Tag Archives: vgm

VGM Entry 18: Takahito Abe

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 18: Takahito Abe
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

I would like to throw one more comparison piece out there before I pick up the pace again. But before I get to that, let’s take a short break. Yuzo Koshiro is frequently listed among the greatest video game composers of all time. While I find his work in the Streets of Rage series a little bland, that may just be a matter of taste. He is certainly an outstanding composer of great historical significance. His first work should make that obvious.

Xanadu Scenario II: The Resurrection of Dragon, released in 1986, was an expansion for Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu. (I featured a video from the original 1984 Dragon Slayer earlier.) Supposedly the 18 year old Yuzo Koshiro submitted a music sample to Nihon Falcom, and it ended up accompanying Takahito Abe’s work into the game’s final cut.

Of Yuzo you will be hearing plenty more. Takahito Abe, the composer of the bulk of Xanadu Scenario II, remains a bit more anonymous. His major compositions appear to be Asteka 2 – Templo del Sol, Xanadu Scenario 2, and Romancia 1 through Falcom, followed by Susano O Densetsu and Hagane through Hudson Soft. He does not appear to have composed video game scores since the mid-90s, but he does maintain a personal website with an English translation, if anyone’s interested.

This video, from the PC-8801 release, is an hour long, but the soundtrack is actually about 30 minutes. The second half appears to be some peculiar broken version of the first, and you’d best skip it. But do listen to the first half. It’s your loss if you don’t.

Xanadu Scenario II: The Resurrection of Dragon. I’d never heard of it. I suspect you hadn’t either. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsBcY8xrYkU

VGM Entry 17: A question of authorship (part 3)

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 17: A question of authorship (part 3)
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Kinuyo Yamashita and Kazunaka Yamane: two respected video game composers whose main melodies have appeared in both refined, noteworthy form (on the NES) and in rather half-hearted, trashy form (on the MSX and in the arcade respectively.) The lack of well-documented attribution leaves us clueless as to how much of a role either played in this disparity. But at least we can be fairly confident that they wrote the basic melodies of the songs.

In the case of some pretty famous works, even that much information can be difficult to come by.

Take Bionic Commando. Its main theme (calling it the “main theme” might be something of an afterthought; it first appears as the background music for level 2) is an iconic NES classic. But in the span of about a year between 1987 and 1988, Capcom released this game for the arcade, the Amiga, the Atari ST, the Commodore 64, the Amstrad CPC, the ZX Spectrum, DOS, and oh yes, the Nintendo. The Nintendo version did have its fair share of differences, both in gameplay and in song selection (perhaps as an undermining of Nintendo’s licensing laws akin to Vampire Killer), but the “Main Theme” faithfully appears in every version.

Here is a collection of some of the song’s variations over the years. You’ll notice that even the early takes were each quite different:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTl5jSgJk-Q

The first track in this mix is the arcade version. You’ll notice the central roll of the drums and the flutey trills, giving the song a distinctly martial feel quite appropriate for the game. It was clearly composed with an orchestra in mind, and could I imagine be preformed live with hardly any alterations.

The second track in the mix is from the Commodore 64 version. Tim Follin is credited with the arrangement, and if you’re at all familiar with his unique and lively approach to video game music, there can be hardly any doubt. The then about 17 year old Follin was determined to make a musical impact, and he certainly did, taking such spirited risks as mixing in the Star Wars theme song and converting an upbeat march into a grimy space groove. Completely inappropriate for the game, it’s certainly sub par to the arcade version, but Follin was fairly new to C64 sound programming at the time, having made his initial mark in the world of the ZX Spectrum. (Follin did use this same version of the song for the ZX Spectrum release, not featured in the compilation video, but considering its drastic departure from his previous Spectrum compositions I have to assume his arrangement was originally intended for the C64.)

The next track, confoundingly labeled “Nintendo Sequel”, “WRONG AMIGA VERSION”, and a bit later “Bionic Commando Rearmed” is in fact the Amiga 500 version. You might think of it as a toned down, slightly safer take on Follin’s C64 version.

The fourth take is the Nintendo version. Whether it should be regarded as a “sequel” or simply a heavily altered port is debatable. Its music in this instance is faithful to the arcade version, ignoring Follin’s spin, but it fails to incorporate a lot of the original’s frills or deliver with nearly the same impact. It is, I would say, by far the weakest of the five, while the original arcade take is the best. (The “Bionic Commando Rearmed” version which follows in this video is obviously a travesty, but it was released in 2008.)

