Outline (not part of work)

I. Introduction

A. What are video games? Why are they important?

1. A medium for telling stories

2. Mass-market and mainstream, plus avant-garde (cite examples), Phantasmagoria

a) So do they articulate societal norms? Are they predominately right-wing texts?

3. Currently exceeds market capitalization of Hollywood movies, VCR rentals, and all of the PC software market.

B. Video Game Music

1. A business

2. An art form

3. Central Objectives of this Paper

a) Expose the history of video game music from a historical progress narrative, paying close attention to technical abilities and limitations

b) Define a cultural space for video game music

c) Putting video game music in a commodity context: when and why does video game music become a marketing tool for game promotion?

d) Analyze the music of specific video games

e) Draw conclusions as to why and how music is important to video games.

4. (can be placed towards the end) Essential Thesis: On an immediate level, a video game’s music is less important than its plot, graphics, and gameplay. However, the strength of a video game extends beyond these traditional interactive elements. Memorable music is the ultimate contributor to a game’s lasting popularity and extended success.

II. Development I: History of Video Game Music

A. The trichotomy of Console, Arcade, and PC Games

B. Early Days, pre-Nintendo

C. Console Wars, NES

1. The tonal melodic line

2. 4-bar repeats

3. Looping soundtracks

4. Discrete Distilled Tonality

a) Definition: A musical style consisting of pure and modulated tones, usually by an FM synthesis chip.

b) Examples: most NES games

5. Golden Age of Video Games

D. Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis (compare to development of sound track, and then color)

E. Advent of CD-Quality Sound

1. The Future: Interactive Audio

a) Microsoft X-box

b) Sound melding

III. Development II: Genre Breakdown and Analysis of Specific Games

A. First-Person Shooter

1. ex Wolfenstein 3D, Quake

B. Fighting

1. ex Street Fighter

C. Racing and Flying: Machine-Mediated Competition

D. Sports

E. Simulation

1. Uniqueness of the Simulation Genre

a) Few games are in it

b) Even fewer are “pure” simulation

c) The role of Will Wright and others at Maxis

2. ex Populous

3. ex SimCity 3000

4. ex The Sims

F. Puzzle

1. ex Tetris

G. Action

1. Definition: A game characterized by completion of levels, where the gamer plays one character (or multiple characters with fundamentally similar controls). Action games have a clearly-defined goal or set of goals.

2. ex Super Mario Bros. Series, Metroid,

H. Adventure and RPG

1. Reliance on text (RPG) and simple interactive elements (Adventures), the most “imaginative” of the categories, and the most reliant on scores to set mood

2. Orchestral Music styles

3. Series over time

a) ex Quest for Glory, with Chance Thomas and his work

4. Transmedia Sensation

a) ex Pokémon: music between the video game and the anime

5. Role of One Composer

a) ex Nobuo Uematsu, Final Fantasy

IV. Conclusion

The Motivation for Glory

Video games are the tour de force of the modern entertainment industry. As one of the late industries of the twentieth century, the rapid growth of the video gaming market is staggering. These games are the products of artists, engineers, and producers, whose work results in a new textual form that is interactive and organic through the versatility of electric media. Electronic games have become the newest, coolest medium for exploration, competition, and storytelling. Indeed, in 1964 McLuhan had the foresight to write, “Games are popular art, collective, social, reactions to the main drive or action of any culture. [They] … are the extensions of social man and of the body politic.” As with other types of multimedia, each design element of a video game contributes to its success or failure. Graphics, narrative, interaction, multiplay, and marketing must all be balanced and perfected to create a blockbuster, which will inevitably be eclipsed by advancing technology. Studies undertaken in the past fifteen years have brought video games into the outer sphere of academic studies, including analyses of narrative features of games and their psychological effects on the children who play them. Conspicuously absent from this heated discussion of video game media, however, is music.

This study examines video game music from historical and analytical perspectives to determine the importance of music within video game contexts. Game music has evolved into a mainstream business: directors and composers no longer shamefully affirm their ties to a game. At the same time, video game music embodies a set of conventions and styles that distinguish it as a distinctive and elusive art form. By studying the history and technology surrounding video game lore, one may define a cultural space that video games occupy and supplant. It shall be seen that game music is indeed at the heart, rather than the periphery, of this cultural space, and that game music is vital to the medium’s accelerated success.

Tale of Fantasy

Ever since the rise of genres of computer games in the late 1960s (Friedman), publications, companies, and fans have created countless schemes to categorize the endless sea of games. One can sort titles by game content genre, by platform, by localization, by country, or by any other classification known to man. Even the most stringent game classifications fail to encompass all games: there is always at least one game that belongs at the loci of multiple categories. These games are more than cross-pollinations of genres: they are melting pots of ideas and processes, so that they cannot viably fit in one, two, or even three distinctions. Nevertheless, a genre classification is the most viable from narrative, literary, and interactive perspectives. Classifications by localization and platform ascribe more weight to the technical details of video game production and distribution by system. Since video game music—especially music before 1994—is a direct product of the technical limitations and capabilities of these systems, game platforms and their localizations must be stressed within the context of emerging gameplay genres. These genres—Action, Simulation, and Fighting, to name just a few—are unique in media categorization in that they explicitly account for audience reception and interpretation of the texts through internal interface conventions and external expressive channels. This stands opposed to traditional notions of film and television (Jenkins), which only define genre as a set of narrative features and conventions under authorial control.

