Michael
Vafeas
|
by Michael Vafeas |
| Graphics in video games play a major role, especially in today's games. It seems, however, that many people take the music in these games for granted. Nevertheless, music in video games has been a very important part of the games throughout gaming history. When you open your ears to what the game companies are spending thousands of dollars to compose, you'll see that the music in these games does more than offer an alternative to silence, and that it provides a richness that is necessary in every game. I first noticed music in games about eleven years ago when I saw Super Mario Bros. on the NES. Being accustomed to the Atari 2600, which had few games with any music at all, I thought "Wow, they actually play music for you DURING the game? This is awesome!" Then, in future games, I took the music for granted. After a while, music in games was simply expected. Being young I didn't care what music the game developers packed in the game, as long as I heard some tunes in the background. Then came the Super NES. The first game that really caught my ear was probably Castlevania IV, which has one of the best soundtracks I've heard to date. The clarity of the pianos, the feeling of the flutes, and the joy of hearing the old Castlevania songs in 16-bit glory kept me in the options screen playing with the background music often, and I finally realized that the music did play an important role in games. Not only has the music increased in quality throughout the years, but it has increased in scope as well. It was once easy to pick out stereotypical video game music, which was often tiny and usually had a happy feeling. Not anymore, today's game soundtracks include techno, rock, classical, rag time, fusion, modern jazz, big band, and countless other styles which help define a game and make it as much a pleasure to listen to as to play. This is definitely the case with my personal favorite soundtrack to date, that of Final Fantasy III, which has enough instruments that you could honestly believe that an actual orchestra was needed for such beautiful music. Then came along Tempest 2000 with the best techno I've heard in a video game, and the soundtrack fitted the game with perfection that could only be considered uncharacteristic of Atari. A year later, I was wowed again by the soundtracks on some 3DO games and realized that some CD-ROM games would have quite impressive soundtracks. Several PlayStation and Saturn games proved this very well too. While some soundtracks are very monotonous and poorly written, it is nice to see that the talented composers can express themselves today without the boundaries which plagued some of the 16-bit systems. In general, it is easy to take music for granted, since it is quite intangible to the casual player. It is usually difficult to notice excellent music as readily as you would gorgeous graphics and blood pouring out of digitized characters, but the music is there, and it adds that little something that we are aware of, but rarely appreciate fully. So next time you're playing a game, just stop for a second and listen to what's in the background. Listen carefully. You can ever groove to it if you like, and realize that at one point someone had to place every little detailed sound in the song that you're listening to. Just for fun, here's a list of soundtracks that are a step above those in other games and are good enough to be appreciated in and out of video games: Final Fantasy III, StarFox, Donkey Kong Country 2, Castlevania IV, Dracula X (all for Super NES), Streets of Rage 1 and 2, Sonic 3 (for Genesis, of course), Ridge Racer Revolution, Street Fighter Alpha, Rayman, Zero Divide (PlayStation, naturally), Tempest 2000 (Jaguar), Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter, Guardian Heroes, and Mortal Kombat II (Saturn). Wait, that last one was a joke... |
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