Video game music ( VGM ) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games . Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips , such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led to the style of music known as chiptune , which became the sound of the first video games.
126-496: Jake Kaufman (born 1981; also known as virt or virtjk ) is an American video game music composer . After starting out creating arrangements and remixes of video game soundtracks, he began his commercial composing career in 2000 with the score to the Game Boy Color port of Q*bert . He continued to compose music for games for the next couple of years, working primarily with handheld video games . In 2002, he set up
252-561: A chiptune rendition of Yellow Magic Orchestra 's " Rydeen " (1979); several later computer games also covered the song, such as Trooper Truck (1983) by Rabbit Software as well as Daley Thompson's Decathlon (1984) and Stryker's Run (1986) composed by Martin Galway . Home console systems also had a comparable upgrade in sound ability beginning with the ColecoVision in 1982 capable of four channels. However, more notable
378-488: A "new high watermark for what music in games could sound like." The soundtrack for Streets of Rage 2 (1992) in particular is considered "revolutionary" and "ahead of its time" for its blend of house music with " dirty " electro basslines and " trancey electronic textures" that "would feel as comfortable in a nightclub as a video game." Another important FM synth composer was the late Ryu Umemoto , who composed music for many visual novels and shoot 'em ups during
504-451: A 3D virtual world, a binaural audio system, positional and rotational real-time head tracking for six degrees of movement. Options include motion controls with haptic feedback for physically interacting within the virtual world in an intuitive way with little to no abstraction and an omnidirectional treadmill for more freedom of physical movement allowing the user to perform locomotive motion in any direction. Augmented reality (AR)
630-452: A 90-degree field of vision that was previously unseen in the consumer market at the time. Luckey eliminated distortion issues arising from the type of lens used to create the wide field of vision using software that pre-distorted the rendered image in real-time. This initial design would later serve as a basis from which the later designs came. In 2012, the Rift is presented for the first time at
756-527: A CD drive supported 32 channels of PCM at the same resolution as the original PlayStation. In 1996, the Nintendo 64 , still using a solid-state cartridge, actually supported an integrated and scalable sound system that was potentially capable of 100 channels of PCM, and an improved sample rate of 48 kHz. Games for the N64, because of the cost of the solid-state memory, typically had samples of lesser quality than
882-495: A DAC engine of one or more streams. Only a minority of developers ever used Amiga-style tracker formats in commercial PC games, ( Unreal ) typically preferring to use the MT-32 or AdLib/SB-compatible devices. As general purpose PCs using x86 became more ubiquitous than the other PC platforms, developers drew their focus towards that platform. The last major development before streaming music came in 1992: Roland Corporation released
1008-461: A MIDI controller to run the sequence. However, different products used different sounds attached to their MIDI controllers. Some tied into the Yamaha FM chip to simulate instruments, some daughterboards of samples had very different sound qualities; meaning that no single sequence performance would be accurate to every other General MIDI device. All of these considerations in the products reflected
1134-490: A MIDI controller) to give it the features of a fully integrated card. Unlike the standards of Amiga or Atari , a PC using x86 even then could be using a broad mix of hardware. Developers increasingly used MIDI sequences: instead of writing soundtrack data for each type of soundcard, they generally wrote a fully featured data set for the Roland application that would be compatible with lesser featured equipment so long as it had
1260-493: A My MLB sound track feature that allows the user to play music tracks of their choice saved on the hard drive of their PS3, rather than the preprogrammed tracks incorporated into the game by the developer. An update to Wipeout HD , released on the PlayStation Network, was made to also incorporate this feature. In the video game Audiosurf , custom soundtracks are the main aspect of the game. Users have to pick
1386-513: A PC, inserting custom music into the stations is done by placing music files into a designated folder. For the Xbox version, a CD must be installed into the console's hard drive. For the iPhone version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars , players create an iTunes playlist which is then played by the game. Virtual reality Virtual reality ( VR ) is a simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give
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#17327978434321512-413: A PC-powered virtual reality headset that same year. In 1999, entrepreneur Philip Rosedale formed Linden Lab with an initial focus on the development of VR hardware. In its earliest form, the company struggled to produce a commercial version of "The Rig", which was realized in prototype form as a clunky steel contraption with several computer monitors that users could wear on their shoulders. The concept
1638-502: A Yamaha chip, the YM2612 ), but largely held the same approach to sound design. Ten channels in total for tone generation with one for PCM samples were available in stereo instead of the NES's five channels in mono, one for PCM. As before, it was often used for percussion samples. The Genesis did not support 16-bit sampled sounds. Despite the additional tone channels, writing music still posed
1764-577: A challenge to traditional composers and it forced much more imaginative use of the FM synthesizer to create an enjoyable listening experience. The composer Yuzo Koshiro utilized the Genesis hardware effectively to produce " progressive , catchy, techno -style compositions far more advanced than what players were used to" for games such as The Revenge of Shinobi (1989) and the Streets of Rage series, setting
1890-520: A collection of essays, Le Théâtre et son double . The English translation of this book, published in 1958 as The Theater and its Double , is the earliest published use of the term "virtual reality". The term " artificial reality ", coined by Myron Krueger , has been in use since the 1970s. The term "virtual reality" was first used in a science fiction context in The Judas Mandala , a 1982 novel by Damien Broderick . Widespread adoption of
2016-447: A cross between sequencing samples, and streaming music is used. Games such as Republic: The Revolution (music composed by James Hannigan ) and Command & Conquer: Generals (music composed by Bill Brown) have utilised sophisticated systems governing the flow of incidental music by stringing together short phrases based on the action on screen and the player's most recent choices (see dynamic music ). Other games dynamically mixed
