And it’s not like techno or some other electro-dance music genres, where musical repetition is a big defining feature of the music. There’s a cover of it on pretty much every instrument on YouTube and it doesn’t seem to get old, despite it being only a few minutes of music. And so as far as I’m concerned, the Mario theme is one of the greatest musical achievements of our time. It means your music has to be catchy, interesting, and somehow able to repeated without sounding repetitive. The person playing the game is in charge of what happens in the game, so as a composer you have to assume that the music you write will loop for any given amount of time. The Play! symphony series have also attained a high level of popularity.īut something I think a lot of people fail to appreciate is that there is an unique challenge to writing video game music–something that doesn’t exist in other mediums. A few games (the Legend of Zelda in particular) have entered a space where I think the level of respect is higher–Nintendo recently commissioned an original symphony, The Legend of Zelda, Symphony of the Goddesses, and has been going on a hugely popular tour at big concert venues all around the US and Japan.
Video game music has always been sort of looked down upon–in the same way film music/incidental music in general has historically been considered inferior to “absolute” music (“Symphony in G Minor”), in this case video game music is low art in two ways–the fact that the music is incidental, and more importantly, that the video game medium itself is still largely considered unworthy of any real critical consideration.
But before we get to Cave Story specifically, let’s first talk about video game music in general: This game had some of the best music ever written for a video game. The only tragedy is that the game is short–although considering that one person did everything it’s quite an accomplishment.Ī game developed by one guy, in his free time–and he did EVERYTHING. The gameplay, story, music, are all top-notch, and it’s is probably one of my favorite single-player games of all time. It takes after the style of some of the classic games of its genre: Mega Man, Metroid, Castlevania, but the actual experience of the game is unique. It’s a free 2D platforming shooter for the PC, developed entirely by one guy, “Pixel,” in his free time.
Subject of today’s post (first post!)…the Cave Story OST! If you aren’t familiar with it you can download it for free here or listen on YouTube…would be good to marinate it some of this before we get into the details 🙂Ĭave Story is a miracle of a game.
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