sound — Features — In the footsteps of an Itinerant Child

No medium is as beholden to its sound design and production as video games. It is an industry which, despite being worth $84.1 billion last year, is never given recognition, be it creatively, contextually or in the sense of its world building and immersiveness.

Video games are not a passive medium like movies or tv. They require a world to be built to then be inhabited by the player. Every footstep, every door opening, the weather effects or the visceral blast of an explosion, everything is carefully crafted.

Few games outside of the $100 million production values of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series can afford to license real world songs so it is made from scratch and, Clint Mansell's of the world aside, it is already surpassing its more established celluloid counterpart.

The 2012 Grammy's saw a games first nomination at an unequivocally mainstream event. “To be nominated alongside John Williams and Hans Zimmer is something I genuinely never thought would happen”, Austin Wintory told Wired magazine, adding, “its a long way from Streets of Rage 2.”

Wintory's work on Journey, a mesmeric and ambient game for Sony's various consoles. It would eventually lose out to Trent Reznor's 'Girl with a Dragon Tattoo' soundtrack but, regardless, it was another step on the medium's own journey to true appreciation.

Unlike film, video games don't find themselves as crushingly tied to preconceptions. For every Jack Wall, Mass Effect soundtrack with its huge orchestral strings, sci-fi theremins and Solaris ambience, which cost Canadian developer Bioware almost as much as their entire physics engine, there are indie darlings embracing obsolete technologies and out moded methods to recreate the ear-worms of the 80's and 90's.

Of those earworms, it is Streets of Rage 2 (1992) for the Sega Megadrive which is considered the high water mark both contemporaneously and historically. Yuzo Koshiro was the Bowie of 16bit beats. Working as he was at the time with already outdated technology, an NEC PC-8801, utilised; PSG sound-chips, SID chips and waveform generators to create a retro-futuristic soundtrack that still elevates the game today.

Ed McMillan and Tommy Refennes 2008 release, Super Meat Boy, could have come directly from the realms of Super Nintendo or Sega Megadrive and utilises the same technology, or at least digital emulations of it. Re-embracing the SID chips, FM synthboards, Music Macro Language and Midi interfaces to lead a lo-fi, low bit renaissance. Unlike film the finished product doesn't feel dated as a game's mechanics, controls and visual ambience work to create a polished whole.

In the case of this pixellated, punishing, platforming tale of a skinless boy and the bandage based soul mate, it is not just the tight controls and rapid response gameplay of yore but vibrant, pulsing, catchy soundtrack complete with chip-based synthesis of electric guitar solos and driving riffs, which make it so compulsive.

The most common Chiptune video game music is Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. theme from their 1985 NES console debut. It's distinctive sound was generated accidentally as the console's chips couldn't accurately capture the steel drum calypso sound Kondo wanted.

The theme was to be scrapped before the father of the series and its lead designer, Shigeru Miyamoto personally stepped in and decreed it to be used as the canonical theme. Thirty years on and it sounds as fresh as ever and is still the most recognisable piece of game music in the world, the second being the Tetris theme.

Modern sampling and synthesizer technology grew in complexity and abundance throughout the 90's and 2000's as games grew in stature and scope so did their soundtracks. They became grand and cinematic in many cases, mimicked the dance electronic music of the time or slipped into art-house inflected minimalism. Dynamic masterpieces such Harry Gregson-Williams' scores for Hideo Kojima's behemoth of a game series, Metal Gear has given the game's worlds contextual consistency across time periods and locales. The third instalment, Snake Eater's Bond-esque theme, is superior to any 007's recent themes.

Speaking at the awards, “it's been a long time coming,” the 28 year old Denver native, Wintory, went on, “I almost feel ashamed that so much great stuff has been done over the last decade that for reasons unknown has never got the recognition it deserves from the music industries.”

Role playing game Rogue Legacy boasts a 16 bit soundtrack filled with sinister synthesised strings adding a level for tension and foreboding otherwise impossible due to the game's cutesy graphics and 80's schlock-fest Hotline Miami embraces 80's syths and modern Chiptune to create a sense of place and depth as effective as those created through similar techniques in Nicholas Winding Refn's 2011 film Drive.

Regardless of how any individual may view the games industry or the old SID driven styles of music and sound design, their growing significance in and around creative industry sectors point to more opportunities and branches for all and the cross-overs into mainstream popular music with acts like Crystal Castles, The Prodigy and Daft Punk shows that the beeps and bloops are back and this time, here to stay.