There are three primary localizations where people play video games: in arcades, on console systems, and on personal computers. Colloquially speaking, the term “video games” refers to games on console systems. Within this analysis, however, “video games” includes all electronic games; games on console systems are referred to as “console games.” In the United States, PCs and consoles remain the mainstay of the industry, while arcades have diminished in popularity relative to the other two. Indeed, Martin Jaffe’s report to the American Planning Association indicates that arcade establishments were largely undesirable by adult Americans in the early 1980s. He writes:

Each generation of young Americans apparently finds a way to engage in some activity parents disapprove of…the 1980s ushered in a computer version of what is in the eyes of some parents the latest menace—electronic videogames… there are concerned citizens and angry parents demanding that videogame machines be banned or at least their use by teenagers be prohibited. (Jaffe 1)

He completes his introduction with the prophetic statement:

Perhaps only when teenagers are playing these games in the sanctity of their homes will the regulation of videogames in public places cease to be a planning issue. (Jaffe 2)

The arcade is a unique social phenomenon that occurs under special ethnocentric conditions. In Japan, arcades are vital to the social space of the culture. Men, women, and children all play the same sets of games at the same arcade. This study, therefore, will limit itself to PC and console applications: the carnival-like atmosphere of the arcade gave birth to action, fighting, and racing games; within the United States, arcade music survives through these popular genres.

The development of video game audio extends to the distant past of electronic game history, but as with film audio, video game music and sound were not present from the beginning. The first video game, titled Spacewar and developed by MIT hackers at the Tech Model Railroad Club (Watlington; Levy 45), had no sound.[1] Likewise, the first role-playing game Adventure, developed at Stanford, had no audio track of which to speak. It took to the days of Pong, Pac-Man, and Atari to integrate audio into games. The audio from these games was simple and repetitive, designed by programmers to fill the silence of the living room or arcade. These tonal sounds had a traumatic impact on the design of game music from that point onward. Games like Atari’s Pitfall! and Space Invaders are remarkable for their wide accessibility to players of all ages. However, musical passages for games such as these were widely recognized as gamey. Within the context of electronic media, the term gamey (adj.) ascribes the qualities of undecorated, electronic, and tonal to a passage or score. The musical content of gamey music lasts only for a few seconds, after which it repeats without refrain. Most significantly, gamey music causes visceral displeasure after extended exposure. The term is generally derisive, not unlike its homophonic counterpart, gamy. It would take years, even decades, for the body politic to shed its perception of video game music as a musically impoverished field of expression.

The U.S. video game market crashed in 1984, and with it, most of the good, mediocre, and poor video games that had flourished in the time space. Nintendo entered the collapsed market in 1985 with its FAMICOM system, dubbed the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, in the United States. Thanks to decisive marketing and content control (ClassicGaming.Com), the NES revived the market, and continued selling with runaway success.[2] Shortly after, gaming systems such as the Sega Master System (SMS) made their debut. A proliferation of the video game market ensued, and with it, the demand for music and sound effects. ClassicGaming.Com reports, “the NES is widely recognized as the console which elevated videogame music from simple beeps and whistles to an art form composed of beeps and whistles. Almost all gamers from the Nintendo era have a favorite NES tune or two…” During the days of these console systems, distinctions between music and sound effects were thin. The NES had one sound processing system on its CPU, with four internal channels to produce two square sine waves, one triangle sine wave, and one noise signal (Taylor). These specifications amount to a system capable of frequency modulated, or FM, signals for both sound effects and music. Scores to NES games comprised approximately ten percent of the total game size, anywhere within a range of four to forty kilobytes (Leonard, Sample). Musical data sent to the audio processing unit was directly interpreted as coded instructions. These technical limitations gave rise to creative artistry as composers began to produce scores that mimicked game behaviors. Video game music from the NES era characterizes itself with an unbroken, strong melody, coupled with a secondary bass line and an occasional midrange accompaniment. Four, eight and sixteen bar tunes, all equally repetitive, dominated the musical scene. As a musical style consisting of pure and modulated tones, the discrete distilled tonality of the scores allows for melodies that are purely defined. Their distilled forms permitted easy deconstruction, memorization, and reproduction by players. Especially popular NES games spawned sequels with similar theme songs and melodic lines, so that veteran gamers would feel comfortable in new versions of a series. We still see this frequency-modulated audio heritage in handheld systems, such as the Nintendo Game Boy (1988). The vestiges of this audio production method, however, carry themselves in all video game music, regardless of platform or genre.

