five channels in mono, one for PCM. As before, it was often used for percussion samples, or "drum kits" (Sonic the Hedgehog 3
). The 16-bit Sega referred to was the CPU and should not be confused with 16-bit sound samples. The Genesis did not support 16-bit sampled sounds. Despite the additional tone channels, writing music still posed a challenge to traditional composers and it forced much more imaginative use of the FM synthesizer
to create an enjoyable listening experience. The composer Yuzo Koshiro
utilized the Mega Drive/Genesis hardware effectively to produce "progressive, catchy, techno
-style compositions far more advanced than what players were used to" for games such as The Revenge of Shinobi
(1989) and the Streets of Rage series, setting a "new high watermark for what music in games could sound like." Another important FM synth composer was the late Ryu Umemoto
, who composed music for many visual novel
s and shoot 'em up
s during the 1990s.
As cost of magnetic memory declined in the form of diskettes, the evolution of video game music on the Amiga, and some years later game music development in general, shifted to sampling in some form. It took some years before Amiga game designers learned to wholly use digitized sound effects in music (an early exception case was the title music of text adventure
game The Pawn
, 1986). By this time, computer and game music had already begun to form its own identity, and thus many music makers intentionally tried to produce music that sounded like that heard on the Commodore 64
and NES, which resulted in the chiptune
genre.
The release of a freely-distributed Amiga program named Sound Tracker by Karsten Obarski in 1987 started the era of MOD
-format which made it easy for anyone to produce music based on digitized samples. MOD
-files were made with programs called "trackers" after Obarski's Sound Tracker. This MOD/tracker tradition continued with PC computers in 1990s. Examples of Amiga games
using digitized instrument samples include David Whittaker's soundtrack for Shadow of the Beast
, Chris Hülsbeck
's soundtrack for Turrican 2
and Matt Furniss
's tunes for Laser Squad
. Richard Joseph
also composed some theme songs featuring vocals and lyrics for games by Sensible Software
most famous being Cannon Fodder
(1993) with a song "War Has Never Been So Much Fun" and Sensible World of Soccer
(1994) with a song "Goal Scoring Superstar Hero". These songs used long vocal samples.
A similar approach to sound and music developments had become common in the arcades by this time and had been used in many arcade system board
s since the mid-1980s. This was further popularized in the early 1990s by games like Street Fighter II
(1991) on the CPS-1, which used voice samples extensively along with sampled sound effects and percussion. Neo Geo
's MVS system also carried powerful sound development which often included surround sound
.
The evolution also carried into home console video games, such as the release of the Super Famicom
in 1990, and its US/EU version SNES in 1991. It sported a specialized custom Sony
chip for both the sound generation and for special hardware DSP. It was capable of eight channels of sampled sounds at up to 16-bit resolution, had a wide selection of DSP effects, including a type of ADSR usually seen in high end synthesizers of the time, and full stereo sound. This allowed experimentation with applied acoustics in video games, such as musical acoustics (early games like Castlevania IV, F-Zero, Final Fantasy IV
, Gradius III
, and later games like Chrono Trigger
), directional (Star Fox) and spatial acoustics (Dolby Pro-Logic was used in some games, like King Arthur's World and Jurassic Park), as well as environmental and architectural acoustics
(Zelda III
, Secret of Evermore
). Many games also made heavy use of the high quality sample playback capabilities (Super Star Wars
, Tales of Phantasia
). The only real limitation to this powerful setup was the still-costly solid state memory
. Other consoles of the generation could boast similar abilities yet did not have the same circulation levels as the SNES/SFC. The Neo-Geo
home system was capable of the same powerful sample processing as its arcade counterpart, but was several times the cost of a SNES. The Mega-CD (Sega-CD in the US) hardware upgrade to the Mega Drive (Genesis in the US) offered multiple PCM channels, but they were often passed over instead to use its capabilities with the cd-rom itself.
Popularity of the SNES and its software remained limited to regions where NTSC
television was the broadcast standard. Partly because of the difference in frame rates of PAL
broadcast equipment, many titles released were never redesigned to play appropriately and ran much slower than originally intended, or were never released. This showed a divergence in popular video game music between PAL and NTSC countries that still shows to this day. This divergence would be lessened as the fifth generation of home consoles launched globally, and as Commodore began to take a backseat to general purpose PCs and Macs for developing and gaming.
Though the Sega-CD/Mega-CD, and to a greater extent the PC Engine in Japan, would give gamers a preview of the direction video game music would take in streaming
music, the use of both sampled and sequenced music continues in game consoles even today. The huge data storage benefit of optical media would be coupled with progressively more powerful audio generation hardware and higher quality samples in the Fifth Generation
. In 1994, the CD-ROM equipped PlayStation
supported 24 channels of 16-bit samples of up to 44.1 kHz sample rate, samples equal to CD audio in quality. It also sported a few hardware DSP effects like reverb. Many Square
titles continued to use sequenced music, such as Final Fantasy 7, Legend of Mana
, and Final Fantasy Tactics
. The Sega Saturn
also with a CD drive supported 32 channels of PCM at the same resolution as the PSX. In 1996, the Nintendo 64
, still using a solid state cartridge, actually supported an integrated and scalable sound system that was potentially capable of 100 channels of PCM, and an improved sample rate of 48 kHz. Games for the N64, because of the cost of the solid state memory, typically had samples of lesser quality than the other two however, and music tended to be simpler in construct.
The more dominant approach for games based on CDs, however, was shifting toward streaming
audio.
In the same timeframe of late 1980s to mid 1990s, the IBM PC clones using the x86 architecture became more ubiquitous, yet had a very different path in sound design than other PCs and consoles. Early PC gaming was limited to the PC speaker
, and some proprietary standards such as the IBM PCjr
3-voice chip. While sampled sound could be achieved on the PC speaker using pulse width modulation, doing so required a significant proportion of the available processor power, rendering its use in games rare.
With the increase of x86 PCs in the market, there was a vacuum in sound performance in home computing that expansion cards attempted to fill. The first two recognizable standards were the Roland
MT-32, followed by the AdLib
sound card. Roland's solution was driven by MIDI sequencing using advanced LA synthesizers. This made it the first choice for game developers to produce upon, but its higher cost as an end-user solution made it prohibitive. The AdLib used a low-cost FM synthesis chip from Yamaha, and many boards could operate compatibly using the MIDI standard.
The AdLib
card was usurped in 1989 by Creative
's Sound Blaster
, which used the same Yamaha FM chip in the AdLib, for compatibility, but also added 8-bit 22.05 kHz (later 44.1 kHz) digital audio recording and playback of a single stereo channel. As an affordable end-user product, the Sound Blaster constituted the core sound technology of the early 1990s; a combination of a simple FM engine that supported midi, and a DAC engine of one or more streams. Only a minority of developers ever used Amiga-style tracker formats in commercial PC games, (Unreal
) typically preferring to use the MT-32 or AdLib/SB-compatible devices. As general purpose PCs using x86 became more ubiquitous than the other PC platforms, developers drew their focus towards that platform.
The last major development before streaming music came in 1992: Roland
released the first General MIDI
card, the wavetable SCC-1. The comparative quality of the samples on the wavetable spurred similar offerings from Soundblaster, but costs for both products were still high. Both companies offered 'daughter board' wavetables that could be later added to a less expensive soundcard (which only had a DAC and a MIDI controller) to give it the features of a fully integrated card. (Roland had used a similar interchangeable daughterboards in its musical instrument keyboards, also widely used to develop music at the time.)
Unlike the standards of Amiga or Atari, a PC using x86 even then could be using a broad mix of hardware. Developers increasingly used MIDI sequences: instead of writing soundtrack data for each type of soundcard, they generally wrote a fully featured data set for the Roland application that would be compatible with lesser featured equipment so long as it had a MIDI controller to run the sequence. However, different products used different sounds attached to their MIDI controllers. Some tied into the Yamaha FM chip to simulate instruments, some daughterboards of samples had very different sound qualities; meaning that no single sequence performance would be accurate to every other General Midi device.
All of these considerations in the products reflected the high cost of memory storage which rapidly declined with the optical CD format.
In fourth generation home video games and PCs this was limited to playing a Red Book audio track from a CD
while the game was in play (such as Sonic CD). Some of the earliest examples of Red Book audio in video games were later titles of the Ys series, composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Mieko Ishikawa, and arranged by Ryo Yunemitsu for the TurboGrafx-CD from 1989. The Ys soundtracks are still regarded as some of the most influential video game music ever composed.
However, there were several disadvantages of regular CD-audio. Optical drive technology was still limited in spindle speed, so playing an audio track from the game CD meant that the system could not access data again until it stopped the track from playing. Looping
, the most common form of game music, was also problem as when the laser reached the end of a track, it had to move itself back to the beginning to start reading again causing an audible gap in playback.
To address these drawbacks, some PC game developers designed their own container formats in house, for each application in some cases, to stream compressed audio. This would cut back on memory used for music on the CD, allowed for much lower latency and seek time when finding and starting to play music, and also allowed for much smoother looping due to being able to buffer
the data. A minor drawback was that use of compressed audio meant it had to be decompressed which put load on the CPU of a system. As computing power increased, this load became minimal, and in some cases dedicated chips in a computer (such as a sound card) would actually handle all the decompressing.
Fifth generation home console systems also developed specialised streaming formats and containers for compressed audio playback. Sony would call theirs Yellow Book
, and offer the standard to other companies. Games would take full advantage of this ability, sometimes with highly praised results (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
). Games ported from arcade machines, which continued to use FM synthesis, often saw superior pre-recorded music streams on their home console counterparts (Street Fighter Alpha 2
). Even though the game systems were capable of "CD quality" sound, these compressed audio tracks were not true "CD quality." Many of them had lower sampling rates, but not so significant that most consumers would notice. Using a compressed stream allowed game designers to play back streamed music and still be able to access other data on the disc without interruption of the music, at the cost of CPU power used to render the audio stream. Manipulating the stream any further would require a far more significant level of CPU power available in the 5th generation.
Some games, such as the Wipeout
series, continued to use full redbook CD audio for their soundtracks.
This overall freedom offered to music composers gave video game music the equal footing with other popular music it had lacked. A musician could now, with no need to learn about programming or the game architecture itself, independently produce the music to their satisfaction. This flexibility would be exercised as popular mainstream musicians would be using their talents for video games specifically. An early example is Way of the Warrior on the 3DO
, with music by White Zombie. A more well-known example is Trent Reznor
's score for Quake.
An alternate approach, as with the TMNT arcade, was to take pre-existing music not written exclusively for the game and use it in the game. The game Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
and subsequent Star Wars games took music composed by John Williams
for the Star Wars
films of the 1970s and 1980s and used it for the game soundtracks.
Both using new music streams made specifically for the game, and using previously released/recorded music streams are common approaches for developing sound tracks to this day. It is common for X-games sports-based video games to come with some popular artists recent releases (SSX, Tony Hawk, Initial D), as well as any game with heavy cultural demographic theme that has tie-in to music (Need For Speed: Underground
, Gran Turismo
, and Grand Theft Auto
). Sometimes a hybrid of the two are used, such as in Dance Dance Revolution
.
Sequencing samples continue to be used in modern gaming for many uses, mostly RPGs. Sometimes a cross between sequencing samples, and streaming music is used. Games such as Republic: The Revolution
(music composed by James Hannigan
) and Command & Conquer: Generals
(music composed by Bill Brown) have utilised sophisticated systems governing the flow of incidental music by stringing together short phrases based on the action on screen and the player's most recent choices (see dynamic music
). Other games dynamically mixed the sound on the game based on cues of the game environment.
As processing power increased dramatically in the 6th generation of home consoles, it became possible to apply special effects in realtime to streamed audio. In SSX
, a recent video game series, if a snowboarder takes to the air after jumping from a ramp, the music softens or muffles a bit, and the ambient noise of wind and air blowing becomes louder to emphasize being airborne. When the snowboarder lands, the music resumes regular playback until its next "cue". The LucasArts
company pioneered this interactive music technique with their iMUSE system, used in their early adventure games and the Star Wars flight simulators Star Wars: X-Wing
and Star Wars: TIE Fighter
. Action games such as these will change dynamically to match the amount of danger. Stealth-based games will sometimes rely on such music, either by handling streams differently, or dynamically changing the composition of a sequenced soundtrack.
Some PlayStation games supported this by swapping the game CD with a music CD, although when the game needed data, you had to swap the CDs again. One of the earliest games, Ridge Racer, was loaded entirely into RAM, letting the player insert a music CD to provide a soundtrack throughout the entirety of the gameplay. In Vib Ribbon, this became a gameplay feature, with the game generating levels based entirely on the music on whatever CD the player inserted.
Microsoft's Xbox
, a competitor in the sixth generation of home consoles opened new possibilities. Its ability to copy music from a CD onto its internal hard drive allowed gamers to use their own music more seamlessly with gameplay than ever before. The feature, called Custom Soundtrack, had to be enabled by the game developer. The feature carried over into the seventh generation with the Xbox 360
except it is now supported by the system software and enabled at any point.
The Wii
is also able to play custom soundtracks if it is enabled by the game (Excite Truck, Endless Ocean).
The PlayStation Portable
can, in games like Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City and FIFA 08
, play music from a Memory Stick
.
The PlayStation 3
has the ability to utilize custom soundtracks in games using music saved on the hard drive, however few game developers have used this function so far. MLB 08: The Show, released in North America on March 4, 2008, has a My MLB sound track feature which allows the user to play music tracks of their choice saved on the hard drive of their PS3, rather than the preprogrammed tracks incorporated into the game by the developer. An update to Wipeout HD
, released on the PlayStation Network, was made to also incorporate this feature.
