Chiptunes and Classic Videogame Music - Oh, Say Can You Hear?

Here in the United States, July 4^th is a patriotic holiday, and besides fireworks and parades, the music of the holiday is distinctive and instantly summons some memories. Aside from Christmas and a few cultural festivals, there are few other holidays that do that. I don't usually hear a particular song and think “Halloween” or “Easter”, and if there is an Arbor Day song, I don't know it. Thinking about a particular Independence Day/July 4^th memory and the music associated with it brings me to today's topic. One of the most easily recognizable songs for American Patriotism is, of course, our National Anthem, and being a geek, my clearest memory of the Star Spangled Banner isn't of some sporting event I attended or competed in, and it isn't some formal event where a band or orchestra played a stirring rendition. It is (for good or ill) … this.

One of the greatest and worst moments in early videogaming history. Konami's “interesting” interpretation aside, there have been some really incredible compositions to come out of video games in the last 30 or so years, and chiptune music has been dissected, analyzed, remixed and remastered by literally thousands of aspiring musicians. For those who know a little bit about the geeky, crazy little niche subset of music that includes 8 and 16-bit compositions, there are standouts, and I'd like to talk about a few of the best.

Castlevania (NES) – Composer: Kinuyo Yamashita

The original Castlevania had one of the most remixed, analyzed and familiar songs in video gaming history. If you've ever played the game, I'm sure you recognize it, but you may not know that the song's official name is Vampire Killer, or that it was composed by a woman, which was highly unusual in the videogame industry of the 1980s. So unusual, in fact, that Kinuyo Yamashita was credited under the pseudonym James Banana. I'll also always have fond memories of her soundtrack for the trippy game “Stinger,” which was my first NES game after Super Mario Bros, which shipped with the system.

Legend of Zelda/Super Mario Brothers (NES) – Composer: Koji Kondo

Kondo is well known as a composer for the creation of the two most iconic themes of the 8-bit era of video gaming. In addition to being a composer, he literally wrote the book on overcoming the inherent challenges with sound design on Nintendo's FamiCom system (released abroad as the Nintendo Entertainment System.) In addition to composing the scores for Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda, he returned in some capacity to work on other games in both of those franchises and did a lot of the music and sound for the Star Fox series.

Streets of Rage (Sega Genesis) – Composer: Yuzo Koshiro

Not all of the early great music in videogames first showed up on the NES. Whenever someone says “great music from a video game” I usually first think of Streets of Rage. I discovered these songs before I knew they were from a game, having missed out on the fighting franchise when it first appeared on Sega Genesis. The high energy tunes were inspired by club music the composer heard at the time, and the success of the game has been attributed in no small part due to how memorable the music from each stage is.

Final Fantasy Series (Many Systems) – Composer: Nobuo Uematsu

The “Prelude” composition from the original Final Fantasy game has appeared in most of the games in the most popular JRPG series in videogaming history. It was based on a simple arpeggio found in one of Johann Sebasian Bach's stort pieces, and has evolved over the years from a simple two-voice melody to a fully orchestrated theme that is recognized by millions worldwide. The success of Final Fantasy and its music led to Nobuo Uemastu scoring over 30 other titles, and he, along with several other employees of Squaresoft, formed a band. They named it “The Black Mages.”

I didn't include some of my favorite remixes or any of the post-chiptune music found in games on purpose. I got into Jonathan Coulton based on “Still Alive” from Portal and after hearing Poets of the Fall in Alan Wake, I made sure to listen to all of their stuff. I'll revisit the topic of music from or by artists made famous by video games at a future date, but to hear the themes I've referred to in this article remastered or reimagined, I recommend the amazing music archive OC Remix. The OverClocked Remix site has a hard rock/metal inspired version of Vampire Killers called “CastleMania” that isn't to be missed, and jazz versions of Legend of Zelda and Mario themes as well a thousands of other tracks for download.