Introduction to audio on personal computers was a variegated process. Advances in music technology were roughly similar to advances in the console realm: they occurred in discrete and disjointed strides. However, struggles for market power and dominance were not characteristic features of the computer audio market. Beyond the Apple II, it took Amiga Corp.’s Commodore 64 (1982) to integrate the first music synthesizer chip into the realm of computing. The Amiga 1000 (1985) later brought full stereo sound and speech synthesis (Halfhill). Games under the Commodore 64 flourished, and several principal composers under this system, such as Charles Deenen and Robert Hubbard, advanced to top audio positions in the video game industry within fifteen years. Technically superior to the NES by virtue of its primitive audio sampler, the Commodore 64 allowed for longer unique music sequences with short vocals. However, the cultural context surrounding the Commodore 64 played a larger role in its musical development. When the NES and SMS entered the vacuum created by the downfall of the console market, they decisively filled the void with games of Japanese origin.[3] The European market did not suffer from the U.S. collapse of 1984; in fact, the Commodore 64 was so staggeringly popular from 1984 to 1988 that, “in Europe it became a real culture” (Hubbard). The composers of Commodore 64 games had backgrounds in American and European music, which is detectable by the implicit similarities between Commodore 64 music and the popular ’80s synth music that flourished in America and Europe. Namely, American and European music follow a musical tradition of chords and harmony progression, while Japanese musical composition favors strong melody for reproduction on “solo” instruments, such as the sakuhatchi or shamisen (Takebe). Despite shared motifs between console and C64 music by the irradiating distillation processes of platform music composition, an antagonistic musical dichotomy was born that continues to this day between many console and PC games. Also significantly, Nintendo’s licensing standards excluded many gamers above the age of thirteen from its markets (ClassicGaming.Com), causing many older gamers to flock to the computer for entertainment. Thus familiarity of video games and their deconstructed elements, including music, have deep implications for both children’s culture and adult culture, separated by age bands according to platform popularity.

The IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh came to supplant the Commodore 64 and all similar products in the computer platform wars. By 1992, the PC became the ubiquitous standard for gaming, thanks to direct accessibility of hardware for maximum performance. By this juncture, audio development reached a degree of specialization, such that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) could choose from a variety of audio peripheral solutions. Starting from 1989, Adlib, Roland, and Creative Labs provided products that eventually became widely supported for music synthesis and digital sample reproduction. Competition spurred innovation long after the Sound Blaster by Creative Labs became the de facto standard (Mueller): competing sound cards simply had to emulate a Sound Blaster to be compatible with legacy software titles. Games took on a whole new level of realism with synthesized music through MIDI, the Musical Instrumental Digital Interface, and through precariously crafted sound effects, to balance quality and size constraints. The computer realm gave birth to the shooter and simulation genres, which thirsted for new musical definitions. Console wars rekindled with the introduction of the Sega Genesis in late 1989 and the Nintendo Super NES in September 1991 (November 21, 1990 in Japan as the Super FAMICOM). Musical repetition, once hovering at about twenty seconds between cycles, extended between one and three minutes. Digital audio samples also became possible under the new chipsets, but they were not effectively exploited until 1993, about the same time as samples appeared in computer games.

Video game music entered a new era in 1994, with giant increases in storage capacity via the compact disc. Rather than reproduce music synthetically using FM or wavetables,[4] games could store full musical clips for digital processing and output. The technical quality of video game music could then be compared directly to other prerecorded music forms, such as film, television, or classical music. The change from synthesized music to streamed music occurred as with other media transitions: acceptance came slowly and discreetly.[5] Nintendo decided to continue using cartridges with its new system, the Nintendo⁶⁴ (1996). However, cartridges were several orders of magnitude larger than previous incarnations. In place of streamed audio, Nintendo⁶⁴ systems employed wavetable MIDI and sophisticated sound samples. The Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn[6] were the first major consoles to adopt CDs as a storage medium; advanced operating systems, and accompanying hardware, helped tap the potential of the vast storage space on the PC. Nevertheless, first-generation, CD-based console and computer games continued the tradition of music production through synthetic methods. Although computer game scores were almost entirely prerecorded and streamed by late 1997, as many as two-thirds of all PlayStation games continue to use MODs—essentially wavetable MIDI but with dynamic control over instrument samples. Both the Nintendo⁶⁴ and the PlayStation have 24 musical voices for use, but differences in hardware architecture still force composers to distill their scores to fit the hardware limits. The Nintendo⁶⁴’s synthesizer, which is arguably of higher quality, does not allow dynamic control over instrument samples during gameplay. While the instrumental quality of original game scores increased in the past four years, the length of the average track remained stagnant at two to four minutes. Composers have begun to carefully craft moments of silence as an anti-repetitive mechanism. Organized, industry-wide plans started in 1998 to develop dynamic music, such as Microsoft’s Direct Music, which promises to produce a never-ending, always-changing score through subtle pattern manipulation. Game composers look forward to the day when the length limit is lifted forever.

Network of Plumbing

Before attempting a deconstruction of gamedom’s principal genres, one must heed the first cardinal rule of the medium: video games must engage the projected demographic on at least one level of interactive, symbolic interpretation. Therefore, games must be fun. Failing this criteria spells absolute disaster for a video game, which no degree of literary or artistic merit can salvage. Video games may violate their rigidly defined genre contexts when they cater to wider or marginal groups. As a corollary, transmedia franchises with established ethnographies (i.e., a large viewer base) may supplant musical styles and themes of video game genres with their own styles and themes. These convenient exceptions arise, for example, in cases where an action or puzzle game is presented to child markets, or where a strategy game is made within the context of the Star Trek franchise.

