The Investigation of The History of Game Music

The base of my research is going to be the investigation of the history of game sounds / music on one side and the investigation of the history of gaming consoles on the other since the two have always been in a tight connection. After that I’ll analyze their present situation and connect it with the popular music throughout the decade and nowadays to show how it was and is used today. I will do research on the present and consequently the future of game consoles, game sound and popular music putting it together to create an image of the future where art will be felt.

The earliest sounds in the context of improving gameplay experience dates back to as late as the 1930 with the invention of pinball machines. The Baffle Ball created by manufacturers Gottlieb & Company which became the antecedents for all pinball machines yet to come. For quite a while pinball machines have been the only source of sound one could get while playing until the year of 1972 when the company ATARI invented the PONG game which had a simple but very effective use of two sounds that made the gameplay more dynamic and alive. One of the most important moments in the history of game sound happens also in 1972 when the same company ATARI releases a game called Touch Me which features a circle with four blinking colored buttons, and the player needs to press the one that lights up. The product, as interesting and attractive it looked turned out to be a complete failure. The developer Ralph Baer decided to redo the game and added random sounds when the buttons would light up and sold the idea to Milton Bradley who sold the game under the name of SIMON SAYS in 1974 which turned out to be one of the most successful games ever. The next big invention was in the year of 1977 when ATARI released their 2600 VCS model that had played 16 different sounds ranging from flute like melodies to explosive sounds. Although it brought a lot of new sounds and features it lacked the pureness of tone in its noise because the pitches didn’t correspond to the frequency division feature it was operating with so the music would sound rather detuned, wrong and irritating. Nevertheless the consoles worldwide unit sales reach over 27 and a half million .The next year ATARI decided to go back to its former arcade game platform with the game FOOTBALL which was quite successful but soon stomped by Midways Space Invaders created by Taito, causing a wave of popularity both in Japan and the US. 1980 was one of the most memorable years of gaming history when ATARI released the game Asteroids which holds a legendary status in the gaming world. Not only were the visuals and gameplay smooth, the game also featured carefully designed sound dynamics such as the heart beat sound effect and the explosions which had specially placed hardware circuits inside of the arcade reacting to what was going on in the game and playing at the right time. All of that together created an unforgettable and never yet to be seen experience.

To boost that ATARI released a VCS version of the game making the sales of the console rocket up again. The next and probably the most popular arcade game ever was NAMCOs famous Pac-Man. It was the first game to create a mania and caused people to actually wait in line in order to get a chance to play it selling over 350 000 arcade units and had a revenue of over 2 billion $. Having a very memorable GAME START tune with a set of attracting loud squeaking, beeping and weeping noises it was impossible to ignore. In 1981 Nintendo releases the famous Donkey Kong arcade which also introduces the character Mario (from the Mario Bros. line of games) and features a very memorable array of tunes and sounds. By the end of 1982 the arcade industry reaches 12 billion $ in revenue. At the same time a lot of existing game companies such as ATARI focused on the production and improvement of home computer systems such as the 400 and 800 models which included a built in speaker and a Pokey sound chip which is known for its famous 8-bit square wave sound which was the best quality of sound a computer could produce at that time. 1985 marks an important year when Nintendo released the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) with worldwide sales of almost 62 million units.

As mentioned above a lot of companies had started showing interest in PCs (personal computers) which sparked another branch of game developing which really took off after John Madden’s Football release in 1988. In 1989 Nintendo unveiled its first Gameboy console which was the first handheld system turning out to be a game-changer in the gaming industry with almost 120 million units sold worldwide. It had a headphone jack and 4 stereo channels that played classic 8-bit melodies. The same year SEGA releases its Sega Genesis console complete with legendary Sonic the Hedgehog game reaching almost 39 million sales. The game features a wide variety of soundtracks and sound effects which were a source of inspiration for generations to come. Nintendo comes back 1991 with the SNES console which could play 16-bit sounds and had much more impressive graphics and coloring comparing to its predecessor, the NES. One of the first two-player fighting games Mortal Combat comes out on arcade systems in 1993 with its unforgettable soundtrack and sound effects that can be heard in many songs to this day. SONY decided to step into the world of consoles with the release of PlayStation that set them right on the throne of the game industry with over 100 million units sold worldwide. The next year Nintendo puts out its 64 console which didn’t quite live up to its expectations comparing to its predecessors but was still impactful enough to almost reach 33 million sales. Nintendo also recreated and released the Gameboy model again in 1998 as the Gameboy Color which it didn’t change much on the field of Sonics but rather focused on the color palette of the visuals. It was also my first ever game console which I have spent countless hours playing Pokemon games that made a crucial impact on me in the musical sense. 1999 marks the release of the first interactive music arcade game called Dance Dance Revolution made by KONAMI which made the players dance to fast electronic tunes and turned out to be a real hit .