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Back to the Grind – Repetitive Tasks in RPGs

Roleplaying Games, from a video gaming perspective, share a lot of features with their tabletop progenitors. There are experience points, levels, typically there is something like a character class (even if the “class” is unique to a character) and skills improve over time. Increasing the relative power of a character or group of characters is one of the primary motivations for roleplaying gamers in general, whether with friends around a table, at the controls of a console or keyboard of a PC, single player or MMORPG. Players love to level up.

But what about grinding? Most players talk about “level grind” or “money grind” as a distasteful part of the game that has to be endured in order to experience the “good stuff”. In single-player RPGs, grinding was once an overwhelming percentage of a game's entire content. The grind WAS the game, with story elements and even boss fights that seemed tacked on almost as an afterthought. As years went on, grinding in RPGs became less common in the single-player western and JRPGs on consoles and PCs. This is not, however, to suggest that it went away.

In this context "Epic RPG" means "killing lots of slimes."

In 1986, Western audiences got their first taste of the Japanese style of console RPG (JRPG) gaming with the release of Dragon Warrior for the NES. The story was very simplistic, save the princess, slay the dragon, marry the princess. Player choice is nonexistent, at one point the princess gives you a choice of whether or not you wish to have her accompany you, which leads you to marriage. Selecting “No” prompts the response “But Thou Must!” and sends you back to the Yes/No options until “Yes” is selected. The vast majority of the game, in fact, is walking back and forth in a field or forest until attacked randomly by a level-appropriate monster and then killing them, and repeating until you have to move on to find harder monsters to slay.

Long before the androgynous heroes
 with big swords.

A year later, the first game in the Final Fantasy series came out for the NES, and while it had more varied environments, and there was a lot of improvement with regard to story, there was still the grind. Each town had equipment and spells which needed to be purchased before moving on, so in order to level up and gain the gold coins needed to buy everything the group needed to move on... walk back and forth, looking for random battles. This trend continued to Super NES console games, but typically the experience/gold grind got shorter, and stories became more important and a larger part of the overall game experience.

In the PC world, single player RPGs tackled grinding more subtly, still requiring massive amounts of low level monsters to be killed, but eschewing the “walk back and forth for a random encounter” element of the JRPGs. Instead, low level dungeons filled with rats to be cleared out, endless fetch quests requiring travel through potentially dangerous places, and lots of filler “content” that served the same purpose as Final Fantasy's goblins or Dragon Warrior's slimes while providing more of a feeling that something was getting accomplished, despite the complete lack of advancement of a story in these areas beyond “the hero(es) found the monsters, killed them and took their stuff.”

Today, the single player RPG released by any major game publisher has all but eliminated the grind, though typically the first generation of this style of game for any new platform (mobile/smartphone, tablet PC, PDA) may use the technique to “pad” game length. The grind itself, however, has not died. It has found itself a new home where it thrives today and is more pervasive than ever. Grinding experience points, gold pieces, skills, crafting materials and any number of other in-game resources is the basis of the treadmill found in the MMORPG.

"Just another 10 miles and I can equip the Pants of Fitting."

Though different MMORPGs have easier or more difficult grinds to increase levels, skills and acquire the best possible equipment for a character, most of them follow the same formula. Repeat simple task for incremental reward, hit a milestone as those rewards accumulate, achieve specific new ability or item. Whatever the particular systems in building and preparing a character for whatever sort of “endgame” the developers have in mind for characters that are at or near the level cap (or with maximized skills,) it is safe to say that in most of these kinds of games some grinding was involved in getting there. This aspect of these games, “I don't want to kill 20 rats and bring back the tails” is often one of the reasons cited for players who find this style of gaming dull and/or tedious.

