As you may be able to tell in addition to my love of video games I am also a huge music fan. Ever since hearing what designers and composers did with antiquated sound chips, the intrigue created by the union of video games and music has always interested me through the years. Although starting from the definition of minimal sounds and eventually giving way to full orchestrations and mastered recordings, despite the leaps in technology over the past 20 years, there is no denying the fact that even today the music in a game can help make, or break the experience. For the foreseeable future every Monday I will be highlighting certain titles that exemplify the evolution and rich history of the video game soundtrack.

When making my first Music Monday selection I wanted to start off with a title that truly exemplifies how a games audio and visual style can be so intertwined that it is hard to know which medium was conceived first. When considering my choices a few options ran through my head including Rez, Parappa, and Katamari Damacy, however I ultimately had to settle with not one, not two but three exceptional games: Jet Grind Radio, Jet Set Radio Future and Ollie King. While it may seem a little meaningless to have three games as my choices, I promise there is a some sound reasoning behind my choices; The combination of a fluid audio/visual style which began in the original Dreamcast title was slowly refined and tweaked to create a more refined experience, ie. The whole is greater then the sum of its parts.

Exerpt from “The Concept of Love (The Concept of Passion Mix)” -Ollie King, Hideki Naganuma

If you have never played any of those games (Ollie King was an Arcade game released in 2004 in Japan by Sega, which utilized a similar style to the Jet Set Games) the merger between audio and visual is uncanny leading to an almost synesthesia like experience. With an amazingly colorful cell shaded visual style, as well as a genre bending soundtrack the sound designers and especially composer Hideki Naganuma, who contributed heavily to the audio direction in all 3 titles (and who composed both of the sample tracks), truly hit a grand slam. While I don’t want to come off as a crazy fanboy, The Jet Set Games are fantastic and should be played by any gamer who thinks there are just a few too many space marines on current gen consoles this holiday season. While it remains to be seen if SEGA will ever ressurect the Jet Set series, we can always hope.

Exerpt from “Like It Like This Like That” -Jet Set Radio Future, Hideki Naganuma

-Eric Wall

Tags: Dreamcast!!, Game Design, Jet Set Radio, music, Music Monday

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