January 22, 2025 • 35 mins
Welcome back FDH fans! This episode dives deep into the world of video game music. In part 1 of this 2-part episode, Dave, Jon, and Ben are joined by super special guest expert and listener of the show, Alyssa! Also invited back is Dave's oldest daughter, Kayla! First, as always, they eat a food related to the topic and discuss. Then they play a fun fact quiz - see how many you get right! Then they share a brief history of video game music before our super special guest experts share their insights on their favorite video game soundtracks. Don't miss out on part 2 where they will play and rate some of the fav's and then make their own mix with just their voices!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Whatever really happened to dudes calling each other best friends?
(00:04):
Dave and John grew up in the 80s in New Jersey and they did everything together.
They were the quintessential best friends until they became teenagers and Dave moved
away.
Fast forward to today and these two 40-somethings reconnected and decided to not only be besties
again but to put on a podcast and share their reunion with anyone who will listen.
(00:25):
Welcome to Fat, Dumb and Happy.
Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to another super fun episode of Fat, Dumb and Happy.
Tonight we're going to take you on a musical journey through the ages and various platforms
of video games.
That's right, we are talking about video game soundtracks and sounds from then to now.
I'm your host and player number one this evening, Dave.
(00:48):
Helping me beat the boss battle is my second player and bro host John.
How you doing tonight John?
Hey, I got my up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, A, B, slug start ready to
go baby.
Yes.
99 lives in Contra.
That's what I'm talking about.
Yes sir.
All right.
And overseeing the strategy and Googling the walkthrough is our in-house special guest
expert, Ben.
(01:09):
Are we going to speed run this level, Ben, tonight?
Oh, no way, man.
I am a completionist.
I want to go through everything in detail.
I don't want to miss any hidden passageway or anything.
That is totally me too, man.
I always have to get all the coins, get all the hidden things.
It frustrates my kids because I'm like, no slow down there might be a secret something
here.
(01:29):
That's hilarious.
All right.
Tonight is extra special because this topic came from a listener of the show and she is
on here with us.
She is a super special guest expert on video game soundtracks, especially the more current
games.
With us tonight is Alyssa.
How you doing tonight Alyssa?
I'm doing awesome.
I'm glad to be on here.
Yeah.
(01:49):
Thanks for joining us.
So tell us a little bit about your love for video game music.
I love the atmosphere video game music can create whether it can be a theme song for
a character or it's just like a really catchy song.
It can also add character development or foreshadow events in the story.
Yes.
I love that too.
It's awesome.
So I understand this is your first podcast.
(02:11):
We are super excited to have you on.
This should be a great time.
We're excited.
Absolutely.
Welcome.
Welcome.
Glad to have you on.
And just so you all know Alyssa is joining us all the way from Missouri tonight.
So thank you.
Yes.
And guys, you can be just like her.
Don't forget that she wanted to be on the show.
So you can be on the show too.
You bring us a topic.
We'll figure it out.
That's right.
(02:32):
So you know the show is Fat, Dumb and Happy and we're a bunch of old dudes and we didn't
want our super special guest expert to feel like she was stuck with a bunch of Fat, Dumb
and Happy dudes for the night.
So I invited my daughter Kayla back on the show.
How are you doing tonight Kayla?
I'm doing great.
I'm glad to be back.
Awesome.
(02:52):
Yeah, we're so glad to have you back for sure.
And Kayla is a bit of an expert in video games too.
I think she holds the title for our immediate family and she knows soundtracks and songs
and sounds too.
So she'll be a great ad for sure.
All right.
Let's turn it over to Ben for the food portion of this episode.
All right.
Now, you know, food is one of my favorite parts of the show.
Yes.
(03:12):
But I have to say this one was a very difficult one to like try to meet the theme.
Yeah.
Speaking about this.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like crazy.
Because I don't know how much food associated with video game music.
But I will say this.
Music and sounds, they travel through waves like wavelengths, right?
Yes.
Yes.
I got Blaze wavy chips.
(03:34):
Yes.
The crunch through the sound waves.
I love it.
That's a great idea.
So how about you, John?
What did you come up with?
So I just tried to think of a video game that I played back as a kid and I came up with
two options.
I went with I guess the healthier one.
I was thinking from Simpsons hit and run, do I go eat a bunch of donuts?
Yeah.
Because of that game or do I go Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and eat some pizza?
(03:58):
Oh, man.
So I had a slice of pizza, got my gamer energy drink ready.
Yes.
I'm not going to say who it is because they don't pay me an advertised form.
So let me guess.
It's not Little Caesar's this time, right?
It is not Little Caesar's.
No.
Gross.
Gross.
I will never, ever, ever, ever give them another penny of mine in my life.
(04:19):
They're awful.
Alyssa, do you have a favorite pizza?
Pizza?
I just like cheese.
I'm a little disappointed.
Do you have a brand like a pizza chain?
Well, there's this really good place called Woodgrain Pizza.
It's kind of like fancy though.
Local joint.
OK.
They have like really good pizza and I also love Mod Pizza.
I mean.
Oh yeah.
(04:39):
I like Mod Pizza.
Heck yeah.
OK.
All right.
So that's what I'm eating tonight.
What about you, Dave?
So I decided to go with the original game fuel.
I've been sipping on it already.
It's the Code Red Mountain Dew.
So that's always a good beverage to go with video games.
And then kind of along the lines of Ben actually, I figure the sounds of a crunchy Cheetos puff.
(05:01):
I feel like that's also kind of a stereotypical gamer.
I don't know.
Maybe it's totally wrong, but I like Cheetos puffs and I like Mountain Dew.
So good excuse to have both.
Yeah.
All right.
What about you, Kayla?
All right.
So for my food, I got Sprite and some M&Ms because they were two things that I liked to have when
(05:22):
it comes to gaming.
A good snack that I usually picked.
Yes.
You know, like my Cheetos puffs, I'm going to get cheese dust on my controller.
Whereas M&Ms, you know, you got that thin candy shell.
So you're safe.
You're not going to get chocolate on there.
