The Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES was released in 1985 in NA, and had about a 10 year life span. During those 10 years, there was an extraordinary evolution within the soundtracks that accompanied the some 700 total games. With only 5 limited channels of audio dedicated to all music/sound related events, the composers and sound designers that worked on NES titles needed to make some ingenious and deliberate decisions. A number of those decisions affect the player’s relationship with immersion within the game.
EMBRACING INSTRUMENTATION FOR GREATER IMMERSION.
Almost all music can be boiled down to melody and harmony. The melody serves as the central theme for the music, and harmony serves to support that theme. How the melody and harmony sounds is a different story.
The Overworld Theme from the original Super Mario Bros. (1983) is a classic tune that is very often referenced when mentioning “classic nes” sounds. You have two pulse waves behaving and melody and harmony, a triangle for bass, and a simple noise as a rudimentary percussion instrument. Being one of the first titles released for the fresh hardware of the NES, I will argue that overall, the entire soundtrack doesn’t take any particular risks. While there are some thematic developments that help connect the player to the environment, the entirety of the 9:33 minute soundtrack has a consistent sonic quality that arguably detracts from the player’s immersion with the world that the game creates.
Compare this to the Overworld Theme from the sequel, Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988). The track contains 4.5 distinct instrumentation changes within its more than double runtime. The composer, Koji Kondo has had 5 years to explore and push the limits of the NES audio system. The resulting expansion of sonic palette makes the game locations seem much larger than before. This particular title also begins the exploration of the audio channel as a sample playback system within the Mario Bros. trilogy. Showing up in the Underworld track, channel 5 is used as a playback for a drum sample. This “real” sounding drum furthers the player’s immersion within the created world.
Last in the trilogy comes Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988). Throughout the 47:46 minutes, you hear less of a reliance on changing instrumentations mid song, but instead much heavier use of real sounding drums samples to “worldize” the environments and scenarios. Because of the ability to depend on unique samples rather than instrumentation, the game is then able to focus more on developing musical themes that are unique to environments.
The evolution of the sonic signature of Super Mario Bros. throughout the trilogy shows how important the balance is between the lyric content of soundtracks and how they physically sound. When experiencing the games first hand, it is almost shocking how much more immersive Super Mario Bros. 3 feels when compared to the 1st one, and instrumentation has a huge impact on that feeling.
TREATING REPETITION CORRECTLY
Hardware limitations within the NES included limited size restrictions for all data. This especially affected music. One way to go about reducing file size of music was to use the concept of looping or repetition. Repetition could have a huge influence on the player’s perception and enjoyment of games.
For example, take Star Force (1984). Interspersed between some infrequent but extravagant transitional material, there is a single 4 bar loop that is considered the main soundtrack. These 8 seconds of music happens non stop, for practically the entirety of the 56 minutes of full gameplay. While there are brief periods of “boss-type” developments, they are too short and too far in between. The immersion factor is broken after the first 5 minutes of the game.
The complete other end of the spectrum is Kirby’s Adventure (1993). Featuring a whopping 29 different tracks spanning just 29.56 minutes, the average song in Kirby’s adventure is around 62 seconds. Within those 62 seconds, each of the tracks follows the lyric lines and repetition standards put forth by classical music theory. We are shown a main theme A, which is followed by a secondary theme B, which is followed by a recap of a slightly altered version of A. This ABA form is easily iterated upon to develop extended themes. Stage Music 5, for example follows an (intro)ABA’CA’’ form. It packs a lot of different ideas into a very tight 1:15 minute space, not to mention the changing instrumentations as well. While normally, such complexity could potentially break immersion because too much effort is required by the player to understand what is happening, we are reminded that Kirby himself is constantly changing forms and gaining new powers. A greater amount of compelling, but shorter tracks gives more items and locations in the game an identity. These two concepts together reinforce the sometimes quite chaotic nature of the game.
When coupled with the changing instrumentation techniques mentioned before, the Kirby’s Adventure soundtrack is an amazing example of the extent that music has the power to shape the entire player experience. The comparisons of Kirby’s adventure (one of the last games to be released), and Mario Bros 1 (one of the first games released) show a substantial evolution in soundtracks over the 10 year period of the NES, and arguably shaped the development of game composition and audio design for future generations.