Now tell me: who wrote this song? Do a quick google search, pull your best resources, see what you can come up with. Pretty much every result is going to direct you to either the 2008 remake Bionic Commando Rearmed or the 2009 sequel Bionic Commando (both by Capcom, same publisher as the originals), because their soundtracks were actually released and the latter uses the exact same name. You’ll find a lot of sites that simply list a composer for the 80s versions with no further information, but they can’t all seem to come to an agreement. Something official from the publishers would be nice. The original game manuals contain no credits (I checked), nor do the original games appear to have ending credits, save the NES version, which lists the composer under a pseudonym. So I pulled up the official liner notes of the 2008 and 2009 game soundtracks. Both acknowledge “Main Theme” to be based on the original by Junko Tamiya. A-ha. We have an answer.

But Wikipedia lists Harumi Fujita as the composer of Bionic Commando (arcade, 1987)–providing no source–and Junko Tamiya as the composer of Bionic Commando (NES, 1988)–providing precisely the 2009 liner notes I used as a source. And we know that “Main Theme” appears in the arcade version. You just heard it. The NES version wiki’s subsection on Music states that “The music for the game was created by female videogame music composer Junko Tamiya, who was credited under the pseudonym “Gondamin”. It is very highly praised for its militaristic compositional element. Two songs from the Arcade versions are used in some areas.” This last comment again has no source.

That makes a bit more sense. I picked up copies of both soundtracks, and sure enough, aside from “Main Theme” and “Power Plant”, all of the NES music is original. Junko Tamiya did likely compose sixteen out of its eighteen tracks. The problem is that one of the two she did not compose happens to be her most famous composition!

What to do when a few unsourced claims on Wikipedia get the credits right and Capcom, the people who actually made the game, don’t?

Bionic Commando‘s “Main Theme” is one of the most revered video game songs of the 1980s. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been so concerned about figuring out who originally wrote it. It would certainly appear as though Harumi Fujita wrote it, Junko Tamiya rearranged it for the Nintendo shortly thereafter, and an oversite more then twenty years later lead the company who released it to get the two mixed up. But this is only a best guess. It just goes to reaffirm the dismal state of preservation of even some of the best early video game music.

VGM Entry 16: A question of authorship (part 2)

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 16: A question of authorship (part 2)
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Castlevania was released on the Nintendo first, but only by a period of one month. Vampire Killer was in development alongside it, and the two games are certainly not identical. It’s rather disappointing then that the soundtrack turned out to be a hasty port from the NES. Preserving Kinuyo Yamashita’s melodies was not the mistake here, but Konami should not have attempted to replicate the NES arrangements as closely as possible. Differences in technology meant an exact replica was not possible, and the result comes off as a dumbed down version of the NES music rather than a new spin of equal merit. Failure to consider a system’s unique limitations produced a soundtrack that just wasn’t that great.

This is just as much of an issue in reverse, with artists taking too much comfort in superior sound quality. Arcade games seem to have had it best in the pre-Genesis 1980s (and perhaps afterwards too.) My primary example thus far, Hisayoshi Ogura’s Darius, is probably unfair, because it is a reasonable contender for the title of greatest video game soundtrack of the 1980s. But having heard the miraculous feats it accomplished, let’s take a look at another arcade soundtrack: Double Dragon, composed by Kazunaka Yamane for Technos Japan (not to be confused with Tecmo) and released in 1987.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1136QL5RWk

Now here is a soundtrack that shamelessly exploits the sound capabilities of an arcade machine if ever I’ve heard one. The bass is massive for its day, almost as a novelty. The tunes laid over top of it have a somewhat obnoxiously shrill quality made worse by one of the worst drum tones I have ever heard. The troubles just amplify in the next song, as you are forced to accept that the drum beats are truly an afterthought totally devoid of value. The song that kicks off at 7:10 sounds like elevator music. The only redeeming value is that groovy track at 2:40 that emulates every stereotype in the book and (that dreadful plague-ridden snare that just won’t die aside) just happens, almost as a fluke, to pull it off. My sincerest apologies to Kazunaka Yamane, especially in consideration of the possibility that this arrangement may have been completely out of his hands, but this whole soundtrack is just absolute garbage.

A lot of soundtracks are. Don’t take it too harshly.

Abysmal arrangements killed the arcade original, not Yamane’s compositions in the raw. But then the game was ported to the NES a year later. Whoever headed up the project–perhaps Kazunaka Yamane himself–decided it would be a good idea to retain all of the arcade version’s original tunes. The outcome couldn’t have been better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUoIZwHJlzI

Of course the contrast fluffs my opinions a little, but I think this really kicks ass. With the Nintendo’s monumental dearth of bass it was no longer possible to pretend that technology-exploitation could sell a game, so for starters the music compensates by blasting out at warp speed. The tones are all complimentary. The drumming, while still pretty dismally bland, is more of a non-entity than a nuisance, and it at least incorporates a little variation. And the shear ingenuity required to take that utter crap and make a solid go at it is commendable. I’d mentioned that the groove track at 2:40 was the arcade version’s only redeeming quality. But it was total bass exploitation–probably one of the hardest tracks in the game to convert. No? Skip up to 2:37 in the NES version (bless your attention to detail Garudoh). They pulled the style conversion off flawlessly.