2142-516: A dynamic approach to video game music, using at least eleven different gameplay tracks, in addition to level-starting and game over themes, which change according to the player's actions. This was further improved upon by Namco's 1982 arcade game Dig Dug , where the music stopped when the player stopped moving. Dig Dug was composed by Yuriko Keino, who also composed the music for other Namco games such as Xevious (1982) and Phozon (1983). Sega 's 1982 arcade game Super Locomotive featured
2268-462: A gameplay feature, with the game generating levels based entirely on the music on whatever CD the player inserted. Microsoft's Xbox allowed music to be copied from a CD onto its internal hard drive, to be used as a "Custom Soundtrack", if enabled by the game developer. The feature carried over into the Xbox 360 where it became supported by the system software and could be enabled at any point. The Wii
2394-443: A loop, though it was dynamic and interacted with the player, increasing pace as the enemies descended on the player. The first video game to feature continuous, melodic background music was Rally-X , released by Namco in 1980, featuring a simple tune that repeats continuously during gameplay . The decision to include any music into a video game meant that at some point it would have to be transcribed into computer code. Some music
2520-488: A music file to be analyzed. The game will generate a race track based on tempo, pitch and complexity of the sound. The user will then race on this track, synchronized with the music. Games in the Grand Theft Auto series have supported custom soundtracks, using them as a separate in-game radio station. The feature was primarily exclusive to PC versions, and was adopted to a limited degree on console platforms. On
2646-463: A pseudo fourth sound channel. Its comparatively low cost made it a popular alternative to other home computers, as well as its ability to use a TV for an affordable display monitor. Approach to game music development in this time period usually involved using simple tone generation and/or frequency modulation synthesis to simulate instruments for melodies, and use of a "noise channel" for simulating percussive noises. Early use of PCM samples in this era
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#17327978434322772-459: A real video. Users can select their own type of participation based on the system capability. In projector-based virtual reality, modeling of the real environment plays a vital role in various virtual reality applications, including robot navigation, construction modeling, and airplane simulation. Image-based virtual reality systems have been gaining popularity in computer graphics and computer vision communities. In generating realistic models, it
2898-461: A service that shows panoramic views of an increasing number of worldwide positions such as roads, indoor buildings and rural areas. It also features a stereoscopic 3D mode, introduced in 2010. In 2010, Palmer Luckey designed the first prototype of the Oculus Rift . This prototype, built on a shell of another virtual reality headset, was only capable of rotational tracking. However, it boasted
3024-662: A single note long, and play it back through the computer's sound chip from memory. This differed from Rally-X in that its hardware DAC was used to play back simple waveform samples, and a sampled sound allowed for a complexity and authenticity of a real instrument that an FM simulation could not offer. For its role in being one of the first and affordable, the Amiga would remain a staple tool of early sequenced music composing, especially in Europe . The Amiga offered these features before most other competing home computer platforms though
3150-658: A song "Goal Scoring Superstar Hero". These songs used long vocal samples. A similar approach to sound and music developments had become common in the arcades by this time and had been used in many arcade system boards since the mid-1980s. This was further popularized in the early 1990s by games like Street Fighter II (1991) on the CPS-1 , which used voice samples extensively along with sampled sound effects and percussion. Neo Geo 's MVS system also carried powerful sound development which often included surround sound . The evolution also carried into home console video games, such as
3276-612: A song (often not American) that is upbeat and has lots of rhythm. The inclusion on the FIFA soundtrack has given many artists exposure that helped launch their music careers. Sequencing samples continue to be used in modern gaming where fully recorded audio is not viable. Until the mid-2000s, many larger games on home consoles used sequenced audio to save space. Additionally, most games on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS used sequenced music due to storage limitations. Sometimes
3402-565: A sound card) would actually handle all the decompressing. Fifth generation home console systems also developed specialised streaming formats and containers for compressed audio playback. Games would take full advantage of this ability, sometimes with highly praised results ( Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ). Games ported from arcade machines, which continued to use FM synthesis, often saw superior pre-recorded music streams on their home console counterparts ( Street Fighter Alpha 2 ). Even though
3528-503: A stereoscopic image with a field-of-view wide enough to create a convincing sense of space. The users of the system have been impressed by the sensation of depth ( field of view ) in the scene and the corresponding realism. The original LEEP system was redesigned for NASA's Ames Research Center in 1985 for their first virtual reality installation, the VIEW (Virtual Interactive Environment Workstation) by Scott Fisher . The LEEP system provides
3654-599: A user's physical presence in a virtual environment. A person using virtual reality equipment is able to look around the artificial world, move around in it, and interact with virtual features or items. The effect is commonly created by VR headsets consisting of a head-mounted display with a small screen in front of the eyes, but can also be created through specially designed rooms with multiple large screens. Virtual reality typically incorporates auditory and video feedback , but may also allow other types of sensory and force feedback through haptic technology . " Virtual " has had
3780-585: A variety of productions, most notably the background music and theme songs for the TV shows OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes and Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart . Through Mint Potion, Kaufman briefly worked again with WayForward as a freelance composer on the games Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche and Vitamin Connection , as well as continued composing for the various Shovel Knight DLCs . Other composers such as Chiyoko Yamasato and Tommy Pedrini have since joined
3906-475: A video game was to use digital means, where a specific computer chip would change electrical impulses from computer code into analog sound waves on the fly for output on a speaker. Sound effects for the games were also generated in this fashion. An early example of such an approach to video game music was the opening chiptune in Tomohiro Nishikado 's Gun Fight (1975). While this allowed for
