Soundtrack, OST, Game music… There are several names to characterize something so integral in the player’s synesthetic experience that often goes unnoticed. It’s weird, isn’t it?
The evolution of the video game soundtrack and all the sound design of games is absurd even for those who have been following the industry for a long time… Long enough to have lived in this transitional era when it was no longer made in MIDI and finally reached the classic instruments .
The Role of Music in Games
Music has always had enormous weight in helping to bring out the personality of a game and is essential for the player’s immersion in a given game to be complete. Whether it’s animated jingles for an Overworld, a calm waltz for the dreaded water stages, or the theme of that disgraceful rival created to be the target of player hate.
These women and men working as songwriters gave the blood, tears and sweat to create memorable sounds and songs that many people, like me, carry in their hearts to this day and I would very much like to reserve a space here, between one post and another, to tell my stories related to game music and also those people who contributed so much to my formation as a human being.
Big names in sound design
I want to reserve this space to celebrate this area, extolling names already well known in the imagination of any gamer like Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura, Frank Klepacki, Dave Wise, Manami Matsumae…. But also rescue and celebrate names that are not so present in the discussion about game soundtracks, such as Masashi Kageyama or even Nobuyuki Hara.
The work of these composers was simply monstrous. During the 8-bit era mostly. Dealing with Hardware limitations and, mainly, limited space in the cartridges, were things that these professionals dealt constantly in their day-to-day activities during the early days and that was always very fascinating to me.
Knowing that the Game Boy, with only 03 (THREE!!!!) sound channels with very little space allocated for the soundtrack, was able to produce amazing songs like this one by Smurf’s Nightmare (from a Smurfs game, bro… SMURFS!) ), created by the phenomenal Alberto Jose Gonzales, or that theme of the duel against the Grand Masters in Pokémon TCG, created by the phenomenal Ichiro Shimakura (RIP, Hudson…. 🙁 ) is worthy of praise for being a small miracle in the industry.
Coded notes – why music is so important.
The creativity required to translate musical notes into pieces of code has always fascinated me. Composing for video games is such a counter-intuitive process of making music and maybe that’s why I’ve gotten so attached to this style specifically. It’s a song that should touch on some specific features of what’s happening in the game without being intrusive enough to get in the way between player and game, thus breaking the immersion it purports to enhance. It’s a very fine line.
The first memory I have clear in my head regarding the game soundtrack is from phase 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. for NES. My parents had a Dynavision famiclone called Phantom System, and my mom played “with me” when I was a baby. In fact, I just watched her play, right.
Of course… It’s too cliché to say that the Mario theme has marked my life, but what can I do? It was actually one of the first video game songs I ever heard. Is that you? What were the game songs that most marked your life?
I don’t get tired of thinking about the importance of the soundtrack in games. She is and has always been the most important piece to my immersion in any game and probably that realization came from playing Donkey Kong Country 2. DKC 2 has a soundtrack, by the legendary Dave Wise, which needs no introduction, but, BRO… The music Forest Interlude made me realize how much the experience I had with the game stayed with me even after I finished it.
The choice of instruments sampled in the game, the melody of the music, even the sound effects of the ghosts, especially the Ghost Ropes and other enemies present there, all contributed heavily so that I finally realized that I was facing one of the most memorable games. of my life. Yeah, I know… It’s a pretty crazy thing, but my head works that way.
It is very difficult to transcribe in a few words something that is so intrinsic to me, so I will continue in other posts talking about music. But don’t think I abandoned Business Intelligence posts, no! Soon there will be a new post with BI content!
Anyway. Thanks for listening to me or reading me this far.