Nope.
And what kind of M&Ms are you going with?
That's the important question.
Just regular chocolate.
Regular.
That's what I have on me now.
But if I had it, I'd say peanut butter.
(05:44):
Yeah.
Okay.
That's what I just need to make sure.
Make sure you can still be on the show.
Yeah.
Peanut butter M&Ms are awesome.
They are.
They're the best.
All right.
What about you, Alyssa?
For me, it's bread and peanut butter, which sounds really weird.
Really weird.
Explain, please.
Classics.
Because when I'd be gaming at my dad's house, I would always want a snack and I loved bread.
(06:11):
I love bread so much because everybody loves bread.
It's so good.
Yeah.
It's just plain and nice.
It's so good.
It's a good snack.
And he would always say, oh, well, you have to do something that's healthy.
So I always chose peanut butter and he accepted that.
So I just always ate bread and peanut butter as a gaming snack.
The different lives we lead through the generations.
(06:31):
A slice of bread with peanut butter on it was like punishment for us growing up if we
didn't want dinner at the dinner table.
Oh, really?
We got a slice of bread with peanut butter and a cup of water and went to take it to
our room.
Oh.
So, yes.
Yep.
I love bread and peanut butter for sure.
Did you like just flat like peanut butter on top and that was it?
Or did you fold it in half?
(06:52):
Did you roll it up?
What did you do?
Oh, no, it was just flat.
I think it was like this special kind of peanut butter that had cinnamon or something.
It had like plenty of sugar in it, I'm sure.
That's I mean, otherwise it wouldn't eat it.
Right.
Right.
I mean, yeah.
It was technically healthy because it had peanuts in it, of course.
There you go.
And yeah, you need that sugar for gaming.
(07:13):
Absolutely.
That's exactly.
Technicalities are great.
Yes.
Good job.
And we had a guest on another episode, Justin, on our 80s TV show episode that said that
his snack during TV shows was a spoon of peanut butter.
So he, we have peanut butter lovers on this show for sure.
Yep.
All right.
Kayla, over to you to kick us off the main part of the episode.
(07:35):
All right.
So for the main topic of this podcast, we're going to be talking about video games and
to start off, we're going to start with a fun fact quiz where we have one person hosting
the quiz and we just try to do our best to answer this quiz.
Nice.
Yes.
All right.
So this is a fun fact quiz.
I'll be your host tonight.
(07:56):
You know, nobody knows these answers, but me at Google.
I mean, I don't know.
You might know somebody might know, but it's okay to just guess and we'll try to figure
out how much you guys know about video game music.
So first up question number one, how much CD quality audio did the entire Super Mario
(08:18):
Brothers soundtrack occupy a less than 10 minutes, be less than five minutes, see less
than one minute or D less than one second.
Man.
D feels like a trap.
Less than a minute.
Okay.
John says C less than a minute.
Who else?
(08:39):
I'm going to go with B. B less than five minutes.
All right.
Ben, Alyssa, C too.
C as well.
Okay.
Less than one minute.
Ben, what do you think?
This is the original Super Mario Brothers.
Yeah.
I think the CD quality is less than one second.
I think the level, I don't know if that level was up there yet.
(09:01):
I mean, it is simple, but it was so catchy and there were like, you know, different beats
and notes and things.
All right.
Well the answer, the correct answer is D. Ben is right.
Less than a second of CD quality audio.
That's how like far we've progressed.
(09:22):
You're just booing because you didn't get the right answer, but it's interesting, right?
All right.
Let's see.
Question number two.
Why is 8-bit music also known as chip tune?
A, named after inventor Chip Williams.
B, named after sounds from electronic sound chips.
(09:43):
Or C, named after the creator's love of potato chips.
Maybe Lay's wavy.
I don't know.
I'm going to go with B. B?
Alyssa says B.
Kayla says same.
John, Ben.
Ben, John says B as well.
Ben.
I think it's B.
All right.
(10:03):
You guys all think it's named after sounds from electronic sound chips.
You are all correct.
Good job.
All right.
Question number three.
When was an orchestra first used for a video game soundtrack?
Oh, wow.
Okay.
This is just years.
(10:24):
Ready?
A, 1989.
B, 1994.
C, 2001.
Or D, 2004.
So remember, we were just talking about chip tunes, you know, that 8-bit style of music.
Now we're talking full-blown orchestras.
When was that first used?
(10:45):
89, 94, 01, or 04.
Let's start with Ben this time.
You're always last.
What was your first time?
I think it's still going to be early, honestly.
I think I'm going to guess it's 89 for some game.
And not like most games at that time.
Okay.
But I bet there's one game out there that they mastered it or did something with the
(11:05):
orchestra, I bet.
Okay.
Kayla, what do you think?
I think it's C. I think it's just a great mix between early and later.
Okay.
Right in the middle there, kind of.
2001.
All right.
Alyssa?
Yeah, I agree.
Okay.
John, what about you?
Man, I kind of want to go with Ben on A. I don't want to say B, but I'm going to go
(11:28):
A as well with Ben.
Okay.
Are you sure, John?
Yeah, sure.
John, are you sure?
I'm sure.
All right.
The answer is B. 1994.
Gosh, thanks.
That was awesome.
I tried to help you, man.
So 1994.
Final Fantasy IV was the first video game to use a full-blown orchestra.
(11:52):
That's funny.
I was totally thinking it was going to be Final Fantasy.
I've never played Final Fantasy, but I kind of thought that's what it was going to be.
Yes, Final Fantasy.
Yeah, right.
It was a few years off.
All right.
Question number four.
When did a video game song first win a Grammy?
Another one with years here.
1997, 2004, 2009, or 2011?
(12:15):
97.
John says 97.
I'm going to go with C.
2009.
Yes.
Alyssa.
Okay.
Kayla, Ben, what do you think?
I'm thinking C. I'm almost on D, but policy.
Okay.
Yeah.
Kayla.
Yeah, you know where I might just go with D at this point.
(12:37):
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
You are correct.
2011.
