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The Development Of Video Game Music
The history of the Video game library music is a particularly interesting site of innovation. To the uninitiated, the chip tunes of the 80s and early 90s video game were ear-bleeding nonsense. Yet the limitations of early synthesiser chips really tested the compositional abilities of many talented music directors. Households internationally are haunted by the echoes of Dreams Come True’s Sonic the Hedgehog soundtracks, and decades on, parents who have never even touched a joypad can recognise such tunes. Many enthusiasts now strive to emulate this sound and in an impressive array of retro-styled games, the grating electronic sound of the early consoles is alive and well. Remakes of legacy titles often make a point of revisiting earlier sounds. Climatic themes in Final Fantasy IV and V contain feature samples of the songs they were based on before bringing out the full digital sound of the rest of the title’s music.
The noughties are widely recognised as the point at which proper audio fidelity was achieved in games, but the nineties featured many notable landmarks. The home computer, always one step ahead of the curve, was creating sophisticated tracks well before the consoles, which were limited for a long time to instruments in their MIDI tables. One of the boldest and earliest endeavours was the dynamic music Lucasarts put into popular point and click adventure ‘Monkey Island 2′. As the player moved from scene to scene, the instruments would neatly segue into the relevant theme. In music composed for games in the later 90s, the techniques of electronica production musicwere common. Unreal engine games (‘Unreal’, ‘Deus Ex’) were particularly renowned for their sample sequenced music.
This period also saw the video game musician becoming more experimental and sophisticated. The soundtrack to PC strategy title ‘Homeworld’ featured a number of tracks that were best described as ‘Industrial Arabic’ due to its use of ethnic wails and instruments. ‘Homeworld’ was also somewhat innovative for using both a choir (‘Agnus Dei’, ‘Adagio for Strings’ in vocal form) and a guest artist (Yes) on the soundtrack. All this is remarkable when you consider that the games of just ten years previous didn’t have enough audio bandwidth for both the music and the sound effects.
Adventure Island (Game Boy) Dinosaur Island [Final]