96: The decline of digitally synthesized soundtracks
Ok, I'm gonna sound like an old elitist here. But I gotta tell the truth, nothing will ever beat consoles like the NES, SNES and Genesis for classic soundtracks.
In the old days, music composers actually had to program the music using the console's own synthesizer, because they couldn't record it, a lot of these old consoles could support samples, but they sounded like sh*t, so to make both the sound effects and music using the systems built in synthesizer was necessary, back then they were quite primititve, with only around 4 to 8 sound channels. But the music and sound effects were classic. The music for Mario, Zelda, Sonic, Mega Man and many others is an iconic part of video game history. You knew video game music when you heard it, it was distintive and a genre of it's very own, Kojo Kondo was it's Mozart.
And Sonic's soundtracks sounded more like David Bowie's Low than many of the trashy industrial rock bands that album inspired.
But since the rise of pre-recorded music and samples, this golden age has sadly been forgotten by developers (but not fans), sure great soundtracks still exist. But I find many games now just use the same boring cliches over and over, sh*tty nu metal (the new Sonic games for example) or stocky orchestrations that seemed to be left over from a Hollywood action film. That's
not video game music.
They should let Brian Eno or Rick Wakeman do video game soundtracks.
