I love listening to video game music. Whether it is the orchestral pieces in your favorite Final Fantasy game, the adrenaline- building popular tunes of the latest Madden, or the classic “Korobeiniki” (More commonly known as the Tetris theme song); they all get my blood pumping. The quality of the song itself makes little difference to how memorable it becomes. The music becomes a placeholder for the emotions felt during those greatest gaming moments. It helps jog our memories for what we liked or maybe hated most about a game.
I remember as a kid, borrowing my friend’s Final Fantasy VII soundtrack to copy the CDs over to a tape, so I can continue to listen to them over and over again. This was before the CD burner so I had to go through the lengthy process of recording at playback speed. But, I had to do it to be able to hear “One Winged Angel” at least one more time. The rush of feeling the same emotions as playing the game, a culmination of 80 hours of game play to reach the final boss.
But, how many of us talk about the music to our friends? Many of us still secretly listen to our favorite Pokémon theme, having listened to in the past for hours to level up. Video game music acts as an intermediary. It allows us to relive your favorite games without having to take the time to actually play again. How else can you get the enjoyment of playing video games while doing your homework? Take a stand, and be proud of your fondness for video game music. This guilty pleasure doesn’t need be a secret one!
Some other notable gems:
Music during the last level of Halo 1: You’re in a truck and everything is blowing up around you. You never stop thinking how awesome this game is.
The music and sound effects of Super Mario Bros: Everyone knows the music to this game, but the most spectacular part is that even the sound effects are memorable. There is some weird satisfaction from getting a mushroom and hearing the sound of Mario get beefed up.
Medieval man rap from Warcraft 2: Hidden gem from Warcraft 2 where if you entered the cheat code: “disco”, you were able to listen to a random rap song made from sound bites from the game.
The celebratory music of Sonic: This quick jingle made you want to go running…if only we were as fast as Sonic.
I remember the day I got my first Gameboy…. it was a Christmas present I got in 1996 and came with a Tetris cartridge, a game now standard on any modern piece of respectable equipment. With its black and white screen and nearly 5 MHz processor, it was a revolution in my hands. It was great for long car rides or anytime I needed to appear disinterested in things happening around me. The screen was just in black and white, and tiny, I’m surprised I was able to put up with it for so long, actually. Today, look how far we’ve come. I can find the basic classic Tetris, Pac-Man, Bubble Breaker and more on nearly every portable device. So what helped the mobile revolution get to where it is today with all this high tech gaming?
I’m gonna attribute it to these these contributing factors:
With the advent of modern era gaming consoles like the Nintendo Wii, it may be easy to forget where you came from. The Wii, innovative in its own right, had roots in providing a gaming experience that date back to the introduction of the N64 Rumble Pack, er “Rumble Pak” as Nintendo marketed it. As the Rumble Pak was released in the Fall of 1997, IGN remarked that it “adds an unusual burst of arcade ecstasy to the game”. Clearly they knew what they were talking about. As a third grader in 1997, I got to experience this arcade ecstasy through Golden Eye 007 (Developed by Rareware, now a part of Microsoft) for N64. I remembered the first time that I shot a weapon, and felt my controller give me feedback – I was instantly intrigued and knew that I had found something that would occupy me for hours. The first time I tried the Rumble Pak, I sat down and went through my available weapons option options and began shooting at the walls, just so I could feel the feedback sensations provided by each awesome weapon.
I ended up playing Golden Eye 007, (the first N64 game I got that was actually compatible with a rumble pack) for like a month straight with my elementary school buddies. We had Golden Eye 007, which was like $45 bucks at the time, Rumble Paks and 4 controllers and a huge new 32 inch CRT TV, which for the day was really sufficiently large. We’d run around the basement and shoot each other for hours until we held the flag for the longest amount of time, killed each other, or the little triple A batteries ran out of juice.
Those were the days that paved the way to today’s modern and high tech systems like Xbox 360 and the Wii, subtle advances in technology like the Rumble Pak prepared the gaming public for the awesomeness that was coming. I’m just glad I was a part of it.