Why do we grind? The “perform task, get reward” cycle has been compared to the conditioning found in Pavlov's experiments with animals, and even gamers aware of this trained psychological response may not be immune to it. I personally fall into this category of gamer. Even if, intellectually, I know that I'm just ringing a bell to get a treat... I like treats. Some players find repetition with strictly defined rewards (i.e. “if I catch 12 fish, I gain a point in fishing skill”) relaxing. Grinding with an element of randomness, such as killing monsters for a particular rare item or crafting items that may on rare occasion produce something more valuable or powerful, has been shown to stimulate the same areas of the brain that are active while gambling. Many aspects of MMORPG grinding combine both strictly defined rewards with the possibility of a random “special” reward for a powerful psychological draw for a wide variety of players.

Almost every MMORPG has a fishing mini-game.
Every time I play them I fish, and I don't know why. I don't even like fishing.

How do you feel about grinding? Hate it when it pops up in games? Don't mind it because the reward for your efforts is typically satisfying? Refuse to play games that feature it? Some combination of these, or maybe something else entirely? Let me know.

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Blog Gadgets

Can't Stick the Landing – RPGs and poor endings.

 Not so long ago, I wrote about Dragon Age 2. I read a lot of reviews of the game, and ended up liking it in spite of some of the things others mentioned that bothered them. Yeah, the same few areas were re-used over and over again. Yep, game was too damned short. And it sure would have been nice to get out of Kirkwall just a little bit more.

What bugged me most, and almost enough to wreck the game for me, was the tepid final act. The ending was abrupt and seemed forced, with characters behaving in ways that were supposed to be designed to make final choices difficult. The problem is, a good ethical/moral conundrum should not rely on all sides being equally unpleasant. “You're all jerks, but I hate this guy a little less, so we go with him.” That's not a well-written morality tale, it feels more like the attitude of the average apathetic American voter.

Don't give me that look, You know what you did.

This isn't the first time that a game I've played has had an incredible buildup, only to let me down at the last moment. The most striking example I can think of is Fallout 3 (to be fair, I've played NONE of the expansions or DLC.) Throughout, Fallout 3 had an engaging experience, your choices seemed to matter and I was having a good time. Then, you get to the ending, and you are forced into a “this or that” choice, both of which aren't very good... and you can't even back out and decide later. I gritted my teeth, unhappy but resolved to see it through, and then got the ending. I'd beaten previous games in the Fallout series, and expected to see the consequences of my decisions and how they affected the world. Not so. The vast majority of the decisions I made turned out to be utterly meaningless as far as my ending.

This ruined the game for me, and is the reason I didn't continue on with any of the additional material.

War. War never changes. And neither does the ending, aside from 2-3 choices you made.

Thinking back on it, a lot of the Final Fantasy games were like this, too... the ending got so weird that I disconnected with what came before and stopped caring about the story. What is it about so many modern RPGs that have great beginnings, great mid-game, and then completely fall apart somewhere in the Third Act? There are a few things that will utterly ruin a game if included in the ending.

1. Radically changing your storytelling right at the end: This includes not only the “we're all in a dream/the afterlife/the matrix” or the sudden inclusion of aliens or magic “a wizard did it”, but establishing one kind of pace and one standard for player input for the game, and another for the ending. Talk about ruining suspension of disbelief.
2. Huge buildup to a climactic conclusion, and insufficient closure before providing a cliffhanger. Cliffhangers are annoying enough in games, but they really rob the player of the experience if after hours and hours of struggle, there's no moment of “victory.” If you take away the feeling that a hero's fight accomplished something, who cares what happens next?
3. Cardinal Sin: Do Not, I repeat, DO NOT let a character other than the one the player controls swoop in to be the deciding force in victory. If this ultra-badass is the real hero of the day, why did anyone else bother to show up? Thanks, I always wanted to play “unintentional sidekick.”

Almost everything listed above, in one game.  The ending is somehow less comprehensible  than being an underwater soccer star whose father becomes a Satan Whale.

What games really infuriated you with a letdown at the end? Was there one in particular that everyone else seems to hate but you actually kind of liked the ending for? Let me know.

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