In Audiosurf
, custom soundtracks are the main aspect of the game. Users have to pick a music file to be analyzed. The game will generate a race track based on tempo, pitch and complexity of the sound. The user will then race on this track, synchronized with the music.
software, sampling and playback rate of 16-bit @ 48 kHz (internal; with 24-bit hardware D/A converters), hardware codec streaming, and potential of 256 audio simultaneous channels. While powerful and flexible, none of these features represent any major change in how game music is made from the last generation of console systems. PCs continue to rely on third-party devices for in-game sound reproduction, and SoundBlaster, despite being largely the only major player in the entertainment audio expansion card business, continues to advance its product development at a significant pace.
The PlayStation 3 handles multiple types of surround sound technology, including Dolby TrueHD
and DTS-HD, with up to 7.1 channels, and with sampling rates of up to 192 kHz.
Nintendo's Wii
console shares many audio components with the Nintendo GameCube
from the previous generation, including Dolby Pro Logic II. These features are extensions of technology already currently in use.
The game developer of today has many choices on how to develop music. More likely, changes in video game music creation will have very little to do with technology and more to do with other factors of game development as a business whole. As sales of video game music separate from the game itself became marketable in the west (compared to Japan where game music CDs had been selling for years), business elements also wield a level of influence that it had little before. Music from outside the game developer's immediate employment, such as music composers and pop artists, have been contracted to produce game music just as they would for a theatrical movie. Many other factors have growing influence, such as editing for content, politics on some level of the development, executive input and other elements.
bands, particularly Yellow Magic Orchestra
(YMO), who were popular during the late 1970s to 1980s. YMO sampled sounds from several classic arcade games in their early albums, most notably Space Invaders
in the 1978 hit song "Computer Game". In turn, the band would have a major influence on much of the video game music produced during the 8-bit
and 16-bit eras
.
Features of the video game music genre include:
Although the tones featured in NES music can be thought of emulating a traditional four-piece rock band (triangle wave used as a bass, two pulse waves analogous to two guitars, and a white noise channel used for drums), composers would often go out of their way to compose complex and rapid sequences of notes, in part because of the restrictions mentioned above. This is similar to music composition during the Baroque
period, when composers, particularly when creating solo pieces, focused on musical embellishments to compensate for instruments such as the harpsichord
that do not allow for expressive dynamics. For the same reason, many early compositions also feature a distinct jazz influence. These would overlap with later influences from heavy metal
and j-pop
music, resulting in an equally distinct compositional style in the 16-bit era.
In an unrelated but parallel course in the European and North American developer scene, similar limitations were driving the musical style of home computer games. Module file
format music, particularly MOD
, used similar techniques but was more heavily influenced from the electronic music scene as it developed, and resulted in another very distinct subgenre. Demos and the developing demoscene
played a big part in the early years, and still influence video game music today.
As technological limitations gradually lifted, composers were given more freedom and with the advent of CD-ROM pre-recorded soundtracks came to dominate, resulting in a noticeable shift in composition and voicing style.
As the divisions between movies and video games has blurred, so have divisions between film scores and video game scores. Adventure and fantasy movies have similar needs to adventure and fantasy games, i.e. fanfare, traveling, hero's theme and so on. Some composers have written scores in both genres. One noted example is U.S. composer Michael Giacchino
who composed the soundtrack for the game Medal of Honor
and later composed for the television series such as Lost
and the score for the movies The Incredibles
(2004) and Star Trek (2009).
and fourth
generations of home video game console and sometimes newer generations, continues today in very strong representation in both fans and composers alike, even out of the context of a video game. Melodies and themes from 20 years ago continue to be re-used in newer generations of video games. Themes from the original Metroid
by Hirokazu Tanaka
can still be heard in Metroid games from today as arranged by Kenji Yamamoto.
Video game music soundtracks were sold separately on CD in Japan well before the practice spread to other countries. Interpretive albums, remixes and live performances were also common variations to original soundtracks (OSTs). Koichi Sugiyama
was an early figure in this practice sub-genres, and following the release of the first Dragon Quest
game in 1986, a live performance CD of his compositions was released and performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
(then later by other groups including the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra
, and NHK Symphony). Yuzo Koshiro
, another early figure, released a live performance of the Actraiser
soundtrack. Both Koshiro's and fellow Falcom
composer Mieko Ishikawa's contributions to Ys
music would have such long lasting impact that there were more albums released of Ys music than of almost all other game-type music.
Like anime
soundtracks, these soundtracks and even sheet music books were usually marketed exclusively in Japan. Therefore, interested non-Japanese gamers have to import the soundtracks and/or sheet music books through on or offline firms specifically dedicated to video game soundtrack imports. This has been somewhat less of an issue more recently as domestic publishers of anime and video games have been producing western equivalent versions of the OSTs for sale in UK and US, but only for the most popular titles in most cases.
Other original composers of the lasting themes from this time have gone on to manage symphonic concert performances to the public exhibiting their work in the games. Koichi Sugiyama was once again the first in this practice in 1987 with his "Family Classic Concert" and has continued concert performances almost annually. In 1991, he also formed a series called Orchestral Game Concerts, notable for featuring other talented game composers such as Yoko Kanno
(Nobunaga's Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Uncharted Waters), Nobuo Uematsu
(Final Fantasy), Keiichi Suzuki (Mother/Earthbound), and Kentaro Haneda (Wizardry).
Global popularity of video game music would begin to surge with Square
's 1990s successes, particularly with Final Fantasy VI
, Final Fantasy VII
and Final Fantasy VIII
by Nobuo Uematsu and with Chrono Trigger
, Xenogears
and Chrono Cross
by Yasunori Mitsuda
. Compositions by Nobuo Uematsu on Final Fantasy IV
were arranged into Final Fantasy IV: Celtic Moon, a live performance by string musicians with strong celtic influence recorded in Ireland. The Love Theme from the same game has been used as an instructional piece of music in Japanese schools. At least eight Final Fantasy soundtrack albums (VI, VII, VIII, IX
, X
, X-2
, XII
, and XIII
) debuted in the top ten of the Oricon
albums chart in Japan, where at least five of them (VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X) sold more than 100,000 copies each in Japan alone, with the best-selling Final Fantasy VIII soundtrack selling 300,000 copies in that country. In addition, at least eight Square Enix
singles (from Final Fantasy
and Kingdom Hearts
) have sold more than 100,000 copies in Japan: "Hikari
" (600,000), "Eyes on Me
" (500,000), "Real Emotion/1000 no Kotoba
" (280,000), "Melodies of Life", "Suteki Da Ne", "Passion", "Redemption
", and "Hoshi no Nai Sekai".
On August 20, 2003, for the first time outside Japan, music written for video games such as Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda was performed by a live orchestra, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra
in a Symphonic Game Music Concert
in Leipzig, Germany at the Gewandhaus concert hall. This event was held as the official opening ceremony of Europe's biggest trading fair for video games, the GC Games Convention and repeated in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. On November 17, 2003, Square Enix launched the Final Fantasy Radio on America Online. The radio station has initially featured complete tracks from Final Fantasy XI
and Final Fantasy XI: Rise of Zilart
and samplings from Final Fantasy VII through Final Fantasy X
. The first officially sanctioned Final Fantasy concert in the United States was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall
in Los Angeles
, California
, on May 10, 2004. All seats at the concert were sold out in a single day. "Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy" followed and was performed at various cities across the United States.
On July 6, 2005, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra also held a Video Games Live
concert, which was founded by video game music composers Tommy Tallarico
and Jack Wall
at the Hollywood Bowl
. This concert featured a variety of video game music, ranging from Pong to Halo 2
. It also incorporated real-time video feeds that were in sync with the music, as well as laser and light special effects. Video Games Live has been touring worldwide since. On August 20, 2006, the Malmö Symphonic Orchestra with host Orvar Säfström
performed an outdoor concert of game music in Malmö
, Sweden
before an audience of 17,000, currently the attendance record for a game music concert. From April 20–27, 2007, Eminence Symphony Orchestra
, an orchestra dedicated to video game and anime music, performed the first part of their annual tour, the "A Night in Fantasia" concert series in Australia. Whilst Eminence had performed video game music as part of their concerts since their inception, the 2007 concert marked the first time ever that the entire setlist was pieces from video games. Up to seven of the world's most famous game composers were also in attendance as special guests.
industry, video game music and sounds have appeared in songs by various popular artists, with arcade game sounds having had a particularly strong influence on the hip hop
, pop music
(particularly synthpop
) and electro music genres during the golden age of video arcade games in the early 1980s. Arcade game sounds had an influence on synthpop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra
, who sampled Space Invaders sounds in their influential 1978 debut album, particularly the hit song "Computer Game". In turn, the band would have a major influence on much of the video game music produced during the 8-bit
and 16-bit eras
.
Other pop songs based on Space Invaders soon followed, including "Disco Space Invaders" (1979) by Funny Stuff, "Space Invaders" (1980) by Playback, and the hit songs "Space Invader
" (1980) by The Pretenders and "Space Invaders" (1980) by Uncle Vic. Buckner & Garcia
produced a successful album dedicated to video game music in 1982, Pac-Man Fever
. Former YMO member Haruomi Hosono
also released a 1984 album produced entirely from Namco
arcade game
samples entitled Video Game Music, an early example of a chiptune
record and the first video game music album. Warp's record "Testone
" (1990) by Sweet Exorcist (Richard H. Kirk
and Richard Barratt
) sampled video game sounds from YMO's "Computer Game" and defined Sheffield's bleep techno scene in the early 1990s.
In more recent times, "video game beats" have appeared in popular songs such as Kesha
's "Tik Tok
", the best-selling single of 2010, as well as "U Should Know Better" by Robyn
featuring Snoop Dogg
, and "Hellbound" by Eminem
. The influence of video game music can also be seen in contemporary electronica
music by artists such as Dizzee Rascal
and Kieran Hebden. Grime
music in particular samples sawtooth wave
sounds from video games which were popular in East London
.
, Yale University
, New York University
and the New England Conservatory all feature or are adding game music to their curricula. Game sound & music design has also been part of the curriculum since 2003 at the Utrecht School of the Arts
(Faculty of Art, Media and Technology). Training seminars such as GameSoundCon also feature classes in how to compose video game music.
Extracurricular organizations devoted to the performance of video game music are being established in tandem to these additions to the curriculum. The University of Maryland Gamer Symphony Orchestra
performs self-arranged video game music and the Video Game Orchestra
is a semiprofessional outgrowth of students from the Berklee College of Music and other Boston-area schools. The establishment of these groups is also occurring at the secondary
level.
has included a category for best original video game score. The 2010 award winner was Killzone 2 (Composed by Joris de Man), and in 2011, Napoleon: Total War
(Composers: Richard Beddow, Richard Birdsall, Ian Livingstone
)
Spike Video Game Awards includes awards for Best Soundtrack, Best Song in a Game, and Best Original Score.
From 2012, the Grammy Award
s will explicitly name "video game music" as part of its "Visual Media (Motion, Television, Video Game Music, or Other Visual Media)" awards. The four Visual Media awards are: Best Music for Visual Media, Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, Best Song Written for Visual Media. In 2011, Baba Yetu
, a song from Civilization IV
, won the 53rd annual music awards' Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists
, the first video game music to be nominated for (or to win) a Grammy.
The International Film Music Critics Association
(IFMCA) has a Best Original Score for Interactive Media award.
Hollywood Music In Media Awards includes a Best Original Video Game Score award.
Machinima.com
's Inside Gaming
Awards include Best Original Score and Best Sound Design.
The MTV Video Music Award for Best Video Game Soundtrack
ran from 2004 to 2006. Additionally an award for Best Video Game Score
was awarded only in 2006.
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
s and background music
Background music
Although background music was by the end of the 20th century generally identified with Muzak or elevator music, there are several stages in the development of this concept.-Antecedents:...
s found in video games. It can range from a primitive synthesizer tune to an orchestral piece, usually such that the older the game, the simpler the music. In recent times, many games have had complex soundtracks similar to those of movies, and sometimes even interactive soundtracks which change in order to create an appropriate atmosphere, based on what the player does. It is also much more common for video game soundtracks to be commercially sold or even be performed in concerts that focus on video game music. Music can also be an important gameplay element in certain types of video games (like rhythm games).
Early video game technology and computer chip music
At the time video games emerged as a form of entertainment in the 1970s (the first generationHistory of video game consoles (first generation)
The first generation of video game consoles lasted from 1972, with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, until 1977, when "pong"-style console manufacturers left the market en masse due to the introduction and success of microprocessor-based consoles....
), music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
was stored on physical medium in analog waveforms such as compact cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
s and phonograph records. Such components were expensive and prone to breakage under heavy use making them less than ideal for use in an arcade cabinet
Arcade cabinet
A video game arcade cabinet, also known as a video arcade machine or video coin-op, is the housing within which a video arcade game's hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the JAMMA wiring standard...
, though in rare cases, they were used (Journey
Journey (arcade game)
Journey is an arcade game released by Bally Midway in 1983, following the success of the albums Escape and Frontiers by the rock band Journey. Bally/Midway decided to ride this wave of popularity and created an arcade game based on the band...
). A more affordable method of having music in a video game was to use digital means, where a specific computer chip would change electrical impulses from computer code into analog sound waves on the fly
On the fly
-Colloquial usage:In colloquial use, on the fly means something created when needed. The phrase is used to mean:# something that was not planned ahead# changes that are made during the execution of same activity: ex tempore, impromptu.-Automotive usage:...
for output on a speaker. Sound effects for the games were also generated in this fashion.
While this allowed for inclusion of music in early arcade video games
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
, it was usually monophonic, looped
Music loop
In electroacoustic music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns...
or used sparingly between stages or at the start of a new game, such as the Namco
Namco
is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...
titles Pac-Man
Pac-Man
is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,...
