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The Unsung Heroes Behind Early Video Game Music

Ever wondered who's behind Nintendo theme songs?
One of the many unsung heroes. Image: YouTube

Documentary filmmaker and musician Nick Dwyer still remembers where and when he realized that video games had musical composers. His road-to-Damascus moment came on Streets of Rage. "His name appears right on the title screen, 'Music by Yuzo Koshiro,'" Dwyer told me via Skype. "And it's like 'Whoa. Who is this dude?' It was the first time that music's role was elevated. And that was a big deal."

Despite their influence, the actual men and women who wrote the music for the 8- and 16-bit console games remain mostly obscure outside of Japan. This desire to shed light on the "unsung heroes" of early gaming is part of what motivated Dwyer to team up with Red Bull to do a documentary series, "Diggin' in the Carts," about them. The series' name is inspired by how Dwyer hunted through Japanese vintage game store carts, like a DJ searching for new records, for games. The final episode drops on Thursday, just in time for night-in binge watching, or a lost weekend.

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Watching the series you finally hear from the composers and musicians the music inspired. And that's everyone from London's Dizzee Rascal to LA's Flying Lotus. There's also tons of great Tokyo b-roll, and old Japanese video game console footage, if you're into that sort of thing—I am and it's great.

As a kid, it never occurred to me that someone—a real-life person—had composed the music that played as I flailed and failed at video games. But being a rather dull child, I'm pretty sure if I found out Nintendo had employees, I would've assumed they were controlling the Goombas, and Dwyer, being a New Zealander, was polite and patient enough to agree. "When you're a kid you don't think that there's someone who's like 'okay, time to make some progressive rock through three channels.' It just plays to help you through the game."

Dwyer noted that New Zealand was a real Sega Megadrive nation, and we agreed that Sonic had some of the best music. This was and thus always will be the author's favorite.

But to a generation of both gamers and musicians, video game music has been an inspiration. Not only for "chiptune" artists, either, whose music sounds like it belongs on an 8-bit cartridge—but even hip-hop musicians cite video game soundtracks as an influence. Not to mention, video game music gets arranged for choral presentations, and for subway-busking jazz duos, who serenaded the 4 train I was riding one afternoon, with the famous Mario theme.

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"I've found that pretty much with the internet now, anything that inspires you as a kid—no matter how obscure your music taste—you can get on the internet and find out information on it," Dwyer said. "I always found it so crazy that with these Japanese composers who had such a massive effect on all of us growing up, it was so amazing how little information was out there about them. Obviously it's quite hard to Google in kanji for Japanese speakers, but…"

Being unheralded, Dwyer pointed out, came with the territory back then. There might be a cult following today devoted to that "Sunsoft bass," sound found on Sunsoft games, but Naoki Kodaka and the rest of the team at Sunsoft didn't find out about it until recently. To them, they were just going to their jobs in the 1980s.

"When you think about it it's just an odd beast, the whole notion of being a musician, but you spend all your time in an office environment, a salary man position," he said. "Nine-to-five you're making music with absolutely no feedback. Any musician can play a gig to even 15 people, and get a sense of how people respond to their music."

Other limitations, however, spawned creativity. Dwyer waxed about this perhaps harkening back to older Japanese culture and traditional art forms like haiku poetry or ikebana flower arrangement, both of which "say a lot with so little." But tech limitations begetting art isn't unique to just video game music.

"It's echoed in early electronic music production—jungle, early house—it's all about producers trying to squeeze the most they can out inside of these limitations," Dwyer said. "These guys, they enjoyed the challenge of it. I think with the memory and loop of the early 8-bit and 16-bit stuff, it was focused on making great melodies that people wouldn't tire of…They wanted to create music that kids wouldn't get sick of if they got stuck on a difficult stage."

As we were chatting about this, I was reminded of the times video game music had the opposite effect: when time was winding down and the music would speed up.

"When you think about it, that's like the first moment in your life when you encounter stress," Dwyer laughed. "Maybe that's something we should explore in series two. I remember the Street Fighter 2 speed up was so awesome. It took years off my life I reckon."

Dwyer's labor of love will be up on Youtube in its entirety by the end of the week.