Angry Gaming 11.26.07: Let the Music Play
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 11.26.2007
When music gets into your video games, you get Guitar Hero. When video games get into your music, you get something even more sinister.
Welcome to Angry Gaming, the holiday shopping mob that tramples over the gaming industry. I am your hate master, Damian Sarcuni, and I missed last week's article due to sex. Yeah…
Let the Music Play
So I was at a house party the other week, sipping down a beer while watching a girl with red and blonde streaks in her hair go at it with a short guy in a luchadore mask battle each other to the death while surrounded by around 30 of their peers. After reminding myself that I wasn't at a Vince Russo-booked lumberjack match, I strolled on over to the living room where another group was gathered around the room playing the ever popular party music hit game Guitar Hero. Apparently the party patrons were up in arms over an incident where someone managed to fail the Foo Fighter's All My Life despite having achieved 100% completion of the song.
See? I got proof.
While I'm not quite the Guitar Hero or Rock Band fanatic most of my friends and colleagues are, the appeal isn't lost on me at all. Metal rules, and through my experiences with Konami's Dance Dance Revolution I'm certainly no stranger to the timing and addiction involved in music games. I can no doubt appreciate the impact that music has brought into the video game industry, if only from these types of games alone. There is nothing quite like the soundtracks of Mega Man X or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night either. Music can have just as deep of an impact in games as it can in the movies, if not more so. As a random new friend poured me another round of Jack Daniel's and Captain Morgan's, I found myself wishing games could have the same impact in other industries and be further legitimized as an art form.
But then again, haven't they already?
When music gets into your video games, you get Guitar Hero or Para Para Paradise. When movies get into your video games, you get Spider-Man 2 or Grand Theft Auto III. When video games get into your movies and music though, you get something even more sinister. We all know about the impact games have had in the movie industry, heck even Hitman's motion picture is still out in theatres now. But video game-based songs seem to come in short bursts, gimmicks that amuse us on the radio for a few plays and then move over for the latest Beyonce and Fallout Boy hits.
Today we will look at three songs from three continents and see just how each culture responds when games become the subject of a more established art form. I'm including videos of the songs themselves, so don't rat me out to Metallica's lawyers.
Buckner and Garcia – Pacman Fever
We start with the classic from 1982, quite possibly the first song related to anything involving video games. Capitalizing off the popularity of arcade games that had just splashed onto the 80's recreation scene, Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia released an entire album entitled "Pacman Fever" along with a hit single of the same name. The album was entirely based around songs for popular video games including Centipede, Frogger, Donkey Kong and Asteroids. According to interviews, Buckner and Garcia hadn't intended to do a video game related album and simply were interested in performing pop music. When Columbia Records bought the rights to "Pacman Fever" and signed the duo however, they insisted the two keep up the video game theme.
The song is the first about a video arcade experience and with the exception of repeated mentions about how games will eat up all your money, its generally positive and upbeat. You can tell that Buckner and Garcia were actual fans of the game by looking at the lyrics, and considering the song spoke to the very first generation of video game playing teens it's probably not that far off in terms of accuracy. If I was working at a movie theater or diner in the 80's, and the very first game was released, I'd probably blow all my money on it as well. Pacman was certainly addictive and the intensity of being chased by ghosts at a high rate of speed is something the lyrics do communicate very well.
The actual music is pretty standard fare and quite honestly it's not even a catchy tune. Still, it's not necessarily a bad representation of gamers or their passion and certainly isn't bad for a first try. The song reached #9 on the charts in the United States which goes to show just how many people at least identified with the lyrics. Buckner and Garcia are still around by the way, you can check them out at bucknergarcia.com.
This one is a prize for me, as I've wanted to write about this for quite awhile now. In early 2005, a somewhat mysterious techno group of three Japanese guys calling themselves the "Tongari Kids" got together and created a song called "B Dash", using music samples from the original Super Mario Bros.. The song is about what its like to be a kid and play through Super Mario, dealing both with the frustrating challenges of the game and the frustrating challenges of ones own parents. The song became a hit in Japan, starting off at 36th on the music charts there and climbing all the way up to 4th place after 12 weeks of spreading FM radio play and live TV appearances.
Speaking of TV appearances, the Tongari Kids for some reason felt the need to constantly mask themselves on TV which led to some speculation that they might actually be previously established Japanese pop stars just playing around and having fun with samples. I should mention that the performance I've included is one of the later televised performances of "B Dash", and that earlier ones didn't include the costumed characters dancing in Star and Flower costumes. No, the earlier performances of "B Dash" just had fly girls in Mario hats running around in a circle. At the risk of sounding unpatriotic or fan boyish, sometimes, Japan just rules.
The great thing about "B Dash" is that the lyrics work even when translated to English, which is often a rarity in Japanese music. On top of that, they aren't simply limited to what's in the game. "You might be using Mario too much, Luigi will get depressed" is accurate regardless of what country you live in because everyone played the original Super Mario Bros. that way. If nothing else the performance is whacky and successfully illustrates the difference between American concerns in music in video games compared to Japanese interests.
I told you before, Metal rules. The German power metal band Helloween has gone through several lineups and incarnations over time, and their music has ranged on topics from Christian metaphors to crusading knights to…Tetris addiction? Indeed, Helloween's "The Game is On" borrows some heavy sampling from the original home console version of Tetris and even goes so far as to mimic its main guitar riff directly after the ending theme of the game. What results is a song that both gamers and metal heads can more or less identify with.
The lyrics are an exaggerated version of what can happen if video game addiction is left unchecked. This may sound insulting to non-Helloween fans, but those who follow the band will be able to tell you that most of their lyrics are exaggerated versions of one thing or another. Also, to be fair, Tetris was freakishly addictive when it was first released. Ad spots for the original Game Boy described the effect of addiction to the game as becoming "Tetrisized", but that particular marketing phrase never caught on.
I'm hard pressed to find a live performance of "The Game is On", which is fine considering Helloween tends to avoid breaking out the synthesizers for live performances. I couldn't even find a video for the song, but thankfully a .Hack fan felt the lyrics fit in well enough with the storyline to make an anime music video. Its interesting to note that Helloween did sort of jump on the growing trend of viewing video games as being detrimental to ones health, and considering "The Game is On" was released on their 1994 "Master of the Rings" album, this just about firs the growing view of video game popularity for adults at the time. Regardless, "The Game is On" is a great song, and certainly something I would love to see fit into the Guitar Hero series someday.
Video game based music has made it into the top charts and is taken quite seriously by performers in America, Europe, and Asia as well. What it has not done, however, is been received as anything more than a novelty act by the masses of both gamers and non-gamers alike. As games become more and more sophisticated, this may be likely to change. Sure, groups have written songs about classic games, but how long before someone lyrically declares their boyhood crush on Lara Croft? That day will be great…and horrible at the same time. Until then, embrace the hatred.