Since 1985 in the console market, and since 1990 in the PC market, the putative standard for a game’s success is its sequel. If truly popular games are put to rest without developing a sequel to take its place, another game will come within the genre to usurp its lucrative position. Games leave power vacuums; platforms do not, market failure notwithstanding. By continuing the production of successful add-ons, sequels, and special editions, a series can cross the frontiers of advancing technology, and then spread out across different media forms. Therefore, the game must metamorphose creatively and effectively to warrant continued interest. Narrative continuity is downplayed; gameplay continuity is stressed. Thus continuity devices that enhance gameplay will be preserved and celebrated as a series progresses. Music within video games is such a continuity device, as it substantiates through the central genres of electronic gaming. Not all genres are as receptive to the power that music embodies as a continuity device. When music plays a utilitarian role within a video game, it sacrifices some or all of its lasting power in favor of an immediate power to manipulate the gaming stage, which it controls as tightly as a vice.

The first first-person shooter game, Wolfenstein 3D (1993), generated critical scorn for its graphic violence and wanton disregard for human life. Nevertheless, its groundbreaking graphics, storyline,[7] and sound effects set a precedent that almost all of the genre’s games follow rigidly. Its reincarnations, however, dropped arcade-style music as a continuity device. Starting with Doom (1994), shooters had little music, and trends from that game have either planted silence, grunge techno, or popular heavy metal bands (Quake 2) into the action. When gamers immerse themselves, their senses heighten to exploit all available stimuli. Now perfected through the audile manipulations of Unreal (1999), each footfall, water drop, and gunshot can mean the difference between life and death. The avid player subconsciously draws clues from the audio streams, incorporating them into his overall assessment of the game status. They are the primal and carnal cries that only manifest themselves in the most human and earthy texts. Ambient sounds thus become a form of music, with the backdrop of silence as the ultimate noise floor.

Fighting, Racing, and Flying games all emphasize competition between people, usually on a one-to-one basis. Fighting games use upbeat techno and grunge music heavily, rousing the player to an aggressive mood. The Street Fighter series from Capcom uses these popular genres as thematic music for specific fighting arenas, and for the characters associated with them. This is a novel use of music to establish place and time, considering that scenery is still peripheral to the action. Racing and Flying games carry a longer and more profound history, considering their origins as defense exercises for the military. These genres form a subcategory of machine-mediated competition, where every move made on the controller represents movement for the vehicle that you control, rather than the pilot. The audio system, while peripheral, is crucial to break the monotony of the road. World rhythms and strong bass rivet the attention of the player on the unfolding competition, raising nervousness to, but not beyond, a heightened awareness. Appropriately, techno style music has become the recent trend in some of these adrenaline-packed racing games. In his review of Einhänder’s original soundtrack (PSX, 1997), Eric Eickhorst writes:

Upon playing Einhänder for the first time, the thing that immediately struck me was neither the flashy graphics nor the fast gameplay, but rather the music. Dropping you in the middle of a futuristic melee, the first level begins with an opera-like sound…
Einhänder Original Soundtrack, on the other hand, serves as a brilliant example of how techno can be used effectively in a game soundtrack…
(Eickhorst, SoundtrackCentral.Com)

Music in machine-mediated competitions, when scored properly, propel the player to become one with the machine.

Games in the sports genre are wide and varied. These games include any type of simulated group or individual sport: basketball, football, hunting, fishing, and all manner of other activities are fair game. Because the emphasis is on physical strength and dexterity, musical elements must emphasize these elements, lending them mythical dimensions. Ambient sounds, therefore, function to mesmerize and transport the player to the scene of the simulated battlefield. The fanfare and the band must work in a symbiotic relationship with the graphics on the screen, for the sounds represent concrete objects, rather than vague feelings on the screen. Melodic and triumphant interludes complete the mythical equation. No matter how human a football game might be, for example, the triumphant play-by-play jingles inherited from television media culture frame each moment with an air of greatness. The mind and the hand meld together, so that by interjecting oneself into a sports game, the gamer re-partakes in the experiences of everyday life.

Tetris (Game Boy, 1989) is one of the most widely played games on the planet. Its principles are simple, and its pretexts are few. Puzzle games model the music that accompanies them: both are repetitive and patterned. Their task-oriented approach builds analytical thinking in an amplifying feedback loop. Like a fractal, each textual element of the game can be deconstructed to branch out to other games and patterns within life. Consider, for example, the Type A music found in Tetris. The game borrows its score from The Nutcracker Suite, yet if the music is ever played in a remix or manifestation of popular culture, it is instantly recognizable as Tetris music through discrete distilled tonality. Other examples are equally profitable, including Hexcite (1998) and Dr. Mario (1990). The Incredible Machine series (Sierra, 1990-2000) has music that is as vigorous and entertaining as the wacky machines that the player solves and creates. Here we invoke the first cardinal law: The Incredible Machine is targeted at all age groups, but especially to those between six and twelve years old. Thus, tracks like “Hay Seed” in The Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions (2000) make lighthearted fun out of solving puzzles, including the background lyrics, “Hey, if y’all can solve this puzzle / Maybe you can come out to the front yahrd and help me get mah truck sturted!”