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4032-637: A virtual environment. This addresses a key risk area in rotorcraft operations, where statistics show that around 20% of accidents occur during training flights. In 2022, Meta released the Meta Quest Pro . This device utilised a thinner, visor-like design that was not fully enclosed, and was the first headset by Meta to target mixed reality applications using high-resolution colour video passthrough. It also included integrated face and eye tracking , pancake lenses , and updated Touch Pro controllers with on-board motion tracking. In 2023, Sony released
4158-468: A year later) initially required users to log in with a Facebook account in order to use the new headset. In 2021 the Oculus Quest 2 accounted for 80% of all VR headsets sold. In 2021, EASA approved the first Virtual Reality-based Flight Simulation Training Device. The device, made by Loft Dynamics for rotorcraft pilots, enhances safety by opening up the possibility of practicing risky maneuvers in
4284-408: Is a type of virtual reality technology that blends what the user sees in their real surroundings with digital content generated by computer software. The additional software-generated images with the virtual scene typically enhance how the real surroundings look in some way. AR systems layer virtual information over a camera live feed into a headset or smartglasses or through a mobile device giving
4410-497: Is also able to play custom soundtracks if it is enabled by the game ( Excite Truck , Endless Ocean ). The PlayStation Portable can, in games like Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City and FIFA 08 , play music from a Memory Stick . The PlayStation 3 has the ability to utilize custom soundtracks in games using music saved on the hard drive, however few game developers used this function. MLB 08: The Show , released in 2008, has
4536-669: Is common for X-games sports-based video games to come with some popular artists recent releases ( SSX , Tony Hawk , Initial D ), as well as any game with heavy cultural demographic theme that has tie-in to music ( Need For Speed: Underground , Gran Turismo , and Grand Theft Auto ). Sometimes a hybrid of the two are used, such as in Dance Dance Revolution . Many sports game titles like Madden NFL , NBA 2K , and FIFA use popular and underground songs in their soundtrack to give their menus atmosphere. The phrase "FIFA song" has become popular in recent years, it describes
4662-454: Is essential to accurately register acquired 3D data; usually, a camera is used for modeling small objects at a short distance. Desktop-based virtual reality involves displaying a 3D virtual world on a regular desktop display without use of any specialized VR positional tracking equipment. Many modern first-person video games can be used as an example, using various triggers, responsive characters, and other such interactive devices to make
4788-436: Is given a complete sensation of reality, i.e. moving three dimensional images which may be in colour, with 100% peripheral vision, binaural sound, scents and air breezes." In 1968, Harvard Professor Ivan Sutherland , with the help of his students including Bob Sproull , created what was widely considered to be the first head-mounted display system for use in immersive simulation applications, called The Sword of Damocles . It
4914-860: Is instead branded as a “ spatial computer ”. In 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration approved its first virtual reality flight simulation training device: Loft Dynamics' virtual reality Airbus Helicopters H125 FSTD —the same device EASA qualified. As of September 2024, Loft Dynamics remains the only VR FSTD qualified by EASA and the FAA. Modern virtual reality headset displays are based on technology developed for smartphones including: gyroscopes and motion sensors for tracking head, body, and hand positions ; small HD screens for stereoscopic displays; and small, lightweight and fast computer processors. These components led to relative affordability for independent VR developers, and led to
5040-477: The Commodore 64 and NES, which resulted in the chiptune genre. The release of a freely-distributed Amiga program named Soundtracker by Karsten Obarski in 1987 started the era of MOD -format which made it easy for anyone to produce music based on digitized samples. Module files were made with programs called " trackers " after Obarski's Soundtracker. This MOD/tracker tradition continued with PC computers in
5166-553: The E3 video game trade show by John Carmack . In 2014, Facebook (later Meta) purchased Oculus VR for what at the time was stated as $ 2 billion but later revealed that the more accurate figure was $ 3 billion. This purchase occurred after the first development kits ordered through Oculus' 2012 Kickstarter had shipped in 2013 but before the shipping of their second development kits in 2014. ZeniMax , Carmack's former employer, sued Oculus and Facebook for taking company secrets to Facebook;
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5292-522: The Fifth Generation . In 1994, the CD-ROM equipped PlayStation supported 24 channels of 16-bit samples of up to 44.1 kHz sample rate, samples equal to CD audio in quality. It also sported a few hardware DSP effects like reverb . Many Square titles continued to use sequenced music, such as Final Fantasy VII , Legend of Mana , and Final Fantasy Tactics . The Sega Saturn also with
5418-680: The Macintosh which had been introduced a year earlier had similar capabilities. The Amiga's main rival, the Atari ST , sourced the Yamaha YM2149 Programmable Sound Generator (PSG). Compared to the in-house designed Amiga sound engine, the PSG could only handle 1 channel of sampled sound, and needed the computer's CPU to process the data for it. This made it impractical for game development use until 1989 with
5544-728: The Meta Quest 3 , the successor to the Quest 2. It features the pancake lenses and mixed reality features of the Quest Pro, as well as an increased field of view and resolution compared to Quest 2. In 2024, Apple released the Apple Vision Pro . The device is a fully enclosed mixed reality headset that strongly utilises video passthrough. While some VR experiences are available on the device, it lacks standard VR headset features such as external controllers or support for OpenXR and
5670-516: The Motorola 68000 CPU and accompanying various Yamaha YM programmable sound generator sound chips allowed for several more tones or "channels" of sound, sometimes eight or more. The earliest known example of this was Sega 's 1980 arcade game Carnival , which used an AY-3-8910 chip to create an electronic rendition of the classical 1889 composition " Over The Waves " by Juventino Rosas . Konami 's 1981 arcade game Frogger introduced
5796-577: The NEC PC-8801 and PC-9801 in the early 1980s, and by the mid-1980s, the PC-8801 and FM-7 had built-in FM sound. The sound FM synth boards produced are described as "warm and pleasant sound". Musicians such as Yuzo Koshiro and Takeshi Abo utilized to produce music that is still highly regarded within the chiptune community. The widespread adoption of FM synthesis by consoles would later be one of
5922-617: The PC speaker , and some proprietary standards such as the IBM PCjr 3-voice chip. While sampled sound could be achieved on the PC speaker using pulse width modulation, doing so required a significant proportion of the available processor power, rendering its use in games rare. With the increase of x86 PCs in the market, there was a vacuum in sound performance in home computing that expansion cards attempted to fill. The first two recognizable standards were
