Author Topic: Talking with an Old School 'Hip'-ster  (Read 4003 times)

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Offline msuzuki

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Talking with an Old School 'Hip'-ster
« on: September 30, 2002, 08:57:10 PM »
Gamasutra.com has an informative interview with Hip Tanaka, the man behind the music for many NES greats.

Gamasutra.com recently posted an interview with Hirokazu 'Hip' Tanaka.  For those who don't know, Tanaka currently heads Creatures Inc. (of Pokemon fame) and began his career in the video game industry with Nintendo composing music for classics like Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Balloon Fight; just to name a few.  Below is an excerpt but for the full interview, check out Gamasutra.com or pick up the October 2002 issue of Game Developer magazine.  Note that to read the full interview, you've got to register with Gamasutra first (don't worry it's free, and worth it if you're interested in making games).


AB. For Metroid, how did you go about creating the music? Did someone give you graphics from the game and give you ideas for themes? Who did you work most closely with? Gumpei Yokoi? Hai Yukami?


HT. The sound for games used be regarded just as an effect, but I think it was around the time Metroid was in development when the sound started gaining more respect and began to be properly called game music. Even the media had put spotlights on it, and we began to see many articles on game music.  Then, sound designers in many studios started to compete with each other by creating upbeat melodies for game music. The pop-like, lilting tunes were everywhere.  The industry was delighted, but on the contrary, I wasn't happy with the trend, because those melodies weren't necessarily matched with the tastes and atmospheres that the games originally had.  The sound design for Metroid was, therefore, intended to be the antithesis for that trend. I had a concept that the music for Metroid should be created not as game music, but as music the players feel as if they were encountering a living creature. I wanted to create the sound without any distinctions between music and sound effects. The image I had was, "Anything that comes out from the game is the sound that game makes."