The simulation, action, adventure, and RPG genres take music beyond its stated purpose. Previous genres have demonstrated the immediacy of music’s effect on the setting, the mood, and the interpretation of games. These genres rely on visual cues more than audio cues to establish continuity within their series. Indeed, Rob Hubbard reports that, “music plays a vital role in adventure games and role playing games. It plays less of a role in fighting games and sports games.” Unlike the previous examples, the simulation genre attempts to recreate something real and fundamental from the world. Whether one plays a flight sim, an underwater sim, or an earth sim, he or she expects the simulator to model the system based on conditions grounded in reality. At the same time, the player’s contradictory expectation is that micromanagement is possible by the person playing the game. Few games are in this genre, and fewer still classify as pure simulation, devoid of mythic or symbolic meaning through plot construction. For example, the objective of Populous (1989) is to lead your civilization—as God—from primordial ooze to glory and conquest. The music proceeds in parts an epic folktale, and in others as a brooding warning of the future. The track “Pittopureen” emphasizes the role of the player and the historic and cultural implications that his or her office represents. The pure simulation, however, has a different set of criteria for its music, setting it apart as a self-reflecting work.

SimCity (1987) is the game that single-handedly started the simulation genre. The ultimate open-ended text, SimCity puts the player in charge of a city as mayor and urban planner. The original version only had ambient sound effects for atmosphere, which was common for low-budget games at the time. Following its unpredicted popular success, Maxis ported SimCity to several other platforms, and went on to populate the new simulation genre with Sim- games, including SimEarth, SimLife, SimTower, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000 (1993). Despite being produced by different groups with different department leads at Maxis, all of the Sim games have mellow urban jazz, with a slight mix of subdued homely music. When asked about the lack of melodramatic, deep, serious, and terribly foreboding music in SimCity 3000 and The Sims, audio director Jerry Martin states:

I can’t really speak for the simulation genre as a whole, but it doesn’t make sense to me to have music that is melodramatic and serious in our games. One thing that’s a musical challenge in our simulation games is the fact that you never know what the user is going to do with the game. A lot of other games have very specific in-game geography and very specific goal-oriented levels, which would make it easier to score to. (E-mail Interview)

The four basic styles of SimCity 3000 are “City music ala George Gershwin, Urban Jazz, Patternistic Minimalism, and Electronica” (Martin 1998). Martin carefully weaves the original “SIM City Theme” through many of the pieces, including “SIM Broadway” and “Window Washer’s Dream,” so that series players feel comfortable subconsciously with the new themes. Similar musical motifs appear in the airy, ambient, and relaxing tones of PilotWings (SNES, 1991) and PilotWings 64 (N64, 1996), both third-person flight sims. The emphasis in the simulation genre is clearly exploration and creative development, mediated through a musical diffusion grid. Action games, in contrast, present problem-solving sequences coupled with well-defined melodies and interludes.

Action games have been the putative staple of the gaming industry. Every major console has entered the market with a flagship action game, almost always with the company’s trademark character. By definition, an action game is characterized by completion of stages, where the gamer plays one character, or multiple characters with fundamentally similar controls. Action games have a clearly defined set of goals. These goals may shift as the game progresses, but unlike the adventure or RPG, there is never a possibility of “wondering what to do next.” The continuing Mega Man series (started 1987) by Capcom stands as a monument stage-based gaming. Each stage comes with a graphical and musical continuity that corresponds with a boss character at the stage’s end. Shadow Man, Dust Man, and Napalm Man are sample boss characters. Mega Man music always has a fast electronic rhythm, which even shines through slower passages that establish scenic identity. The underwater stage (Dive Man) in Mega Man 4 (1991), for example, hints at a soothing and relaxing score that is appropriate for submerged adventure. Nevertheless, strong drumbeats and synthetic cymbals quickly move to dominate the musical atmosphere before the music reverts to a continuous loop. Mega Man’s success has allowed it to jump across console platforms in more recent incarnations. Despite advancing technology, all games in the series share common interludes, such as the Victory and Battle Complete themes. The “selection” melody, which is most clearly articulated in the Stage Select track of Mega Man 2 (1988), appears throughout several games in the series. Many of the musical conventions of Mega Man were present in previous action games, most notably in the genre’s first plumber-champion in 1985.

The most famous character of the genre from Nintendo is Mario, originally from Mario Bros. (1981). The company’s tight command the industry in the 1980s was the new genius of the system: Nintendo controlled production of cartridges, limiting the market to only titles that would not damage its corporate image. At the same time, Nintendo allowed key titles, like Mario, to expand into a transmedia franchise that would imprint its characters on the minds of young fans worldwide. This was accomplished in no small part by Nintendo’s composer, Koji Kondo. His compositions for the Super Mario Bros. series maintain a calypso motif, which he later develops in his CD, Super Mario World (1991). For instance, the high notes in the theme for World 6 of Super Mario Bros. 3, the ice world, sound like the true rings of icicles that fall on a frozen pond.