6048-632: The PlayStation VR ), a virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 4 video game console. The Chinese headset AntVR was released in late 2014; it was briefly competitive in the Chinese market but ultimately unable to compete with the larger technology companies. In 2015, Google announced Cardboard , a do-it-yourself stereoscopic viewer: the user places their smartphone in the cardboard holder, which they wear on their head. Michael Naimark
6174-468: The PlayStation VR2 , a follow-up to their 2016 headset. The device includes inside-out tracking, eye-tracked foveated rendering , higher-resolution OLED displays, controllers with adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, 3D audio , and a wider field of view. While initially exclusive for use with the PlayStation 5 console, a PC adapter is scheduled for August 2024. Later in 2023, Meta released
6300-497: The Power Glove , an early affordable VR device, released in 1989. That same year Broderbund 's U-Force was released. Atari, Inc. founded a research lab for virtual reality in 1982, but the lab was closed after two years due to the video game crash of 1983 . However, its hired employees, such as Scott Fisher , Michael Naimark , and Brenda Laurel , kept their research and development on VR-related technologies. In 1988,
6426-573: The Roland MT-32 , followed by the AdLib sound card. Roland's solution was driven by MIDI sequencing using advanced LA synthesizers. This made it the first choice for game developers to produce upon, but its higher cost as an end-user solution made it prohibitive. The AdLib used a low-cost FM synthesis chip from Yamaha, and many boards could operate compatibly using the MIDI standard. The AdLib card
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#17327978434326552-673: The Sega VR headset for the Mega Drive home console. It used LCD screens in the visor, stereo headphones, and inertial sensors that allowed the system to track and react to the movements of the user's head. In the same year, Virtuality launched and went on to become the first mass-produced, networked, multiplayer VR entertainment system that was released in many countries, including a dedicated VR arcade at Embarcadero Center . Costing up to $ 73,000 per multi-pod Virtuality system, they featured headsets and exoskeleton gloves that gave one of
6678-527: The Sensorama in 1962, along with five short films to be displayed in it while engaging multiple senses (sight, sound, smell, and touch). Predating digital computing, the Sensorama was a mechanical device . Heilig also developed what he referred to as the "Telesphere Mask" (patented in 1960). The patent application described the device as "a telescopic television apparatus for individual use... The spectator
6804-556: The Shantae series, the BloodRayne series , and nearly a dozen other games. During this time he also composed music for independent games such as Shovel Knight . On November 1, 2014, Kaufman announced that he was leaving WayForward on mutual terms to work as a freelance composer and sound designer from his own studio, in order to be able to set his own schedule and choose his own projects. The last games which he worked full-time for
6930-559: The TurboGrafx-CD RPG franchises Tengai Makyō , composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto from 1989, and the Ys series , composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Mieko Ishikawa and arranged by Ryo Yonemitsu in 1989. The Ys soundtracks, particularly Ys I & II (1989), are still regarded as some of the most influential video game music ever composed. However, there were several disadvantages of regular CD-audio. Optical drive technology
7056-712: The VR-1 motion simulator ride attraction in Joypolis indoor theme parks, as well as the Dennou Senki Net Merc arcade game . Both used an advanced head-mounted display dubbed the "Mega Visor Display" developed in conjunction with Virtuality; it was able to track head movement in a 360-degree stereoscopic 3D environment, and in its Net Merc incarnation was powered by the Sega Model 1 arcade system board . Apple released QuickTime VR , which, despite using
7182-627: The Valve Index . Notable features include a 130° field of view, off-ear headphones for immersion and comfort, open-handed controllers which allow for individual finger tracking, front facing cameras, and a front expansion slot meant for extensibility. In 2020, Oculus released the Oculus Quest 2 , later renamed the Meta Quest 2. Some new features include a sharper screen, reduced price, and increased performance. Facebook (which became Meta
7308-416: The stereoscope invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone were both precursors to virtual reality. The first references to the more modern-day concept of virtual reality came from science fiction . Morton Heilig wrote in the 1950s of an "Experience Theatre" that could encompass all the senses in an effective manner, thus drawing the viewer into the onscreen activity. He built a prototype of his vision dubbed
7434-413: The virtual fixtures system at the U.S. Air Force 's Armstrong Labs using a full upper-body exoskeleton , enabling a physically realistic mixed reality in 3D. The system enabled the overlay of physically real 3D virtual objects registered with a user's direct view of the real world, producing the first true augmented reality experience enabling sight, sound, and touch. By July 1994, Sega had released
7560-592: The 1990s. As the cost of magnetic memory declined in the form of diskettes , the evolution of video game music on the Amiga, and some years later game music development in general, shifted to sampling in some form. It took some years before Amiga game designers learned to wholly use digitized sound effects in music (an early exception case was the title music of text adventure game The Pawn , 1986). By this time, computer and game music had already begun to form its own identity, and thus many music makers intentionally tried to produce music that sounded like that heard on
7686-528: The 1990s. Examples of Amiga games using digitized instrument samples include David Whittaker 's soundtrack for Shadow of the Beast , Chris Hülsbeck 's soundtrack for Turrican 2 and Matt Furniss's tunes for Laser Squad . Richard Joseph also composed some theme songs featuring vocals and lyrics for games by Sensible Software most famous being Cannon Fodder (1993) with a song "War Has Never Been So Much Fun" and Sensible World of Soccer (1994) with
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#17327978434327812-466: The 2012 Oculus Rift Kickstarter offering the first independently developed VR headset. Independent production of VR images and video has increased alongside the development of affordable omnidirectional cameras , also known as 360-degree cameras or VR cameras, that have the ability to record 360 interactive photography , although at relatively low resolutions or in highly compressed formats for online streaming of 360 video . In contrast, photogrammetry
