In fact, historians will likely look back on these last few and current years as the golden age of video game music. DDR and similar games have made an even broader impact on the video game form by introducing full-body tracking and dance pads (or drum kits or guitars) as the central control interface. With these titles, interacting with the soundtrack is the very focus of the gameplay. Consider the genre of rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution and Frequency. (Hear that crunching, gnawing sound to the left? That's why we're taking this here passage to the right.) First-person "sneakers," like the popular Thief series, turned the art of listening and eavesdropping into a survival skill in itself.Īnd for some games, sound and music are the point in and of themselves. With the advent of directional and simulated surround sound, game audio became integral to the action itself. Music is, of course, only one element of the overall sound design of video games, and in this larger arena too, exponential leaps have been made in a relatively short period of time. There's even a small but growing movement of video game music cover bands, which incorporate 1980s console hardware into live performances of classic arcade ditties. Video game soundtracks have their own real estate now in retail outlets both online and off. Today, internationally renowned orchestras perform entire concerts of music composed specifically for video games, and game soundtracks regularly feature top-drawer techno, hip-hop, rock, and punk bands. Once an afterthought in terms of game design and overall pop-culture consciousness, video game music is now a legitimate industry of its own. Video game music has come a long way, baby.
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