Still Playing

All I really know about Chip Tanaka is that his melodies are permanent now. They’ve been playing in the background of every thought since I was young enough to hold a controller, and they’re not going anywhere.

Hirokazu Tanaka composed the sound of my childhood—Dr. Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Tetris, Super Mario Land, EarthBound. He was Nintendo’s in-house composer. Every track with his name on it hit different. There’s something about those 8-bit arrangements that nothing modern comes close to.

He played a set at Red Bull Academy’s Cart Diggers event in Tokyo, the kind of thing where you sit and listen to someone explain the architecture of sounds that built you. But you don’t really need the event. You just need to remember what those games felt like, and how they never actually left you.

I don’t know much with certainty, but I know this: old video game music means more to me than anything being made now. I can hum it in my sleep. It’s burned in so completely it’s part of me now. He built something that lasts.