7938-482: The Atari 2600 and several late Famicom titles. These chips add to the existing sound capabilities. From around 1980, some arcade games began taking steps toward digitized, or sampled , sounds. Namco's 1980 arcade game Rally-X was the first known game to use a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to produce sampled tones instead of a tone generator. That same year, the first known video game to feature speech synthesis
8064-483: The CD while retrieving game data exclusively from the hard disk, thereby allowing the game CD to be swapped for any music CD. The first PC game to introduce in-game support for custom soundtracks was Lionhead Studio's Black & White . The 2001 game included an in-game interface for Winamp that enabled the players to play audio tracks from their own playlists. In addition, this would sometimes trigger various reactions from
8190-460: The CD, allowed for much lower latency and seek time when finding and starting to play music, and also allowed for much smoother looping due to being able to buffer the data. A minor drawback was that use of compressed audio meant it had to be decompressed which put load on the CPU of a system. As computing power increased, this load became minimal, and in some cases, dedicated chips in a computer (such as
8316-568: The CD-ROM itself. The popularity of the Super NES and its software remained limited to regions where NTSC television was the broadcast standard. Partly because of the difference in frame rates of PAL broadcast equipment, many titles released were never redesigned to play appropriately and ran much slower than had been intended, or were never released. This showed a divergence in popular video game music between PAL and NTSC countries that still shows to this day. This divergence would be lessened as
8442-682: The Cyberspace Project at Autodesk was the first to implement VR on a low-cost personal computer. The project leader Eric Gullichsen left in 1990 to found Sense8 Corporation and develop the WorldToolKit virtual reality SDK, which offered the first real time graphics with Texture mapping on a PC, and was widely used throughout industry and academia. The 1990s saw the first widespread commercial releases of consumer headsets. In 1992, for instance, Computer Gaming World predicted "affordable VR by 1994". In 1991, Sega announced
8568-462: The Necrodancer . Kaufman dropped out of high school with what he describes as "a total lack of work ethic and no concept of timeliness or organization." He spent the next few years composing arrangements and remixes of video game music under the alias "virt". In 2000, Kaufman broke into the video game industry as a composer, with his first work being the Game Boy Color port of Q*bert . Over
8694-685: The Run , International Karate ), Koji Kondo ( Super Mario Bros. , The Legend of Zelda ), Miki Higashino ( Gradius , Yie-Ar Kung Fu , Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ), Hiroshi Kawaguchi ( Space Harrier , Hang-On , Out Run ), Hirokazu Tanaka ( Metroid , Kid Icarus , EarthBound ), Martin Galway ( Daley Thompson's Decathlon , Stryker's Run , Times of Lore ), David Wise ( Donkey Kong Country ), Yuzo Koshiro ( Dragon Slayer , Ys , Shinobi , ActRaiser , Streets of Rage ), Mieko Ishikawa ( Dragon Slayer , Ys ), and Ryu Umemoto ( visual novels , shoot 'em ups ). By
8820-501: The audio stream. Manipulating the stream any further would require a far more significant level of CPU power available in the 5th generation. Some games, such as the Wipeout series, continued to use full Mixed Mode CD audio for their soundtracks. This overall freedom offered to music composers gave video game music the equal footing with other popular music it had lacked. A musician could now, with no need to learn about programming or
8946-749: The basis for most of the modern virtual reality headsets. By the late 1980s, the term "virtual reality" was popularized by Jaron Lanier , one of the modern pioneers of the field. Lanier had founded the company VPL Research in 1984. VPL Research has developed several VR devices like the DataGlove , the EyePhone, the Reality Built For Two (RB2), and the AudioSphere. VPL licensed the DataGlove technology to Mattel , which used it to make
9072-416: The chip itself. Konami 's 1983 arcade game Gyruss used five synthesis sound chips along with a DAC, which were used to create an electronic version of J. S. Bach 's Toccata and Fugue in D minor . Beyond arcade games, significant improvements to personal computer game music were made possible with the introduction of digital FM synth boards , which Yamaha released for Japanese computers such as
9198-567: The company were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Danger of the Ooze and Shantae: Half-Genie Hero , the latter being composed between 2013 and 2015 but only released in late 2016. In February 2015, Kaufman collaborated with Jessie Seely, a video game vocalist and professional artist, to launch the Kickstarter campaign of [NUREN] The New Renaissance . [NUREN] was self-described as "the world's first virtual reality rock opera ." The project
9324-424: The composition of a sequenced soundtrack. Being able to play one's own music during a game in the past usually meant turning down the game audio and using an alternative music player. Some early exceptions were possible on PC/Windows gaming in which it was possible to independently adjust game audio while playing music with a separate program running in the background. Some PC games, such as Quake , play music from
9450-446: The consumer headsets including separate 1K displays per eye, low persistence, positional tracking over a large area, and Fresnel lenses . HTC and Valve announced the virtual reality headset HTC Vive and controllers in 2015. The set included tracking technology called Lighthouse, which utilized wall-mounted "base stations" for positional tracking using infrared light. In 2014, Sony announced Project Morpheus (its code name for
9576-418: The driver the impression of actually driving a vehicle by predicting vehicular motion based on the driver's input and providing corresponding visual, motion, and audio cues. With avatar image -based virtual reality, people can join the virtual environment in the form of real video as well as an avatar. One can participate in the 3D distributed virtual environment in the form of either a conventional avatar or
9702-742: The fifth generation of home consoles launched globally, and as Commodore began to take a back seat to general-purpose PCs and Macs for developing and gaming. Though the Mega CD/Sega CD, and to a greater extent the PC Engine in Japan, would give gamers a preview of the direction video game music would take in streaming music, the use of both sampled and sequenced music continues in game consoles even today. The huge data storage benefit of optical media would be coupled with progressively more powerful audio generation hardware and higher quality samples in
9828-450: The first General MIDI card, the sample-based SCC-1 , an add-in card version of the SC-55 desktop MIDI module. The comparative quality of the samples spurred similar offerings from Soundblaster, but costs for both products were still high. Both companies offered 'daughterboards' with sample-based synthesizers that could be later added to a less expensive soundcard (which only had a DAC and
9954-572: The first "immersive" VR experiences. That same year, Carolina Cruz-Neira , Daniel J. Sandin and Thomas A. DeFanti from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory created the first cubic immersive room, the Cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). Developed as Cruz-Neira's PhD thesis, it involved a multi-projected environment, similar to the holodeck , allowing people to see their own bodies in relation to others in