The NES port of Double Dragon might deserve credit as one of the best CPR moves in the history of gaming music, if nothing else. It’s not my favorite soundtrack by any means, but I admire whoever accomplished it. It almost feels like a sort of proto-Mega Man.

But that’s the question these rampant port projects in the mid to late 80s have me stuck on. Who was responsible for them? Short of conducting personal interviews, how will I ever find out? Maybe Kazunaka Yamane redeemed himself in epic fashion, or maybe someone else arranged it, or, maybe having written the basic songs, Kazunaka Yamane had little further say in any of the game’s arrangements.

Did I mention Double Dragon was ported to the Sega Master System too? Yeah, that version retained all of the original melodies too, and reconstructed them in a third entirely different way. Ay yai yai….

VGM Entry 15: A question of authorship (part 1)

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 15: A question of authorship (part 1)
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Everyone has likely heard at least some passing reference to the “console wars” between Nintendo and Sega beginning with the release of the Sega Master System in 1985. I am curious to know whether this is a posthumous attribution. The Master System never had a leg to stand on outside of Europe, and the heat never really came on until Sega released the Genesis/Master System in 1988. (Their rapid transition from third to fourth generation console may have had a lot to do with this.) Nintendo and Sega became ruthless rivals in the 1990s, playing all sorts of mind games with their markets and seeking out every legal loop-hole in the book. It makes for quite an interesting story, and I was initially inclined to think that frequent efforts to root out its origins in the third generation era generated some misconceptions over just how directly these companies targeted each other in the mid-80s. But perhaps I am wrong. Was the Master System’s flop a direct result of Nintendo strong-arming the market?

A part of this origin story lies in Nintendo’s licensing policies. One can frequently find such statements as “Any developer who signed on to produce software for the NES was trapped into an exclusivity contract. They were not allowed to develop games for competing systems for two years following the beginning of the contract, and they were limited to releasing only five games a year.” (Lucas DeWoody, “Nintendo vs. Sega: The Console War: Part One”, October 24, 2007. The original online publication appears to have been deleted.)

This sounds like quite a pickle, but I would like to know its more precise ramifications and loop-holes. What constituted a competing system? If these merely meant the Sega Master System and the Atari 7800, not home computers, then that could explain a lot, but it seems odd to me that Nintendo would let so many other competitors squeak by.

The reason I bring this up in the first place is because, come 1986, it feels as though nearly every game not published by Nintendo was appearing in half a dozen different formats. This has quite a few consequences for video game music, because the variance in sound quality from one medium to the next was vast. It becomes very difficult to point out a stellar soundtrack when the particular arrangement of that soundtrack, more often than not created by someone other than the original songwriter, is such a pivotal factor.

I would like to spend some time on this topic. Let’s look again at “Vampire Killer” and “Wicked Child” from Castlevania.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHvG0j0ekXM

Does anything sound a bit different? Well, the tracks I posted yesterday should have sounded more like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI2aB86u-zQ

Konami released Vampire Killer for the MSX2 about a month after they released Castlevania for the NES. MSX was a home computer architecture employed by a large variety of manufacturers. You could have a Yamaha MSX, a Sony MSX, a Sharp MSX, etc. Did that, along with a name change, get Konami around Nintendo’s licensing clause? Well, Castlevania series enthusiasts may claim that Vampire Killer was its own distinct game, but it doesn’t look it to me. Nintendo had no trouble pulling Rainbow Arts’ The Great Giana Sisters off the shelves despite it copying Super Mario Bros. to a lesser extent than Vampire Killer copied Castlevania (I’ll be covering that later). Whether Konami were less legally bound or simply had a sort of gentleman’s agreement (Nintendo had a lot more to lose by pissing them off) will remain a mystery to me for the time being.

But anyway, this is only the first example of many, and I wish to emphasize the musical distinctions. “Vampire Killer” in Vampire Killer has a much more crisp sound, which I would say is more readily appealing. But you’ll notice that early into the first break away from the main chorus, precisely at 22 seconds in both videos, a lot of the subtler notes which give the Castlevania version its real charm are completely missing in Vampire Killer. It’s enough to make or break the song for me, and moreover it could be enough to make or break the composer.

Now skip ahead to 1:32 in Vampire Killer and 1:35 in Castlevania and let’s take a look at “Wicked Child”.(Garudoh really did an outstanding job of syncing these up.) Here the distinction is shamefully obvious. The entire dramatic introduction is missing in Vampire Killer, and worse yet, the alternating bass beat of the main chorus has been reduced down to a single repeated note. I can’t bare to go any farther; Vampire Killer‘s soundtrack is a travesty compared to the original.

