Famicom Chip-Love
games music chiptunes
Composer Yuzo Koshiro has seen the games industry through its infancy to its present incarnation. Beginning with the action RPG series Ys, through ActRaiser and the Streets of Rage series, he is probably one of the most diverse composers in games in terms of adaptability and variety of musical style. Most recently, he was behind the soundtracks for both Etrian Odyssey I and II for the DS.
Utilizing a medium on the DS with similar sound capabilities to older consoles rather than redbook audio, Koshiro has preserved what I like to call the inherent “game genre” of music. The chiptunes, the synths, the epic themes; they’re all part of a genre of music that seems to only fit in games yet thrives in them.
With his music for the upcoming DS RPG 7th Dragon published by SEGA, Koshiro is matching the game’s desire to be an oldschool RPG using today’s handheld technology. With that in mind, the entire soundtrack exists in two different versions which are available to be switched on the fly: The original version and FC (Famicom a.k.a. NES) version. (Check out samples of both versions of two tracks from the game at the link!) While the originals follow a set of synths reminiscent of PS1 or PS2 instrument samples, the FC version is total 8-bit chiptune style.
The chiptune rennaisance isn’t something just being done by SEGA’s 7th Dragon. It also happened with Capcom’s Mega Man 9, though mainly due to its entirety being 8-bit in style. Regardless, retro graphics and audio are very much something that is coming back into style after being such a shunned aspect of the gaming aesthetic in the transition to realism and ubergraphics. Being a fan of both pixel art and chiptunes, I say bring it on.
