Emails: More on the Old Music…

Hi Sean,
I think the reason why old game music is so catchy is because it has a lead voice and little embellishment beyond that, most modern background music tends to have a multitude of voices with no lead voice that defines the piece and usually not even using themes (at least none my untrained ear can discern). Most catchy music is music you can hum because there is one distinct main voice. Not all recent games lack catchy music either, something like Plants vs Zombies or Katamari Damacy has a very strong main theme that can instantly be associated with the game. I think it’s those lead voices along with strong use of themes and maybe also the short loop length of most old pieces that allow them to be so catchy.

Not a bad hypothesis. Modern game music may have become more complicated than the consumer can absorb, overshooting perhaps.

Hello Malstrom,
I like your new column about game music, but I’d just like to point out real quick that your comment on Super Mario Land made my inner game music geek cringe.
First of all, the GameBoy is based on the Z80 CPU, which is 8-bit. Therefore, like its big brother the NES, the GameBoy itself is an 8-bit device. The only thing 4-bit about it is the bit depth of the samples which are used by one of the GameBoy sound channels. The rest of it is mostly the same as the NES sound hardware, and it comes with stereo capabilities.
Remember how Nintendo already managed to create a long list of great musical works on the NES (such as SMB or Mega Man 2) before the release of the GameBoy. Since the sound hardware are pretty similar to each other, it was only natural to get similar results on it. I think GameBoy music is greatly underrated by many people, in contrast to the praise the NES always gets. They just have to listen up and maybe use headphones for once instead of the crummy internal mono speaker. Anyway it’s a good thing you’re pointing out Mario Land.

Are you going to show some C64 tunes in future posts? The C64 actually started the game sound revolution together with the NES, so it mustn’t be missed out.

Cheers,

I did not know that about the Gameboy hardware for music being comparable to the NES.

And there will definately be C64 music. :)