10080-492: The first artist to produce navigable virtual worlds at NASA 's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1977 to 1984. The Aspen Movie Map , a crude virtual tour in which users could wander the streets of Aspen in one of the three modes (summer, winter, and polygons ), was created at MIT in 1978. In 1979, Eric Howlett developed the Large Expanse, Extra Perspective (LEEP) optical system. The combined system created
10206-618: The first major commercial release of sensor-based tracking, allowing for free movement of users within a defined space. A patent filed by Sony in 2017 showed they were developing a similar location tracking technology to the Vive for PlayStation VR, with the potential for the development of a wireless headset. In 2019, Oculus released the Oculus Rift S and a standalone headset, the Oculus Quest . These headsets utilized inside-out tracking compared to external outside-in tracking seen in previous generations of headsets. Later in 2019, Valve released
10332-518: The game architecture itself, independently produce the music to their satisfaction. This flexibility would be exercised as popular mainstream musicians would be using their talents for video games specifically. An early example is Way of the Warrior on the 3DO , with music by White Zombie . A more well-known example is Trent Reznor 's score for Quake . An alternate approach, as with the TMNT arcade,
10458-409: The game systems were capable of "CD quality" sound, these compressed audio tracks were not true "CD quality." Many of them had lower sampling rates, but not so significant that most consumers would notice. Using a compressed stream allowed game designers to play back streamed music and still be able to access other data on the disc without interruption of the music, at the cost of CPU power used to render
10584-624: The generation could boast similar abilities yet did not have the same circulation levels as the Super NES. The Neo-Geo home system was capable of the same powerful sample processing as its arcade counterpart but was several times the cost of a Super NES. The Sega CD (the Mega CD outside North America) hardware upgrade to the Mega Drive (Genesis in the US) offered multiple PCM channels, but they were often passed over instead to use its capabilities with
10710-428: The high cost of memory storage which rapidly declined with the optical CD format. Taking entirely pre-recorded music had many advantages over sequencing for sound quality. Music could be produced freely with any kind and number of instruments, allowing developers to simply record one track to be played back during the game. Quality was only limited by the effort put into mastering the track itself. Memory space costs that
10836-530: The inclusion of music in early arcade video games , it was usually monophonic , looped or used sparingly between stages or at the start of a new game, such as the Namco titles Pac-Man (1980) composed by Toshio Kai or Pole Position (1982) composed by Nobuyuki Ohnogi. The first game to use a continuous background soundtrack was Tomohiro Nishikado 's Space Invaders , released by Taito in 1978. It had four descending chromatic bass notes repeating in
10962-562: The introduction of FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis, providing more organic sounds than previous PSGs. The first such game, Marble Madness used the Yamaha YM2151 FM synthesis chip. As home consoles moved into the fourth generation , or 16-bit era, the hybrid approach (sampled and tone) to music composing continued to be used. The Sega Genesis offered advanced graphics over the NES and improved sound synthesis features (also using
11088-709: The label. Video game music With technological advances, video game music has grown to include a wider range of sounds. Players can hear music in video games over a game's title screen, menus, and gameplay. Game soundtracks can also change depending on a player's actions or situation, such as indicating missed actions in rhythm games , informing the player they are in a dangerous situation, or rewarding them for specific achievements. Video game music can be one of two kinds: original or licensed . The popularity of video game music has created education and job opportunities, generated awards, and led video game soundtracks to be commercially sold and performed in concerts. At
11214-501: The late 1980s, video game music was being sold as cassette tape soundtracks in Japan, inspiring American companies such as Sierra , Cinemaware and Interplay to give more serious attention to video game music by 1988. The Golden Joystick Awards introduced a category for Best Soundtrack of the Year in 1986, won by Sanxion . Some games for cartridge systems have been sold with extra audio hardware on board, including Pitfall II for
11340-479: The major advances of the 16-bit era , by which time 16-bit arcade machines were using multiple FM synthesis chips. One of the earliest home computers to make use of digital signal processing in the form of sampling was the Amiga in 1985. The computer's sound chip featured four independent 8-bit digital-to-analog converters . Developers could use this platform to take samples of a music performance, sometimes just
11466-452: The meaning of "being something in essence or effect, though not actually or in fact" since the mid-1400s. The term "virtual" has been used in the computer sense of "not physically existing but made to appear by software " since 1959. In 1938, French avant-garde playwright Antonin Artaud described the illusory nature of characters and objects in the theatre as "la réalité virtuelle" in
11592-520: The next few years, he composed the music to several Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games. In 2002, Kaufman was one of the co-founders of the website VGMix, which hosted video game music remixes. During 2002–2005, Kaufman's career as a video game music composer began to take off. By 2005, he was a full-time freelance video game composer. He continued to compose music to increasingly big-name projects, such as Contra 4 and TMNT in 2007 and Red Faction: Guerrilla in 2009; he described composing
11718-453: The other two, however, and music tended to be simpler in construct. The more dominant approach for games based on CDs, however, was shifting toward streaming audio. In the same timeframe of the late 1980s to mid-1990s, the IBM PC clones using the x86 architecture became more ubiquitous, yet had a very different path in sound design than other PCs and consoles. Early PC gaming was limited to
11844-458: The player's Creature, like dancing or laughing. Some PlayStation games supported this by swapping the game CD with a music CD, although when the game needed data, players had to swap the CDs again. One of the earliest games, Ridge Racer , was loaded entirely into RAM, letting the player insert a music CD to provide a soundtrack throughout the entirety of the gameplay. In Vib Ribbon , this became
11970-454: The potential to produce much more realistic sounds, each sample required much more data in memory . This was at a time when all memory, solid-state ( ROM cartridge ), magnetic ( floppy disk ) or otherwise was still very costly per kilobyte . Sequenced soundchip-generated music, on the other hand, was generated with a few lines of comparatively simple code and took up far less precious memory. Arcade systems pushed game music forward in 1984 with