One of the best features of next generation gaming consoles is often one of the ones that’s overlooked the most. It isn’t the graphics, motion sensing controllers, or high definition television capability. The feature I am referring to is that you can download classic video games through the online stores that the manufacturers provide and play them on the new systems. Nintendo’s Wii has a feature called the Virtual Console, Microsoft’s Xbox360 has Xbox Live, and Sony’s Playstation 3 has the Playstation Network. All of these online networks have stores associated with them that allow you to download classic video games and sometimes also arcade games.
The Nintendo Wii seems to have the most complete online store in terms of downloading and that is probably mostly due to the fact that Nintendo simply had so many popular classic games with its older systems. Not only does Nintendo take advantage of its own classic games, but it also takes advantage of many classic Sega titles. Nintendo’s online store has classic games to download from the NES, SNES, N64, Arcade, Commodore 64, NEOGEO, Sega Genesis, and Sega Master System. One could argue that either the NES, SNES, N64, or Sega Genesis was the greatest system of all time. While Wii’s native controller is based on their new motion technology, they also created a classic looking controller to be used for the classic video games you download from their online store.
Both Xbox and Playstation 3’s online networks are really designed to play their current games online. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the Xbox360 is only their second system so they don’t really have a lot of classic games that they can release for you to pay for and download. They do release some arcade games and have a lot of other options of simpler games to download through their store which is still pretty interesting. They also have some virtualization software that allows you to play most original Xbox games on the Xbox360. Playstation 3’s store is very similar to Xbox except they allow you to download some original Playstation games to play them on their new system. Playstation originally planned on making the Playstation 3 compatible with all Playstation and Playstation 2 games but they eventually scrapped that after their first batch of systems to cut costs.
This is a tough subject to write on because it can turn into such a heated debate amongst gaming enthusiasts. There are just so many great consoles from the past to choose from; Super Nintendo, the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, and Playstation just to name a few. The best console of all time argument can be related to the argument between Macs and PC’s. Fan boys on each side of the isle will take sides and swear by their own personal favorite console. In my personal opinion, the greatest console ever made (so far) is the Nintendo 64. Nintendo 64 is the greatest console of all time because of the games it had and how the system was designed for you and your friends to take advantage of the games.
The greatest part about Nintendo 64 was all of the quality titles that were produced for the console. Many of the quality titles were also produced exclusively for the Nintendo 64. Some of those exclusive titles were Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers, Golden eye, Legend of Zelda, Mario Party, Perfect Dark, and WCW versus nWo Revenge. All of these titles had great game play, they all had great replay value, and lastly most of them had excellent multiplayer functionality.
The last point I made in the paragraph above leads me into the other main component that made Nintendo 64 the best console ever made, the multiplayer functionality. Mind you, these were the days before online game play on consoles so the systems had to design ways to let more than one user play with each other at the same time. While Sony’s Playstation eventually came out with a hub that allowed 4 player multiplayer, Nintendo 64 already had this built in and most games took advantage of this. This is why I believe that Nintendo 64 was the superior system to Sony’s Playstation because four users could play with each other at the same time on the same console. This could provide hours of entertainment with you and your friends.
Watch videos at Vodpod and other videos from this collection.
About Eujin
Eujin Kwak is an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently finishing up a B.S. in Accountancy as well as a B.S. in Information Systems & Information Technology. Eujin is enjoying his time as a Super Senior before he gets on his version of the hamster wheel.
About Aidan
I am a senior at the University of Illinois majoring in Information Systems and Information Technology. I hope to graduate in Spring 2010 and plan to get a job wherever I can find one. I created this blog with my classmates Scott Mares and Eujin Kwak for BADM351.
About Scott
My name is Scott, I'm a Senior in Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. This blog was created for a class project in BA351.
Eujin Kwak is an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently finishing up a B.S. in Accountancy as well as a B.S. in Information Systems & Information Technology. Eujin is enjoying his time as a Super Senior before he gets on his version of the hamster wheel.
I am a senior at the University of Illinois majoring in Information Systems and Information Technology. I hope to graduate in Spring 2010 and plan to get a job wherever I can find one. I created this blog with my classmates Scott Mares and Eujin Kwak for BADM351.
My name is Scott, I'm a Senior in Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. This blog was created for a class project in BA351.
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