1 - Before Red Book: Early Video Game Music and Technology

Summary

There can be no doubt that interest in video game music has grown considerably in recent years. It is notable that this passion is not reserved only for the latest releases, but extends back to the earliest days of the form, with as much praise heaped upon 1980s Commodore 64 or 1990s Amiga 500 music as on the high-profile symphonic soundtrack du jour. Contemporary game developers, such as Terry Cavanagh, underscore games like vvvvvv (2010) and Super Hexagon (2012) with soundtracks that draw directly on the early home computing and console instrumentation and form. In doing so, they demonstrate their own fandom, as well as a desire to draw on the distinctive aesthetics of early gaming and their association with an era of putatively simple yet unabashedly complex gameplay. We further note exhaustive online archival collections such as the HVSC (High Voltage SID Collection) or VGMrips that gather together music files extracted from original game code.