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Video game music

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Video game music is the music pieces from computer and video games (the Magnavox Odyssey being the only game console without sound capability). Until the appearance in 1990–1992 of the Super NES, video game music often sounded characteristically "bleepy", although some home computer sound chips, like the C64's SID, partly ameliorated this. With its SONY SPC700 chip, the Super NES revolutionized video game music, spawning the modern age of this field of applied acoustics, exemplified by games such as Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI, Chrono Trigger, Castlevania IV, and ActRaiser. Some NES games, which originally had bleepy soundtracks, have later been enhanced-remade for the Super NES, Sony Playstation, or some other modern game console to reflect the modern age of applied acoustics.

The Final Fantasy series is considered by many gamers and unofficial video game Web sites to have the best music of any modern video game series, especially the pieces that are part of the work of Nobuo Uematsu, and it has been widely known for its soundtracks: Japanese game companies routinely make CD soundtracks, called OSTs, for their games. Like anime soundtracks, these soundtracks are usually marketed exclusively in Japan. Therefore, interested non-Japanese gamers have to import the soundtracks through on- or offline firms specifically dedicated to video game soundtrack imports. Those non-Japanese gamers import mainly Final Fantasy soundtracks. Some of those firms also offer anime soundtrack imports. Listening to video game music outside gaming, especially Final Fantasy music, along with anime music, is getting more popular among non-Japanese gamers. Video game music is even performed by European orchestras, such as the London Symphony Orchestra.

Video game soundtracks are frequently "ripped" electronically through emulation in formats such as NSF, GBS, SID, HES, VGM, SPC, PSF, and PSF2, and can be played through e.g. Winamp in sample rates above 44.1 kilohertz. Modern video game music is traditionally done in classical orchestra or techno music genres. A number of video game critics are known to prefer digitized recordings of orchestrated music in games as opposed to synthesized music. An example of orchestrated classical music in video games can be heard in Super Smash Bros. Melee, with its score performed by the aptly named Orchestra Melee.

== Known video game musicians == (most of them Japanese)

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