From the sugary jangling of Parappa to the phat sounds of Psygnosis' finest, there's no denying that beat cred's an issue in modern videogames. FG looks at the evolution of computer game music, from bleeps and blips to block-rocking trips.
Steve Edwards

It's difficult to have a conversation about videogames without discussing which 3D card or next generation console you're planning to buy. However, among the polygon processors and accelerator chips, we seem to have lost sight of one of the most important aspects of any interactive experience: the music.

By and large, music technology hasn't advanced that far over the past decade. Sure, there are more channels, memory, effects, and techniques that musicians can utilize, but if you compare it to innovations in graphics hardware, progression has been inconsiderable.

Back in the 8bit days, sounds were limited to blips and beeps from rudimentary buzzers. It was the Commodore 64, with its radically advanced 'SID' sound chip that really changed the face of computer music. And it was celebrity musicians such as Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway who paved the way, stretching the potentials of the SID chip to the limit using programming prowess as well as musical ability.

Writing their own sound drivers and squeezing epic tunes into as little as 3k, everything was created from scratch; clever arrangements to make up for the lack of voices and memorable melodies to compensate for the twee sounds. The beeps and blips finally vanished, replaced by technically competent musical pieces.

Though musicians worked much harder to realise their ideas, there was much more creative freedom than exists today. Most soundtracks were written towards the end of a project, usually in isolation from the game. This led to better quality music, and often the public would buy a title purely because 'Musician X' was involved. Software companies capitalized on this, which is why many classics tunes are tagged on to mediocre games.