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Thought I'd share an interesting 6-part documentary about the pioneering soundtrack composers in the early Japanese video game industry.

Talking mostly about 8 bit music here, so many of you here maybe not interested but it's an interesting watch nonetheless.

LINK

Sounds interesting! Will definitely check this out. Thanks!

This sounds right up my street! Almost, anyway - 16 and 32-bit is where it's at for me... Will give it a go when I'm slightly more drunk.



EDIT: I am now slightly drunker and have watched the first one. Could have done with a Hipster Warning half way through, but I'm loving this. Especially the nerdsplosion that comes with seeing that Tappy did the intro music!
Also: that thing that Junko Ozawa says about not saying that they worked for Namco is absolutely true! Most designers and pretty much all game musicians at the time had to work either anonymously or under pseudonyms for fear of other companies poaching them - Konami in particular were sods for this and carried this trend on well into the Playstation era. Weirdly though, many of the people forced to work under assumed names still do despite being so against it when it was forced on them (Tappy being the main one but everyone on the Castlevania and Gradious teams who buggered off to form Treasure still use their Konami names).

BTW - there is an app (I think it's iOS only at the mo) called Gambi that a friend of mine is involved in, allowing you to listen to and remix old 8-bit tunes from past and present.

I might have to check this out.

My hardcore gaming friend played this for me the other day "because you like all that Carpenter stuff".

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dnVHCelqoA[/video]

My favourite piece of videogame music will probably always be this one - Vagrant Story on the PS1 was the first game I completed in Japanese without assistance and this piece of music (from Hitoshi Sakamoto, who features in the above doc) was the reward for doing so, in a game full of incredible music.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM7RIUgYIoU[/video]

More than 20 years later, I remember the music from the 8-bit classic, 'Blaster Master', level 4:


[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B_9aOdyjew[/video]

Still love it!