12096-562: The release of the Atari STE which used DMA techniques to play back PCM samples at up to 50 kHz. The ST, however, remained relevant as it was equipped with a MIDI controller and external ports. It became the choice of by many professional musicians as a MIDI programming device. IBM PC clones in 1985 would not see any significant development in multimedia abilities for a few more years, and sampling would not become popular in other video game systems for several years. Though sampling had
12222-765: The release of the Super Famicom in 1990, and its US/EU version Super NES in 1991. It sported a specialized custom Sony chip for both the sound generation and for special hardware DSP. It was capable of eight channels of sampled sounds at up to 16-bit resolution, had a wide selection of DSP effects, including a type of ADSR usually seen in high-end synthesizers of the time, and full stereo sound. This allowed experimentation with applied acoustics in video games, such as musical acoustics (early games like Super Castlevania IV , F-Zero , Final Fantasy IV , Gradius III , and later games like Chrono Trigger ), directional ( Star Fox ) and spatial acoustics ( Dolby Pro Logic
12348-431: The room. Antonio Medina, a MIT graduate and NASA scientist, designed a virtual reality system to "drive" Mars rovers from Earth in apparent real time despite the substantial delay of Mars-Earth-Mars signals. In 1992, Nicole Stenger created Angels , the first real-time interactive immersive movie where the interaction was facilitated with a dataglove and high-resolution goggles. That same year, Louis Rosenberg created
12474-558: The snowboarder lands, the music resumes regular playback until its next "cue". The LucasArts company pioneered this interactive music technique with their iMUSE system, used in their early adventure games and the Star Wars flight simulators Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: TIE Fighter . Action games such as these will change dynamically to match the amount of danger. Stealth-based games will sometimes rely on such music, either by handling streams differently, or dynamically changing
12600-458: The sound effect. The mid-to-late 1980s software releases for these platforms had music developed by more people with greater musical experience than before. Quality of composition improved noticeably, and evidence of the popularity of the music of this time period remains even today. Composers who made a name for themselves with their software include Koichi Sugiyama ( Dragon Quest ), Nobuo Uematsu ( Final Fantasy ), Rob Hubbard ( Monty On
12726-452: The sound on the game based on cues of the game environment. As processing power increased dramatically in the 6th generation of home consoles, it became possible to apply special effects in realtime to streamed audio. In SSX , a recent video game series, if a snowboarder takes to the air after jumping from a ramp, the music softens or muffles a bit, and the ambient noise of wind and air blowing becomes louder to emphasize being airborne. When
12852-431: The soundtrack to Shantae: Risky's Revenge , the sequel to the game he worked on ten years prior. Original Sound Version named Kaufman their Composer of the Year for 2011, based on his work on BloodRayne: Betrayal and Mighty Switch Force , as well as several other soundtracks and arranged albums. Kaufman lives with his puggle Nugget in northern Los Angeles . While working at WayForward, Kaufman composed music for
12978-561: The soundtrack to a Contra game and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game as his "lifelong dream". Kaufman contributed a track to the official arranged album of music from Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi . He was a full-time employee of Volition while working on Red Faction , but in January 2010, he left the company to become the "lead audio guy" for WayForward , for which he had already composed several soundtracks such as those of Shantae and Contra 4 . For WayForward he first composed
13104-587: The term "VR", was unable to represent virtual reality, and instead displayed 360-degree interactive panoramas . Nintendo 's Virtual Boy console was released in 1995. A group in Seattle created public demonstrations of a "CAVE-like" 270 degree immersive projection room called the Virtual Environment Theater, produced by entrepreneurs Chet Dagit and Bob Jacobson. Forte released the VFX1 ,
13230-411: The term "virtual reality" in the popular media is attributed to Jaron Lanier , who in the late 1980s designed some of the first business-grade virtual reality hardware under his firm VPL Research , and the 1992 film Lawnmower Man , which features use of virtual reality systems. One method of realizing virtual reality is through simulation -based virtual reality. For example, driving simulators give
13356-428: The time video games had emerged as a popular form of entertainment in the late 1970s, music was stored on physical media in analog waveforms such as cassette tapes and phonograph records . Such components were expensive and prone to breakage under heavy use, making them less than ideal for use in an arcade cabinet , though in rare cases such as Journey , they were used. A more affordable method of having music in
13482-622: The user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games ), education (such as medical, safety or military training) and business (such as virtual meetings). VR is one of the key technologies in the reality-virtuality continuum . As such, it is different from other digital visualization solutions, such as augmented virtuality and augmented reality . Currently, standard virtual reality systems use either virtual reality headsets or multi-projected environments to generate some realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate
13608-475: The user feel as though they are in a virtual world. A common criticism of this form of immersion is that there is no sense of peripheral vision , limiting the user's ability to know what is happening around them. A head-mounted display (HMD) more fully immerses the user in a virtual world. A virtual reality headset typically includes two small high resolution OLED or LCD monitors which provide separate images for each eye for stereoscopic graphics rendering
13734-625: The user the ability to view three-dimensional images. Mixed reality (MR) is the merging of the real world and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. A cyberspace is sometimes defined as a networked virtual reality. Simulated reality is a hypothetical virtual reality as truly immersive as the actual reality , enabling an advanced lifelike experience or even virtual eternity. The development of perspective in Renaissance European art and
13860-445: The verdict was in favour of ZeniMax, settled out of court later. In 2013, Valve discovered and freely shared the breakthrough of low-persistence displays which make lag-free and smear-free display of VR content possible. This was adopted by Oculus and was used in all their future headsets. In early 2014, Valve showed off their SteamSight prototype, the precursor to both consumer headsets released in 2016. It shared major features with
