What is it about?
By comparing how the two Nintendo game consoles differed in terms of their capabilities to produce sound and video, we can learn how the composer adapted their music to create more detailed and complex music. Another question answered by this paper relates to how the themes were composed through an examination of sound for cinema, using popular films and soundtracks from the period.
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Why is it important?
Composing music for video games is becoming more and more involved, so uncovering and understanding the history of music for popular video games links to other areas of popular culture. By comparing and contrasting video game music with cinema may offer some insight into how the compositions were shaped and align video game music with research into music for the moving image and other areas of an audio-visual nature.
Perspectives
As a video game enthusiast, I have always enjoyed exploring the imaginative worlds which are created and laid out for us by video game designers. This includes the music and sound design which I think adds a considerable amount to any production. As a musician and composer, I find it fascinating to think about the limitions imposed on the composer by the console hardware and how issues such as running out of memory, or how being limited to a certain musical palette were dealt with by the composer: how do the compositions differ when the hardware limitations are lifted with the release of a new and more powerful console?
Mr James Anthony Fox
University of Huddersfield
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘It’s a-me, Mario!’ Exploring dynamic changes and similarities in the composition of early Nintendo video game music, Fields journal of Huddersfield student research, January 2016, University of Huddersfield Press,
DOI: 10.5920/fields.2016.2115.
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