What is the deal with games only having orchestral scores?
Apologies for the Seinfeldesque intro, but I kind of miss the electronic bleeps and bloops of the 8 and 16-bit eras of video games. The sounds that those consoles produced had a certain charm to them. Video games have a way of creating ridiculous situations that are impossible to the physical realm of reality. I think that some games should bring that old funny sounding electronic soundtrack back.
Video games have the capacity to tell a story, or express an emotion, in a way that no other medium can attain. That's all well and good, but games can be fun and silly as well. I've been watching a lot of Let's Play videos on the Youtube. Those Let's Players play a lot of old school video games from the NES and SNES. There's a definite feel to those games that modern games, for whatever reason, try to put behind them. It's true, that as art, a medium should evolve with the time, but what's wrong with a little bit of nostalgia?
A lot of Indie games these days go back to that style of art and sound, as well as difficulty. Indie games are where it's at when it comes to finding something new and inventive, and just plain creative, but that's for a different post. Indie game developers create their games to look and feel like the games of yesterday because that's what they grew up with, and so did we. Part of that experience was the graphical and audio limitations.
While there's nothing wrong with grandiose orchestral scores that sweep me off my feet, there's nothing wrong with a few bleeps and bloops that send me back to my childhood.
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