If you belong to the often complained-about generation of millennials — which I do — chances are you grew up with video games — which I did. That grew into an obsession that didn’t just include the games but also the music featured in them. Most people remember video game music as something that droned on while they’re playing. I don’t. Some of my favorite video game soundtracks are of games I even never played! When other people did, well, cool things, I made mixtapes of video game soundtracks.
See, scoring a video game in the 21st century is a completely different endeavor from back when I grew up, where restrictive sound chips posed great challenges for the composers. I like challenges. If you think about making great music, it becomes more about what you can take away instead of what you can add. And writing old school video game music forces you take a way a whole friggin’ lot!
Thankfully, there’s a whole scene of people — and quite a bit of software — creating music with old sound chips, aptly called chiptunes. And I joined them and became what is called *gasp* a chiptune artist!
