Gaming
Games
Catch up with Diggin' in the Carts as it returns
With Diggin' In The Carts back for its second season, we catch up with host Nick Dwyer to discuss the evolution of video game music.
Whether we know it or not, we all have our favourite gaming soundtrack. It may be that every time you hear Final Fantasy VII's Aerith's Theme the room becomes a bit dusty, but for gamers, video game soundtracks are etched into our memories and can trigger Pavlovian responses with ease.
It's this joy that Diggin' in the Carts, the documentary series and radio show airing on Red Bull Radio, taps into. The show takes a look at classic Japanese video game music and includes conversations with the composers responsible.
After tackling chiptune and the cartridge era in its first series, the show, hosted by Nick Dwyer, is taking a step towards the present, even if its focus remains in Japan. As Dwyer delves deeper into the 1990s and the sounds of CD-sporting consoles, he stresses that this is about more than playing the hits.
"For me Diggin' in the Carts is much more than just about 'video game music'," says Dwyer. "The whole idea behind the concept in the first place is using that era and the story behind the creation of the music to offer a window into Japan's past and examine the context in which it was created."
He adds, "We've jumped up a generation, but all of our guest composers this series give us a taste of all this incredible culture and the influences that helped shape Japanese video game music."
The times they are a changin'
Gamers aren't typically wary of change, yet there's a degree of purism where chiptune music is concerned and, for some, the jump from cartridge to CD with the arrival of the original PlayStation indicated an unwelcome disruption to the tunes (think Dylan going electric).
So why is this the case? Dwyer explains, "I think a large part of the charm of early video game music is that composers were trying to recreate genres like fusion or jazz or classical, but through limited sound channels and adopting methods like wavetable synthesis to try and get square waves to sound as close as they could to regular instruments, like a guitar or a violin.
"It's the accident of not quite getting it right combined with the individual sound palette of the particular sound chip they were working with that made all the music from that era sound like its own wonderful genre of electronic music."
As for the later generation of CD consoles, Dwyer listened to a huge number of tracks to gain insight into how the changing times resulted in changing tunes.
"Once CD technology arrived, composers were able to compose more freely, which in some ways was great, but video game music lost the uniqueness that it had during the chip era and started to become more and more like regular music," he says. "Once the CD era arrived, composers could just make fusion or jazz or classical music, which varied in weight depending on some challenges that still remained, like memory limitations and budget."
He explains that some games (mostly RPGs) did have the budgets where they could record full orchestras, but mostly this era was all about sequencing through MIDI. Dwyer adds, "Of course this was great for composers, but it marked the departure from an era when video game music was its own magical thing. But a lot of people prefer this era to the previous. It's all about personal tastes, right?"
Indeed, Dwyer stresses that while the sounds may have changed, the hits just kept on coming. And one of the best places to find these was on Sony's PlayStation.
Come to play
While Sony's '90s flagship may have been the hit makers' console of choice, Dwyer believes that it had less to do with the system than with the kinds of game titles that were found on the PlayStation. He explains that, as the machine for third parties, PlayStation became the console that everyone wanted to work with.
"I think it was also a time when UK, US and European games companies came of age and were starting to develop incredible titles. I guess when you have a new generation of music composers who are into cool stuff, they’ll put their influences into their game music," Dwyer says.
"In addition, there were all of these future-facing game franchises, like Wipeout, which prided themselves on using the most cutting edge electronic music of the day. The PlayStation is where you'd find some seriously killer electronic vibes and club influences, which was definitely to my tastes at the time."
So, while the PlayStation was busy pulling up trees, what of the Sega Saturn? The console could never quite compete with Sony's behemoth, but was this the case with music as well? Not according to Dwyer. "There's some heat on the Saturn for sure! Definitely any and all of the Shin Megami Tensei spin-offs like Devil Summoner have some of the best soundtracks of the generation," he argues. "Plus, a lot of really good shooting games were only released on the Saturn, and for my personal tastes shooters just have some of the best soundtracks. Radiant Silvergun, which is composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto, is a great example."
