(a brief) History of video game music (16/4/2013)

For this presentation we looked at multiple examples of video games which included the following:

• The simple beeps from 'Pong' (1972).
• The revving noises of the tanks moving in the first ever driving game 'Tank' (1974).
• The first game to have background sound and shooting sound affects 'Space Invaders' (1978). We also found out that the invaders themselves accidentally went faster as more were destroyed as it was a glitch in the original program. 
• The supposed first ever game to have talking in it, even though the voices were completely inaudible possibly due to its speakers and the technology at the time. 'Startovox' (1978).
• Listened to the classic theme from 'Tetris' which was the first ever backing track for a game (1984). 
• Listened to the classic music from 'Super Mario Bros' (1985) which was the first game to use different music for each level.
• Listened to 'F-ZERO's 16 bit music which was a change from previous 8-bit music as it was more detailed since it sounded like actual drums and guitar playing (1991).
• 'Wipeout' (1995) contained 32 bit music and therefore allowed for music that you would usually hear. Such as this game's club like beats and lyrics. It was also the first game to release a separate soundtrack in stores, even though some of music on it was never in the game.
• 'Halo's (2001) classic orchestra track that contained a mixture of orchestral choral singing/sound, guitar and drums. Thus being a great example of an overall piece put together by an entire group of people and not just one in order to create an awesome musical score. 
• 'Red Dead Redemption's (2010) musical track that was a mix of acoustic guitar and lyrics sung slowly in order to create an affective atmosphere. This was put into the game for when the player crossed the border into Mexico as the music sounds very Mexican and has a sense of loneliness to underline the player's travel, thus also sounding like a western theme which was in fact the genre.

We were then asked to find a number of soundtracks that have had a  influence in our lives to present next week. I really enjoyed putting together my power point and look forward to showing my examples as I love video game music.

However, even though I was only going to go with 10 examples I know for a fact that I will end up presenting far more as I will not beable to leave some examples out.