Baba Yeru.
Baba Yeru from Civilization 4 was the first one to win a Grammy.
So pretty cool.
All right.
Last question here.
Which video game song has the most streams on Spotify as of 2023?
(13:00):
We're going a full year because we're recording just at the beginning of 25.
But all right.
So the possible answers are A, Megalovania from Undertale, B, Sweden from Minecraft,
C, Rip and Tear from Doom, or D, 115 from Call of Duty Black Ops Zombies.
Don't go on Minecraft.
(13:21):
Minecraft is big.
But nobody copied me because I haven't been right once.
Aw, man.
I was going to get a set.
Don't copy him, Kayla.
All right.
Bye.
Who's got a guess?
Ben, you got a guess?
I don't even know any of these songs.
So I random Undertale's not even a game I've heard of.
(13:44):
So it's probably that one.
So you're going with A?
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, what about you, Alyssa?
I like it's either A or B. I'm going to go with A though because I never really played
Minecraft.
Okay.
Cool.
Kayla, what do you think?
We got two votes for A and one for B so far.
(14:05):
And I might just go with C.
Just throw it out there?
Yeah?
Yeah.
Sounds good.
C is my backup answer, but Minecraft is just so popular, man.
Yeah, so true.
It is a big game.
And the music's pretty cool actually.
It's like soothing and stuff like that.
But the correct answer is A, Megalovania Undertale.
(14:28):
Of course it is.
With 184 million streams.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was the most by a lot.
But those other ones were up there too for sure.
It's like I always say it's better to be born lucky than smart.
That's right.
I swear the answer's really Super Mario Brothers but fine.
I think Ben got the most right answers, but we're not keeping track.
(14:51):
Everyone's a winner on it.
Ben's been killing it on the quizzes lately.
I know, man.
He really got a lot on that last one too.
He knows how I do my questions.
He knows he's playing my game.
He knows my mind.
No, I'm just kidding.
And we don't keep scoring Fat Domen Happy.
We're all winners for sure.
Dave Spoodford have the answers.
Just so you all know.
Yeah, that's right.
Just texting Ben.
(15:11):
For a game that means absolutely nothing.
That's right.
I still get some wrong.
Yeah.
That's just, that's by design.
All right.
So how about we go through kind of the history of video game music?
I mean, we talked about it a little bit in this fun fact quiz that we just did, but we
(15:33):
start off with the early days.
You know, Ben, John and I, we remember back in the OG days of arcades, the music and sounds
for video games were extremely simple.
We had Pong, remember Pong was just like a bar and a ball and it was just boops and
bleeps, man.
That's all it was.
Yeah.
And then Pac-Man came around and had a little bit more repetitive, more, yep, there were
(15:57):
the sounds, but then there was also a little bit of music with it as well.
I think one of the first full background music games was Asteroids back in like 1978.
When Nintendo and Sega came around, video game composers got crazy creative with their
very limited sound chips.
Only a few quote unquote instruments and they were able to create catchy tunes and a fun
(16:20):
sound that's still beloved today.
I love the original Mario.
We talked about that earlier and it didn't take a lot of data to do it, but it's still
catchy.
And then in the 90s, we saw a huge leap forward with CD-ROMs and there came orchestral scores.
Like we said, the Final Fantasy IV, that whole orchestra brought up to a whole new level.
(16:42):
Games like Final Fantasy and Zelda brought pure magic to the scene, but the evolution
didn't stop there.
We got epic metal scores for action games, haunting ambient music for horror and even
fully fledged jazz clubs within games.
Video game music has become an art form in its own right with live concerts and dedicated
fans.
But any comments about the crazy old originals, some of those catchy tunes that you guys
(17:07):
remember and love at all?
It's funny because if they were to play Super Mario 1, 2, and 3, I could tell the difference
between the music because it wasn't always the same.
They changed it as they went along, but then Sega came along and you had like the Michael
Jackson game.
And they had this whole soundtrack there.
Actual soundtrack.
He was like stealing little kids or whatever.
(17:28):
I didn't see it.
I can't remember what it was.
And they just got better and better and better.
And you mentioned with the orchestra and stuff like that, and you can go to a concert based
off of Final Fantasy music.
Yeah.
That's insane to me.
Like how far it's come.
And like I was a wedding at the end of October and the girl danced with her dad.
(17:52):
And I danced with her dad to a song from Final Fantasy 100 or whatever they're on right
now.
I don't know.
I think it was Final Fantasy 7 or 10 or something like that.
But yeah, she danced for a portion of that song.
It's just, it's crazy how much it gets you going.
You know, whether the music is based off of what kind of game you're playing or you're
(18:12):
like on an adventure game, but you just get lost in it and that music really helps you
man.
So yeah.
I know that Ben and Dave right now, like if you were to hear Mike Tyson's song, it's
like a song that's been playing since Punch Out or something like that.
If you were to hear the music, you'd know what game that is.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Like, but they did get better and they got better pretty quick.
It feels like, but maybe that's just me.
(18:33):
No, I agree.
I agree.
Even between like Super Mario 1 to Super Mario 3, I think 2 was kind of not the best.
But 3 got like even better and you know.
About the really old stuff.
Okay.
Yeah.
So when we were young, we had this drawer full of Atari games.
Yes.
(18:54):
We got like a garage sale or something, you know, and there were a couple of those really
old ones that you could tell they didn't put any effort into the sound and it was like
annoying sound.
Yeah.
I don't play the game, man.
It was just like annoying to play it because you'd hear these weird noises, just repetitive
again and again and again, you just like, just turn the sound off, dude.
(19:17):
I don't even want to play this.
And I can't name you the games because I decided not to play them.
And so I don't have like much memory of them anymore.
You know, I just know enough that at the very, very oldest games, they didn't put much effort
into it.
And you can totally tell not long after that they noticed sales probably that you had to
(19:39):
get the sound at least decent or that would affect sales, I think, you know, like people
wouldn't like the game.
Yeah.
The oldest games that I remember are the Atari 1600.
