Diggin’ In The Carts

I whistle Super Mario World without thinking about it. Tetris themes, Secret of Mana, the whole catalog is just embedded in me. My iPod is loaded with video game remixes—Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy XIII, Ocarina of Time—and the title themes from Grandia and Terranigma and Illusion of Time have burned themselves into my brain permanently.

Video game music means more to me than basically all Western music combined, but not because it’s inherently better. It’s just that I’ve heard it constantly my whole life, so it had more time to sink in, more chances to become part of how I think and feel. It’s the true soundtrack to growing up, this constant ambient presence that shaped me without me ever really noticing.

Red Bull made a documentary about Japanese video game music, focusing on that golden 8-bit era when composers like Hidenori Maezawa and Masashi Kageyama were basically inventing what game music could be. They flew to Japan and talked to these people, got the real history of how this all happened.

If you ever spent hours with a Game Boy or a Super Nintendo, watching these composers talk about writing those melodies is something else. You hear the context and then you hear the songs again and suddenly you understand why you can’t get them out of your head. It’s not about the cultural significance or the history or any of that—it’s just about recognizing where part of yourself comes from.