10/20/2024
Why Do We Like Video Game Music?
Video game music is often a bit different from what most consider "regular music" - and rightfully so, I believe. Regular music is the kind of stuff you would hear on the radio or played live at some giant concert. However, video game music, much like show or movie soundtracks, are one part of a larger experience. Video game music is some data placed alongside other things like visuals, rules, gameplay, a story, etc.
I could ramble about the compositional brilliance of something like One-Winged Angel from Final Fantasy VII, or talk about how cleverly written the Super Smash Bros. (N64) character select is for someone to be able to listen to it for 5 minutes and not get annoyed by it. However, this second example takes me to why I think most of us like the video game music that we do.
It's definitely a form of stockholm syndrome. The main reason I've gone out of my way to listen to the battle theme of Final Fantasy VI over Final Fantasy II (JP), despite how similar they sound, despite how the context in which that music appears is virtually the same, despite how it's another good piece by the same composer - is because Final Fantasy VI's battle theme "held me hostage" for 30-40 hours while I dispatched various monsters. I have not done so to the battle theme of Final Fantasy II, and so VI's is definitely stuck in my head.
And stuck in my head in a formative fashion, too, much how like we likely haven't forgotten some of our first favorite songs that we heard. The first time me and some of my family, WAY too young to be using the internet, found some Weird Al music (some parodies of songs we hadn't even heard yet, given we were maybe 7 years old or so) and got that stuck in our heads... haven't forgotten them. Only artist I've been to two concerts for, and some of my favorite artists I have not seen live once!! That's how vital something like the Weird Al music is for me, given how formative it was, how it got to me first and didn't leave me since we could only have so many songs on our iPod Nanos anyways.
This is a form of Stockholm syndrome I'll gladly live with however, because my other favorite part of re-listening to video game music is that it's like re-living the best parts of the game experience again without having to be playing the game. Video games are a bit more complicated than movies, structurally speaking, and so having something like a chapter select is difficult to implement in many games. Even one of the most notable examples of a chapter select done well in Half-Life 2 and its episodes is still very... impersonal.
Don't get me wrong, I love this feature in the Half-Life games - if you want to replay one part of the game real quick, hit new game, and you're already in half way. No cheats needed or anything - the developers had the foresight to recognize that sometimes in longer games you just want to play your favorite part again every now and then. Of course, since starting a new game this way would not mean you played everything before it, the game developers just have to start you with some loadout of weapons they think is fair for which chapter you chose to start from.
Now think about that last part with a 100 hour JRPG - if you start a new game from some "chapter 5" in some RPG, what items do you have? What levels should you be at? Do you get the bare minimum or get every possible goodie? (This would be unrealistic for me in Final Fantasy IX, because I do NOT feel like getting Excalibur II, as much as I like Final Fantasy IX.) Maybe a menu to select what you want to start with in a new game? How would that affect achievements? Not to mention how developers would have to keep quite an extensive log of every flag and variable that should be set when starting a new game from the middle rather than the beginning (though I sure hope they keep track of what their flags do regardless!!).
So, while developers stay as they are and continue not to implement some chapter select feature ala DVD menus, the next best thing, in my mind, is the game soundtrack. (I've made games before, I certainly don't blame people for not adding them, but for a game from a developer as big as Square Enix or something? C'mon, let me start a few hours into the game past all the 5 hour mandatory tutorial exposition BS.) Listening to a song from Undertale or Deltarune immediately makes me think of all the interesting characters and dialog from those games. Nothing can get me more hyped at the gym like a good Sonic the Hedgehog or Mega Man X song. And there's nothing quite like listening to piano covers of Pokemon music on a snowy or rainy day that isn't captured by listening to other playlists of "10 Hours Rainy Piano Mood Ambient Mix," even if they have songs from other regular composers I know, for instance.
I found all this to be confirmed in my search for music to put on my internet radio station (CLICK HERE LISTEN NOW!!!! Sorry, had to). There is a metric #$%&-ton of amazing music out there from video games with titles I can't even dream of pronouncing. Even if I find some music that I immediately latch on to and really dig, there have been times that I still don't add such to my favorites playlist that I keep on me daily just because I don't have that attachment to them. I'm sure I will down the line, but from this, I noticed how big a part the attachment factor is for which video game music I go back and listen to.
I also noticed that, even for video game music I find interesting or like listening to in my free time, I just can't bring myself to put something like "The Cliff That Time Forgot" from Earthbound on my radio. Maybe I'm not being true to myself, but for people tuning into my station, I'm not sure they want to listen for that for 5 minutes straight due to being fascinated at the sampling work used in the song for a Super Nintendo game, where most of the time sampling was just used briefly for instrumentation whereas games like Earthbound probably ended up having bigger cartridge storage space just to be able to store things like all the samples and text and and and and [JOJO2K ran out of breath.]
There's simply too many good memories in video game music for me to pass up adding them to my playlists and rotation of daily listening. Especially in the games that I've played, it's like an easy way to relive those games!
Just don't, uh... see for how long I've kept my Persona playlist on Spotify playing for...
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