(1980) composed by Toshio Kai or Pole Position
Pole Position
Pole Position is a racing video game released in 1982 by Namco. It was published by Namco in Japan and by Atari, Inc. in the United States...
(1982) composed by Nobuyuki Ohnogi. An early example of video game music was the opening tune in Tomohiro Nishikado's Gun Fight
Gun Fight
Gun Fight, known as Western Gun in Japan and Europe, is a 1975 arcade shooter game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released by Taito in Japan and Europe and by Midway Games in the United States. It was a historically significant game, and a success in the arcades. It was later ported to the...
(1975). The first game to use a continuous background soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
was Tomohiro Nishikado's Space Invaders
Space Invaders
is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to...
, released by Taito
Taito Corporation
The is a Japanese publisher of video game software and arcade hardware wholly owned by publisher Square Enix. Taito has their headquarters in the Shinjuku Bunka Quint Building in Yoyogi, Shibuya, Tokyo, sharing the facility with its parent company....
in 1978. It had four simple chromatic
Diatonic and chromatic
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony...
descending bass note
Bass note
In music theory, the bass note of a chord or sonority is the lowest note played or notated. If there are multiple voices it is the note played or notated in the lowest voice. While the bass note is often the root or fundamental of the chord, it does not have to be, and sometimes one of the other...
s repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and interacted with the player, increasing pace as the enemies descended on the player. The first video game to feature background music
Background music
Although background music was by the end of the 20th century generally identified with Muzak or elevator music, there are several stages in the development of this concept.-Antecedents:...
was Rally-X
Rally-X
Rally-X is a maze driving arcade game that was released by Namco in 1980. It runs on Namco Pac-Man hardware, and was the first Namco game to feature "Special Flags", which would become a recurring object in later games .It was the first game to ever feature a "bonus round." The object is to...
, released by Namco
Namco
is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...
in 1980, featuring a simple tune that repeats continuously during gameplay
Gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and player's connection with it...
. The decision to include any music into a video game meant that at some point it would have to be transcribed into computer code by a programmer, whether or not the programmer had musical experience. Some music was original, some was public domain music
Public domain music
Music is in the public domain if like with any other work in the public domain:*all rights have expired or*the authors have explicitly put a work into the public domain*there never were copyrights-Copyrights:For music the involved rights are:...
such as folk songs. Sound capabilities were limited; the popular Atari 2600
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
home system, for example, was capable of generating only two tones, or "notes", at a time.
As advances were made in silicon technology and costs fell, a definitively new generation of arcade machines and home consoles
History of video game consoles (third generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the third generation began on July 15, 1983, with the Japanese release of both the Nintendo Family Computer and Sega SG-1000...
allowed for great changes in accompanying music. In arcades, machines based on the Motorola 68000 CPU and accompanying various Yamaha
Yamaha
Yamaha may refer to:* Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services** Yamaha Motor Company, a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company...
YM programmable sound generator
Programmable sound generator
A Programmable Sound Generator is a sound chip that generates sound waves by synthesizing multiple basic waveforms, and often some kind of noise generator, and combining and mixing these waveforms into a complex waveform, then shaping the amplitude of the resulting waveform using...
sound chip
Sound chip
A sound chip is an integrated circuit designed to produce sound . It might be doing this through digital, analog or mixed-mode electronics...
s allowed for several more tones or "channels" of sound, sometimes eight or more. The earliest known example of this was Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
's 1980 arcade game Carnival, which used an AY-3-8910 chip to create an electronic rendition of the classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
1889 composition "Over The Waves" by Juventino Rosas
Juventino Rosas
José Juventino Policarpo Rosas Cadenas was a Mexican composer and violinist.-Life and career:Rosas was born in Santa Cruz de Galeana, Guanajuato, now renamed Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas. Rosas began his musical career as a street musician and playing with dance music bands in Mexico City...
. Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
's 1981 arcade game Frogger
Frogger
Frogger is an arcade game introduced in 1981. It was developed by Konami, and licensed for worldwide distribution by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct frogs to their homes one by one. To do this, each frog must avoid cars while crossing a busy road and navigate a river full of...
introduced a dynamic approach to video game music, using at least eleven different gameplay songs, in addition to level-starting and game over
Game over
Game Over is a message in video games which signals that the game has ended, often due to a negative outcome - although the phrase sometimes follows the end credits after successful completion of a game...
themes, which change according to the player's actions. This was further improved upon by Namco
Namco
is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...
's 1983 arcade game Dig Dug
Dig Dug
is an arcade game developed and published by Namco in Japan in 1982 for Namco Galaga hardware. It was later published outside of Japan by Atari. A popular game based on a simple concept, it was also released as a video game on many consoles.-Objective:...
, where the music stopped when the player stopped moving. Dig Dug was composed by Yuriko Keino, who also composed the music for other Namco games such as Xevious
Xevious
is a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game by Namco, released in 1982. It was designed by Masanobu Endō. In the U.S., the game was manufactured and distributed by Atari. Xevious runs on Namco Galaga hardware. In Brazil the arcade cabinet was printed with the name 'COLUMBIA' for the game, while the...
(1982) and Phozon
Phozon
Phozon is an arcade game that was released in by Namco in 1983 only in Japan.-Gameplay:The player controls a small black atom with red spikes called a Chemic, which can adhere itself to passing Moleks, which come in four different colours: cyan, green, pink and yellow. It must use these to...
(1983).
Home console systems also had a comparable upgrade in sound ability beginning with the ColecoVision
ColecoVision
The ColecoVision is Coleco Industries' second generation home video game console which was released in August 1982. The ColecoVision offered arcade-quality graphics and gaming style, and the means to expand the system's basic hardware...
in 1982 capable of four channels. However, more notable was the Japanese release of the Famicom in 1983 which was later released in the US as the Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
in 1985. It was capable of five channels, one being capable of simple PCM sampled sound. The home computer Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
released in 1982 was capable of early forms of filtering effects, different types of waveform
Waveform
Waveform means the shape and form of a signal such as a wave moving in a physical medium or an abstract representation.In many cases the medium in which the wave is being propagated does not permit a direct visual image of the form. In these cases, the term 'waveform' refers to the shape of a graph...
s and eventually the ability to play 4-bit samples on a fourth sound channel. Its comparatively low cost made it a popular alternative to other home computers, as well as its ability to use a TV for an affordable display monitor.
Approach to game music development in this time period usually involved using simple tone generation and/or frequency modulation synthesis
Frequency modulation synthesis
A 220 Hz carrier tone modulated by a 440 Hz modulating tone with various choices of modulation index, β. The time domain signals are illustrated above, and the corresponding spectra are shown below ....
to simulate instruments for melodies, and use of a "noise channel" for simulating percussive noises.Some latter games started to use triangle/square tones for bass/snare noises. Usually with the noise. Early use of PCM samples in this era was limited to sound bites(Monopoly), or as an alternate for percussion sounds (Super Mario Bros 3). The music on home consoles often had to share the available channels with other sound effects. For example, if a laser beam was fired by a spaceship, and the laser used a 1400 Hz tone, then whichever channel was in use by music would stop playing music and start playing the sound effect.
The mid-to-late 1980s software releases for these platforms had music developed by more people with greater musical experience than before. Quality of composition improved noticeably, and evidence of the popularity of music of this time period remains even today. Composers who made a name for themselves with their software include Nobuo Uematsu
Nobuo Uematsu
is a Japanese video game composer, best known for scoring the majority of titles in the Final Fantasy series. He is considered as one of the most famous and respected composers in the video game community...
(Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy
is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and is developed and owned by Square Enix . The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science-fantasy role-playing video games , but includes motion pictures, anime, printed media, and other merchandise...
), Koji Kondo
Koji Kondo
is a Japanese video game composer and sound director who has been employed at Nintendo since 1984. He is best known for scoring numerous titles in the Mario and The Legend of Zelda series.-Early life:...
(Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros.
is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist...
, The Legend of Zelda), Koichi Sugiyama
Koichi Sugiyama
is a Japanese music composer, council member of JASRAC , and honorary chairman of the Japanese Backgammon Society...
(Dragon Quest
Dragon Quest
, published as Dragon Warrior in North America until 2005,Due to the inconsistent usage by sources since Square Enix obtained the naming rights to Dragon Quest in North America. Dragon Quest has been used by sources to refer to games released solely under the Dragon Warrior titles...
), Miki Higashino
Miki Higashino
is a Japanese video game composer best known for her works in the Suikoden series.-Biography:Miki Higashino first entered the music business as a student employed by Konami and contributed to various minor products, often uncredited or under the alias MIKI-CHAN or MIKI-CHANG...
(Gradius
Gradius
The Gradius games, first introduced in 1985, make up a series of scrolling shooter video games published by Konami for a variety of portable, console and arcade platforms. In many games in the series, the player controls a ship known as the Vic Viper...
, Yie-Ar Kung Fu
Yie-Ar Kung Fu
is a 1985 arcade fighting game developed and published by Konami. It was considered by many gamers in Japan to be the basis for modern fighting games. It pit the player against a variety of opponents, each with a unique appearance and fighting style...
, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (arcade game)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, released as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in Europe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Super Kame Ninja in Japan, is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up released by Konami as a coin-operated video game in...
), Hiroshi Miyauchi (Space Harrier
Space Harrier
is a third-person rail shooter game, released by Sega in 1985. It was produced by Yu Suzuki, responsible for many popular Sega games. It spawned several sequels: Space Harrier 3-D , Space Harrier II , and the spin-off Planet Harriers ....
, Hang-On
Hang-On
Hang-On is an arcade game released by Sega in 1985. It is the world's first full-body-experience video game. In the game, the player controls a motorcycle against time and other computer-controlled bikes. It was one of the first arcade games to use 16-bit graphics and Sega's "Super Scaler"...
, Out Run
Out Run
is an arcade game released by Sega in 1986. It was designed by Yu Suzuki and Sega-AM2. The game was a critical and commercial success. It is notable for its innovative hardware , pioneering graphics and music, a choice in both soundtrack and route, and its strong theme of luxury and relaxation...
), Rob Hubbard
Rob Hubbard
Rob Hubbard is a music composer best known for his composition of computer game theme music, especially for microcomputers of the 1980s such as the Commodore 64...
(Monty On the Run
Monty on the Run
Monty on the Run is a computer game created by the software house Gremlin Graphics and released in 1985 for the C64, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore Plus/4, written by Peter Harrap for the Spectrum with music by Rob Hubbard....
, International Karate
International Karate
International Karate is a karate fighting game created and published by System 3 for various home computers. Of these versions the 1986 releases for Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit computers, created by Archer MacLean with music by Rob Hubbard, stand out for their good playability and overall high...
), Hirokazu Tanaka
Hirokazu Tanaka
is a Japanese composer and musician, best known for his scores for various video games produced by Nintendo. He is also the current President of Creatures, Inc.-Video game soundtracks:*Radar Scope *Space Firebird...
(Metroid
Metroid
is an action-adventure video game, and the first entry in the Metroid series. It was co-developed by Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division and Intelligent Systems, and was released in Japan in August 1986, in North America in August 1987, and in Europe in January 1988...
, Kid Icarus
Kid Icarus
Kid Icarus, known as in Japan, is an action platform video game for the Famicom Disk System in Japan and the Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and North America. The first entry in Nintendo's Kid Icarus series, it was published in Japan in December 1986, and in Europe and North America in...
, EarthBound
EarthBound
EarthBound, also known as EarthBound: The War Against Giygas! and released as in Japan, is a role-playing video game co-developed by Ape and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console...
), Martin Galway
Martin Galway
Martin Galway is one of the best known composers of music for the Commodore 64 sound chip, the SID soundchip, and for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum...
(Daley Thompson's Decathlon
Daley Thompson's Decathlon
Daley Thompson's Decathlon is a computer game based on Konami's Track and Field, developed and released under license by Ocean Software in 1984...
, Stryker's Run, Times of Lore
Times of Lore
Times of Lore is an action role-playing game with a detailed world. It was released for several platforms, including PC, Commodore 64/128, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, Atari ST, Apple II, NES, and Amiga.-Description:...
), Yuzo Koshiro
Yuzo Koshiro
is a Japanese video game music composer and audio programmer. He is regarded as one of the most influential innovators in chiptune music and video game sound design...
(Dragon Slayer, Ys, Shinobi, ActRaiser
ActRaiser
is a 1990 Super Nintendo Entertainment System action and city-building simulation game developed by Quintet and published by Enix that combines traditional side-scrolling platforming with urban planning god game sections. A sequel, ActRaiser 2, was released for the Super Nintendo in 1993...
, Streets of Rage), Mieko Ishikawa (Dragon Slayer, Ys), and Ryu Umemoto
Ryu Umemoto
Ryu Umemoto was a Japanese video game music composer, born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture. He is known for composing soundtracks to various visual novel and shoot 'em up games since the 1990s, for several companies including FamilySoft, C's Ware, ELF Corporation, D4 Enterprise, and Cave...
(visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
s, shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up is a subgenre of shooter video games. In a shoot 'em up, the player controls a lone character, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. The genre in turn encompasses various types or subgenres and critics differ on exactly what...
s). By the late 1980s, video game music was being sold as cassette tape soundtracks in Japan, inspiring American companies such as Sierra
Sierra Entertainment
Sierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
, Cinemaware
Cinemaware
Cinemaware was a computer game developer and publisher that released several popular titles in the 1980s based on various movie themes. The company was resurrected in 2000, before being acquired by eGames in 2005.-Cinemaware Corp...
and Interplay
Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment Corporation is an American video game developer and publisher, founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by Brian Fargo. The company had been a quality developer until they started publishing their own games in 1988, like Neuromancer and Battle Chess. The company was renamed...
to give more serious attention to video game music by 1988.