13986-467: The website VGMix, which hosts video game music remixes, and continues to administrate it. His career began to take off over the next few years, resulting in him transitioning jobs into a full-time freelance composer by 2005. Since then he has worked on several big-name projects such as the Shantae series, Contra 4 , Red Faction: Guerrilla , DuckTales: Remastered , Shovel Knight , and Crypt of
14112-403: Was also released: Sunsoft's shoot 'em up game Stratovox . Around the same time, the introduction of frequency modulation synthesis ( FM synthesis ), first commercially released by Yamaha for their digital synthesizers and FM sound chips , allowed the tones to be manipulated to have different sound characteristics, where before the tone generated by the chip was limited to the design of
14238-513: Was appointed Google's first-ever 'resident artist' in their new VR division. The Kickstarter campaign for Gloveone, a pair of gloves providing motion tracking and haptic feedback, was successfully funded, with over $ 150,000 in contributions. Also in 2015, Razer unveiled its open source project OSVR . By 2016, there were at least 230 companies developing VR-related products. Amazon , Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft , Sony and Samsung all had dedicated AR and VR groups. Dynamic binaural audio
14364-470: Was common to most headsets released that year. However, haptic interfaces were not well developed, and most hardware packages incorporated button-operated handsets for touch-based interactivity. Visually, displays were still of a low-enough resolution and frame rate that images were still identifiable as virtual. In 2016, HTC shipped its first units of the HTC Vive SteamVR headset. This marked
14490-536: Was later adapted into the personal computer-based, 3D virtual world program Second Life . The 2000s were a period of relative public and investment indifference to commercially available VR technologies. In 2001, SAS Cube (SAS3) became the first PC-based cubic room, developed by Z-A Production ( Maurice Benayoun , David Nahon), Barco, and Clarté. It was installed in Laval , France. The SAS library gave birth to Virtools VRPack. In 2007, Google introduced Street View ,
14616-408: Was limited to short sound bites ( Monopoly ), or as an alternate for percussion sounds ( Super Mario Bros. 3 ). The music on home consoles often had to share the available channels with other sound effects. For example, if a laser beam was fired by a spaceship, and the laser used a 1400 Hz square wave, then the square wave channel that was in use by music would stop playing music and start playing
14742-410: Was original, some was public domain music such as folk songs. Sound capabilities were limited; the popular Atari 2600 home system, for example, was capable of generating only two tones at a time. As advances were made in silicon technology and costs fell, a definitively new generation of arcade machines and home consoles allowed for great changes in accompanying music. In arcades, machines based on
14868-445: Was planned to be a full-length music album, accompanied by music videos that users would experience using a head-mounted display such as the Oculus Rift . The proposed music and videos were set in a post-war future society where androids cater to humanity's needs; two prototype androids named QGK and RIX were planned as the main subjects of the project. In March 2015, the project was successfully funded with $ 76,950 raised. The project
14994-492: Was previously a concern was somewhat addressed with optical media becoming the dominant media for software games. CD quality audio allowed for music and voice that had the potential to be truly indistinguishable from any other source or genre of music. In fourth generation home video games and PCs this was limited to playing a Mixed Mode CD audio track from a CD while the game was in play (such as Sonic CD ). The earliest examples of Mixed Mode CD audio in video games include
15120-639: Was primitive both in terms of user interface and visual realism, and the HMD to be worn by the user was so heavy that it had to be suspended from the ceiling, which gave the device a formidable appearance and inspired its name. Technically, the device was an augmented reality device due to optical passthrough. The graphics comprising the virtual environment were simple wire-frame model rooms. The virtual reality industry mainly provided VR devices for medical, flight simulation, automobile industry design, and military training purposes from 1970 to 1990. David Em became
15246-538: Was slated to arrive to Kickstarter backers in February 2016. In August 2016, Kaufman cited "contracting work" and a "ridiculous client workload" as obstacles to completing [NUREN], and as of 2024 it has yet to be released. In March 2016, Kaufman and recording engineer Robert Altschuler founded their own music label called Mint Potion, based in Santa Clarita, California . It provides music and audio services for
15372-599: Was still limited in spindle speed, so playing an audio track from the game CD meant that the system could not access data again until it stopped the track from playing. Looping , the most common form of game music, was also a problem as when the laser reached the end of a track, it had to move itself back to the beginning to start reading again causing an audible gap in playback. To address these drawbacks, some PC game developers designed their own container formats in house, for each application in some cases, to stream compressed audio. This would cut back on memory used for music on
15498-650: Was the Japanese release of the Famicom in 1983 which was later released in the US as the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. It was capable of five channels, one being capable of simple PCM sampled sound. The home computer Commodore 64 released in 1982 was capable of early forms of filtering effects, different types of waveforms and eventually the undocumented ability to play 4-bit samples on
15624-536: Was to take pre-existing music not written exclusively for the game and use it in the game. The game Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and subsequent Star Wars games took music composed by John Williams for the Star Wars films of the 1970s and 1980s and used it for the game soundtracks. Both using new music streams made specifically for the game, and using previously released/recorded music streams are common approaches for developing sound tracks to this day. It
15750-464: Was used in some games, like King Arthur's World and Jurassic Park ), as well as environmental and architectural acoustics ( A Link to the Past , Secret of Evermore ). Many games also made heavy use of the high-quality sample playback capabilities ( Super Star Wars , Tales of Phantasia ). The only real limitation to this powerful setup was the still-costly solid state memory . Other consoles of
15876-530: Was usurped in 1989 by Creative 's Sound Blaster , which used the same Yamaha FM chip in the AdLib, for compatibility, but also added 8-bit 22.05 kHz (later 44.1 kHz) digital audio recording and playback of a single stereo channel. As an affordable end-user product, the Sound Blaster constituted the core sound technology of the early 1990s; a combination of a simple FM engine that supported MIDI, and
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