Those are the ones I remember playing, but like even some of them didn't have music at
all.
Just noises.
Like joust.
Just like you could just hear the little bird you're flying.
Jumping.
(20:00):
Yeah.
And that's it.
And that's it.
Yeah.
So Alyssa and Kayla, have you guys gone back and played like any of the old like regular
Nintendo or regular Sega games back in the day?
Well, we have a, you know, like the kind where you have those cartridges and you blow on it.
Yes.
You have that kind.
Yeah.
The what's it called?
Super Mario.
(20:21):
Yeah.
That's Super Mario.
That was the regular NES Nintendo entertainment system.
So that's classic.
Yes.
Yes.
That's what we have.
And we have like the old Aladdin.
We have the old Mario Brothers.
We have the old Mario Kart.
Yeah.
Any thoughts on the soundtracks or music from those games at all?
Well, we also have Tetris and Dr. Mario.
(20:41):
Oh yeah.
I love Dr. Mario.
Dr. Mario is my game.
Yeah.
And like it brings me back because I would play it at my grandma's house against my cousins
and that was fun.
Yeah.
Nice.
That's cool.
That's a fun one.
And I like it too.
Because just like Tetris, the like the closer you get to dying, the faster the music picks
up.
(21:02):
So it gets like intense.
Yeah.
Dr. Mario is a fun one.
Sam and Tetris, they speed up.
Yeah.
Sam and Tetris.
And like you can go buy those little mini-Nintendo's that has like 30 games pre-packed onto it
and stuff like that.
And I think they do that with the other systems as well.
But yeah, you should do that and kind of go back and see the games that the us old people
(21:22):
played.
Yep.
I just love that Alyssa described it as that thing with the cartridges that you blow on.
Like, and we're all like, oh yeah, we know that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's classic.
Yeah.
That's class.
Instantly what you were talking about.
Yeah.
What about you, Kayla, any thoughts on the old original games, any kind of thoughts about
their music or sounds?
(21:44):
I think for me, it just depends on the game because even with like, yeah, when you introduced
us kids to Super Nintendo, right?
Is that?
Yeah.
That's the next one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like most of the games on there, there were some catchy songs like Yoshi's Island or Donkey
Kong Country.
Yes.
Oh yeah, DK Country.
Yeah.
Street Fighter.
(22:04):
But then there were some games where like the music sounded kind of like weird.
Metroid was one of them.
That one was a little like, hmm, I don't really like it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think with Metroid is like, that's the intent.
It's supposed to be kind of creepy weird.
And I get what you mean by it being like, not pleasant.
But yeah, I think, I think they did all right.
(22:27):
But yeah, I agree.
So with the 16 bit, we moved on from the bloops and bleeps to more like powerful sound chip
type stuff and more channels and a wider range of the sounds, right?
So it's kind of like going from like the cheap Casio keyboard to like a full on synthesizer.
Yeah.
So we're talking about like Super Nintendo, the Sega Genesis for the most part.
(22:49):
That's kind of where that was.
And I'm games like Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Metroid.
And Kate Lidget mentioned Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter.
Yo, that's very recognizable too.
That's a good one.
But you know, they stepped it up.
They had to.
They had to step it up and composers ended up like pushing the limits of what these sound
(23:11):
chips could actually do within the game.
So you know, they created this complex harmonies, catchy melodies and even use like some techniques
like sampling to get more realistic instrumental sounds in their games.
And the audio fidelity kind of crew leaps and bounds from what it was in the 70s and
80s to what Sega and Super Nintendo were.
(23:35):
Yeah.
So I actually grabbed some.
These are some of my favorites from that era, Super Mario World, because it was the
first one I was introduced to in the 16 bit era.
But those songs were catchy and Donkey Kong Country, like Kayla said.
We had Kirby's Outlandish, which is similar to like Dr. Mario Tetris.
(23:56):
And you can and it stressed you out as you got hired to the top of the screen.
F zero is great.
Street Fighter 2.
(24:17):
Sonic has a good one, too.
To me, I felt like that was a time when I felt like so many of them were really good.
A lot.
Enough that if you played them for a couple of hours or so, you'd get them stuck in your
head.
Yeah.
And you're right.
They had multiple sounds blending together.
Now we were playing them out of beat up old TVs that probably didn't have the best
(24:41):
true so give it the full credit that it deserved because, you know, if we maybe had some high
fidelity headsets or something like that listening to probably would have been even more.
Right.
I think they work with what they had pretty well.
I was pretty impressed.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I hadn't thought about that.
The first Super Nintendo I ever even played.
(25:01):
I didn't play much of it at all, to be honest.
Was it Nathaniel Cannon's house for his birthday party?
And I only mentioned that because today is his birthday.
So shout out to Nathaniel.
That's right.
Happy birthday to Daniel.
I remember that.
That was a good time.
Yeah.
Built the sandwich on his head.
Now imagine going from the bleeps and bloops to more advanced synthesized sound and then
(25:22):
to actual orchestra music.
Video games today have a full orchestra to create beautiful composition with depth and
emotion.
Not only is the music developed for the game itself, but these orchestras put on concerts
for fans.
I mean, I've never been, but I bet it would be a great time.
Yeah, I think it would be so crazy cool.
(25:42):
But I kind of looked up these video games live concert series and they look amazing.
I mean, it's like a couple hours of playing just different video game songs and soundtracks
and full light show, you know, scenes from the games.
It looks like a pretty awesome time.
I was sitting there trying to figure out like what it would be like to be like just an audience
(26:03):
just listening to like to an orchestra and you're just trying to remember in your head
like where it was playing.
Like you got to be that much of a fan.
I guess I didn't figure there'd be like a video showing in the background, but that's
smart.
I do know one of my good buddies who took his son to a final fantasy and maybe even a Zelda
one.
Nice.
They do come through here, Houston, quite a bit.
(26:24):
And I do like even like movies do that now.
Movies or TV shows that have just been outstanding in their prime that where they do that and
they kind of took that from the video games.
Yeah.
The orchestra part.
I think they took that from them.