Or does it simply make do with the MSX2’s limitations as best it can? How do I know whether this was a cheap, hasty reconstruction or a thoughtful, best possible scenario? I suppose I’ll never know unless I attempt to reconstruct it myself or else listen to a whole bunch of other soundtracks released for both systems. But if I have to contextualize all of this stuff within a given system, and a lot of the best soundtracks appear on multiple systems, and a lot of their authors had nothing to do with the port arrangements, well this is all getting to be quite messy.

I observed in my last post that Kinuyo Yamashita refrained from disclosing which Castlevania tracks she wrote, despite having written most of them. Perhaps this is because game composition was far more of a group project than meets the eye. Satoe Terashima appears to be credited for both games under “music and sound effects”, and I tend to associate sound effects more directly with sound programming, but even the credits here are by no means official in the form I found them, and I have found plenty of fan-based game credits which falsely attribute the original sound programmer to a port. This distinction is critical. We have reached a point in time here where ‘composer’ and ‘sound programmer’ begin to branch off into separate jobs. Writing a catchy tune is one thing, and arranging it for a given platform is quite another. In the computer world the two jobs may have remained synonymous, but this was not so on the Nintendo. Where multiple parties are involved in this process, the qualities which distinguish an outstanding video game musician become hopelessly obscured.

It’s nice to put names and faces to the songs I love, but it’s important to realize that at least at some level this can be a facade. Even if Konami had never produced a quick port to the MSX2 and the Nintendo version was all we had to roll with, there’d be no telling which of the soundtrack’s more subtle thrills derived from the main melody’s author.

VGM Entry 14: Konami in ’86

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 14: Konami in ’86
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

I never actually got into the Castlevania series until Symphony of the Night came out in 1997. It was conspiratorially taken off my radar. My parents weren’t about to have any of that demonic, Satan-worshiping trash in OUR household. Here’s some change, go pick up that new one I heard about in Reader’s Digest. M.C. Kids was it? (We actually owned a copy of the infamous unlicensed Bible Adventures.)

But I digress.

What drew me to Symphony of the Night in the first place was Michiru Yamane’s outstanding soundtrack. Her classical compositions drove the game, defining the setting and mood in a way that graphics alone could never accomplish. What I hadn’t known at the time was that this was a series tradition dating all the way back to the 1986 original. Even some of the tracks remained. Vampire Killer, arguably the most iconic song of the series (its rival, Bloody Tears, first appeared on Simon’s Quest in 1987), was in place from the get-go.

Konami is an especially difficult company to sort out soundtrack credits for. Kinuyo Yamashita has acknowledged that she composed most of the soundtrack, but refrained from disclosing which tracks specifically were her work. Her official biography confirms Wicked Child and Heart of Fire. The rest is anyone’s guess. The classical influences in both of these songs, which so appropriately set the mood for the entire game series, may well have been a part of her conceptual contribution.

Of course the entire soundtrack isn’t this great. Vampire Killer, Wicked Child, and Heart of Fire stand pretty far above the rest. The music varies from excellent to merely sufficient, though much to its credit it never devolves further. Kinuyo Yamashita still struggled I suppose, as did most of her contemporaries, to make do with the highly limited sound selections technology made available. But if some of the tracks sink a bit into mediocrity, they at least never dip below it. The classical influences maintain the work’s consistency and provide the requisite spooky haunt of a vampire game. She never tries to get too experimental about creating a sinister sound (as opposed to say, Hirokazu Tanaka on Metroid, which was just a little more hit-or-miss than people care to remember), and the decision pays off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w_E4MmOugU
(Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Dōchū)

Another significant Konami series launched in 1986 is Ganbare Goemon, familiar to western audiences as Legend of the Mystical Ninja. Konami never made a real go at marketing this series in North America. The SNES title Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyuushutsu Emaki, appearing in North America as The Legend of the Mystical Ninja in 1992, was our first of very few ported installments. In fact, Wikipedia lists a whopping 35 Ganbare Goemon titles, of which only five were ever ported. At least up through the SNES era they all featured the Asian folk style you are currently hearing.

The first was Mr. Goemon, a 1986 arcade game, but Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Dōchū followed that same year for the Famicom and was not a port. Satoko Miyawaki is occasionally credited with the composition of the latter, however I could not confirm this, nor whether he had any involvement in the arcade version. This musical style, similar to that of Yie Ar Kung-Fu, was and remains relatively unique for video games. Konami’s musicians would continue to improve upon it over the years, making it a staple feature of all of the early Ganbare Goemon games.

VGM Entry 13: Darius

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 13: Darius
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Taito have kindly sent me a letter informing me of their intention to sue me for this post, and in particular for its visual and audio depictions of an out of print soundtrack for an out of print arcade machine, if I do not remove such content immediately. Taito being a subsidiary of Square Enix, I highly encourage you to boycott all Square Enix products in the future. Since their games are terrible these days anyway I am probably doing you a favor.

