The History of the World of Video Game Music

The History of the World of Video Game Music

So this was included in last month's Dwelling of Duels, a monthly video game remix competition where the only prerequisite is that entries require live instruments.

I can really say hands down that it was one of the greatest videos I have seen in a long time. Of course, I didn't recognize a lot of the games, and some of the music for that matter. It isn't the most enlightening video but the custom medley as the background music is pretty great.

Being a ridiculously large fan of video game music, it's stuff like this that bring up the interesting point that video game music has evolved rather well over the past few decades. From the limited chiptunes of the Atari and Commodore to NES and it's 4 channels of noise all the way to today where musical recordings can be easily coded into games. Nobody even bothers with trackers or MML in mainstream games anymore, even though it's heavily favored in indie games and for sport.

I just wanna now if this topic, "The History of the World of Video Game music", is for game remixes, history on video game music, or talking about favorite video game music. I just wanna know ok. Inferno Out!

The video is just an interesting find, but the topic I was looking for is how the envelope was pushed with the limitation for video game music, mostly in chiptune.

I've been well into NES|FC music for a few years and it astounds me at the idea of coding a music expansion chip into Famicom catridges to achieve more than a 4 channel limit. I'm pretty sure it isn't been possible on a NES. With the many ways it's possible to track NSF, the file format for NES music, it's still real difficult to use said sound chips. Meanwhile, there are about a dozen+ people doing it over at Famicompo mini.

Even the idea to use arpeggios to get around not being able to use chords in early forms of chiptune is pretty great.

The PC-98 got a nice little hardware update going from the Yamaha YM2203 sound chip to the YM2612 to allow for more FM channels and a few nifty percussion perks.

Now since direct audio seems to be the standard, what envelope is there to push? There doesn't seem to be much of a limit. It seems a bit monotonous if there isn't a new capability of digital sound to embrace.

I was just wondering if anyone here had some thoughts on that.

So what you are saying is how they are trying to put music like today into older systems like the NES. And how the music today won't work on systems like that because the system can not support it. I'm sorry I do not understand some of what you are saying. :( Inferno out...