The year 2000 is probably the most significant year for gaming because of the most distributed console of all time, the PlayStation 2 which managed to sell almost 160 million units worldwide. In the same year the famous game The Sims is released, drawing a new and more casual audience of gamers. Nintendo comes back with more releases in 2001 starting with the Gameboy Advance console (which is an even smaller handheld gaming system than the previous Gameboy - 83 million sales) as well as the GameCube system with very popular games such as Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion and Super Smash Bros. (22 million sold). On the other side Microsoft is entering the console industry with the release of their XBOX system which creates a firm but much smaller fan base than SONYs (25 million sales). The game HALO, being an XBOX exclusive, becomes one of the most popular First Person Shooter games in the history. The digital distribution platform called Steam which allowed PC gamers to download and play a huge selection of games for a subscription was brought up in the year of 2003. Probably the most popular handheld gaming system, the Nintendo DS was released in 2004 with worldwide sales reaching up to 155 million. SONY followed putting its own handheld console, the PSP (PlayStation Portable) on the market for the first time, but couldn’t beat the DS by selling 80 million units. In 2005, the Microsoft’s XBOX 360 is released (with impressive HD DVD capabilities that made the first person shooter games like Call of Duty, Bioshock, Borderlands, Fallout, Mass Effect and Gears of War) that sold 84 million worldwide . The following year was also one of the most important ones for console releases as SONY put its PS3 system on the market (which also holds the exclusive right to Blu-ray technology on the console) but what’s more important is that Nintendo released the Wii console, which was the first fully interactive gaming system making families come together to play since it was such a new and fun thing to do (sold over a 100 million units).

In the year 2007 a game Rock Band is released which includes a microphone, drum and guitar controllers, which is the first one of its kind to directly interact with music in the game. In the following years, from 2008 when World of Warcraft revolutionized the social aspect of gaming to 2013 when both SONY and Microsoft released their latest consoles ( PlayStation 4 – 63million sales and the XBOX One – 31million sales), not much has happened. Console companies are rather perfecting their consoles features and focusing on online/social gaming making rereleases of existing products with minor changes in the design and interface while the gameplay stays the same. The new platform for games has appeared with the invention of smartphones in a form of apps that one can download from their smartphone stores. The main two software platforms are Android and iOS.

The music industry connected with the game industry quite soon after its kick off. Already in the year of 1982, the first crossing of the two appear when the rock ‘n’ roll supergroup Journey released its Journey Escape game for the Atari VCS 2600 in which you guide the band past the paparazzi and groupies to their vehicle. A very simple, Asteroid like game that attracted not only the fans of the band but also gamers. More importantly the soundtrack for this game contains their song, but digitized and adjusted for the Atari console. This is the first game to incorporate a musical trend, and it only goes forward from there. The following year a Paul McCartney game is released titled Give My Regards to Broad Street which involves driving through London to meet the members of the band in order to piece together the song, No More Lonely Nights – of course, digitalized. Soon after the previous one the next band related game comes in the year 1985 titled same as the band: Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The game is interesting and different as the player needs to solve a bunch of minigames to actually finish it. Three of their hit songs have also been digitalized and made into 8bit chiptunes that follow the player through the game. The legendary Michael Jackson even had his own game titled Moonwalker, after his film at the time. While winning races and battles the player listens to 8 bit synthesized versions of the famous MJ songs and watching the animated MJ reenacting his trademark dance moves.

One of the biggest bands ever Aerosmith released their Revolution X game that was a real hit in the arcades. Along with the thrilling first person shooter gameplay and the interesting conspiring content the player also gets the chance to listen to digitalized Aerosmith songs which improve the gameplay and make it more intense. The next big year was 1999 when David Bowie made an appearance in the game Omikron – the nomad soul. Giving his voice to a extra - terrestrial being that warns of the governments evil plans makes the game a hundred times more interesting. He also wrote numerous songs for the in – game band called The Dreamers and later also used his songs on his 1999 album Hours. The same year the legendary Hip –Hop group, The Wu – Tang Klan released a fighting type of game titled Taste The Pain, basically a Hip – Hop version of Mortal Kombat, which only added up to the hype they were generating at that time resulting in a bigger fan base and overall happier fans. The next rock ‘n’ roll band to do it was KISS with their first person shooter game Psycho Circus named after their album. The band already had a history of involving themselves into games since they had previously made a KISS pinball machine but in 2000 they released a game compatible for PCs and Sega Dreamcast. The year 2004 marks the next important year when the record label Def Jam unveils its wrestling themed game called Fight for New York featuring many popular artists from that time.