Unfortunately Hisayoshi Ogura is the one that suffers here, since Square Enix have simultaneously expressed no intention of legally distributing his work and barred all attempts by fans to share it.

It is very easy to get on a one-track mind and focus down home gaming in total disregard for the arcade. Arcade composers rarely had the lasting impact of Nintendo and computer game music, perhaps in part because arcade gaming as a business was pretty much dead by the end of the 80s. Where arcade music is still remembered today, it is usually in the form of NES and C64 port renditions. Yet in the mid-1980s, some producers still placed their finest resources into refining the arcade game first and foremost. Taito’s Zuntata sound team most significantly, and also Konami’s Kukeiha Club and Capcom’s Alph Lyla, were composing arcade music that far exceeded in sound quality anything ever heard on a home system. Taito did it best, and among their eccentric and innovative staff no one shines brighter than Hisayoshi Ogura. When Taito released its arcade shooter Darius in 1986, it achieved a level of sound quality that would not be surpassed until at least the late 1990s.

***Video removed due to Square Enix’s corporate bullying.***
Chaos and Boss 4

A collection of experimental oddities both catchy and disturbing, it could not have been better suited for the game it represents. Darius was experimental and innovative in many ways, featuring a triple-screen ultra-wide display and a non-linear level progression which would mix up the seven stages between (I believe) twenty-six possible maps, creating a slightly different experience on every play through. It even featured multiple endings–something you might not expect from a shooter game.

You probably wouldn’t expect to be fighting giant evil space fish, either. Darius receives pretty mixed reviews from a lot of shooter junkies these days, but if I was going to spend my quarters on anything in 1986 I know it’s the first game I’d have tried. It attempts to awe and bewilder, and it succeeds.

***Video removed due to Square Enix’s corporate bullying.***

You can really tell that Ogura designed his score to exploit every technological possibility available to him. The depth and fullness of the sound is overwhelming. It reminds me of the sort of audio experience I got from Square’s Einhänder–a game I bought specifically for the music. But Einhänder was released in 1997! Darius was 11 years old by then.

If it doesn’t sound that special to you, try plugging in headphones. Much like Kenneth W. Arnold’s Ultima soundtracks, my lousy laptop speakers can’t do it justice. I also recommend you try to get your hands on a copy of the soundtrack; Taito released a version as early as 1987, fully aware of its significance. I included a gameplay video of “Chaos” to showcase the music in action, but a playlist of the ost is also available. (Youtube link removed due to threats by Square Enix.) You can find full gameplay videos of each level with music on youtube thanks to *censored*.

***Video removed due to Square Enix’s corporate bullying.***

“The Sea” might be the most eclectic song in the mix. It’s certainly my favorite. You quickly discover that it does not intend to be a typical aquatic theme when the demented chime tones come into play. The next transition back to relative normalcy is quickly derailed by an erratic explosion of mechanized blast beats, and Hisayoshi Ogura wraps it all up in fittingly weird form with what feels like some sort of proto-dubstep.

Taito knew they were kings of the arcade. Their house band, Zuntata, even went so far as to perform some of the Darius soundtrack live.

***Video removed due to Square Enix’s corporate bullying.***
Chaos, performed live by Zuntata

A lot of game developers had “house bands” in the early days. This is part of why it is difficult to attribute authorship to a lot of game soundtracks of the era. Taking a closer look at these bands could prove pretty interesting–perhaps another task for another summer. Hisayoshi Ogura was not the first video game composer to perform his material live. I believe that credit goes to Koichi Sugiyama. But this concert, dated to 1990, has to be among the first.

Darius–a 1986 video game music masterpiece. Considering how easily it might have slipped by me unnoticed, I have to wonder how much more I am leaving behind.

VGM Entry 12: Zelda and Dragon Quest

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 12: Zelda and Dragon Quest
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Two fantasy-style games in 1986 achieved massive retail success and thereby brought the genre to the attention of the masses. These, it should be fairly obvious, were The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo) and Dragon Quest (Enix). Both games are likewise frequently cited among the most important soundtracks for the Famicom/NES. I think this can be a bit misleading.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jElFHhfIrY

The Legend of Zelda had a truly epic main theme, with which Koji Kondo almost certainly surpassed his work in Super Mario Bros. Whether it was the best video game song written up to that point is really a matter of personal preference; it is not as though it had no competition. Regardless, this was the first installment of Nintendo’s second major franchise gaming series, and the sort of anthem Koji Kondo was able to craft for Link had enormous marketing benefits. It’s not as though lead characters in Nintendo’s games became popular out of the shear force of the company’s good name. No one really remembers say, Professor Hector (Gyromite and Stack-Up) or Mr. Stevenson (Gumshoe). If Link was going to become a franchise character, he was going to need a theme song, and in that regard Koji Kondo pulled through once again.

