Kong
03-27-2009, 02:27 AM
Having been a big fan of Hitoshi Sakimoto's work since Final Fantasy Tactics (http://retrouprising.com/do/gameOverview?cId=2016959) -- I think it was Antidote (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ILBQHuY7QM) that did it for me -- I was excited to attend his presentation today at GDC. As you can see from my writeup (http://retrouprising.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173464), it was a very technical, industry-oriented talk, which is only to be expected from a lecture posted on the audio career track. GDC is for developers, and his comments were aimed directly at aspiring musicians who hope someday to have the same level of success as he has.
Not being much of a musician myself, of course, my main interest was hearing more about his formative years...and in that respect, Sakimoto didn't disappoint. He talked at length about his first project, a PC-8801 shooter called Revolter, and how he parlayed his modest success with that game into a career of composing for some of the greatest RPGs and shooters ever.
http://media.1up.com/media/03/6/9/7/lg/046.gif?r
Unfortunately, information on games for NEC's Japan-only PCs (the 8801 and 9801 families) remains maddeningly difficult to come by in English. I'd like to know more about Revolter and some of Sakimoto's subsequent works, but since the majority of PC-8801 info on the Internet is encrypted in Japanese text far too dense for my Ovaltine Secret Decoder ring to translate, solid facts remain elusive at best.
Well, at least some Japanese gamers still make use of YouTube rather than hiding all their video goodness behind NicoNico's arcane registration process. After a bit of searching, I was able to track down a video of Revolter, which should make it easy to understand how Sakimoto's work caught so much attention when the game made its 1988 debut at Comiket (a sort of cross between San Diego Comic-Con and a job fair, with amateur creators peddling their works and hoping for a big break):
Revolter doesn't look like much of a shooter -- I've seen those patterns in a dozen other, prettier games; the fact that the player's bullets are indistinguishable from the enemies' should be some sort of crime; and the choppy scrolling of the PC-88 is a little nauseating. But oh man, that music is in a class by itself. The disconnect between the rough, primitive visuals/gameplay and the rich, layered, arcade-quality sound is practically mindblowing.
The really impressive thing is that Sakimoto started out as more of a programmer than a composer -- he's admitted that his approach to composing was more like an engineer's, and that the creative aspect of composition is easily the most difficult part of working on a game. Yet not only is this a catchy, driving, atmospheric tune, the music is constructed much like his current work: in layers that build on one another. Sakimoto is hardly the only game composer to use those techniques, but it's a defining characteristic of his work.
http://media.1up.com/media/03/6/9/7/lg/047.gif?rIt also reinforces how great these old Japanese PCs sounded in the hands of a great composer. I've been playing a lot (a lot) of the Brandish remake (http://retrouprising.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8984260&publicUserId=5379721) this past week, and one of my favorite features in the game is the option to use the retro sound mode. Rather than drawing from the Super NES version of Brandish, though, Falcom has chosen to emulate the NEC PC-9801 soundtrack -- and it's fantastic. NEC used FM synthesis for their audio, similar to the Genesis, but the extra sound channels the PCs offered gave the music a fuller, warmer sound than the (admittedly great) otherworldly coldness of Genesis music. What boggles my mind is that these audio capabilities were found in a format initially released in 1981. Here in America, PC audio was still pretty much completely horrible a decade later. No wonder all the famous classic game composers come from Japan and Europe.
Revolter images found on some obscure Japanese site that I can't seem to locate again.
More... (http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8984511&publicUserId=5379721)
Not being much of a musician myself, of course, my main interest was hearing more about his formative years...and in that respect, Sakimoto didn't disappoint. He talked at length about his first project, a PC-8801 shooter called Revolter, and how he parlayed his modest success with that game into a career of composing for some of the greatest RPGs and shooters ever.
http://media.1up.com/media/03/6/9/7/lg/046.gif?r
Unfortunately, information on games for NEC's Japan-only PCs (the 8801 and 9801 families) remains maddeningly difficult to come by in English. I'd like to know more about Revolter and some of Sakimoto's subsequent works, but since the majority of PC-8801 info on the Internet is encrypted in Japanese text far too dense for my Ovaltine Secret Decoder ring to translate, solid facts remain elusive at best.
Well, at least some Japanese gamers still make use of YouTube rather than hiding all their video goodness behind NicoNico's arcane registration process. After a bit of searching, I was able to track down a video of Revolter, which should make it easy to understand how Sakimoto's work caught so much attention when the game made its 1988 debut at Comiket (a sort of cross between San Diego Comic-Con and a job fair, with amateur creators peddling their works and hoping for a big break):
Revolter doesn't look like much of a shooter -- I've seen those patterns in a dozen other, prettier games; the fact that the player's bullets are indistinguishable from the enemies' should be some sort of crime; and the choppy scrolling of the PC-88 is a little nauseating. But oh man, that music is in a class by itself. The disconnect between the rough, primitive visuals/gameplay and the rich, layered, arcade-quality sound is practically mindblowing.
The really impressive thing is that Sakimoto started out as more of a programmer than a composer -- he's admitted that his approach to composing was more like an engineer's, and that the creative aspect of composition is easily the most difficult part of working on a game. Yet not only is this a catchy, driving, atmospheric tune, the music is constructed much like his current work: in layers that build on one another. Sakimoto is hardly the only game composer to use those techniques, but it's a defining characteristic of his work.
http://media.1up.com/media/03/6/9/7/lg/047.gif?rIt also reinforces how great these old Japanese PCs sounded in the hands of a great composer. I've been playing a lot (a lot) of the Brandish remake (http://retrouprising.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8984260&publicUserId=5379721) this past week, and one of my favorite features in the game is the option to use the retro sound mode. Rather than drawing from the Super NES version of Brandish, though, Falcom has chosen to emulate the NEC PC-9801 soundtrack -- and it's fantastic. NEC used FM synthesis for their audio, similar to the Genesis, but the extra sound channels the PCs offered gave the music a fuller, warmer sound than the (admittedly great) otherworldly coldness of Genesis music. What boggles my mind is that these audio capabilities were found in a format initially released in 1981. Here in America, PC audio was still pretty much completely horrible a decade later. No wonder all the famous classic game composers come from Japan and Europe.
Revolter images found on some obscure Japanese site that I can't seem to locate again.
More... (http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8984511&publicUserId=5379721)