Near the end of the life-cycle of the Famicom, some game producers at their own expense custom manufactured their cartridges with an additional tone generating chip. These chips added to the existing sound chip in the Famicom, but also sported extra features to modulate the additional channels.
Early digital synthesis and sampling
From around 1980, some arcade games began taking steps toward digitized, or sampledSampling (signal processing)
In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous signal to a discrete signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of samples ....
, sounds. Namco
Namco
is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...
's 1980 arcade game Rally-X
Rally-X
Rally-X is a maze driving arcade game that was released by Namco in 1980. It runs on Namco Pac-Man hardware, and was the first Namco game to feature "Special Flags", which would become a recurring object in later games .It was the first game to ever feature a "bonus round." The object is to...
was the first known game to use a digital-to-analog converter
Digital-to-analog converter
In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter is a device that converts a digital code to an analog signal . An analog-to-digital converter performs the reverse operation...
(DAC) to produce sampled tones instead of a tone generator. That same year, the first known video game to feature speech synthesis
Speech synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
was also released: Sunsoft's shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up is a subgenre of shooter video games. In a shoot 'em up, the player controls a lone character, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. The genre in turn encompasses various types or subgenres and critics differ on exactly what...
game Stratovox
Stratovox
Stratovox AKA Speak & Rescue is an arcade shoot 'em up developed by Sun Electronics and published by Taito in 1980. It was the first video game to feature voice synthesis.-Gameplay:...
. Around the same time, the introduction of frequency modulation synthesis
Frequency modulation synthesis
A 220 Hz carrier tone modulated by a 440 Hz modulating tone with various choices of modulation index, β. The time domain signals are illustrated above, and the corresponding spectra are shown below ....
(FM synthesis), first commercially released by Yamaha
Yamaha
Yamaha may refer to:* Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services** Yamaha Motor Company, a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company...
for their digital synthesizer
Digital synthesizer
A digital synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses digital signal processing techniques to make musical sounds.Electronic keyboards make music through sound waves.-History:...
s and FM sound chip
Sound chip
A sound chip is an integrated circuit designed to produce sound . It might be doing this through digital, analog or mixed-mode electronics...
s, allowed the tones to be manipulated to have different sound characteristics, where before the tone generated by the chip was limited to the design of the chip itself. Konami
Konami
is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...
's 1983 arcade game Gyruss
Gyruss
is a shoot 'em up video arcade game developed by Konami, and released in 1983. It was designed by Yoshiki Okamoto, who had earlier created Time Pilot for Konami. Gyruss was licensed to Centuri in the United States, and was ported to numerous games consoles and home computers...
utilized five synthesis sound chips along with a DAC, which were partly used to create an electronic rendition of J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's Toccata and Fugue in D minor
Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. It is one of the most famous works in the organ repertoire, and has been used in a variety of popular media ranging from film, video games, to rock music, and ringtones...
.
Beyond arcade games, significant improvements to personal computer game
Personal computer game
A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...
music were made possible with the introduction of digital
Digital synthesizer
A digital synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses digital signal processing techniques to make musical sounds.Electronic keyboards make music through sound waves.-History:...
FM synth boards
Sound card
A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...
, which Yamaha
Yamaha
Yamaha may refer to:* Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services** Yamaha Motor Company, a Japanese motorized vehicle-producing company...
released for Japanese computers such as the NEC PC-8801
NEC PC-8801
The NEC PC-8801 was an early Zilog Z80-based computer exclusively released in Japan, where it became very popular, by NEC Corporation in 1981. It was informally called the "PC-88"....
and PC-9801 in the early 1980s, and by the mid-1980s, the PC-8801 and FM-7
FM-7
FM-7 is a home computer released in 1982 in Japan.The Fujitsu FM-7 was Fujitsu's first entry into the Japanese home computer market, and for their debut computer, they chose to come out with a 6809-based personal computer very similar to Radio Shack's Color Computer.-Hardware:*Two MC 68B09 CPUs @...
had built-in FM sound. This allowed computer game music to have greater complexity than the simplistic beeps
Beep (sound)
A beep is a single tone onomatopoeia, generally made by a computer or a machine.-Use in computers:In some computer terminals, the ASCII character code 7, bell character, outputs an audible beep. The beep is also sometimes used to notify the user when the BIOS is not working or there is some other...
from internal speakers. These FM synth boards produced a "warm and pleasant sound" that musicians such as Yuzo Koshiro
Yuzo Koshiro
is a Japanese video game music composer and audio programmer. He is regarded as one of the most influential innovators in chiptune music and video game sound design...
and Takeshi Abo
Takeshi Abo
is a Japanese video game composer. He was employed by KID beginning in 1990, and joined 5pb. in December 2006 after KID declared bankruptcy.-Discography:*Chaos;Head*Close to ~Inori no Oka*Famicom8BIT - momo-i*Gokujyou Seitokai*Iris ~Irisu~...
utilized to produce music that is still highly regarded within the chiptune
Chiptune
A chiptune, also known as chip music, is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of vintage computers and video game consoles, as well as with other methods such as emulation. In the early 1980s, personal computers became cheaper and more accessible than they had previously...
community. The widespread adoption of FM synthesis by consoles would later be one of the major advances of the 16-bit era
History of video game consoles (fourth generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the fourth generation began on October 30, 1987 with the Japanese release of Nippon Electric Company's PC Engine...
, by which time 16-bit arcade machines were using multiple FM synthesis chips.
One of the earliest home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
s to make use of digital signal processing in the form of sampling was the Commodore Amiga in 1985. The computer's sound chip featured four independent 8-bit digital-to-analog converter
Digital-to-analog converter
In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter is a device that converts a digital code to an analog signal . An analog-to-digital converter performs the reverse operation...
s. Developers could use this platform to take samples
Sampling (signal processing)
In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous signal to a discrete signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of samples ....
of a music performance, sometimes just a single note long, and play it back through the computer's sound chip
Sound chip
A sound chip is an integrated circuit designed to produce sound . It might be doing this through digital, analog or mixed-mode electronics...
from memory. This differed from Rally-X in that its hardware DAC was used to play back simple waveform
Waveform
Waveform means the shape and form of a signal such as a wave moving in a physical medium or an abstract representation.In many cases the medium in which the wave is being propagated does not permit a direct visual image of the form. In these cases, the term 'waveform' refers to the shape of a graph...
samples, and a sampled sound allowed for a complexity and authenticity of a real instrument that an FM simulation could not offer. For its role in being one of the first and affordable, the Amiga would remain a staple tool of early sequenced
Music sequencer
The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
music composing, especially in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
The Amiga offered these features before other competing home computer platforms. The Amiga's main rival, the Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
, sourced the Yamaha YM2149 Programmable Sound Generator
Programmable sound generator
A Programmable Sound Generator is a sound chip that generates sound waves by synthesizing multiple basic waveforms, and often some kind of noise generator, and combining and mixing these waveforms into a complex waveform, then shaping the amplitude of the resulting waveform using...
(PSG). Compared to the in-house designed Amiga sound engine, the PSG could only handle 1 channel of sampled sound, and needed the computer's CPU to process the data for it. This made it impractical for game development use until 1989 with the release of the Atari STE which used DMA techniques to play back PCM samples at up to 50 kHz. The ST however remained relevant as it was equipped with a MIDI controller and external ports. It became the choice of by many professional musicians as a MIDI programming device.
IBM PC clones
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
in 1985 would not see any significant development in multimedia abilities for a few more years, and sampling would not become popular in other video game systems for several years. Though sampling had the potential to produce much more realistic sounds, each sample required much more data in memory. This was at a time when all memory, solid state (cartridge), magnetic (floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
) or otherwise was still very costly per kilobyte
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
. Sequenced soundchip generated music on the other hand was generated with a few lines of comparatively simple code and took up far less precious memory.
Arcade systems pushed game music forward in 1984 with the introduction of FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis, providing more realistic sounds than previous PSGs. The first such game, Marble Madness
Marble Madness
Marble Madness is an arcade video game designed by Mark Cerny, and published by Atari Games in 1984. It is a platform game in which the player must guide an onscreen marble through six courses, populated with obstacles and enemies, within a time limit. The player controls the marble by using a...
used the Yamaha YM2515 FM synthesis chip.
As home consoles moved into the fourth generation
History of video game consoles (fourth generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the fourth generation began on October 30, 1987 with the Japanese release of Nippon Electric Company's PC Engine...
, or 16-bit era, the hybrid approach (sampled and tone) to music composing continued to be used. In 1988 the Sega Mega Drive
Sega Mega Drive
The Sega Genesis is a fourth-generation video game console developed and produced by Sega. It was originally released in Japan in 1988 as , then in North America in 1989 as Sega Genesis, and in Europe, Australia and other PAL regions in 1990 as Mega Drive. The reason for the two names is that...
(Sega Genesis in the US) offered advanced graphics over the NES
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
and improved sound synthesis features (also using a Yamaha chip, the YM2612
Yamaha YM2612
thumb|right|Yamaha YM2612The YM2612, aka OPN2, is a six-channel sound chip developed by Yamaha. It belongs to Yamaha's OPN family of FM synthesis chips used in several game and computer systems. Developed as a stripped-down version of the YM2608, it lacks its larger sibling's ADPCM channel,...
), but largely held the same approach to sound design. Ten channels in total for tone generation with one for PCM samples were available in stereo
STEREO
STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth...
instead of the NES's five channels in mono, one for PCM. As before, it was often used for percussion samples, or "drum kits" (Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a 1994 platform video game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. It was developed in the United States by members of Sonic Team working at Sega Technical Institute, and was published by Sega, debuting worldwide in the first half of 1994...
). The 16-bit Sega referred to was the CPU and should not be confused with 16-bit sound samples. The Genesis did not support 16-bit sampled sounds. Despite the additional tone channels, writing music still posed a challenge to traditional composers and it forced much more imaginative use of the FM synthesizer
Frequency modulation synthesis
A 220 Hz carrier tone modulated by a 440 Hz modulating tone with various choices of modulation index, β. The time domain signals are illustrated above, and the corresponding spectra are shown below ....
to create an enjoyable listening experience. The composer Yuzo Koshiro
Yuzo Koshiro
is a Japanese video game music composer and audio programmer. He is regarded as one of the most influential innovators in chiptune music and video game sound design...
utilized the Mega Drive/Genesis hardware effectively to produce "progressive, catchy, techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
-style compositions far more advanced than what players were used to" for games such as The Revenge of Shinobi
The Revenge of Shinobi
The Revenge of Shinobi, published in Japan as is a video game developed and published by Sega in 1989. It was the first Shinobi game developed for the Sega Mega Drive, and was later released on the coin-operated version of that console, the Mega-Tech....
(1989) and the Streets of Rage series, setting a "new high watermark for what music in games could sound like." Another important FM synth composer was the late Ryu Umemoto
Ryu Umemoto
Ryu Umemoto was a Japanese video game music composer, born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture. He is known for composing soundtracks to various visual novel and shoot 'em up games since the 1990s, for several companies including FamilySoft, C's Ware, ELF Corporation, D4 Enterprise, and Cave...
, who composed music for many visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
s and shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em up is a subgenre of shooter video games. In a shoot 'em up, the player controls a lone character, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. The genre in turn encompasses various types or subgenres and critics differ on exactly what...
s during the 1990s.
As cost of magnetic memory declined in the form of diskettes, the evolution of video game music on the Amiga, and some years later game music development in general, shifted to sampling in some form. It took some years before Amiga game designers learned to wholly use digitized sound effects in music (an early exception case was the title music of text adventure
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
game The Pawn
The Pawn
The Pawn is an interactive fiction game by Magnetic Scrolls which was first published by Rainbird in 1986. It is remembered for its excellent graphics and the opening music available in some game versions. Also the game itself - story and parser - got mostly positive reviews...
, 1986). By this time, computer and game music had already begun to form its own identity, and thus many music makers intentionally tried to produce music that sounded like that heard on the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
and NES, which resulted in the chiptune
Chiptune
A chiptune, also known as chip music, is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of vintage computers and video game consoles, as well as with other methods such as emulation. In the early 1980s, personal computers became cheaper and more accessible than they had previously...
genre.
The release of a freely-distributed Amiga program named Sound Tracker by Karsten Obarski in 1987 started the era of MOD
MOD (file format)
MOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”...
-format which made it easy for anyone to produce music based on digitized samples. MOD
MOD (file format)
MOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”...
-files were made with programs called "trackers" after Obarski's Sound Tracker. This MOD/tracker tradition continued with PC computers in 1990s. Examples of Amiga games
Amiga games
Amiga games are computer games compatible with the Commodore Amiga.The Amiga was an important platform for games in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Of all the 16-bit home computers, it was the one to gain the greatest success as a games machine due to its graphic and sound subsystems, which were...
using digitized instrument samples include David Whittaker's soundtrack for Shadow of the Beast
Shadow of the Beast
Shadow of the Beast is a side-scrolling platform computer game produced by Reflections Interactive and published by Psygnosis in 1989. The original version was released for the Commodore Amiga, but the game has been ported to many other systems...
, Chris Hülsbeck
Chris Hülsbeck
Chris Hülsbeck is a video game music composer from Germany.He has written soundtracks for more than 70 titles, the latest being Star Wars: Rebel Strike for Nintendo GameCube. Many of his scores for the Commodore 64 are regarded as classics among enthusiasts today, most notably The Great Giana...