I've ever seen TV shows and movies do that, but prior to video games doing that.
Yep.
(26:45):
You're right.
I think you're right.
Alyssa, if you could go to one, what would you go to?
Yeah, what game?
Probably Ori and the Wild, the Wisps, because there's so much like different kinds of instruments
that they use that you probably don't even the name of.
And it'd be so cool to like watch the people use them.
Yeah, that would be awesome.
Yeah, we just got that game recently, actually.
(27:07):
Oh, I'll pretend I know what it is.
We're excited to play it.
Kayla, what about the same question?
What would you go to if they had one?
I think I'd want to listen to Breath of the Wild concert because their music is very unique
and kind of cultural to each landscape.
And there's so many different instruments that they use for each song.
(27:31):
It has a unique court.
That's Zelda, right?
Yes.
Okay.
I knew I'd get there sooner or later.
Johnny sounds so old, dude.
I am old.
I'm with you.
You see the gray hair?
You're gonna be old as me here soon.
That's right.
That's a little podcast.
I'm that dumb old enough.
Yeah, we need to add that fourth adjective.
You're right.
(27:51):
You're right.
Well, if our podcast made any actual money, we would like surprise you guys with tickets
to those shows.
Unfortunately, don't.
So I'm sorry.
But you can YouTube them.
So have fun.
I was gonna say, you know, I have YouTube some of these things and it's interesting because
they have orchestras not just doing current games, but going back and redoing stuff that
(28:14):
were like the bleeps and bloops almost, you know,
Yeah, as an orchestra.
An orchestra version of it, and it's pretty impressive to see how they vamp that up.
I think that's what I would do is go to like a Mario themed one because I mean Mario, they're
still coming out with stuff, but then it would bring back some of those old classics and
that would be awesome.
But like, yes, underwater part.
(28:36):
Yeah, underwater.
You know exactly what it sounds like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For you Zelda fans, Amazon Prime is about to they're making a massive, massive Zelda
series that's supposed to just be huge.
Oh, yeah.
Like live action or like a live action.
Nice.
Interesting.
(28:56):
Yeah, they're supposed to be dropping major money on it.
Awesome.
Well, I read actually recently that the video game industry, I don't know what it is this
year, but oftentimes it has been more than the movie industry and more than TV.
Like it brings in more revenue.
So it makes sense that they're going to put more into it.
I mean, and we're getting more video game movies in a movies based off video games.
(29:21):
So it's I wonder if that's I wonder if it has anything to do with movies getting released
straight to Netflix and Prime and Hulu and all that.
Yeah, maybe because box offices just aren't what they used to be period.
Yeah.
You know, because of COVID and all that.
And just I honestly don't know how movie theaters still exist as a facility because it's just
(29:43):
it takes a lot to run them and movie quality has just dropped tremendously over the last
year and a half.
So they make their money on the $20 popcorn.
Yeah, but the small for the small.
Yeah, exactly.
A handful of popcorn.
All right.
So let's turn the time over to Alyssa.
And Kayla has some comments as well.
(30:04):
What are some of your favorite video game soundtracks and why Alyssa?
This is your time to shine.
Don't mess up.
I'm not going to mess up.
I'm going to press your head.
My favorite soundtracks are definitely Undertale Kings Quest, which is like the newer one
in 2015 and or in the Will the Wisps, because I love the diversity of the songs that all
(30:28):
these soundtracks have and how new environments kind of what Kayla was talking about earlier,
how new environments sound different and the instruments and it just and also the songs
are just like so catchy.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Now I forgot to ask, do you have like a specific platform you usually play on or are there
(30:48):
a few?
PlayStation.
Okay, cool.
I used to be an Xbox person, but yeah, now I'm in PlayStation.
Nice.
Nice.
So when you're playing these games, when you're getting into the music, the games that you
play, the music actually have words or is it just background music?
It's just background music.
(31:09):
Do you feel yourself like just depending on what part of the game you're playing, does
it get more intense?
Do you feel like it means it kind of guides you through how aggressively you should be
playing the game?
Oh, definitely.
And one of the songs that we'll be listening to, the ones from Detroit Become Human have
to do like intense thinking and your choices.
It's a RPG game and your choices have major consequences later on in the story.
(31:35):
So it's really cool how it's like, oh, what are you going to do?
You know, there's going to be different outcomes.
Yeah, awesome.
What about you, Kayla?
Do you have some favorite soundtracks?
Yeah, I mean, I'm a Mario fan, so I grew up on the Mario games, but for me, top two would
be Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Galaxy.
(31:55):
Those ones are my favorite.
Both are very kind of special and quirky and fun, while also others have, like, you know,
really cool boss fight music or stressful songs or, you know, peaceful songs.
Also, yeah, like, yeah, Breath of the Wild had mentioned that one, you know, same reason.
(32:17):
And then, yeah, Minecraft.
Minecraft is also up there.
The songs are really cool.
Still kind of has a bit that, like, pixelated music.
The chipmune-like type.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it, like, fits the vibe of, like, the world that you play in.
Yeah, because it's like blocky or whatever.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And our family, we have one of our favorite gamers on YouTube is Corey Kenshin.
(32:41):
And he's so funny when he played Minecraft.
He, like, gets into it and starts, like, making up songs to, like, go with it and stuff.
It's pretty funny.
He does mostly scary games, actually, and he's hilarious the way he reacts to them.
But anyways.
All right.
A game can be fun, right?
But how important is the soundtrack to the game for your gaming experience and why, Alyssa?
(33:01):
I like soundtracks because they don't only get you invested in the game, but imagine
playing a game without music.
Wouldn't that be so boring?
Like, playing Mario without any music?
Like, you just hear the blue?
Blue?
Like, how does it?
Yeah.
Not only are some songs really catchy to listen to, but they also can get the anxiety pumping
(33:25):
and, like, the adrenaline pumping.
And they also create atmosphere in the game and are very, very important, like a main
part of a video game.
That makes sense, for sure.
What are your thoughts, Kayla?
