Hip Tanaka interview

[EightBit]

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20...brandon_01.htm

You gotta sign up to read it, but thats not really a big deal. They just send you an email every so often.

The interview is cool. I like his thoughts on the Metroid music.

some intresting bits about it...

"In the era when ROM capacities were only 1K or 2K, you had to create all the tools by yourself. The switches that manifest addresses and data were placed side by side, so you have to write something like "1, 0, 0, 0, 1" literally by hand. Such prehistoric work makes me laugh every time I think about it."


"Then, sound designers in many studios started to compete with each other by creating upbeat melodies for game music. The pop-like, lilting tunes were everywhere.

The industry was delighted, but on the contrary, I wasn't happy with the trend, because those melodies weren't necessarily matched with the tastes and atmospheres that the games originally had.

The sound design for Metroid was, therefore, intended to be the antithesis for that trend. I had a concept that the music for Metroid should be created not as game music, but as music the players feel as if they were encountering a living creature. I wanted to create the sound without any distinctions between music and sound effects. The image I had was, 'Anything that comes out from the game is the sound that game makes.'"

Z-roe

[NeoZeedeater]

Metroid's soundtrack was certainly against the trend, as he says, especially for Japanese-developed games. It's definitely one of the greatest achievements in 8-bit era sound.

[johnk_]

any time i hear the phrase "8-bit era sound", i can't help but think of ninja gaiden 2..

still one of my all time favorites, especially for its music.

[Sqoon]

Metroid did have some great music. The title screen song reminds me of the feeding frenzy in Night of the Living Dead.

[1CCOSA]

Wow. He did the music for all the Metroids including the first and now he's doing Prime? Impressive. He's so right though, the game's music really does make you feel like you're in an eerie alien environment looking for an unknown lifeform.

[MechDeus]

Metroid music is damned distinctive, if nothing else (but it is so much more). I think about it everytime I power up GunValkryie, the title screen music reminds me exactly of Metroid.

[Shinobi128]

Originally posted by johnk_
any time i hear the phrase "8-bit era sound", i can't help but think of ninja gaiden 2..

still one of my all time favorites, especially for its music.

[StriderKyo]

This was taken from the current issue of Game Developer magazine. It's excellent; it also has an interview with Mizuguchi entirely about Rez. Apparently the sound and music variables in that game take up 50% of RAM...and you thought those vector graphics were just there to look stylish...