How's this for off the topic, and completely under researched.
My dad showed me some 64 and 8 bit punk the other day. A guy has got punk songs and converted them using the same engines they used to use for game boys, sega master systems etc. So the sound is, well, terrible.. but interesting to see what people will do with the two completely different mediums. The idea of playing with video game music kept with me, until tonight.
With XBox 360 (my flatmates an IT geek) you can plug your HD in and play your MP3's while you play games. Also with 360 you can download all of the old arcade games in their original glory (remember Worms, Paperboy, Pacman etc), so we end up with the opposite of 8 bit punk, where we play paperboy which used to be on my 486 listening to new MP3's, it's this strange remediation of the effect that the old game had, no longer do i have to put up with the repedative 8 bit loop music that accompanies the game. The perfect example would be Alex The Kid, but we don't have that yet.
So I'm still wondering about all this. Does it make the old game less important if you can't hear the music?
Could this be a turning point for newer games as well, as the thought and man power that goes in to coming up with the perfect in game music is all but ruined by me as I plug in the music I want to hear, horror games aren't as scary when you have Ray Charles in the background, and racing games seem strange when Bob Marley is lighting up in the corner. I'll keep thinking.
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Yeah it can be a funny thing playing your old favourites to the latest pop song.
I think people have done that since the beginning of video games anyway, it's only recently that the 'custom soundtrack' came into being. The xbox was the first to incorporate the custom soundtrack I think, and if you look at the back of an xbox title you'll see at the bottom left corner whether or not the game has custom soundtrack enabled.
It's a brilliant idea though as you can sometimes get sick of the repetive music playing in older arcade games, especially if you have to repeat the same level constantly, the music seemingly taunts you. (Remembering hours spent trying to beat that crazy bubble spitting frog from Alex the Kidd, that underwater theme has stuck in my head to this very day and will probably be the theme playing in my head when I die)
But people used to turn the volume down on their TVs and put the stereo on quite often. I remember my friend and I played Tekken tag tournament in high school religiously but we never listened to the soundtrack. Instead we turned the volume down and put on Michael Jacksons greatest hits volume 3 I think. Trust me, you've never played Tekken until you've played to 'Bad' =)
I'm sure those who use emulators on their comps to play games (not admitting to it, it's illegal), but you could always mute the sound and have winamp playing your mp3s in the background.
Customised soundtracks in video games is just another response to a demand that has been there for years. It's also an element of the increasing agency players demand from their gaming. They want to customise their own characters, skills, profile, and not surprisingly a sountrack to play to.
gotta stop talking
Caleb
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