I think music is important in video games because, yeah, it helps bring in the mood of
how to play the game.
You know how, like, sometimes if there's a moment of silence in a game and then the
(33:48):
music comes on, you can tell just by the song, like, oh, this is going to be kind of stressful
or scary or, oh, this, you know, seems nice and peaceful.
Like, I got nothing to worry about or whatever.
So it helps you get into the zone of, like, how to play that game.
Yeah, that makes sense.
It's like how they do with movies, right?
You know, it's a scary, intense part.
(34:09):
You know, like, oh, you've got to look around the corner.
Someone's coming or whatever.
I never really thought about it that way, that games are like that, too.
I'm going to write to the New York Times and tell them to add a soundtrack to Whirl.
Each guess, it gets more and more intense.
Yeah, man.
That would be cool, actually.
Guess five, we're just sweating with this intense music.
(34:33):
That's awesome.
There's some games, too, where I don't know if you guys have any of you played Raymond
Legends.
That's a sample of a game where the actual music gives you cues of when you should be
jumping and things like that.
Like, you move.
Oh.
Yeah, I used to play that.
I used to play Raymond Legends.
Yeah, and some of the levels really are very, very music oriented.
(34:57):
Like, you do it to the beat, basically, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
That's cool.
You have to jump right at the right moment, and the music is the cue of when you're going
to need to do it.
That sounds cool.
I haven't played that one, but that sounds fun, for sure.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to part one of this episode.
Stay tuned for more fun in part two.
Whatever really happened to dudes calling each other best friends?
(00:04):
Dave and John grew up in the 80s in New Jersey and they did everything together.
They were the quintessential best friends until they became teenagers and Dave moved
away.
Fast forward to today and these two 40-somethings reconnected and decided to not only be besties
again but to put on a podcast and share their reunion with anyone who will listen.
(00:25):
Welcome to Fat, Dumb and Happy.
Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to another super fun episode of Fat, Dumb and Happy.
Tonight we're going to take you on a musical journey through the ages and various platforms
of video games.
That's right, we are talking about video game soundtracks and sounds from then to now.
I'm your host and player number one this evening, Dave.
(00:48):
Helping me beat the boss battle is my second player and bro host John.
How you doing tonight John?
Hey, I got my up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, A, B, slug start ready to
go baby.
Yes.
99 lives in Contra.
That's what I'm talking about.
Yes sir.
All right.
And overseeing the strategy and Googling the walkthrough is our in-house special guest
expert, Ben.
(01:09):
Are we going to speed run this level, Ben, tonight?
Oh, no way, man.
I am a completionist.
I want to go through everything in detail.
I don't want to miss any hidden passageway or anything.
That is totally me too, man.
I always have to get all the coins, get all the hidden things.
It frustrates my kids because I'm like, no slow down there might be a secret something
here.
(01:29):
That's hilarious.
All right.
Tonight is extra special because this topic came from a listener of the show and she is
on here with us.
She is a super special guest expert on video game soundtracks, especially the more current
games.
With us tonight is Alyssa.
How you doing tonight Alyssa?
I'm doing awesome.
I'm glad to be on here.
Yeah.
(01:49):
Thanks for joining us.
So tell us a little bit about your love for video game music.
I love the atmosphere video game music can create whether it can be a theme song for
a character or it's just like a really catchy song.
It can also add character development or foreshadow events in the story.
Yes.
I love that too.
It's awesome.
So I understand this is your first podcast.
(02:11):
We are super excited to have you on.
This should be a great time.
We're excited.
Absolutely.
Welcome.
Welcome.
Glad to have you on.
And just so you all know Alyssa is joining us all the way from Missouri tonight.
So thank you.
Yes.
And guys, you can be just like her.
Don't forget that she wanted to be on the show.
So you can be on the show too.
You bring us a topic.
We'll figure it out.
That's right.
(02:32):
So you know the show is Fat, Dumb and Happy and we're a bunch of old dudes and we didn't
want our super special guest expert to feel like she was stuck with a bunch of Fat, Dumb
and Happy dudes for the night.
So I invited my daughter Kayla back on the show.
How are you doing tonight Kayla?
I'm doing great.
I'm glad to be back.
Awesome.
(02:52):
Yeah, we're so glad to have you back for sure.
And Kayla is a bit of an expert in video games too.
I think she holds the title for our immediate family and she knows soundtracks and songs
and sounds too.
So she'll be a great ad for sure.
All right.
Let's turn it over to Ben for the food portion of this episode.
All right.
Now, you know, food is one of my favorite parts of the show.
Yes.
(03:12):
But I have to say this one was a very difficult one to like try to meet the theme.
Yeah.
Speaking about this.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like crazy.
Because I don't know how much food associated with video game music.
But I will say this.
Music and sounds, they travel through waves like wavelengths, right?
Yes.
Yes.
I got Blaze wavy chips.
(03:34):
Yes.
The crunch through the sound waves.
I love it.
That's a great idea.
So how about you, John?
What did you come up with?
So I just tried to think of a video game that I played back as a kid and I came up with
two options.
I went with I guess the healthier one.
I was thinking from Simpsons hit and run, do I go eat a bunch of donuts?
Yeah.
Because of that game or do I go Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and eat some pizza?
(03:58):
Oh, man.
So I had a slice of pizza, got my gamer energy drink ready.
Yes.
I'm not going to say who it is because they don't pay me an advertised form.
So let me guess.
It's not Little Caesar's this time, right?
It is not Little Caesar's.
No.
Gross.
Gross.
I will never, ever, ever, ever give them another penny of mine in my life.
(04:19):
They're awful.
Alyssa, do you have a favorite pizza?
Pizza?
I just like cheese.
I'm a little disappointed.
Do you have a brand like a pizza chain?
Well, there's this really good place called Woodgrain Pizza.
It's kind of like fancy though.
Local joint.
OK.
They have like really good pizza and I also love Mod Pizza.
I mean.
Oh yeah.
(04:39):
I like Mod Pizza.
Heck yeah.
OK.
All right.
So that's what I'm eating tonight.
