TREMENDOUS
THE EIGHTIES WAS THE ERA WHERE VIDEOGAME MUSIC TURNED FROM SOUND EFFECTS AND SHORT JINGLES TO AN ARTISTIC SPECIALISM IN ITS OWN RIGHT, ALLOWING FOR A GOLDEN AGE OF EXPERIMENTATION
Though the games of the Seventies certainly had their distinctive sounds, from the bassy boom of Asteroids’ explosions to the relentless march of the Space Invaders, gaming audio really came of age in the Eighties. One man noted for his love of game music from this era is Chris Abbott, owner of C64audio.com. While he’s most associated with the SID, his love of game music actually predates his ownership of Commodore’s most popular machine. “The Atari 400 was my first machine, so I have a really soft spot for POKEY, which was a chip they put a lot of thought into. Hearing Preppie! and Shamus for the first time on the winter’s night I got my first computer was life-changing.” Once he got the C64, he discovered the work of a range of talented composers, including Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Ben Daglish, Maniacs Of Noise and
Tim Follin. While those composers made their names here, in Japan the likes of Koji Kondo, Yuzo Koshiro, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Shinji Hosoe and Nobuo Uematsu began their own careers, creating memorable tunes in the arcades and on home consoles.
Of course, while the musicians were names you came to know, their tools were just as important and the decade saw rapid technological development. “Going from the VIC-20’S synth chip to the wonder of the C64’s SID was a huge leap, but going from ‘essentially beepers’ to Atari’s four-voice
POKEY chip was almost as big a jump. The guys behind the SID went on to Ensoniq to do amazing stuff with wavetables that seemed to go nowhere commercially. They were years ahead of their time.” FM synthesis became popular in arcades from the mid-eighties and eventually filtered into the home in systems like the Amiga and Mega Drive. By the end of the Eighties it was even possible to experience games with CD audio, if you were lucky enough to own a PC Engine with the appropriate add-on. Freed from restrictions, composers were able to reimagine the chiptunes of games like Ys and Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair.
Today, Eighties game music is reimagined in a similar way by composers in projects like Ocremix and Chris’ C64audio.com. When asked what keeps people interested in his own project, Chris notes a few factors. “Partly because they’re full of talented people including original composers like Rob Hubbard, and because they feel part of that community: it’s a bit of a family,” he explains. “Partly because people like ‘the same but different’ and to have tunes they love have more love poured in. And partly because the projects are so ambitious, technically and creatively: who else would risk a multi-decade project to get a whole symphonic orchestra to do C64 tunes? And we deliver. Eventually!”