3 posts tagged “games”

While I certainly can't claim the sort of video-game music aficionado status as some of my friends, I do have at least one claim to obsessive compulsive fame.  I sat in front of my Dreamcast with the sound out rigged into my computer for most of a single night in order to record and rip all the background music for Jet Grind Radio.

And while it may lack some of the lo-fi charm of the Tetris songs, Jet Grind Radio had a much smaller cult following for its use of cel-shaded graphics to create a cartoony feel to the lighthearted mayhem cause by vandalism of public places.  (It even had the most adorable, "We think grafitti is art, but it's still illegal.  Please don't do it." disclaimer every time you started up the game.)

A good chunk of the songs were by Hideki Naganuma who, as far as I can tell, works primarily in video game soundtracks, but included a few high profile cameo songs for a set of levels set in a fictionalized NYC, including Rob Zombie and Jurassic 5.  (There is one level that is so close to the area around the Lorimer St. JMZ station that I kept wanting to take my character into the McDonald's that I knew was there.)

Rock It On (original) 2 comments

Sweet Soul Brother (original)

Magical Girl

Enjoy,

Having 30 contributors to this blog, there are a bunch of different musical tastes and it's great to share all of it to open ears. Although I think we're neglecting some genres... one being game music.

Back in the early '90s when I was a child, a little handheld gaming console made a splash in the gaming industry. This device I'm referring to was the Nintendo Game Boy. It was released in 1989 and shipped with the addictive puzzle game Tetris. I was only three when it was first released, but I still remember playing it at age five when I was first introduced to it... always leaving one of the sides empty, anticipating a stick or "I", trying to fill up as many gaps as possible with the other six tetrominoes falling, but the "I" never appeared and soon it was game over.

Tetris was first created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov on an Electronika 60 with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov. It was loosely based on a "classic geometric puzzle board game 'Pentominos'." (Tetris.com) In became popular in Moscow and after some legal copyright disputes, made its way to the Nintendo Game Boy. Pajitnov "derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix "tetra-", as all of the pieces contain four segments, and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport" (Wiki - G4 interview on 'Icons'). There's also a whole history page on Tetris.com.

The music is highly addictive even with its lo-fi, 8-bit sound. The most popular song that many artists have covered and has become known as "The Tetris Song" is "Korobeiniki" (Russian: "Коробе́йники"). There's also a variant/original called "Kalinka" that starts out slow and increases in speed and suddenly stops. It's "a Russian song based on a poem with the same name written in 1861 by Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov and printed in the Sovremennik magazine in 1861. Korobeyniki were peddlers selling fabric, haberdashery, books etc. in pre-revolutionary Russia." (Wiki). In the original Game Boy edition, it's called Music A. Music C is called "French Suite No. 3 in B-Minor" by Johann Sebastian Bach (which is my favorite). I don't have any information about Music B, the opening song, or the high score song. They all can be downloaded in mp3 format from KH Insider.

Type 1        Opening Song
Type 2 (A)   Korobeiniki by Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov
Type 3 (B)   Unknown Title
Type 4 (C)   French Suite No. 3 in B-Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach
Type 5        High Score Song

There are a bunch of videos on YouTube of Tetris parodies and people covering the various songs. Below are a handpicked few.

Parodies

Cover Songs

Jason :: Nintendo | Tetris | Wiki (Tetris) | Wiki (Tetris Game Boy) | KH Insider | Directory of Tetris Cover Songs

This is a fact: I have 186 Jeremy Soule songs. That's more than Blur (125, not counting Damon's side projects), but less than Oasis (200). Apparently I buy enough Fantasty/Role Playing Games (with free soundtracks) that it built up quite a collection, even though these soundtracks are really not my cup of tea.

Jeremy Soule is like the Danny Elfman (in his hey day) of video game soundtracks. He's scored over 30 gaming soundtracks, starting with Secret of Evermore for SquareSoft in 1995. The last couple of games (all in 2005-2006) with his music were: Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, Guild Wars Nightfall, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion , and Dungeon Siege II. That's a lot of work, and they all sound the same to me (please see my comment about this not being my cup of tea). Some of songs are derivative or variations of some of the video game's themes, but that's really the nature of background soundtracks.

Anyway, the song I've picked out is "Devona's Theme", which starts off like a heroic theme and then drifts to this ... lurking evil danger. It's kind of hard to explain, there's definitely a shift in the tone of the arrangement. Also, there is a background choir if you listen closely.

Trivia: Guild Wars is one of the most successful online game, second only to Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The reason why they do so well is because ArenaNet does not charge a monthly fee that most online games requires, but instead focus on selling new campaigns. There's been three so far, and my favorite is Nightfall. You can test out all three campaigns by downloading a client, which is only good for ten hours of play, over at www.guildwars.com.

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