It is absolutely essential to note that the previous simile is impossible to synthesize upon playing the game. During play, music is peripheral to the gaming experience. To assert that World 6 music resounds with icicle rings is to read too far into the text, fabricating meaning without substance. A critical ear notes that World 6 music is especially gamey after two listening loops, thereafter becoming a nuisance and a distraction to the gaming event. Therefore, one must consider game music within the interactive context of the game. Video game music assumes its magical characteristics when it leaps beyond the text. It dances through and around the player’s mind, melding with button-pushes in response to graphical elements. With a fiery imagination, the artistic beeps and whistles, coupled with the fascination of exploring a new world, engulf the player in a hypnotic embrace. Well-crafted video games instill creativity in players, insulating them from the technical limitations of the medium. The video game is a symbolic representation of imagined and real experiences in the same sense that a book or film are. Melodies are the key words in this narrative that, when recited, recall the experiences in full glory.

Glory is the object of almost all adventure games, though many hide it through material objectives, such as saving a princess or rebuilding a castle. The distinguishing conventions of these games are interactive battles, and world-based, rather than level-based problem solving. Narratives are not overly complex, although interaction with game characters is necessary to advance. Adventure games represent a large gray area in the genre field, somewhere between Action and RPG. The Legend of Zelda, King’s Quest, and Monkey Island all belong to this genre. A PC series, Sierra On-Line’s Quest for Glory vividly documents the glory motive as the player assumes the role of a graduating adventure student who wishes to become a true Hero through heroic deeds. In the first incarnation, Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero? (1988, VGA 1991), composer Mark Seibert establishes Quest for Glory’s theme song and principal interludes using early Adlib synthesis. The game also iterates the lukewarm humor of designers Lori and Corey Cole, a wit that plays a tacit role in the construction of blithe musical motifs. Quest for Glory II, III, and IV retain these features, although the location of each adventure changes the instrumentation of the scores. Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness (1993), for example, takes place in a Transylvania-esque land known as Mordavia. Borrowing conventions from the horror genre, the music is meant to sound foreboding and ominous, with many low minor chords reproduced on a pipe organ. This music, however, never overpowers the gamer to the point of becoming a dominant interactive form.

After a space of five years, Sierra’s Yosemite Entertainment division released the final game in the Quest for Glory series, Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire (1998). QfG5 featured the talent of composer Chance Thomas, an ardent proponent of video game music as an art form in the United States. Thomas petitioned to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to add a new Grammy category, “Best Soundtrack for an Interactive Game.”[8] Claiming that many adventure game tracks seem “repetitious and banal,” he fashioned a score that approached the composition and fidelity of a film soundtrack, while attempting to add interactive variance during gameplay. As he analyzed the FM and MIDI scores of the previous games, he noted that:

A great deal of creativity obviously went into these games, but I was frustrated with the limitations of the technology. You have to realize that I've always worked with outstanding musicians and high-end recording studios. It was a little tough to listen to the Quest for Glory I-IV MIDI score and get enthused. (Sierra)

Thomas took a bold step in composition by drawing upon the rich online fan culture that surrounded the Quest for Glory series. He submitted many of his musical sketches to the online community for comments and suggestions. While most of his work reflects his professional career, he notes his serious oversight:

But there was one area where I totally missed the boat… My Quest for Glory V overture was not what the fans wanted, nor expected. This was primarily because I left out the traditional Quest for Glory theme. I had always planned to include the theme later in the game, but I wanted to write my own overture. The fans would have none of that self-serving nonsense! They wanted their theme in the overture, and that was all there was to it. Some of them were very explicit about it. So I re-wrote the overture, included the original theme, and sent a copy to a select group of the toughest, most critical respondents. Every single one of them wrote back to me and expressed their approbation for the new overture. When that happened, I figured it was OK to keep it. (Sierra)

Quest for Glory V entered the marketplace in December 1998, but received mediocre reviews. Most notable in these reviews were negative comments towards gameplay elements and combat situations (Ward), and generally positive, yet sometimes ambivalent, remarks towards the soundtrack. After the tepid reception of QfG5, and the failure of many other Sierra/Yosemite titles in the marketplace, Sierra permanently closed Yosemite Entertainment and brought an end to the string of monumental adventure and puzzle games that it created. It is obvious that music enhances narrative. However, music neither hides nor mitigates bad gameplay. Game music that draws attention to itself will automatically contrast with that competing dominant element. Then all of a game’s flaws become exaggerated through its searing musical lens. This is the essence of Harland’s statement while evaluating the fully crafted nature of early video game music: “The problem [in video game music throughout the ’80s] was that the better the song was, the worse it was for the game!” (It is well-known that none of the other Quest for Glory games had particularly innovative or intuitive combat simulations, but it is also by no small coincidence that the accompanying battle music was equally forgettable.)

