Ahhh, music. Personally, the one thing that sticks to mind the most about a game, beside the story for RPGs, is the music. Ever since I got access to the internet, one of my interests was finding music from my games. But there is an evolution behind it too, believe it or not.
Let's go back in time, in the 80s. If you checked my first history lesson, you already know about the Coleco. While I haven't done any tribunes for other systems, they did have common elements on that side.
The first generation of video game music was limited if any at all. Most of the games had a little jingle for the opening screen. For example, almost everyone remembers Pac-Man. Yet, does anyone remember that the game itself had no background music?
Wether it was because the evolution was not there yet, or simply because of technical limitations on those systems at the time, most games had little to no background music. Popeye and Burgertime for example did have a little 'bip boop' rhythm in the back. With nowaday's standars would be simply nothing else than a heart beat to check if the user is still paying attention to the game. Back then, it's all you had.
The only time you had actual music of any sort was during powerups. Pac-Man and Popeye had such power modes, accompanied by a little music that would die off when done. It would be the sole indication of such powered mode most of the time, outside of slight screen color changes.
The first generation of gaming systems also had one severe technical limitation to work around, which was the sound samples. In pretty much every case, they had samples pre-defined and hard-coded into the console itself. The cartdriges held no other data than what note to play on what rhythm.
This system also existed in the first computers. At first it was simply a single beep, but then it evolved into something similar to the consoles, being able to modulate the samples into something that becomes a melody. That system was called MIDI, which also was a standard for electronic organs/pianos. The MIDI system used samples that were on the computer/organ that played it.
When I started on the Internet nearly 10 years ago, there was something called XGMidi (I think), which was a MIDI player that contained it's own set of samples, rather than using the ones from the computer itself. The difference was surprising.
Nowadays most computers come with much better MIDI samples, and most sound cards have options to pick different qualities and sets of samples as well. But that also means that two computers won't run the same MIDI music exactly the same. Some MIDI songs actually sounded horrible on XGMidi, yet were perfect on normal MIDI, and sometimes they were better on XGMidi. It depends on the samples and their modulation. Sometimes it doesn't follow what the author inteded for it.
But up until the NES/MasterSystem, the principle was the same. And the impossibility of changing those samples made sure that everyone would hear the same music. There was only a handful of games that used exterior sound samples. Two examples I remember from the NES was Smash TV (Good luck! You'll need it!) and Star Wars (Luke! Use the Force!). The sound quality was horrendous and ear-splitting though, but that's the best you had.
I'll expand more next time, but before ending I'll leave you with two sound samples that you can download. For fault of having better examples, here's the battle music from Final Fantasy (the first).
First the MP3 format so you hear how it was out of your TV. Then two samples of the same song in MIDI. Since MIDIs are usually done by fans, it won't exactly sound the same, but you can note the difference in the instruments used. Out of the two samples, depending on your computer, one will probably sound better than the other.
FF1-Battle MP3
FF1-Battle MIDI 01
FF1-Battle MIDI 02
PS : I prefer the first MIDI to the second ;)
3 comments:
Very nice post there regarding the music.
I agree with you, the 1st MIDI sounds loads better than the second.
You're right, the first midi sounds better.
"Music in video games" is a very interesting subject IMO. Like you said, older systems had hardware limitations that crippled whatever good intentions the composers might have. Well, i used the word "composers" in a loose way, i doubt that by then companies hired actual composers. And there was a good reason for it: music simply wasn't needed. It was used merely as a filler. The focus of the games were what was going on in the screen, music could be seen as a distraction.
But they still had melodies here and there that are still known nowadays. The little song when you start a Donkey Kong stage, or the Pac-Man music. Even if they were short, they were there, and someone had to compose them as short as they were.
Of course, that doesn't compare to today's games, but everything has a start, as simple as it looks.
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