What about you, Dave?
So I decided to go with the original game fuel.
I've been sipping on it already.
It's the Code Red Mountain Dew.
So that's always a good beverage to go with video games.
And then kind of along the lines of Ben actually, I figure the sounds of a crunchy Cheetos puff.
(05:01):
I feel like that's also kind of a stereotypical gamer.
I don't know.
Maybe it's totally wrong, but I like Cheetos puffs and I like Mountain Dew.
So good excuse to have both.
Yeah.
All right.
What about you, Kayla?
All right.
So for my food, I got Sprite and some M&Ms because they were two things that I liked to have when
(05:22):
it comes to gaming.
A good snack that I usually picked.
Yes.
You know, like my Cheetos puffs, I'm going to get cheese dust on my controller.
Whereas M&Ms, you know, you got that thin candy shell.
So you're safe.
You're not going to get chocolate on there.
Nope.
And what kind of M&Ms are you going with?
That's the important question.
Just regular chocolate.
Regular.
That's what I have on me now.
But if I had it, I'd say peanut butter.
(05:44):
Yeah.
Okay.
That's what I just need to make sure.
Make sure you can still be on the show.
Yeah.
Peanut butter M&Ms are awesome.
They are.
They're the best.
All right.
What about you, Alyssa?
For me, it's bread and peanut butter, which sounds really weird.
Really weird.
Explain, please.
Classics.
Because when I'd be gaming at my dad's house, I would always want a snack and I loved bread.
(06:11):
I love bread so much because everybody loves bread.
It's so good.
Yeah.
It's just plain and nice.
It's so good.
It's a good snack.
And he would always say, oh, well, you have to do something that's healthy.
So I always chose peanut butter and he accepted that.
So I just always ate bread and peanut butter as a gaming snack.
The different lives we lead through the generations.
(06:31):
A slice of bread with peanut butter on it was like punishment for us growing up if we
didn't want dinner at the dinner table.
Oh, really?
We got a slice of bread with peanut butter and a cup of water and went to take it to
our room.
Oh.
So, yes.
Yep.
I love bread and peanut butter for sure.
Did you like just flat like peanut butter on top and that was it?
Or did you fold it in half?
(06:52):
Did you roll it up?
What did you do?
Oh, no, it was just flat.
I think it was like this special kind of peanut butter that had cinnamon or something.
It had like plenty of sugar in it, I'm sure.
That's I mean, otherwise it wouldn't eat it.
Right.
Right.
I mean, yeah.
It was technically healthy because it had peanuts in it, of course.
There you go.
And yeah, you need that sugar for gaming.
(07:13):
Absolutely.
That's exactly.
Technicalities are great.
Yes.
Good job.
And we had a guest on another episode, Justin, on our 80s TV show episode that said that
his snack during TV shows was a spoon of peanut butter.
So he, we have peanut butter lovers on this show for sure.
Yep.
All right.
Kayla, over to you to kick us off the main part of the episode.
(07:35):
All right.
So for the main topic of this podcast, we're going to be talking about video games and
to start off, we're going to start with a fun fact quiz where we have one person hosting
the quiz and we just try to do our best to answer this quiz.
Nice.
Yes.
All right.
So this is a fun fact quiz.
I'll be your host tonight.
(07:56):
You know, nobody knows these answers, but me at Google.
I mean, I don't know.
You might know somebody might know, but it's okay to just guess and we'll try to figure
out how much you guys know about video game music.
So first up question number one, how much CD quality audio did the entire Super Mario
(08:18):
Brothers soundtrack occupy a less than 10 minutes, be less than five minutes, see less
than one minute or D less than one second.
Man.
D feels like a trap.
Less than a minute.
Okay.
John says C less than a minute.
Who else?
(08:39):
I'm going to go with B. B less than five minutes.
All right.
Ben, Alyssa, C too.
C as well.
Okay.
Less than one minute.
Ben, what do you think?
This is the original Super Mario Brothers.
Yeah.
I think the CD quality is less than one second.
I think the level, I don't know if that level was up there yet.
(09:01):
I mean, it is simple, but it was so catchy and there were like, you know, different beats
and notes and things.
All right.
Well the answer, the correct answer is D. Ben is right.
Less than a second of CD quality audio.
That's how like far we've progressed.
(09:22):
You're just booing because you didn't get the right answer, but it's interesting, right?
All right.
Let's see.
Question number two.
Why is 8-bit music also known as chip tune?
A, named after inventor Chip Williams.
B, named after sounds from electronic sound chips.
(09:43):
Or C, named after the creator's love of potato chips.
Maybe Lay's wavy.
I don't know.
I'm going to go with B. B?
Alyssa says B.
Kayla says same.
John, Ben.
Ben, John says B as well.
Ben.
I think it's B.
All right.
(10:03):
You guys all think it's named after sounds from electronic sound chips.
You are all correct.
Good job.
All right.
Question number three.
When was an orchestra first used for a video game soundtrack?
Oh, wow.
Okay.
This is just years.
(10:24):
Ready?
A, 1989.
B, 1994.
C, 2001.
Or D, 2004.
So remember, we were just talking about chip tunes, you know, that 8-bit style of music.
Now we're talking full-blown orchestras.
When was that first used?
(10:45):
89, 94, 01, or 04.
Let's start with Ben this time.
You're always last.
What was your first time?
I think it's still going to be early, honestly.
I think I'm going to guess it's 89 for some game.
And not like most games at that time.
Okay.
But I bet there's one game out there that they mastered it or did something with the
(11:05):
orchestra, I bet.
Okay.
Kayla, what do you think?
I think it's C. I think it's just a great mix between early and later.
Okay.
Right in the middle there, kind of.
2001.
All right.
Alyssa?
Yeah, I agree.
Okay.
John, what about you?
Man, I kind of want to go with Ben on A. I don't want to say B, but I'm going to go
(11:28):
A as well with Ben.
Okay.
Are you sure, John?
Yeah, sure.
John, are you sure?
I'm sure.
All right.
The answer is B. 1994.
