8-Bit

Game Music, Music Production

Watch the Rapid Evolution of Early Game Music

October 12, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | 2 Comments Share this

Passionate as we may be about video game music, it’s easy to gloss over how much work it takes to make computers sing songs, especially in the old days. I’m definitely guilty of that so I always appreciate when someone takes the time to break things down and explain to a simpleton like me.

Our own Sebastian Urrea has done a fabulous job combining history, hardware and composition and similar to his post, NES Sounds as Instruments, is this informative video from The 8-Bit Guy, How Oldschool Sound/Music worked. In less than 10 minutes the video covers the evolution from simplistic beeper speakers, through FM synthesis and finally the PCM sampling of later PCs like the Amiga. There’s great visual examples, simple explanations of what’s going on and some great music to be heard. Thanks go to Engadget for originally posting about The 8-Bit Guy’s video.
Chip Music

Get Meta’ Gear with “Elegia” Remix by Taylor

August 13, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Get Meta’ Gear with “Elegia” Remix by Taylor Share this

Back at E3 in June Konami rolled out a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain featuring one of my favorite New Order songs, “Elegia”. The dark and brooding instrumental 80’s synth/rock track is like nothing else I’ve heard from the group and it fits the themes of Metal Gear Solid V perfectly. I suppose you could also read way into the Konami news and find some irony that the last trailer directed by Hideo Kojima is set to a song that is literally titled ‘elegy’.

Now imagine for a minute that Big Boss were to find a Game Boy in his latest adventure and, in true Metal Gear fashion, it contained an eerily prescient 8-bit stealth action game. Then surely the music in that game would be none other than this chiptune version of “Elegia” from Taylor and Sinner Fox Studios. It’s every bit as haunting as New Order’s original with minimal instrumentation, a nice crackly low end and an indeterminate array of chiptune sounds. No, this literally wouldn’t be coming out of a Game Boy or any other console I could identify.

The track isn’t a final version either and comes from the mini-album “Quantum”, a collection of “scraps” from Taylor’s unfinished project. You can grab “New Order – Elegia(Koneko’s Chip. Ver)” along with the title track “Quantum” for as little as you want (including free) over on Bandcamp. With The Phantom Pain so close I couldn’t help but share this track and imagine how it might fit into the crazy meta-meta-verse of Metal Gear Solid.
Chip Music

Newest Mega Ran Music Video Feat. D&D Sluggers

August 6, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Newest Mega Ran Music Video Feat. D&D Sluggers Share this

The latest in a slew of content being released by Random: aka. Mega Ran leading up to the released of his new album RNDM features a music video with geek rock band D&D Sluggers, as well as 3D animation recreations by artist Benjamin Sutherland of classic game environments such as Mega Man 2, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World.

The new album and several package bundles drops on September 15th and will include 16 tracks, as well as a bonus track of the credits to the (eventual) game Mighty no.9 featuring a collaboration with Castlevania composer Michiru Yamane.

RNDM – Bandcamp | iTunes
Chip Music, Featured, Game Music, Music Production

NES Sounds as Instruments

July 29, 2015 | Sebastian Urrea | 5 Comments Share this NES Sounds as Instruments

The classic, simple sounds of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from the era of 8-bit video game music are for many, including myself, very nostalgic and heartwarming. This is where it all began! Video games have come so far from these original beeps and boops; now there are live orchestras performing this music, sometimes in the game itself, and they even tour around the world to perform. Many people love these sounds and music for the memories they hold, but even so, they may not want to listen to them regularly when they’re not playing these games. And if you play an original NES tune for anyone who doesn’t have similar cherished memories of sitting around playing video games while their mothers begged them to go outside, they’ll probably cringe at the cacophony of fake, electronic noise that you’re subjecting them to. Chances are they will be bewildered that anyone would enjoy such a thing or find value in it, even if they’re too polite to say so.

I am one of the folks who believes that there is a lot to be admired about the music from the 8-bit era of video games, and I believe that there is a lot that contemporary composers can learn from this body of work. If you listen closely, you can hear how composers writing for the NES learned to treat these sounds as instruments, not just sounds, and how they managed to create music, instead of just noise.