The essence of truly lyrical music comes from the role-playing game genre, or RPG. From a historical standpoint, Dragon Quest (JPN)/Dragon Warrior (US) (NES, 1988) is credited for setting the basic standards of the modern RPG, including hit points, magic points, battle sequences, and world travel. Its music was equally impressive for its time, culminating in the Koichi Sugiyama’s landmark Dragon Quest Symphonic Suite music CDs, which feature fully orchestral versions of the 8-bit scores performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Sugiyama, trained in the art of Western music, composes with a strong sense of harmony that is necessary for an orchestral score. At the same time, his early style lacks a forceful melody that is characteristic of the Japanese musical tradition. Final Fantasy stands as a better reference for the development of powerful, epic video game music over time. Final Fantasy games share only a few features: a common (yet evolving) battle system, and a common composer. Nobuo Uematsu composed all Final Fantasy music, from I (Square Co. JPN, 1987, Squaresoft USA 1990) to IX (JPN and USA, 2000), in a process that he describes joyfully as part of his life’s work. The history of the most popular RPG series of all time, then, is also the history of one of video game music’s most influential composers. The popularity of Final Fantasy worldwide has turned Uematsu into a Japanese cultural icon. His soundtracks, most notably Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, and all of their derivative remixes, continue to appear on Japanese best-selling lists. Uematsu’s style attempts to make up for the deficiencies of the video game medium. When questioned on the difference between video game, film, and commercial music production, he explains that melody is the key:

TP: What's the difference between making music for games and making music for commercials or films?
U: There's not so much difference but the music used for games has to be more melodic because the visual elements of games are less expressive than those of films. If you listen to a movie score separate from the film, I think that you'd usually find that it's not that interesting. With games, it doesn't necessarily have to be like that. Melody is very important for keeping momentum within the game.
(Tokyo Pop)

The original Final Fantasy recounted a world in peril that could only be saved by four warriors. These warriors were the foundation of the class, or party, system of RPGs, where the player controls multiple characters in order to accomplish a common objective. Uematsu’s work in the original Final Fantasy games followed many of the musical conventions associated with the 8-bit NES, although he continued to embellish them in sequels as special techniques evolved to exploit the NES’s primitive channels. The Prelude, which is present in almost all Final Fantasy games, connects the series with its rolling harp (or stringed instrument), followed in later versions by a repeating refrain of horns and flutes. The first release for the Super Nintendo/Super FAMICOM (SNES), Final Fantasy IV (JPN 1990) or II (USA 1991), marked a significant turning point in the history of video game music. Uematsu fully utilized the channels of the new system to create a brilliant score in fourty-four tracks (Final Fantasy IV Original Sound Version, 1991), which took the player as far as the moon on a Big Whale of an airship. New media forms tend to inherit old, transitional characteristics, as the graphics, text, and storyline of the game exhibit their roots in NES-style development. Uematsu’s RPG music, however, was unprecedented for its complete embrace of the new features that the SNES sound processor offered, including deep bass, elongated notes, and semi-dynamic sound samples. Of the three reviews on RPGamer.com, all are positive with respect to the music, although two of the three are quick to mention the flaws in other parts of the game.

By Final Fantasy VI (JPN 1994) III (USA 1994), Uematsu perfected his technique to produce what many consider the finest SNES score ever produced, if not the finest video game score ever. Many video game music activists developed their interest through its monumental music (Soundtrackcentral.Com Forum), which marries the turbulent world of fourteen adventurers with a two-world system and a host of catastrophic events. Melodic sadness resonates in Celes Chere’s theme song, Celes, connecting the player with the tragic events of her life. Replaying her theme at significant moments only reinforces this link, establishing musical continuity throughout the game. Thematic music acts as a device for character development, a textual feature that is highly cherished in Japanese narrative philosophy. Uematsu deftly weaves her theme, as well as the other characters’ themes, into the immortal opera scene (Disc 2, Tracks 7-10). The power of this scene combines all elements of gameplay. Parallel drama ensues between the onstage action and the offstage countdown to calamity. The music, already recognizable, becomes a catalyst as it quickens when the countdown to disaster approaches zero. Through the pseudo-cinematic pieces, player interaction is maintained through onscreen text reading. Upon fighting the major adversary—a recurring character—after The Wedding, the boisterous orchestra takes control of the soundtrack. This act illustrates the adversary’s powerlessness when faced by the heroes.

When one compares the entire score of VI to Final Fantasy VII (1997) and VIII (1999), it is clear that the latter two are more musically complex. Neither can compare, however, to the rich narrative complexity of the VI opera scene, which sets the mood for the remainder of the game. In an interview with Weekly Famitsu, Uematsu comments on his work for Final Fantasy IX, which totaled a staggering 160 tracks of music upon completion:

Famitsu: This time, we feel that there are many musical phrases which are memorable.
Uematsu: Really!? That's good! This time, for a change, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. Don't you feel that FFVII and FFVIII had a mood of realism? So it was hard to put in exorbitant, crazy music, you see. But because it was fantasy this time, a serious piece as well as silly, fun pieces could fit in.
(Weekly Famitsu)

Final Fantasy IX is hailed as a game that goes back to the “original roots.” It discards the delusional and post-apocalyptic, depressive mode of both VII and VIII. As with previous Final Fantasy games, IX uses a super-deformed style of character illustration that is more iconic, and therefore less visually expressive, than the previous two. Players attracted to the worlds of VII or VIII might not feel as comfortable with the IX approach. Nevertheless, the series has gained enough popular momentum to cater to a wide variety of audiences, allowing Uematsu to develop themes for realism as well as fantasy.