What else did The Legend of Zelda have going for it musically? Well… very little. I mean, the Underground Level theme (3:18) is pretty cool–all 18 seconds of it. It reminds me of some of Uematsu and Mitsuda’s later works. But there just isn’t much else to this game. The title screen and overworld theme are variations on the same (awesome) melody. Death Mountain (3:48) sounds like it was thrown together in five minutes, and the ending theme (1:42), while catchy, is simply in the wrong game. It is Mario music.

Koji Kondo is one of the most important figures in the history of video game music, no doubt about it, but the bar had not been raised quite so high on the NES in 1986 as it had been in the home computing world. Thus The Legend of Zelda sounds great within the context of its system, but a little primitive in the larger scope of things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntmk5aHaPQ4

The interesting thing about Dragon Quest to my western ears is that the game series was never all that hot here. I seem to recall reading at the time of Dragon Quest VIII‘s Japanese release–and we’re talking 2004 so I may be very much mistaken–that the game franchise had sold more copies than Final Fantasy. At any rate, it is important to recognize that this series was huge in Japan. The original Dragon Quest formalized nearly every stereotype of traditional RPGs. This video should make that fairly clear, and it’s pretty significant to note that this was not a product of Eastern adventure/RPG traditions. Yuji Horii took his inspiration from the Ultima and Wizardy series on the Apple II, and it’s at this point that the two genres really diverge. Japan would become the centerpoint of both Eastern and Western traditions, and just a Legend of Zelda served as the quintessential starting point for the modern adventure game, Dragon Quest permanently defined the RPG.

Like The Legend of Zelda‘s overworld theme, Dragon Quest‘s title theme became a series staple, but “Overture March” took quite a while to grow on me. A good many other ears might hear delicious nostalgia, but its quality does not immediately jump out at me. It’s really how Koichi Sugiyama continually developed and improved upon it in future games that makes the original fun to revisit. The rest of the soundtrack was, like Ultima III and Ultima IV, perfectly well suited for the RPG experience, and wider distribution meant that Sugiyama would be much more influential in standardizing this approach. I would be shocked if “Unknown World” (1:40) did not heavily influence Nobuo Uematsu. It could be a chiptune take on a Final Fantasy VII track, and it’s quite pleasant. Still, and unlike Kenneth W. Arnold’s works, the original soundtrack does have its flaws. The combat music (2:22) is terrible, grating on the ears on the first listen let alone after the constant encounters one expects in an RPG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOrfzFPZLAs

But in setting the standards for the series he would faithfully continue to compose for the next twenty five years (the man is now 81 years old and still making music), Koichi Sugiyama also set the standard for what RPGs should sound like. The standard was already in practice, as I hope I have shown, but the enormous influence that the Dragon Quest series would have on video games in Japan probably prevented a lot of deviation from this norm in the future. And much to Koichi Sugiyama’s credit, the music definitely improved over time. Dragon Quest II, released by Enix in January 1987, less than a year after the series debut, would retain the original’s best tracks while replacing the obvious duds with significant improvements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afXJfo-7XRM

By Dragon Quest III (Enix, 1988), Koichi Sugiyama had firmly established himself as one of the best RPG composers of the 1980s. His emphasis on continuity and improvement of past works rather than wholly original soundtracks allowed each game to feel both refreshing and entirely familiar. In the cases of the best tracks, the changes are barely even noticeable. “Overture March” in Dragon Quest III begins almost identically to the original for instance. The melody is a little more staccato, and that’s it. If it’s not broke, why fix it?

I don’t know that I would call either The Legend of Zelda or Dragon Quest great soundtracks. The Legend of Zelda contained an especially great song, but I feel like allowing one song to carry a game was beginning to be a cop-out by 1986. Dragon Quest formed a more complex whole, and it’s definitely closer to excellence, but I feel like it still lets the shortcoming of the NES get the better of it at times in sound selection for what were certainly wonderful melodies. It’s also got the Combat theme to deal with, and such a reoccurring flaw is hard to ignore. Koichi Sugiyama would continually improve, and Koji Kondo too would be stepping up his game before the Famicom expired, particularly with Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1988.

VGM Entry 11: Ultima

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 11: Ultima
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Ultima I, Wizardry, Bokosuka Wars, and Dragon Slayer–if we ignore this last title’s half-hearted attempt–all lacked my topic of interest here: music. When music first came to Eastern-style adventure/RPGs is as difficult to pinpoint as a precise definition of the type of game itself. The NES port of Bokosuka Wars had continuous music, albeit much to its detriment, but a December 14, 1985, release date renders this historically insignificant; Koji Kondo’s work in The Legend of Zelda would take the Japanese gaming world by storm only two months later. There may have been others with some music of worth, but they have evaded my notice. Western RPGs are an entirely different matter.