Despite his enthusiasm however, Dwyer does note that not every system brought the heat. "To be honest, in terms of my own personal tastes, I think the one system that had the least amount of music I am a fan of it would be the Sega Mega CD," Dwyer reports. "I think the original Mega Drive/Genesis sound chip, the Yamaha YM2612, is so iconic and so many legendary soundtracks were composed for that system, but the Sega CD doesn't even come close to touching that legacy."
Back to the future
Nick Dwyer brings the heat
© Marv Watson
While the '90s saw the growth of CD consoles, the cartridge still remained very much in play. Namely, with the monumental N64 and the slightly-less-so Neo Geo. But how did these consoles stack up against their predecessors? According to Dwyer, they both had their own set of limitations, but could handle a lot more than their forbearers.
"Because there was a lot more memory with the Neo-Geo the possibilities for sampling, as compared to the Super Famicom [SNES], were immense and composers could now, for the first time, do ‘phrase sampling’, which meant that rather than just individual instruments they could sample whole phrases."
Dwyer recommends Sizlla Okamura's soundtrack for Viewpoint, where you can hear this technique used to great effect. With regards to the N64, for all its majesty, its music couldn't quite match up.
Dwyer says, "From what I can gather the N64 didn't have its own dedicated sound chip and shares its workload with the CPU. What that meant was that because graphics were eating up all of the processing power, sound was a little bit more of an afterthought. That said, there are still some great soundtracks on the N64."
One composer who was able to make the most out of the N64 was Koji Kondo, a name spoken in hushed whispers within the video game music crowd.
"Koji Kondo is a such a genius and I don’t think any other composer has thrown themselves into studying music from around the world for the benefit of their game music composition more than Kondo-san," Dwyer says.
"He decided that the way he could keep game music sounding unique was to use traditional instruments from around the world, but arrange them in ways that you would never ever hear in regular music, for example marimba and sitar or banjo and cuíca. I think for millions of kids around the world it was the music of Super Mario World on the Super Famicom that was the introduction to all of these incredible instruments from Africa, the Caribbean and beyond."
While Dwyer is a huge fan, the man himself proved elusive when it came to locking in an interview. Even so, the show incorporates an array of in-depth interviews with famous faces and unknown composers alike. "One of the most important things for the Diggin' in the Carts project is to shine the light on the more lesser known composers who were absolute pioneers," Dwyer explains. "Soshi Hosoi, Sizlla Okamura and Motohiro Kawashima all appear in this new season and although they aren't well known at all, not even in Japan, they deserve to have their work recognised in the history of video game music."
Up next
With tracks still buzzing in his ears and the series just wrapped up after four months, Dwyer is taking some well-deserved downtime at his home in Tokyo. He promises, however, that Diggin' in the Carts will soon be back. "My head is still deep in the second season at the moment, as it's playing currently, but no doubt in a month or so I'll start thinking about where we'll go next," he confirms.
While he's still very much in the Diggin' in the Carts mindset, we thought we'd ask: what's Dwyer's desert island video game soundtrack?
"My favourite soundtrack I stumbled upon for this season is this incredible soundtrack by a Japanese composer called Manabu Saito," Dwyer replied. "Sadly he passed away at the age of 22 so the world never really got to know him or hear what he was capable of going on to do. Even in Japan very few people know him. His music has a sadness and melancholy to it that I have rarely heard in video game music."
Dwyer singles out the 1989 soundtrack for an FM Towns game called Evolution as one of his personal favourites. "It is so beautiful, it's almost like you can hear his ghost coming through in some of those tracks," he says. "I'm thinking at the moment I'd like to work on a release of Manabu Saito's work at some point soon. The world needs to hear this music."
New episodes of Diggin' in the Carts can be found every Wednesday at 7PM EST, on Red Bull Radio.