's soundtrack for Turrican 2
Turrican
Turrican is a 1989 video game programmed and designed by Manfred Trenz. It was first developed for the Commodore 64 by Rainbow Arts, but was ported to other systems later. In addition to concept design and character creation, Trenz personally programmed Turrican on the Commodore 64...
and Matt Furniss
Matt Furniss
Matt Furniss is a video game sound artist. Matt's music and sound effects can be found in many computer and console video games.-Video Game Audio Credits :...
's tunes for Laser Squad
Laser Squad
Laser Squad is a turn-based tactics computer game, originally released for the ZX Spectrum and later for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Amiga and Atari ST computers, as well as PC computers. It was designed by Julian Gollop and his team at Target Games and published by Blade Software...
. Richard Joseph
Richard Joseph
Richard Joseph was a British computer game composer, musician and sound specialist. He had a career spanning some 20 years starting in the early days of gaming on the C64 and the Amiga and onto succeeding formats through to the present day.After being diagnosed with lung cancer, he died on 4 March...
also composed some theme songs featuring vocals and lyrics for games by Sensible Software
Sensible Software
Sensible Software was a software house active during the 1980s and 90s, from the United Kingdom.The company was well-known for the very small sprites used for the player characters in many of their games, including Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder and Sensible Golf.- Early history :Sensible Software...
most famous being Cannon Fodder
Cannon Fodder
Cannon Fodder is a short series of war themed action video games developed by Sensible Software, initially released for the Commodore Amiga. Only two games in the series were released, but were converted to most active systems at the time of release...
(1993) with a song "War Has Never Been So Much Fun" and Sensible World of Soccer
Sensible Soccer
Sensible Soccer, often affectionately known as Sensi, is an association football video game series which was highly popular in the early 1990s and which still retains a cult following...
(1994) with a song "Goal Scoring Superstar Hero". These songs used long vocal samples.
A similar approach to sound and music developments had become common in the arcades by this time and had been used in many arcade system board
Arcade system board
An arcade system board is a dedicated computer system created for the purpose of running video arcade games. Arcade system boards typically consist of a main system board with any number of supporting boards...
s since the mid-1980s. This was further popularized in the early 1990s by games like Street Fighter II
Street Fighter II
is a competitive fighting game originally released for the arcades in . It is the arcade sequel to the original Street Fighter released in and was Capcom's fourteenth title that ran on the CP System arcade hardware...
(1991) on the CPS-1, which used voice samples extensively along with sampled sound effects and percussion. Neo Geo
Neo Geo (console)
The is a cartridge-based arcade and home video game system released on July 1, 1991 by Japanese game company SNK. Being in the Fourth generation of Gaming, it was the first console in the former Neo Geo family, which only lived through the 1990s...
's MVS system also carried powerful sound development which often included surround sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
.
The evolution also carried into home console video games, such as the release of the Super Famicom
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
in 1990, and its US/EU version SNES in 1991. It sported a specialized custom Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
chip for both the sound generation and for special hardware DSP. It was capable of eight channels of sampled sounds at up to 16-bit resolution, had a wide selection of DSP effects, including a type of ADSR usually seen in high end synthesizers of the time, and full stereo sound. This allowed experimentation with applied acoustics in video games, such as musical acoustics (early games like Castlevania IV, F-Zero, Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy IV
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square in 1991 as a part of the Final Fantasy series. The game was originally released for the Super Famicom in Japan and has since then been rereleased for many other platforms with varying modifications. An enhanced remake with 3D graphics...
, Gradius III
Gradius III
Gradius III, known in Japan as , is a side-scrolling shooting game originally released for the arcades in Japan and Asia in . It is the second sequel to the original Gradius for the arcades following Gradius II, and was followed by Gradius IV. Gradius III was rereleased for the Super Nintendo...
, and later games like Chrono Trigger
Chrono Trigger
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995. Chrono Triggers development team included three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team": Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Square's Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, a...
), directional (Star Fox) and spatial acoustics (Dolby Pro-Logic was used in some games, like King Arthur's World and Jurassic Park), as well as environmental and architectural acoustics
Architectural acoustics
Architectural acoustics is the science of noise control within buildings. The first application of architectural acoustics was in the design of opera houses and then concert halls. More widely, noise suppression is critical in the design of multi-unit dwellings and business premises that generate...
(Zelda III
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, known as in Japan, is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console, and the third installment in The Legend of Zelda series. It was first released in Japan in 1991, and was...
, Secret of Evermore
Secret of Evermore
Secret of Evermore is a role-playing video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released by Square Soft in North America on October 1, 1995. In February 1996, it saw release in the PAL territories of Europe and Australia...
). Many games also made heavy use of the high quality sample playback capabilities (Super Star Wars
Super Star Wars
Super Star Wars is the first of a series of three Super Nintendo games based on the original three films of the Star Wars series released in 1992 and re-released on the Wii Virtual Console. The term Super Star Wars can refer to the first game or to all three games collectively...
, Tales of Phantasia
Tales of Phantasia
is a Super Nintendo game in the RPG genre published by Namco and released in Japan in 1995, selling 212,000 copies. It is the first mothership title in the Tales RPG series and was later remade/re-released on the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance and PlayStation Portable...
). The only real limitation to this powerful setup was the still-costly solid state memory
Semiconductor memory
Semiconductor memory is an electronic data storage device, often used as computer memory, implemented on a semiconductor-based integrated circuit. Examples of semiconductor memory include non-volatile memory such as Read-only memory , magnetoresistive random access memory , and flash memory...
. Other consoles of the generation could boast similar abilities yet did not have the same circulation levels as the SNES/SFC. The Neo-Geo
Neo Geo (console)
The is a cartridge-based arcade and home video game system released on July 1, 1991 by Japanese game company SNK. Being in the Fourth generation of Gaming, it was the first console in the former Neo Geo family, which only lived through the 1990s...
home system was capable of the same powerful sample processing as its arcade counterpart, but was several times the cost of a SNES. The Mega-CD (Sega-CD in the US) hardware upgrade to the Mega Drive (Genesis in the US) offered multiple PCM channels, but they were often passed over instead to use its capabilities with the cd-rom itself.
Popularity of the SNES and its software remained limited to regions where NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
television was the broadcast standard. Partly because of the difference in frame rates of PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
broadcast equipment, many titles released were never redesigned to play appropriately and ran much slower than originally intended, or were never released. This showed a divergence in popular video game music between PAL and NTSC countries that still shows to this day. This divergence would be lessened as the fifth generation of home consoles launched globally, and as Commodore began to take a backseat to general purpose PCs and Macs for developing and gaming.
Though the Sega-CD/Mega-CD, and to a greater extent the PC Engine in Japan, would give gamers a preview of the direction video game music would take in streaming
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
music, the use of both sampled and sequenced music continues in game consoles even today. The huge data storage benefit of optical media would be coupled with progressively more powerful audio generation hardware and higher quality samples in the Fifth Generation
History of video game consoles (fifth generation)
The fifth-generation era refers to the computer and video games, video game consoles, and video game handhelds available at stores...
. In 1994, the CD-ROM equipped PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
supported 24 channels of 16-bit samples of up to 44.1 kHz sample rate, samples equal to CD audio in quality. It also sported a few hardware DSP effects like reverb. Many Square
Square (company)
was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix...
titles continued to use sequenced music, such as Final Fantasy 7, Legend of Mana
Legend of Mana
Legend of Mana, known in Japan as , is the fourth game in the Mana series. The game was released for the PlayStation in Japan on July 15, 1999 and in North America on June 7, 2000, with a delayed release in Canada...
, and Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy Tactics
is a tactical role-playing game developed and published by Square for the Sony PlayStation video game console. It is the first game of the Final Fantasy Tactics series and was released in Japan in June 1997 and in the United States in January 1998...
. The Sega Saturn
Sega Saturn
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console that was first released by Sega on November 22, 1994 in Japan, May 11, 1995 in North America, and July 8, 1995 in Europe...
also with a CD drive supported 32 channels of PCM at the same resolution as the PSX. In 1996, the Nintendo 64
Nintendo 64
The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...
, still using a solid state cartridge, actually supported an integrated and scalable sound system that was potentially capable of 100 channels of PCM, and an improved sample rate of 48 kHz. Games for the N64, because of the cost of the solid state memory, typically had samples of lesser quality than the other two however, and music tended to be simpler in construct.
The more dominant approach for games based on CDs, however, was shifting toward streaming
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
audio.
MIDI on the PC
PC speaker
A PC speaker is a loudspeaker, built into some IBM PC compatible computers. The first IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, employed a standard 2.25 inch magnetic driven speaker. More recent computers use a piezoelectric speaker instead. The speaker allows software and firmware to provide...
, and some proprietary standards such as the IBM PCjr
IBM PCjr
The IBM PCjr was IBM's first attempt to enter the home computer market. The PCjr, IBM model number 4860, retained the IBM PC's 8088 CPU and BIOS interface for compatibility, but various design and implementation decisions led the PCjr to be a commercial failure.- Features :Announced November 1,...
3-voice chip. While sampled sound could be achieved on the PC speaker using pulse width modulation, doing so required a significant proportion of the available processor power, rendering its use in games rare.
With the increase of x86 PCs in the market, there was a vacuum in sound performance in home computing that expansion cards attempted to fill. The first two recognizable standards were the Roland
Roland Corporation
is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on April 18, 1972, with ¥33 million in capital. In 2005 Roland's headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. Today it has factories in Japan,...
MT-32, followed by the AdLib
AdLib
Ad Lib, Inc. was a manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval...
sound card. Roland's solution was driven by MIDI sequencing using advanced LA synthesizers. This made it the first choice for game developers to produce upon, but its higher cost as an end-user solution made it prohibitive. The AdLib used a low-cost FM synthesis chip from Yamaha, and many boards could operate compatibly using the MIDI standard.
The AdLib
AdLib
Ad Lib, Inc. was a manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval...
card was usurped in 1989 by Creative
Creative Technology
Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal...
's Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster
The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level , and the evolution in PC design led to onboard...
, which used the same Yamaha FM chip in the AdLib, for compatibility, but also added 8-bit 22.05 kHz (later 44.1 kHz) digital audio recording and playback of a single stereo channel. As an affordable end-user product, the Sound Blaster constituted the core sound technology of the early 1990s; a combination of a simple FM engine that supported midi, and a DAC engine of one or more streams. Only a minority of developers ever used Amiga-style tracker formats in commercial PC games, (Unreal
Unreal
Unreal is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive in May 1998...
) typically preferring to use the MT-32 or AdLib/SB-compatible devices. As general purpose PCs using x86 became more ubiquitous than the other PC platforms, developers drew their focus towards that platform.
The last major development before streaming music came in 1992: Roland
Roland
Roland was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. Historically, Roland was military governor of the Breton March, with responsibility for defending the frontier of Francia against the Bretons...
released the first General MIDI
General MIDI
General MIDI or GM is a standardized specification for music synthesizers that respond to MIDI messages. GM was developed by the MIDI Manufacturers Association and the Japan MIDI Standards Committee and first published in 1991...
card, the wavetable SCC-1. The comparative quality of the samples on the wavetable spurred similar offerings from Soundblaster, but costs for both products were still high. Both companies offered 'daughter board' wavetables that could be later added to a less expensive soundcard (which only had a DAC and a MIDI controller) to give it the features of a fully integrated card. (Roland had used a similar interchangeable daughterboards in its musical instrument keyboards, also widely used to develop music at the time.)
Unlike the standards of Amiga or Atari, a PC using x86 even then could be using a broad mix of hardware. Developers increasingly used MIDI sequences: instead of writing soundtrack data for each type of soundcard, they generally wrote a fully featured data set for the Roland application that would be compatible with lesser featured equipment so long as it had a MIDI controller to run the sequence. However, different products used different sounds attached to their MIDI controllers. Some tied into the Yamaha FM chip to simulate instruments, some daughterboards of samples had very different sound qualities; meaning that no single sequence performance would be accurate to every other General Midi device.
All of these considerations in the products reflected the high cost of memory storage which rapidly declined with the optical CD format.
Pre-recorded and streaming music
Taking entirely pre-recorded music had many advantages over sequencing for sound quality. Music could be produced freely with any kind and number of instruments, allowing developers to simply record one track to be played back during the game. Quality was only limited by the effort put into mastering the track itself. Memory space costs that was previously a concern was somewhat addressed with optical media becoming the dominant media for software games. CD quality audio allowed for music and voice that had the potential to be truly indistinguishable from any other source or genre of music.In fourth generation home video games and PCs this was limited to playing a Red Book audio track from a CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
while the game was in play (such as Sonic CD). Some of the earliest examples of Red Book audio in video games were later titles of the Ys series, composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Mieko Ishikawa, and arranged by Ryo Yunemitsu for the TurboGrafx-CD from 1989. The Ys soundtracks are still regarded as some of the most influential video game music ever composed.
However, there were several disadvantages of regular CD-audio. Optical drive technology was still limited in spindle speed, so playing an audio track from the game CD meant that the system could not access data again until it stopped the track from playing. Looping
Music loop
In electroacoustic music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns...
, the most common form of game music, was also problem as when the laser reached the end of a track, it had to move itself back to the beginning to start reading again causing an audible gap in playback.
To address these drawbacks, some PC game developers designed their own container formats in house, for each application in some cases, to stream compressed audio. This would cut back on memory used for music on the CD, allowed for much lower latency and seek time when finding and starting to play music, and also allowed for much smoother looping due to being able to buffer
Buffer (computer science)
In computer science, a buffer is a region of a physical memory storage used to temporarily hold data while it is being moved from one place to another. Typically, the data is stored in a buffer as it is retrieved from an input device or just before it is sent to an output device...
the data. A minor drawback was that use of compressed audio meant it had to be decompressed which put load on the CPU of a system. As computing power increased, this load became minimal, and in some cases dedicated chips in a computer (such as a sound card) would actually handle all the decompressing.
