BY MIKEY MIGO
Lets take a look at those old school games and one specific element I ignored as a kid, the music. A few years ago the novelty of old school games came back and so did the memories of the midi-like music that came with it.
When thinking of video game music, I like most of you, think of the Mario Brothers theme song. I dig the song so much that I used to have it playing on my old indy wrestling site. A mere tune that is nothing more than a simple monophonic melody is a staple in my generation's pop culture. The song is classic and everyone knows it. Who do we thank for this great piece of music? That would be the legendary Koji Kondo. Konji Kondo was an early and very prominent composer for the best Nintendo games. My other favorite work of his is the theme to Zelda. You know that that too, I'm sure.
Why guys like Koji Kondo don't get mad props from everyone in the land? I'll never know, but this is my shout out to the music that made my childhood all that much bearable.
As time went on the technology evolved and so did the video game music. With the creation of Super Nintendo, things were state of the art at the time. The music blew my mind! The technology used for Super Nintendo was that of the best synthesizers at the time. This could be why I love new wave and sorta dig techno.
As if we weren't spoiled enough, the game systems brought out the big guns. With the creation of SEGA CD and Playstation music moved towards being completely digital. While at start this was awesome, I think it killed the mystic and simplicity of video games. Sure we got games like Tony Hawk and Madden with real song soundtracks, but we can listen to music on ipods, computers, radios, etc. There was only one place to hear video games music and obviously that's in video games.
I know the Playstation 3 comes out soon and many people will be piling in to their local game pimp to plop down their hard earned SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS(WTF!) and take this gaming counsel home to waste hours of their lives. Lets forget the fact that you could take the SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS and invest it into a CD or even a stock and do something responsible. Just remember where it all started. Before the times of three dimensional games and licensed music, it was guys like Koji and people at Nintendo that paved the way.
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