Kenneth W. Arnold’s work experience summary on LinkedIn claims that “Ultima III was the first game for personal computers (Apple II originally) with a musical score.” I have found no reason to doubt this claim. If I have overlooked an earlier RPG with music, it should nevertheless stand that Arnold’s work on Ultima III: Exodus (Origin Systems, 1983) is among the very first.

Much more importantly, it’s amazing. The songs are exquisitely attuned to the properties of the Mockingboard A sound chip. The deep tones carry a real sense of depth into the gameplay, and the natural distortion is wholeheartedly embraced to create a sense of something hinged between danger and mystery–this idea of an old world that is never entirely safe or wholly understood. The style of each song is ideal. It’s got everything you could expect in an RPG soundtrack: an adventurous overworld theme, a peaceful tune for towns, a haunting dungeon, and an especially noteworthy tense combat melody. In what is quite possibly the first RPG soundtrack ever written, one finds style-scenario associations which are pretty much the same today. Kenneth W. Arnold deserves a lot more credit for Ultima III than the history books grant him, not because he invented RPG music–I am inclined to believe such games naturally lend themselves to particular musical styles–but because he did everything right the first shot out the gate, without any previous standard having been set. And he did it so well that his works still stand among the finest today. Cheers to that.

It just got better from there. Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (Origin Systems) was released on September 16, 1985, and with it Kenneth W. Arnold achieved a level of quality in RPG music that even Nobuo Uematsu would not be topping any time soon. The Castle theme especially (3:09) is one of the most commanding of its kind for any RPG. Shopping (1:34) presents an audio vision of some medieval market place filled with crooked old cranks peddling dubious potions. The combat theme (5:27) is a mere 12 seconds long, yet its exciting, adventurous spirit lends itself to continuous repetition better than nearly any other RPG non-boss battle music I’ve heard.

Credit goes to Apple Vault for actually reproducing this music. It wasn’t easy to come by. Ultima must be one of the most heavily ported series in history, with Ultima III appearing on the Atari 800, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, PC-8801, PC-9801, FM-7, NES, and MSX2, and Ultima IV appearing on the Atari 800, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Amiga, Atari ST, PC-8801, PC-9801, FM-7, FM Towns, Sharp X1, Sharp X68000, NES, MSX2, and SMS. Most of these ports contained the original music adapted for different sound chips, and you can see how the original Apple II Mockingboard take might get lost in the clutter. Some of these ports are pretty good approximations. Others, like the NES version, inexplicably toss out Arnold’s soundtrack altogether. But the game was originally intended to be heard on an Apple II Mockingboard, and I believe this is the most accurate version you’re going to find. Accuracy does matter here, I think. Given the amount of attention to tone quality I think Arnold put into this, preserving the medium is just as important as preserving the melodies themselves.

It’s no matter of chance that many of the best game soundtracks were RPGs. By nature among the most diverse games in setting, they naturally demand a diverse score. Thus it was the case that Ultima III, possibly the first RPG soundtrack ever, might also have been the longest soundtrack up to that time, clocking in at about six and a half minutes in 1983. But it’s the shear quality that deserves most of the attention. Kenneth W. Arnold was brilliant. These are the first truly great RPG soundtracks, and it’s a shame that they have been largely forgotten.

VGM Entry 10: The RPG

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 10: The RPG
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

The music of Super Mario Bros. was also somewhat unique in that it merged flawlessly with a game which had nothing to do with sports or space aliens. The electronic nature of early video game music generated futuristic sounds, and a whole ton of early games being space shooters, the music naturally lent itself to synthesis. Konami’s 1983 space shooter Gyruss is a perfect example of a harmonized audiovisual experience of this sort. But good synthesis also meant stylistic relativity. Not every game on the market involved shooting down space invaders, outrunning enemies through a maze, or bashing in faces with a pixilated club. Many innovative new ideas were in the works which would require a very different sort of soundtrack.

The style of most lasting consequence for video game music was the adventure/role playing game, and it has an extensive history. Link did not spring forth from the head of Shigeru Miyamoto clad in shining armor, and someone somewhere out there still goes around telling people that he was larping as Legolas years before this fancy shmancy new “Dungeons & Dragons” game came along. I think it correct to say that The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest, both released in 1986, were respectively the first adventure game and the first RPG to have massive market success, but both distinct styles emerged from long-standing traditions, and their music was a sort of natural consequence of the nature of the games, not a single individual’s revolutionary new idea.

All joking aside, if you want to go all the way back, you really do have to look at D&D. The first computer RPGs were under construction less than a year after the pen and paper game’s initial publication (TSR, 1974), and they were directly inspired by it and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. These were private affairs, designed by programmers in their spare time, and there were quite a few of them. Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood’s dnd, Rusty Rutherford’s pedit5, and Don Daglow’s Dungeon seem to be the most frequently cited surviving 1974-1976 creations, and there are plenty of rumors of slightly earlier lost works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFh0ILCeWos

A lot of the features of “traditional” video RPGs are direct descendents of tabletop games. They evolved fairly linearly, reaching a proto-modern format by the time of Richard Garriott’s Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (California Pacific) and Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead’s Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Sir-tech Software), both released for the Apple II in 1981.