Fifth generation home console systems also developed specialised streaming formats and containers for compressed audio playback. Sony would call theirs Yellow Book
Yellow Book (CD standard)
The Yellow Book is the standard that defines the format of CD-ROMs. The Yellow Book, created by Sony and Philips, was the first extension of the Red Book. It is named after one of a set of color-bound books that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats.-External links:The...
, and offer the standard to other companies. Games would take full advantage of this ability, sometimes with highly praised results (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, known in Japan as , is an action-adventure game developed and published by Konami in 1997. It is the 14th installment of the Castlevania series, the first installment released for the PlayStation, and a direct sequel to Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.Symphony of the...
). Games ported from arcade machines, which continued to use FM synthesis, often saw superior pre-recorded music streams on their home console counterparts (Street Fighter Alpha 2
Street Fighter Alpha 2
Street Fighter Alpha 2, known as in Japan, Asia and South America, is a fighting game originally released for the CPS II arcade hardware by Capcom. The game is both a sequel and a remake to the previous years Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams, which is itself a prequel to the Street Fighter...
). Even though the game systems were capable of "CD quality" sound, these compressed audio tracks were not true "CD quality." Many of them had lower sampling rates, but not so significant that most consumers would notice. Using a compressed stream allowed game designers to play back streamed music and still be able to access other data on the disc without interruption of the music, at the cost of CPU power used to render the audio stream. Manipulating the stream any further would require a far more significant level of CPU power available in the 5th generation.
Some games, such as the Wipeout
Wipeout (video game series)
Wipeout is a series of futuristic anti-gravity racing games developed by SCE Studio Liverpool. The series is well-known for its fast-paced gameplay and high-quality 3D visual design, as well as its association with electronica and electronic dance music.-Gameplay:Wipeout is a racing series that...
series, continued to use full redbook CD audio for their soundtracks.
This overall freedom offered to music composers gave video game music the equal footing with other popular music it had lacked. A musician could now, with no need to learn about programming or the game architecture itself, independently produce the music to their satisfaction. This flexibility would be exercised as popular mainstream musicians would be using their talents for video games specifically. An early example is Way of the Warrior on the 3DO
3DO Interactive Multiplayer
The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer is a video game console originally produced by Panasonic in 1993. Further renditions of the hardware were released in 1994 by Sanyo and Goldstar. The consoles were manufactured according to specifications created by The 3DO Company, and were originally designed by...
, with music by White Zombie. A more well-known example is Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
's score for Quake.
An alternate approach, as with the TMNT arcade, was to take pre-existing music not written exclusively for the game and use it in the game. The game Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter is the third installment of the X-Wing computer game series, although it is not a regular part of the series....
and subsequent Star Wars games took music composed by John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
for the Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
films of the 1970s and 1980s and used it for the game soundtracks.
Both using new music streams made specifically for the game, and using previously released/recorded music streams are common approaches for developing sound tracks to this day. It is common for X-games sports-based video games to come with some popular artists recent releases (SSX, Tony Hawk, Initial D), as well as any game with heavy cultural demographic theme that has tie-in to music (Need For Speed: Underground
Need for Speed: Underground
Need for Speed: Underground is the seventh racing game in the Need for Speed video game series developed by EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts in 2003...
, Gran Turismo
Gran Turismo (series)
is a popular and critically acclaimed series of racing simulation video games developed by Polyphony Digital.Developed exclusively for PlayStation systems, Gran Turismo games are intended to simulate the appearance and performance of a large selection of vehicles, nearly all of which are licensed...
, and Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto (series)
Grand Theft Auto is a multi-award-winning British video game series created in the United Kingdom by Dave Jones, then later by brothers Dan Houser and Sam Houser, and game designer Zachary Clarke. It is primarily developed by Edinburgh based Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games...
). Sometimes a hybrid of the two are used, such as in Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution, abbreviated DDR, and previously known as Dancing Stage in Europe and Australasia, is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, Dance Dance Revolution is the...
.
Sequencing samples continue to be used in modern gaming for many uses, mostly RPGs. Sometimes a cross between sequencing samples, and streaming music is used. Games such as Republic: The Revolution
Republic: The Revolution
Republic: The Revolution is a computer game produced by Elixir Studios, founded by Demis Hassabis, a former programmer of Lionhead Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. It is a depiction of grassroots political action, where one attempts to put their preferred government in power. It is set...
(music composed by James Hannigan
James Hannigan
James Hannigan is an award-winning British film, television and video game composer who has composed music for various entries in the Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Command & Conquer, Wing Commander, Warhammer and Grand Prix series' of games.-Career:Notable early game credits of Hannigan...
) and Command & Conquer: Generals
Command & Conquer: Generals
Command & Conquer: Generals is a real-time strategy game in the Command & Conquer series. Generals utilizes SAGE...
(music composed by Bill Brown) have utilised sophisticated systems governing the flow of incidental music by stringing together short phrases based on the action on screen and the player's most recent choices (see dynamic music
Dynamic music
Dynamic music is a concept used in many video games, whereby specific events cause the background music to change. Its first uses in major video games were Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. It has since been used in such games as Mushroom Men and Guitar Hero...
). Other games dynamically mixed the sound on the game based on cues of the game environment.
As processing power increased dramatically in the 6th generation of home consoles, it became possible to apply special effects in realtime to streamed audio. In SSX
SSX
SSX is the first in the SSX series of snowboarding video games...
, a recent video game series, if a snowboarder takes to the air after jumping from a ramp, the music softens or muffles a bit, and the ambient noise of wind and air blowing becomes louder to emphasize being airborne. When the snowboarder lands, the music resumes regular playback until its next "cue". The LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
company pioneered this interactive music technique with their iMUSE system, used in their early adventure games and the Star Wars flight simulators Star Wars: X-Wing
Star Wars: X-Wing
Star Wars: X-Wing is the first LucasArts DOS computer game set in the Star Wars universe, as well as the lead title in the X-Wing computer game series. It simulates the experience of combat in the A-wing, X-wing, and Y-wing starfighters of the Rebel Alliance...
and Star Wars: TIE Fighter
Star Wars: TIE Fighter
Star Wars: TIE Fighter, a 1994 space flight simulator/space combat computer game, is the sequel to Star Wars: X-Wing, and the first game of the series that puts the player on the side of the Galactic Empire....
. Action games such as these will change dynamically to match the amount of danger. Stealth-based games will sometimes rely on such music, either by handling streams differently, or dynamically changing the composition of a sequenced soundtrack.
Personalized soundtracks
Being able to play one's own music during a game in the past usually meant turning down the game audio and using an alternative music player. Some early exceptions were possible on PC/Windows gaming in which it was possible to independently adjust game audio while playing music with a separate program running in the background. Some PC games, such as Quake, play music from the CD while retrieving game data exclusively from the hard disk, thereby allowing the game CD to be swapped for any music CD.Some PlayStation games supported this by swapping the game CD with a music CD, although when the game needed data, you had to swap the CDs again. One of the earliest games, Ridge Racer, was loaded entirely into RAM, letting the player insert a music CD to provide a soundtrack throughout the entirety of the gameplay. In Vib Ribbon, this became a gameplay feature, with the game generating levels based entirely on the music on whatever CD the player inserted.
Microsoft's Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
, a competitor in the sixth generation of home consoles opened new possibilities. Its ability to copy music from a CD onto its internal hard drive allowed gamers to use their own music more seamlessly with gameplay than ever before. The feature, called Custom Soundtrack, had to be enabled by the game developer. The feature carried over into the seventh generation with the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
except it is now supported by the system software and enabled at any point.
The Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
is also able to play custom soundtracks if it is enabled by the game (Excite Truck, Endless Ocean).
The PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
can, in games like Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City and FIFA 08
FIFA 08
FIFA 08 is the 2008 installment of EA Sports' series of football video games. Developed by EA Canada, it is published by Electronic Arts worldwide under the EA Sports label. It was released on all popular gaming formats in September 2007 in Europe, Australia, and Asia, and in October 2007 in North...
, play music from a Memory Stick
Memory Stick
Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, launched by Sony in October 1998, and is also used in general to describe the whole family of Memory Sticks...
.
The PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
has the ability to utilize custom soundtracks in games using music saved on the hard drive, however few game developers have used this function so far. MLB 08: The Show, released in North America on March 4, 2008, has a My MLB sound track feature which allows the user to play music tracks of their choice saved on the hard drive of their PS3, rather than the preprogrammed tracks incorporated into the game by the developer. An update to Wipeout HD
Wipeout HD
Wipeout HD, trademarked and stylised as WipEout HD, is the eighth title in the Wipeout racing video game series, developed by Sony Liverpool for the PlayStation 3 console...
, released on the PlayStation Network, was made to also incorporate this feature.
In Audiosurf
Audiosurf
Audiosurf is a puzzle/rhythm hybrid game created by Invisible Handlebar, a personal company created by Dylan Fitterer. Its track-like stages visually mimic the music the player chooses, while the player races across several lanes collecting colored blocks that appear in sync with the music...
, custom soundtracks are the main aspect of the game. Users have to pick a music file to be analyzed. The game will generate a race track based on tempo, pitch and complexity of the sound. The user will then race on this track, synchronized with the music.
Current application and future developments
The Xbox 360 supports Dolby DigitalDolby Digital
Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
software, sampling and playback rate of 16-bit @ 48 kHz (internal; with 24-bit hardware D/A converters), hardware codec streaming, and potential of 256 audio simultaneous channels. While powerful and flexible, none of these features represent any major change in how game music is made from the last generation of console systems. PCs continue to rely on third-party devices for in-game sound reproduction, and SoundBlaster, despite being largely the only major player in the entertainment audio expansion card business, continues to advance its product development at a significant pace.
The PlayStation 3 handles multiple types of surround sound technology, including Dolby TrueHD
Dolby TrueHD
Dolby TrueHD is an advanced lossless multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories which is intended primarily for high-definition home-entertainment equipment such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. It is the successor to the AC-3 Dolby Digital surround sound codec which was used as the...
and DTS-HD, with up to 7.1 channels, and with sampling rates of up to 192 kHz.
Nintendo's Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
console shares many audio components with the Nintendo GameCube
Nintendo GameCube
The , officially abbreviated to NGC in Japan and GCN in other regions, is a sixth generation video game console released by Nintendo on September 15, 2001 in Japan, November 18, 2001 in North America, May 3, 2002 in Europe, and May 17, 2002 in Australia...
from the previous generation, including Dolby Pro Logic II. These features are extensions of technology already currently in use.
The game developer of today has many choices on how to develop music. More likely, changes in video game music creation will have very little to do with technology and more to do with other factors of game development as a business whole. As sales of video game music separate from the game itself became marketable in the west (compared to Japan where game music CDs had been selling for years), business elements also wield a level of influence that it had little before. Music from outside the game developer's immediate employment, such as music composers and pop artists, have been contracted to produce game music just as they would for a theatrical movie. Many other factors have growing influence, such as editing for content, politics on some level of the development, executive input and other elements.
Game music as a genre
Many games for the Nintendo Entertainment System and other early game consoles feature a similar style of musical composition that is sometimes described as the "video game genre." Some aspects of this style continue to influence certain music today, though gamers do not associate many modern game soundtracks with the older style. The genre's compositional elements largely developed due to technological restraints, while also being influenced by electronic musicElectronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
bands, particularly Yellow Magic Orchestra
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Sakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band...
(YMO), who were popular during the late 1970s to 1980s. YMO sampled sounds from several classic arcade games in their early albums, most notably Space Invaders
Space Invaders
is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to...
in the 1978 hit song "Computer Game". In turn, the band would have a major influence on much of the video game music produced during the 8-bit
History of video game consoles (third generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the third generation began on July 15, 1983, with the Japanese release of both the Nintendo Family Computer and Sega SG-1000...
and 16-bit eras
History of video game consoles (fourth generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the fourth generation began on October 30, 1987 with the Japanese release of Nippon Electric Company's PC Engine...
.
Features of the video game music genre include:
- Pieces designed to repeat indefinitely, rather than having an arranged ending or fading out.
- Pieces lacking lyrics and playing over gameplay sounds.
- Limited polyphony. Only three notes can be played simultaneously on the Nintendo Entertainment System. A great deal of effort was put into composition to create the illusion of more notes playing at once.
Although the tones featured in NES music can be thought of emulating a traditional four-piece rock band (triangle wave used as a bass, two pulse waves analogous to two guitars, and a white noise channel used for drums), composers would often go out of their way to compose complex and rapid sequences of notes, in part because of the restrictions mentioned above. This is similar to music composition during the Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
period, when composers, particularly when creating solo pieces, focused on musical embellishments to compensate for instruments such as the harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
that do not allow for expressive dynamics. For the same reason, many early compositions also feature a distinct jazz influence. These would overlap with later influences from heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
and j-pop
J-pop
, an abbreviation for Japanese pop, is a musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in 1960s music, such as The Beatles, and replaced kayōkyoku in the Japanese music scene...
music, resulting in an equally distinct compositional style in the 16-bit era.
In an unrelated but parallel course in the European and North American developer scene, similar limitations were driving the musical style of home computer games. Module file
Module file
Module files are a family of music file formats originating from the MOD file format on Amiga systems used in late 1980s...
format music, particularly MOD
MOD (file format)
MOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”...
, used similar techniques but was more heavily influenced from the electronic music scene as it developed, and resulted in another very distinct subgenre. Demos and the developing demoscene
Demoscene
The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
played a big part in the early years, and still influence video game music today.