(more…)
Chip Music, Game Music, Reviews

Up-Beats in a Beatdown – Treachery in Beatdown City Ep.1 OST (Review)

January 25, 2014 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Up-Beats in a Beatdown – Treachery in Beatdown City Ep.1 OST (Review) Share this

You know life’s pretty awesome when you get more Inverse Phase popping up in the video game music and chip music scene, and it’s fantastic when it’s right during the start of the new year. Why slug through a cold winter, right after grand events like MAGFest, and be jonesing for new tunes to keep spirits high?

Case-in-point here is Treachery in Beatdown City: Episode 1, which pays tribute to all the sidescrolling beat ’em ups of the 8 and 16-bit era that most of us ’90s kids grew up on, such as Double Dragon and Bad Dudes with some RPG aspects thrown in for good measure. There’s nothing like a good beat ’em up game, and this particular one allows us gentle listeners a delightful cadre of chip music courtesy of Mr. Brendan “Inverse Phase” Becker.

(more…)
Game Music, Indie Music, Reviews

Boston Plays Indies (Concert Review)

October 22, 2013 | Michael Hoffmann | 1 Comment Share this Boston Plays Indies (Concert Review)

On September 14, the MIT campus hosted the second annual Boston Festival Indie Games. The one-day event featured games by local independent developers, talks by people from the game industry, and viewings of gaming documentaries. To end the event, a concert was held at the Middle East Downstairs, a small music venue just a few blocks away from the MIT campus. This concert, titled Boston Plays Indies, featured music by Deadbeatblast, Control Group, DJ Cutman, and the Video Game Orchestra. I had the chance to see the VGO (Video Game Orchestra) perform before and I was also familiar with the work of DJ Cutman, but I was not as familiar with either Deadbeatblast or Control Group. Having some idea of what to expect, I entered the club and took my seat for what ended up being a great evening of music.

Starting up the show was solo artist Deadbeatblast, a chiptune DJ from Toronto, Canada who’s setup consisted of two Nintendo Game Boys and a set of devices to mix and manage the audio being generated by the two handheld devices. All of the music was original work by the artist. No covers or remixes, but all of it created with the 8-bit sounds available to him on the Nintendo hardware. To describe the music as simply chiptune or 8-bit is too inaccurate and vague. Many of the pieces he performed had an aggressive and experimental sound, similar to what you would hear in industrial genre music. Even with this experimental vibe, Deadbeatblast’s tunes maintained a good steady dance beat that the audience could rock out too. A particular favorite of mine was “Hyperspace”, a piece that started with a simple pattern and steadily built up as he continued to stack more and more music elements into the mix. Pieces took sudden but brief shifts in tempo, incorporated improvised interruptions, and always kept me guessing as to where the music would go next. The performance was full of great rhythms, memorable moments, and some great chiptune sounds. He has definitely made a fan out of me. (more…)
Game Music

An Indiegogo Campaign to Watch: Tales n’ Tactics

August 14, 2013 | Patrick Gann | Comments Off on An Indiegogo Campaign to Watch: Tales n’ Tactics Share this

Richard McDonald, who has recently joined us as a contributing writer for OSV, has informed me of an indie game he is writing the music for … granted it gets funded, crowdsourcing style. Tales n’ Tactics is a strategy game for PC that I think the developers, Arcane Wrench Entertainment, can explain better than I can:

Tales n’ Tactics is an old-school turn-based strategy game in which you control up to four champions, which is either Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Undead or Demon, in a quest for victory. Conquer towns, clear dungeons or just explore the randomly generated maps. Each game can be won by completing certain objectives which are generated randomly for you or that you have chosen yourself in the beginning of a game. You can play either alone or with your friends, on one computer via hot seat-mode or online! All this is presented in cozy, retro graphics with fitting “old-school” music.

Tales n’ Tactics is utilizing Indiegogo as their crowdsourcing platform. To that end, Richard has released 2 preview tracks on his Soundcloud account to help promote the campaign:

The “Human City Theme” preview is piano-heavy and has a lot of great 20th century impressionist style to it (i.e. — it sounds like Masashi Hamauzu, SaGa Frontier II etc).

You can check out the Indiegogo campaign HERE. They’re doing a flex-funding campaign, so the goal does not have to be reached for funds to be released. Support starts with as little as $4, and rewards start with the soundtrack alone for $7, the game alone for $8, the game and soundtrack for $13, and (of course) some crazy rewards for high-dollar contributions. You guys know how these things go. If you’re at all interested, please support, and thank you!