RPG-esque evolutions in Japan were far more diverse, but perhaps a bit less exciting. With no D&D tradition rendering particular game features canonical from the very beginning, developers were more experimental, merging all sorts of features from western RPGs, simulations, strategy games, and standard action types. The earliest examples are quite difficult to find samples of, perhaps in part because of the language barrier, but the tradition does appear to have begun a bit later than in the west. Koji Sumii’s Bokosuka Wars, released by ASCII for the Sharp X1 home computer in 1983, is an interesting example of a strategy game set in a Zelda-esque overworld of forests, mountains, and castle walls.

Yoshio Kiya’s Dragon Slayer, released for the PC-8801 by Nihon Falcom in 1984, is a more obvious inspiration for The Legend of Zelda, with its strong emphasis on puzzle solving, though the graphics are deplorable for its time and the sound a travesty. (Scott Joplin? Really?) But whatever their flaws, these games were the prototypes. They set the stage for great things to come. And at least in the west, RPG music would appear on the stage in fairly perfected form in the first instance.

VGM Entry 09: Nintendo’s turn

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 09: Nintendo’s turn
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

If a bit humbled by less apparent contemporaries, Koji Kondo’s work in Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) nevertheless stands as the most recognized video game music in the world. Your average Joe on the street is more likely to identify it than a Beatles or Dylan song. A lot of this has to do with successful marketing. Super Mario Bros. is not the most distributed game of all time. In fact, it barely sneaks into the top 10, at roughly 40 million copies sold. A lot of this has to do with dirt cheap mobile phone distribution. (Apparently that Angry Birds game has broken 1 billion. I still have no interest in checking it out, and anyway it’s pretty easy to exploit a free download to your heart’s content to get into the world record book. Does one seventh of the world’s population even own smartphones?) Of games that actually require you spend a little, the 2006 title Wii Sports is leading the records at 79 million. It must be that economic depression…

But really, if you asked people what they thought was the all-time best seller I’m pretty sure most would mention Nintendo’s 1985 classic, and that is an indication of the company’s groundbreaking marketing strategy. If you owned a Nintendo, you knew Mario and his music. And if you played video games in the late 80s, you probably owned a Nintendo. The company has moreover been persistently re-releasing the game ever since its conception, not to mention incorporating features of its classic soundtrack and iconic characters into newer games. The only prior game that really offered this sort of bundle–very catchy music, memorable characters, massive distribution–was Pac-Man.

But a 5 second song that doesn’t even loop and a big yellow dot just aren’t all that satisfying. Oh the ghosts had names, and I’m sure if I was born a few years earlier I’d have gotten a kick out of pretending they were somehow relevant and imagining some sort of weird plot to it all. (Preferably a better one than the Hanna-Barbera 1982 Pac-Man tv series.) But all of the important features, while present, were just too simplistic to stand the test of time. And it wasn’t a game design you could make good sequels to.

What Super Mario Bros. really offered was a full package. The “best” music of its day? No. The most memorable characters? Not in isolation. But all of the features came together to make a game that really had no flaws. Nintendo knew it, and they ran with it.

If I tried to compare Koji Kondo’s music to other game musicians of the day, I might sound a little unfair. He certainly wasn’t revolutionary in style; his music was if anything retro, harking back to earlier carnival- esque soundtracks, whereas electronic experimentation was the cutting edge. Compared to the likes of Monty on the Run (which by the way, despite being only one song, was longer than the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack in its entirety), the game sounds a little childish. But that was, after all, the target audience, and let’s not split hairs here. Koji Kondo is brilliant. He wrote a soundtrack that was simultaneously extraordinarily catchy and quite aesthetically pleasing. It never clashes with the game. It never speaks out louder than the game. It just merges harmoniously, and keeps on playing in your head when you power off.

Maybe that should be remembered as one of his greater contributions to video game music. A lot of the Commodore 64 tracks I’ve been listening to, while feeling more progressive than Super Mario Bros., seem to disregard their games entirely. A good case in point is Roland’s Rat Race.

Another 1985 title, composed by Martin Galway, Roland’s Rat Race (Ocean Software) is a sleazy little bop, perfect for an inner-city street fighter, or perhaps, in consideration of the peculiar opening sequence, something to do with extraterrestrial pimps. It’s great stuff, way better than the vast majority of soundtracks that would ever appear on the Nintendo Entertainment System. But the problem here should become pretty obvious when you take another look at the game’s cover art.

You will find irrelevant soundtracks up to this day, and plenty of carefully coordinated ones prior to Koji Kondo, but I do have to wonder if perhaps Super Mario Bros.‘ success lead to developers demanding a little more attention to audio relativity.