As technological limitations gradually lifted, composers were given more freedom and with the advent of CD-ROM pre-recorded soundtracks came to dominate, resulting in a noticeable shift in composition and voicing style.
As the divisions between movies and video games has blurred, so have divisions between film scores and video game scores. Adventure and fantasy movies have similar needs to adventure and fantasy games, i.e. fanfare, traveling, hero's theme and so on. Some composers have written scores in both genres. One noted example is U.S. composer Michael Giacchino
Michael Giacchino
Michael Giacchino is an American composer who has composed scores for movies, television series and video games. Some of his most notable works include the scores to television series such as Lost, Alias and Fringe, games such as the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series, and films such as...
who composed the soundtrack for the game Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President, in the name of Congress, upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her...
and later composed for the television series such as Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
and the score for the movies The Incredibles
The Incredibles
The Incredibles is a 2004 American computer-animated action-comedy superhero film about a family of superheroes who are forced to hide their powers. It was written and directed by Brad Bird, a former director and executive consultant of The Simpsons, and was produced by Pixar and distributed by...
(2004) and Star Trek (2009).
Video game music outside video games
Appreciation for video game music, particularly music from the thirdHistory of video game consoles (third generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the third generation began on July 15, 1983, with the Japanese release of both the Nintendo Family Computer and Sega SG-1000...
and fourth
History of video game consoles (fourth generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the fourth generation began on October 30, 1987 with the Japanese release of Nippon Electric Company's PC Engine...
generations of home video game console and sometimes newer generations, continues today in very strong representation in both fans and composers alike, even out of the context of a video game. Melodies and themes from 20 years ago continue to be re-used in newer generations of video games. Themes from the original Metroid
Metroid
is an action-adventure video game, and the first entry in the Metroid series. It was co-developed by Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division and Intelligent Systems, and was released in Japan in August 1986, in North America in August 1987, and in Europe in January 1988...
by Hirokazu Tanaka
Hirokazu Tanaka
is a Japanese composer and musician, best known for his scores for various video games produced by Nintendo. He is also the current President of Creatures, Inc.-Video game soundtracks:*Radar Scope *Space Firebird...
can still be heard in Metroid games from today as arranged by Kenji Yamamoto.
Video game music soundtracks were sold separately on CD in Japan well before the practice spread to other countries. Interpretive albums, remixes and live performances were also common variations to original soundtracks (OSTs). Koichi Sugiyama
Koichi Sugiyama
is a Japanese music composer, council member of JASRAC , and honorary chairman of the Japanese Backgammon Society...
was an early figure in this practice sub-genres, and following the release of the first Dragon Quest
Dragon Warrior
Dragon Warrior, known as in Japan, is the first role-playing video game in the Dragon Quest media franchise. It was developed by Chunsoft for the Nintendo Entertainment System and published by Enix in Japan in 1986...
game in 1986, a live performance CD of his compositions was released and performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
(then later by other groups including the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra
Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra
The claims to be the oldest classical orchestra in Japan, having been founded in Nagoya in 1911. It moved to Tokyo in 1938 and has some 166 members as of 2005....
, and NHK Symphony). Yuzo Koshiro
Yuzo Koshiro
is a Japanese video game music composer and audio programmer. He is regarded as one of the most influential innovators in chiptune music and video game sound design...
, another early figure, released a live performance of the Actraiser
ActRaiser
is a 1990 Super Nintendo Entertainment System action and city-building simulation game developed by Quintet and published by Enix that combines traditional side-scrolling platforming with urban planning god game sections. A sequel, ActRaiser 2, was released for the Super Nintendo in 1993...
soundtrack. Both Koshiro's and fellow Falcom
Falcom
is a Japanese computer game company. The company was founded in March 1981 by Masayuki Kato. Falcom has played a definite role in the growth and development of the Japanese personal computer software industry. The company released the first Japanese computer role-playing game in 1983 and followed...
composer Mieko Ishikawa's contributions to Ys
Ys (video game)
is a Japanese computer and console role-playing video game series, and Nihon Falcom corporation's flagship franchise. It started on the NEC PC-8801 in 1987, created by Masaya Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki...
music would have such long lasting impact that there were more albums released of Ys music than of almost all other game-type music.
Like anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
soundtracks, these soundtracks and even sheet music books were usually marketed exclusively in Japan. Therefore, interested non-Japanese gamers have to import the soundtracks and/or sheet music books through on or offline firms specifically dedicated to video game soundtrack imports. This has been somewhat less of an issue more recently as domestic publishers of anime and video games have been producing western equivalent versions of the OSTs for sale in UK and US, but only for the most popular titles in most cases.
Other original composers of the lasting themes from this time have gone on to manage symphonic concert performances to the public exhibiting their work in the games. Koichi Sugiyama was once again the first in this practice in 1987 with his "Family Classic Concert" and has continued concert performances almost annually. In 1991, he also formed a series called Orchestral Game Concerts, notable for featuring other talented game composers such as Yoko Kanno
Yoko Kanno
is a composer, arranger and musician best known for her work on the soundtracks for many games, anime films, TV series, live-action movies, and advertisements...
(Nobunaga's Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Uncharted Waters), Nobuo Uematsu
Nobuo Uematsu
is a Japanese video game composer, best known for scoring the majority of titles in the Final Fantasy series. He is considered as one of the most famous and respected composers in the video game community...
(Final Fantasy), Keiichi Suzuki (Mother/Earthbound), and Kentaro Haneda (Wizardry).
Global popularity of video game music would begin to surge with Square
Square (company)
was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix...
's 1990s successes, particularly with Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy VI
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square , released in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as a part of the Final Fantasy series. Set in a fantasy world with a technology level equivalent to that of the Second Industrial Revolution, the game's story focuses on a...
, Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII
is a role-playing video game developed by Square and published by Sony Computer Entertainment as the seventh installment in the Final Fantasy series. It was originally released in 1997 for the Sony PlayStation and was re-released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows-based personal computers and in 2009...
and Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII
is a role-playing video game released for the PlayStation in 1999 and for Windows-based personal computers in 2000. It was developed and published by Square as the Final Fantasy series' eighth title, removing magic point-based spell-casting and the first title to consistently use realistically...
by Nobuo Uematsu and with Chrono Trigger
Chrono Trigger
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995. Chrono Triggers development team included three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team": Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Square's Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, a...
, Xenogears
Xenogears
is a science-fiction console role-playing game developed and published by Square for Sony's PlayStation. It was released on February 11, 1998 in Japan and on October 20, 1998 in North America. The game was never released in PAL territories...
and Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, which was released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System...
by Yasunori Mitsuda
Yasunori Mitsuda
is a Japanese video game composer, sound programmer, and musician. He has composed music for or worked on over 35 games, and has contributed to over 15 other albums...
. Compositions by Nobuo Uematsu on Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy IV
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square in 1991 as a part of the Final Fantasy series. The game was originally released for the Super Famicom in Japan and has since then been rereleased for many other platforms with varying modifications. An enhanced remake with 3D graphics...
were arranged into Final Fantasy IV: Celtic Moon, a live performance by string musicians with strong celtic influence recorded in Ireland. The Love Theme from the same game has been used as an instructional piece of music in Japanese schools. At least eight Final Fantasy soundtrack albums (VI, VII, VIII, IX
Final Fantasy IX
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation video game console. It is the ninth title in the Final Fantasy series. The game introduced new features to the series like the 'Active Time Event', 'Mognet' and a unique equipment and skill system.Final Fantasy IXs...
, X
Final Fantasy X
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square as the tenth title in the Final Fantasy series. It was released in 2001 for Sony's PlayStation 2, and will be re-released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita in 2012...
, X-2
Final Fantasy X
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square as the tenth title in the Final Fantasy series. It was released in 2001 for Sony's PlayStation 2, and will be re-released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita in 2012...
, XII
Final Fantasy XII
is a console role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2. Released in 2006, it is the twelfth title in the Final Fantasy series and the last in the series to be released exclusively on the PlayStation platform...
, and XIII
Final Fantasy XIII
is a console role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Released in 2009 in Japan and 2010 in North America and PAL regions, it is the thirteenth major installment in the Final Fantasy series...
) debuted in the top ten of the Oricon
Oricon
, established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan. It started as , which was founded by Sōkō Koike in November 1967 and became known for its music charts. Oricon Inc...
albums chart in Japan, where at least five of them (VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X) sold more than 100,000 copies each in Japan alone, with the best-selling Final Fantasy VIII soundtrack selling 300,000 copies in that country. In addition, at least eight Square Enix
Square Enix
is a Japanese video game and publishing company best known for its console role-playing game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and the action-RPG Kingdom Hearts series...
singles (from Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy
is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and is developed and owned by Square Enix . The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science-fantasy role-playing video games , but includes motion pictures, anime, printed media, and other merchandise...
and Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts
is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 video game console. The first game in the Kingdom Hearts series, it is the result of a collaboration between Square Enix and The Walt Disney Company. The game combines characters and settings from Disney...
) have sold more than 100,000 copies in Japan: "Hikari
Hikari (song)
is Hikaru Utada's 10th Japanese-language single , and is also her 3rd single on the Deep River album. Its release date was March 20, 2002...
" (600,000), "Eyes on Me
Eyes on Me (Faye Wong song)
"Eyes on Me" is a pop ballad performed by Chinese diva Faye Wong as a love theme for the video game Final Fantasy VIII. The song's lyrics, written in somewhat imperfect English by Kako Someya, unveil the hopes of a night club singer for romance with a member of her audience.-Single:The song was...
" (500,000), "Real Emotion/1000 no Kotoba
Real Emotion/1000 no Kotoba
is a double A-side by Kumi Koda, consisting of the songs "Real Emotion" and "1000 no Kotoba" , which are used as the opening and closing themes respectively of Square Enix's game Final Fantasy X-2, which was used in a cut-scene in the game as well as its ending credits."1000 no Kotoba" was arranged...
" (280,000), "Melodies of Life", "Suteki Da Ne", "Passion", "Redemption
Redemption (song)
-See also:*Music of the Final Fantasy VII series...
", and "Hoshi no Nai Sekai".
On August 20, 2003, for the first time outside Japan, music written for video games such as Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda was performed by a live orchestra, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra
Czech National Symphony Orchestra
Czech National Symphony Orchestra is a symphony orchestra in Prague in the Czech Republic. It was established in 1993 by trumpet player Jan Hasenöhrl...
in a Symphonic Game Music Concert
Symphonic Game Music Concert
The Symphonic Game Music Concerts are a series of award-winning, annual German video game music concerts initiated in 2003, notable for being the longest running and the first of their kind outside of Japan...
in Leipzig, Germany at the Gewandhaus concert hall. This event was held as the official opening ceremony of Europe's biggest trading fair for video games, the GC Games Convention and repeated in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. On November 17, 2003, Square Enix launched the Final Fantasy Radio on America Online. The radio station has initially featured complete tracks from Final Fantasy XI
Final Fantasy XI
, also known as Final Fantasy XI Online, is a MMORPG developed and published by Square as part of the Final Fantasy series. It was released in Japan on Sony's PlayStation 2 on May 16, 2002, and was released for Microsoft's Windows-based personal computers in November 2002...
and Final Fantasy XI: Rise of Zilart
Final Fantasy XI
, also known as Final Fantasy XI Online, is a MMORPG developed and published by Square as part of the Final Fantasy series. It was released in Japan on Sony's PlayStation 2 on May 16, 2002, and was released for Microsoft's Windows-based personal computers in November 2002...
and samplings from Final Fantasy VII through Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square as the tenth title in the Final Fantasy series. It was released in 2001 for Sony's PlayStation 2, and will be re-released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita in 2012...
. The first officially sanctioned Final Fantasy concert in the United States was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall
Walt Disney Concert Hall
The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, California is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center. Bounded by Hope Street, Grand Avenue, 1st and 2nd Streets, it seats 2,265 people and serves as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and the...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, on May 10, 2004. All seats at the concert were sold out in a single day. "Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy" followed and was performed at various cities across the United States.
On July 6, 2005, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra also held a Video Games Live
Video Games Live
Video Games Live is a concert series created and produced by industry veterans and video game composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall. The concerts consist of segments of video game music performed by a live orchestra with video footage and synchronized lighting and effects, as well as several...
concert, which was founded by video game music composers Tommy Tallarico
Tommy Tallarico
Tommy Tallarico is an American video game music composer and musician. He is best known as the co-creator of the concert series Video Games Live...
and Jack Wall
Jack Wall (composer)
Jack Wall is an American video game music composer. He has worked on video game music for over 20 games including the Myst franchise, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect...
at the Hollywood Bowl
Hollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances...
. This concert featured a variety of video game music, ranging from Pong to Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
. It also incorporated real-time video feeds that were in sync with the music, as well as laser and light special effects. Video Games Live has been touring worldwide since. On August 20, 2006, the Malmö Symphonic Orchestra with host Orvar Säfström
Orvar Säfström
Orvar Säfström is one of Sweden's most popular film reviewers and video game journalists. Together with Emma Gray, he hosted Filmkrönikan on the Swedish television network SVT from 2003 to 2006...
performed an outdoor concert of game music in Malmö
Malmö
Malmö , in the southernmost province of Scania, is the third most populous city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg.Malmö is the seat of Malmö Municipality and the capital of Skåne County...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
before an audience of 17,000, currently the attendance record for a game music concert. From April 20–27, 2007, Eminence Symphony Orchestra
Eminence Symphony Orchestra
- Piano Stories :Alexey Yemtsov performed the first Piano Stories concert on 15 April, at Verbrugghen Hall. Featuring work from Studio Ghibli, Yoko Kanno and Shirō Sagisu, Piano Stories marked the beginning of a series of concerts celebrating piano scores from a selection of anime and gaming...
