First, the good...
I love the idea that anyone is writing about game music and trying to engage with it. It's clear that more people are getting in to this field and feeling comfortable putting their interest and time into studying and working with game audio. Very cool. Thus, my number one thought having read the book is that I'm happy to see serious study of game audio. Andrew is a clear, engaging writer whose prose is never over the head or condescending with that typical academic lexis. I'd qualify it as an easy read, actually. Enjoyable, quick. Easy to dip into in you have five or ten minutes before bed or a meeting.
My favorite things in the book were following the footnotes. (This is how I know I'm a complete nerd in game audio.) There's a great interview with Koji Kondo as he talks about his early work with Nintendo. I also loved learning about the existence of The Arcade Flyer Archive. I've been checking out numerous of these. Also, Andrew spends a good bit of discussion looking at some great online writing by Neil Baldwin. Academics must tap into the industry experts, particularly those who want to share methodology and historical stories. The time to get this information is now, before more of the folks die...
Really liked the discussion at the end of the book about chiptunes. This was the most unique part of the book for me, probably in large part because I know the least about this offspring (or precursor?) of game audio. Learning about and hearing Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra was awesome. Some free chip tune software, OpenMPT and Milky Tracker. Glad to encounter this.
Two other things I enjoyed were the focus on Metroid and The Legend of Zelda. I don't know where these games have received as much attention as Super Mario Bros, which seems to need almost nothing new said about it. I also really enjoyed the sound effect vs music discussion. I didn't know the NES games Eric the Viking or Magician. Definitely impressed to realize real bird samples are used in Peace in the harbor. Or how the cricket sounds weave in the texture of the Meryl forest.
Now the bad...
In terms of content, though, the book was a bit of a disappointment for me. Granted, I don't think I'm the audience he has in mind for the book-- I've already done a lot of game audio research and work. For me there wasn't a lot new here; this is more of an introductory work. In Andrew's own words, he's trying "to bridge the gap between the ivory tower and the video game den." For instance, the obligatory opening chapter with a brief history of game audio.... I'm so over these. I know it's the academic tradition to show that you're aware of what else is out there, but there are SO MANY of these history of game audio chapters, articles, etc. My thought is if you don't have anything new to add to the history (is there really much to add to those already written?) then don't write yet one more. The one caveat I have is that I had not considered some of the market influences, business aspects, stock values, and the like that Andrew writes about here. However, that's a very brief part of the history.
And the ugly...
Three things caught my eye that I took issue with.
1- Asteroids and Space Invaders "employ the exact same principle" regarding game audio. I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I play examples of both of these games in my class and point out how much more clever Space Invaders is. With Space Invaders, as the music increases, the pace of the gameplay also increases, peaking at the end where the aliens are coming down as fast as possible and shooting the last one is the most difficult task. With Asteroids, the music peaks toward the end of the level, whereas the gameplay difficulty peaks around 2/3rds of the way through the game. The end of an Asteroids game is, for me, typically trying to hit one last damn asteroid that is proving monotonously difficult. Meanwhile, the music is so active it usually pulls me out of the gameplay as I feel the disconnect. Thus, the audio in these two games doesn't use "exactly the same principle." Instead, Asteroids compares with Space Invaders as a clear example of a copycat game not being as innovative with its connection in gameplay and audio in a critical way.
2- At one point in the discussion of Super Mario's music, Andrew writes that the water music is "incidentally" in C major, the same as the overworld music. I was shocked to read his choice of word here. Music theorists are typically coming up with all kinds of reasons why the music in the 3rd movement of a piece has a key relationship with the development of the first movement, or whatever. (Don't worry if that didn't mean anything to you!) The point is, every piece of game audio is created with a series of explicit choices. As I've already seen from charting the Super Mario Bros games in "My Gaming Audio History," Koji Kondo goes further than almost any other composer I've encountered to establish a "key" for the game, C major. It's not by happen chance, circumstance, or "incident" that the water music is in the same key as the overworld music. It's deliberate.
3- Finally, it was cool to see some of these game music themes transcribed into standard music notation. I'd heard from Karen Collins that one is supposed to get permission to print transcriptions of game audio and that it's not always easy to do so, but Andrew has numerous examples printed here. I'd be interested to learn more about how he got those permissions. The one that is etched in my mind is the overworld theme for The Legend of Zelda. Andrew put's this transcription in a key with five flats (Db major or Bb minor are the choices, then). I think anyone who has ever played this game would consider the key of the overworld music to be Bb major. Maybe he did this for ease of accidental printing, but I got lost in thought wondering how he decided to present the theme in that key. If I'm right, that it was for the purpose of ease (otherwise, I can't figure out why he'd be trying to justify either of the keys the signature suggests), I'm disappointed. One of the cool things about game music is that it usually doesn't exist in printed form and I think it's all the more important then for transcriptions to reflect it accurately, not conveniently!
Let me know if you read this book and what you thought of it.
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