Another Squaresoft game, Xenogears (1998), features epic music in an RPG environment. Xenogears throws the player into a fierce world war for the technological relics of the past. Characters fight with some of these wonders, namely giant humanoid robots that are each capable of as much destruction as an army of men. The game features many of the interactive elements that Squaresoft popularized and standardized through Final Fantasy, such as the menu commands and party system. Yasunori Mitsuda, known previously for the scores of Chrono Trigger and Tobal No. 1, chose electronic and soft-toned synthesized instruments for the Xenogears Original Soundtrack, despite the epic and thematic nature of the game. Some may attribute Mitsuda’s use of these instruments to his style, or to limitations in the medium. However, PlayStation music techniques advanced beyond these technical barriers by the time of Xenogears’s publication in 1998. Furthermore, Mitsuda uses radically different instruments and styles in Chrono Trigger and Tobal No. 1. Mitsuda clearly uses these simpler instruments to convey the overwhelming concentration of technology in the Xenogears RPG. Thus, a new sub-category of music emerges in role-playing games, the electronic epic. As a rule, it is possible to use well-crafted music to identify the dominant themes and motifs throughout a video game, even though this music is discardable by its very nature. Revisiting Final Fantasy VI/III US, for example, reveals that electronic epic music is not present in the “Devil’s Lab” track. What could have been mistaken for a dominant technology theme is actually a series of blaring horns and droning machine tools, specific to the MagiTek Factory stage rather than Final Fantasy VI as a whole. Uematsu reveals that even though the narrative concentrates on the dual rule of magic and technology in world subjugation, it is magic—the fantasy epic element—that triumphs as the dominant protagonist force in the game.

At least one generation from 1975 to 1995 has listened intently, though implicitly, to video game music. This generation has absorbed the realism, the mood, and the fun from all types of scores, both new and old. What may we conclude from their prolonged exposure?

Stage Complete. Save?

Video game music motivates the player, propelling him or her through the interactive narrative. Music weaves itself internally and externally throughout the development and execution of a video game. It is highly genre-specific, assuming patternistic minimalist or urban jazz forms in the simulation, and heart-pounding techno synths in the racing game. Particularly within the action, adventure, and pure simulation categories, we arrive at a profound, but not unsettling, conclusion. Video game music is set apart from other music because it is memorable. In light of severe technical limitations, game music survives as a melody with deep personal meaning. Even in its most repetitive, four-bar form, it vividly recalls the countless hours of frustration, hope, and joy that follow from playing a well-crafted video game. When presented in its natural element, film music still accompanies a static, non-interactive video projection. In contrast, the experience of playing a video game is unique to every person, every time that he or she plays it. No wonder so many video game remixes in Japan are called memorial albums!

Furthermore, game music induces a time-delay effect when it is first heard in its original medium. Absence from playing a video game results in a strong nostalgia that game music affects when heard again. Technology is a motif that places the specific game in its context within the larger series. Children accommodate higher order thinking as they construct and deconstruct the meanings of game texts. Older gamers remember different texts, but the results are the same: Memorable music produces nostalgic effects. The fact that a generation of gamers extrapolated meaning from this feeble, stark, garish medium indicates that video game music is far from a gamy and desolate wasteland.

Video game music is a cascade of creativity: as with Final Fantasy, success breeds upon itself. Uematsu purposefully changes the music in Final Fantasy IX so that it has a classic texture, but it does not regress to a gamey feel. Video game music has shown itself to be a unique art form. The medium comes full circle, but like a spiral, it arrives on a plane far higher than ever before. The game is the hand, and music, the glove. Players feel the music and entrust it with their wildest fantasies. The experience of internalizing and unearthing this music would have the players believe that the world is not just legible; it is playable and reproducible. This implies that game music may be a type of conservative institution, because it keeps players’ sets of values as they were when they first played the game.

Conservative or not, game music is undoubtedly a preservative medium. It stores the listener’s values, aspirations, fears, and hopes. Through memorable games and scores, it challenges us to compare our lives’ journey to a previous age. And thus by appreciating the video game music that we internalize, we store our ideal selves.

Bibliography

Literature and Analysis

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[1] It is instructional to note that Spacewar was remarkable for its time, using one of the first computers that accepted teletype, rather than punch cards, as input.

[2] By the time that the NES was discontinued in 1995, it sold over 62 million systems and 500 million games (ClassicGaming.com). These figures are only rivaled by Nintendo’s Game Boy system.

[3] Ironically, the Japanese development team conceived Mario in a warehouse-turned-software-studio in New York City.

[4] A wavetable synthesizer recreates music by playing predefined sound samples—specific to the audio hardware—that the software selects. Thus, a game request for a piano at mid C produces a prerecorded sound from a piano at mid C.

[5] Consider, for example, the long societal transition from manuscript to print culture, or the transition from radio to film and television as the consensus media.

[6] The previous SegaCD offered CD-quality audio, but virtually no games were developed exclusively to exploit this option. Other CD-based competitors, such as the Jaguar, failed miserably in the market.

[7] The shooter’s storyline is the equivalent of slash fiction’s, “PWP?”

[8] Three new categories have been proposed: Best Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media; Best Song for […]; and Best Instrumental Composition for […]. The term “Other Visual Media” encompasses video games. However, no one in the 42^nd or 43^rd Awards was nominated for these categories.