, an orchestra dedicated to video game and anime music, performed the first part of their annual tour, the "A Night in Fantasia" concert series in Australia. Whilst Eminence had performed video game music as part of their concerts since their inception, the 2007 concert marked the first time ever that the entire setlist was pieces from video games. Up to seven of the world's most famous game composers were also in attendance as special guests.
Popular music
In the popular musicPopular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
industry, video game music and sounds have appeared in songs by various popular artists, with arcade game sounds having had a particularly strong influence on the hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
, pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
(particularly synthpop
Synthpop
Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...
) and electro music genres during the golden age of video arcade games in the early 1980s. Arcade game sounds had an influence on synthpop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Sakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band...
, who sampled Space Invaders sounds in their influential 1978 debut album, particularly the hit song "Computer Game". In turn, the band would have a major influence on much of the video game music produced during the 8-bit
History of video game consoles (third generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the third generation began on July 15, 1983, with the Japanese release of both the Nintendo Family Computer and Sega SG-1000...
and 16-bit eras
History of video game consoles (fourth generation)
In the history of computer and video games, the fourth generation began on October 30, 1987 with the Japanese release of Nippon Electric Company's PC Engine...
.
Other pop songs based on Space Invaders soon followed, including "Disco Space Invaders" (1979) by Funny Stuff, "Space Invaders" (1980) by Playback, and the hit songs "Space Invader
Pretenders (album)
Pretenders is the debut studio album by the British New Wave band The Pretenders, released on 19 January 1980 on Real Records . A combination of rock, punk, and pop music, this album made the band famous...
" (1980) by The Pretenders and "Space Invaders" (1980) by Uncle Vic. Buckner & Garcia
Buckner & Garcia
Buckner & Garcia was a duo consisting of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia from Akron, Ohio. Their first collaboration was in 1980, when they wrote a novelty Christmas song, "Merry Christmas in the NFL", imagining Howard Cosell as Santa Claus...
produced a successful album dedicated to video game music in 1982, Pac-Man Fever
Pac-Man Fever (album)
Pac-Man Fever is a 1982 concept album recorded by Buckner & Garcia. It is also the name of the first song on that album. Each song on the album is about a different classic arcade game, and uses sound effects from that game. The album was released as an LP, a cassette, an 8-track tape, and later...
. Former YMO member Haruomi Hosono
Haruomi Hosono
, also known as Harry Hosono, is a Japanese popular musician, best known internationally as a key member of the rock band Happy End and the pioneering electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra.-Biography:...
also released a 1984 album produced entirely from Namco
Namco
is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...
arcade game
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
samples entitled Video Game Music, an early example of a chiptune
Chiptune
A chiptune, also known as chip music, is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of vintage computers and video game consoles, as well as with other methods such as emulation. In the early 1980s, personal computers became cheaper and more accessible than they had previously...
record and the first video game music album. Warp's record "Testone
WarpVision
WarpVision: The Videos 1989-2004 is a DVD released by British record label Warp Records on September 27, 2004, which features most of the music videos produced for their artists in the 1989-2004 period...
" (1990) by Sweet Exorcist (Richard H. Kirk
Richard H. Kirk
Richard H. Kirk is an English musician specialising in electronic music since the 1970s.-Background:Richard H. Kirk first came to prominence in the 1970s as a member of the seminal industrial band Cabaret Voltaire...
and Richard Barratt
All Seeing I
The All Seeing I is an English electronic music group from Sheffield, comprising Dean Honer, Jason Buckle and DJ Parrot...
) sampled video game sounds from YMO's "Computer Game" and defined Sheffield's bleep techno scene in the early 1990s.
In more recent times, "video game beats" have appeared in popular songs such as Kesha
Kesha
Kesha village is a small village nestled in the mountains of Yongshun County, northwestern Hunan province, China, located at latitude 29 05' 50", longitude 109 57' 9". The name is pronounced in Standard Chinese. The official language is Manderin Chinese....
's "Tik Tok
TiK ToK
"Tik Tok" is the debut single by American recording artist Kesha. The song was produced by Benny Blanco and Dr. Luke and co-written by Blanco, Dr. Luke and Kesha. It was released on August 7, 2009 as the lead single from Kesha's debut studio album, Animal...
", the best-selling single of 2010, as well as "U Should Know Better" by Robyn
Robyn
Robin Miriam Carlsson , better known by her stage name Robyn, is a Swedish recording artist, singer, and songwriter. Robyn became known in the late nineties for her worldwide dance-pop hit "Do You Know " from her debut album Robyn Is Here . She co-wrote the song "Du gör mig hel igen" for...
featuring Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg
Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. , better known by his stage name Snoop Dogg, is an American rapper, record producer, and actor. Snoop is best known as a rapper in the West Coast hip hop scene, and for being one of Dr. Dre's most notable protégés. Snoop Dogg was a Crip gang member while in high school...
, and "Hellbound" by Eminem
Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III , better known by his stage name Eminem or his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group project, D12, to mainstream recognition...
. The influence of video game music can also be seen in contemporary electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
music by artists such as Dizzee Rascal
Dizzee Rascal
Dylan Kwabena Mills , better known by his stage name Dizzee Rascal, is a Ghanaian British rapper, songwriter and record producer. His music is a blend of garage, hip hop, grime, ragga, pop and electronic music, with eclectic samples and more exotic styles...
and Kieran Hebden. Grime
Grime (music)
Grime is a style of music that emerged from Bow, East London, England in the early 2000s, primarily as a development of UK garage, dancehall, and hip hop...
music in particular samples sawtooth wave
Sawtooth wave
The sawtooth wave is a kind of non-sinusoidal waveform. It is named a sawtooth based on its resemblance to the teeth on the blade of a saw....
sounds from video games which were popular in East London
East London
East London is a city on the southeast coast of South Africa, situated at 32.97°S and 27.87°E in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality of the Eastern Cape province. The city lies on the Indian Ocean coast, largely between the Buffalo River and the Nahoon River, and is the country's only river...
.
Video game music education
Video game music has become part of the curriculum of traditional schools and universities. Berklee College of MusicBerklee College of Music
Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...
, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and the New England Conservatory all feature or are adding game music to their curricula. Game sound & music design has also been part of the curriculum since 2003 at the Utrecht School of the Arts
Utrecht School of the Arts
The Utrecht School of the Arts is a performing arts and visual arts educational institution in Utrecht, Netherlands. The institution has 570 teachers and staff members...
(Faculty of Art, Media and Technology). Training seminars such as GameSoundCon also feature classes in how to compose video game music.
Extracurricular organizations devoted to the performance of video game music are being established in tandem to these additions to the curriculum. The University of Maryland Gamer Symphony Orchestra
University of Maryland Gamer Symphony Orchestra
The Gamer Symphony Orchestra at the University of Maryland is a student-run symphony orchestra and chorus at the University of Maryland. The orchestra is the first collegiate ensemble to draw its repertoire exclusively from the music of video games...
performs self-arranged video game music and the Video Game Orchestra
Video Game Orchestra
Video Game Orchestra is an orchestra that performs contemporary arrangements of video game music with an orchestra, choir, and rock band. The orchestra consists of the regional and international award-winning musicians from over 20 countries...
is a semiprofessional outgrowth of students from the Berklee College of Music and other Boston-area schools. The establishment of these groups is also occurring at the secondary
Secondary education
Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...
level.
Awards
Since 2010, the Ivor Novello AwardsIvor Novello Awards
The Ivor Novello Awards, named after the Cardiff born entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and composing. They are presented annually in London by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and were first introduced in 1955.Nicknamed The Ivors, the awards take place...
has included a category for best original video game score. The 2010 award winner was Killzone 2 (Composed by Joris de Man), and in 2011, Napoleon: Total War
Napoleon: Total War
Napoleon: Total War is a turn-based strategy and real-time tactics video game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Sega for the PC. Napoleon was released in North America on 23 February 2010, and in Europe on February 26. The game is the sixth stand-alone instalment in the Total...
(Composers: Richard Beddow, Richard Birdsall, Ian Livingstone
Ian Livingstone (composer)
Ian Livingstone is a British video game, film and TV music composer.Livingstone began his professional career as session musician engineer and midi programmer, recording and touring Europe with a number of successful bands....
)
Spike Video Game Awards includes awards for Best Soundtrack, Best Song in a Game, and Best Original Score.
From 2012, the Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
s will explicitly name "video game music" as part of its "Visual Media (Motion, Television, Video Game Music, or Other Visual Media)" awards. The four Visual Media awards are: Best Music for Visual Media, Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, Best Song Written for Visual Media. In 2011, Baba Yetu
Baba Yetu
"Baba Yetu" is a song by composer Christopher Tin.While 'Baba Yetu' is the opening track on Tin's debut album, "Calling All Dawns", the song was originally created to serve as the theme song for the video game Civilization IV...
, a song from Civilization IV
Civilization IV
Sid Meier's Civilization IV is a turn-based strategy, 4X computer game released in 2005 and developed by lead designer Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and Meier's studio Firaxis Games. It is the fourth installment of the Civilization series...
, won the 53rd annual music awards' Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists
Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
The Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist has been awarded since 1963. The award is presented to the arranger of the music.There have been several minor changes to the name of the award:...
, the first video game music to be nominated for (or to win) a Grammy.
The International Film Music Critics Association
International Film Music Critics Association
The International Film Music Critics Association is a professional association for online, print and radio journalists who specialize in writing about original film and television music.-History and purpose:...
(IFMCA) has a Best Original Score for Interactive Media award.
Hollywood Music In Media Awards includes a Best Original Video Game Score award.
Machinima.com
Machinima.com
Machinima.com is a gaming and media streaming website, that aims to be a hub for machinima, the art of creating animated videos in real-time virtual 3-D environments. The site features machinima-related articles, and news. Machinima productions can be submitted for possible redistribution after...
's Inside Gaming
Inside Gaming
Inside Gaming is a fifteen-minute to thirty minute programme delivered in a documentary format , in which a reporter travels anywhere around the world in order to cover key events related to gaming...
Awards include Best Original Score and Best Sound Design.
The MTV Video Music Award for Best Video Game Soundtrack
MTV Video Music Award for Best Video Game Soundtrack
The MTV Video Music Award for Best Video Game Soundtrack was awarded from 2004 to 2006 as an attempt by MTV to tap into the video gaming community in order to gain greater audiences for its VMAs. When the MTV Video Music Awards were revamped in 2007, this award was eliminated and never brought back....
ran from 2004 to 2006. Additionally an award for Best Video Game Score
MTV Video Music Award for Best Video Game Score
The MTV Video Music Award for Best Video Game Score was only given out in 2006 as a complement to the Best Video Game Soundtrack award. With the 2007 revamp of the VMAs, though, this award was eliminated and never brought back....
was awarded only in 2006.
Fan culture
In addition to these professional deviations, a huge network of English speaking fans has sprung up with the help of emulators and the Internet in recent years.Related music genres
- ChiptuneChiptuneA chiptune, also known as chip music, is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of vintage computers and video game consoles, as well as with other methods such as emulation. In the early 1980s, personal computers became cheaper and more accessible than they had previously...
- Anime music
- BitpopBitpopBitpop is a type of electronic music and also subgenre of Chiptune, where at least part of the music is made using old 8-bit computers and video game consoles. Among systems used are Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari 8-bit Home Computer, Game Boy, Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System...
- Electronic art music
- Electropop
- NintendocoreNintendocoreNintendocore is a music genre that fuses aggressive styles of modern rock with chiptune and video game music...
- Film scoreFilm scoreA film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
- J-popJ-pop, an abbreviation for Japanese pop, is a musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in 1960s music, such as The Beatles, and replaced kayōkyoku in the Japanese music scene...
- Game Boy musicGame Boy musicGame Boy music is a type of chip music produced using a portable gaming console of the Game Boy line. To produce music of the genre, one needs a Game Boy and a cartridge containing appropriate tracking software, such as LSDJ.- Software :...
See also
- Circuit bendingCircuit bendingCircuit bending is the creative customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and small digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators....
- Game rip (audio)Game rip (audio)Within the context of audio -- and video game music in particular—a game rip is the result of taking the audio from a computer/video game and storing it in a format that is more accessible for listening . This is often performed to obtain music that is not available on a soundtrack...
- List of video game musicians
- MAGFestMAGFestMAGFest is an annual convention held in Virginia that celebrates video games and video game music, as well as their surrounding culture...
- Music video gameMusic video gameA music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs...
- OverClocked ReMixOverClocked ReMixOverClocked ReMix, also known as OC ReMix and OCR, is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and paying tribute to video game music through arranging and re-interpreting the songs with new technology and software, as well as by various traditional means...
- VGMusic.comVGMusic.comThe Videogame Music Archive, also known as VGMusic.com or VGMA, is a website that archives MIDI sequences of video game music, ranging from tunes of the NES era to modern pieces featured in Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 games. Currently, there are over 30,000 MIDI sequences hosted on the site across...
- Video Games LiveVideo Games LiveVideo Games Live is a concert series created and produced by industry veterans and video game composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall. The concerts consist of segments of video game music performed by a live orchestra with video footage and synchronized lighting and effects, as well as several...
External links
- GamesSound.com Academic articles on video game sound and music
- Early Video Game Soundtracks 2001 article on video game music, orig. published in In Magazine
- High Score: The New Era of Video Game Music at Tracksounds
- "The Evolution of Video Game Music", All Things ConsideredAll Things ConsideredAll Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...
, April 12, 2008 - List of games with non-original music at uvlist.net
- Pretty Ugly Gamesound Study Website studying pretty and ugly game music and sound.
- CaptivatingSound.com Resources for design of game sound and music.
- Audio and Immersion PhD thesis about game audio and immersion.