Metal Gear Music Day!

July 4, 2008

I missed a week again, but here I am performing my civic duty whilst on vacation. Today, the music of choice is Metal Gear Solid. I recently just finished the first one and as soon as I return from vacation will begin work on MGS2. If you have a PS2 and have not plaed any of these games I highly recommend picking up the recently released Essential Collection as I did. Three games for thirty bucks is a really good deal for excellent games such as these. But anyways, on to the music.

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Game Music Friday - Gerudo Valley

June 13, 2008

One of the first video game songs I remember really enjoying was Gerudo Valley from Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. Back when I had a crappy computer and little hard drive space, I would listen to MIDI files and Gerudo Valley was one of the few songs that had a pretty good version out there. Of course, now that disk space isn't an issue, I've moved on to MP3s. However, I still find myself listening to more remixes than the actual original itself (because, let's face it, the N64 instrument library sucked). But, anyways, here are this weeks Gerudo Valley music picks.

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Game Music Friday - Some Mario Paint

May 29, 2008

Back in August of 1992, Nintendo released unto the world the little gem known as Mario Paint. Bundled with it's own mouse Mario Paint was the equivalent of Adobe Creative Suite for the Super Nintendo. You could draw pictures, do animations, and it even came with a nifty little mouse based game called Gnat Attack. However, Mario Paint's legacy lies not in it's visual abilities (though it inspired a certain internet cartoon). No, Mario Paint is all about its music creating abilities and the amount of high quality Mario Paint remixes on YouTube is absolutely astounding. Narrowing it down to three videos was a challenge not only because of the sheer volume of videos out there, but there are two guys who have the lions share and I wanted to give everybody a chance. Oh, and Mario Paint Composer doesn't count. But, enough rambling, enjoy!

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Welcome to Game Music Fridays!

May 23, 2008

Some time ago, video game news site Joystiq began a weekly series of posts highlighting video game music as performed by the YouTube community. For some reason unbeknownst to me they no longer do this. So in the spirit of all things game and music related, I bring you Game Music Friday. Every week I will select a theme or game and show three videos from YouTube pertaining to said topic. The only stipulation being that the music must be performed or arranged by the community. That means AMVs are out. If you have any suggestions for videos or a topic, please leave a comment below and I'll be sure to check it out.

Without further ado, I bring to you the first Game Music Friday, the topic of choice being Dr. Mario. Enjoy!

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Video Games Live - Something for Everybody

February 1, 2008

I had the great fortune of being able to attend a Video Games Live (VGL) concert. For the uninitiated, VGL is a concert where game music is played. Some people may think it's nerdy, however, but I see it as something that can be appreciated by gamers and non-gamers alike.

People see the words "video game music" and probably automatically think of the bleeps and bloops (more accurately, triangle and square waves) of the Atari and NES days of yore. These may not have sounded great, but because of the limitations more effort was placed on making themes easily recognizable and pronounced (i.e. Mario, Zelda, Metroid). However, since the days of the SNES, video game music has been approached more like a movie score. At the forefront of this movement was Nobuo Uematsu and his work in the Final Fantasy series.

Final Fantasy serves as an excellent demonstration of the similarities between game and movie music. Final Fantasy VI, and SNES game mind you, has one of the best scores of any game. Each character has their own theme, or leitmotif, and these themes are woven throughout every piece of music in the game. The same went for FFX, though the motifs weren't character specific, but specific to certain cultural elements. Star Wars takes this kind of approach: the Empire has a theme, the Force has a theme, etc. It's this kind of music that has the ability to evoke emotions in the listener and, at its core, that's what music is all about.

Of course, not all game scores are orchestral. Koji Kondo dabbles in a little bit of everything, and there are rock and techno type stuff out there. I lean towards the orchestral myself because I find it to be more powerful. I will admit that most of my childhood was spent listening the classical music and John Williams and as such I have a soft spot for this kind of music, but I know die hard fans of vastly different genres who appreciate the vocals of Halo or the trumpet heavy Zelda. Even my mom, a dedicated 80s gal, enjoys much of my game music library.

So, there you have it. The conception that game music is various beeps and just for nerds is a complete fallacy. Video game music these days can be just as powerful, if not more so, than latest blockbuster. At that, it can be appreciated by all walks of life. And I think it should be.

Oh, the concert was awesome (I scream before the rest of the crowd at about 0:31).

(Like the bumper at the top? I'm going to start including these in more of my posts as a design challenge for myself.)

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