Gosh, thanks.
That was awesome.
I tried to help you, man.
So 1994.
Final Fantasy IV was the first video game to use a full-blown orchestra.
(11:52):
That's funny.
I was totally thinking it was going to be Final Fantasy.
I've never played Final Fantasy, but I kind of thought that's what it was going to be.
Yes, Final Fantasy.
Yeah, right.
It was a few years off.
All right.
Question number four.
When did a video game song first win a Grammy?
Another one with years here.
1997, 2004, 2009, or 2011?
(12:15):
97.
John says 97.
I'm going to go with C.
2009.
Yes.
Alyssa.
Okay.
Kayla, Ben, what do you think?
I'm thinking C. I'm almost on D, but policy.
Okay.
Yeah.
Kayla.
Yeah, you know where I might just go with D at this point.
(12:37):
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
You are correct.
2011.
Baba Yeru.
Baba Yeru from Civilization 4 was the first one to win a Grammy.
So pretty cool.
All right.
Last question here.
Which video game song has the most streams on Spotify as of 2023?
(13:00):
We're going a full year because we're recording just at the beginning of 25.
But all right.
So the possible answers are A, Megalovania from Undertale, B, Sweden from Minecraft,
C, Rip and Tear from Doom, or D, 115 from Call of Duty Black Ops Zombies.
Don't go on Minecraft.
(13:21):
Minecraft is big.
But nobody copied me because I haven't been right once.
Aw, man.
I was going to get a set.
Don't copy him, Kayla.
All right.
Bye.
Who's got a guess?
Ben, you got a guess?
I don't even know any of these songs.
So I random Undertale's not even a game I've heard of.
(13:44):
So it's probably that one.
So you're going with A?
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, what about you, Alyssa?
I like it's either A or B. I'm going to go with A though because I never really played
Minecraft.
Okay.
Cool.
Kayla, what do you think?
We got two votes for A and one for B so far.
(14:05):
And I might just go with C.
Just throw it out there?
Yeah?
Yeah.
Sounds good.
C is my backup answer, but Minecraft is just so popular, man.
Yeah, so true.
It is a big game.
And the music's pretty cool actually.
It's like soothing and stuff like that.
But the correct answer is A, Megalovania Undertale.
(14:28):
Of course it is.
With 184 million streams.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was the most by a lot.
But those other ones were up there too for sure.
It's like I always say it's better to be born lucky than smart.
That's right.
I swear the answer's really Super Mario Brothers but fine.
I think Ben got the most right answers, but we're not keeping track.
(14:51):
Everyone's a winner on it.
Ben's been killing it on the quizzes lately.
I know, man.
He really got a lot on that last one too.
He knows how I do my questions.
He knows he's playing my game.
He knows my mind.
No, I'm just kidding.
And we don't keep scoring Fat Domen Happy.
We're all winners for sure.
Dave Spoodford have the answers.
Just so you all know.
Yeah, that's right.
Just texting Ben.
(15:11):
For a game that means absolutely nothing.
That's right.
I still get some wrong.
Yeah.
That's just, that's by design.
All right.
So how about we go through kind of the history of video game music?
I mean, we talked about it a little bit in this fun fact quiz that we just did, but we
(15:33):
start off with the early days.
You know, Ben, John and I, we remember back in the OG days of arcades, the music and sounds
for video games were extremely simple.
We had Pong, remember Pong was just like a bar and a ball and it was just boops and
bleeps, man.
That's all it was.
Yeah.
And then Pac-Man came around and had a little bit more repetitive, more, yep, there were
(15:57):
the sounds, but then there was also a little bit of music with it as well.
I think one of the first full background music games was Asteroids back in like 1978.
When Nintendo and Sega came around, video game composers got crazy creative with their
very limited sound chips.
Only a few quote unquote instruments and they were able to create catchy tunes and a fun
(16:20):
sound that's still beloved today.
I love the original Mario.
We talked about that earlier and it didn't take a lot of data to do it, but it's still
catchy.
And then in the 90s, we saw a huge leap forward with CD-ROMs and there came orchestral scores.
Like we said, the Final Fantasy IV, that whole orchestra brought up to a whole new level.
(16:42):
Games like Final Fantasy and Zelda brought pure magic to the scene, but the evolution
didn't stop there.
We got epic metal scores for action games, haunting ambient music for horror and even
fully fledged jazz clubs within games.
Video game music has become an art form in its own right with live concerts and dedicated
fans.
But any comments about the crazy old originals, some of those catchy tunes that you guys
(17:07):
remember and love at all?
It's funny because if they were to play Super Mario 1, 2, and 3, I could tell the difference
between the music because it wasn't always the same.
They changed it as they went along, but then Sega came along and you had like the Michael
Jackson game.
And they had this whole soundtrack there.
Actual soundtrack.
He was like stealing little kids or whatever.
(17:28):
I didn't see it.
I can't remember what it was.
And they just got better and better and better.
And you mentioned with the orchestra and stuff like that, and you can go to a concert based
off of Final Fantasy music.
Yeah.
That's insane to me.
Like how far it's come.
And like I was a wedding at the end of October and the girl danced with her dad.
(17:52):
And I danced with her dad to a song from Final Fantasy 100 or whatever they're on right
now.
I don't know.
I think it was Final Fantasy 7 or 10 or something like that.
But yeah, she danced for a portion of that song.
It's just, it's crazy how much it gets you going.
You know, whether the music is based off of what kind of game you're playing or you're
(18:12):
like on an adventure game, but you just get lost in it and that music really helps you
man.
So yeah.
I know that Ben and Dave right now, like if you were to hear Mike Tyson's song, it's
like a song that's been playing since Punch Out or something like that.
If you were to hear the music, you'd know what game that is.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Like, but they did get better and they got better pretty quick.
It feels like, but maybe that's just me.
(18:33):
No, I agree.
I agree.
Even between like Super Mario 1 to Super Mario 3, I think 2 was kind of not the best.
But 3 got like even better and you know.
About the really old stuff.
Okay.
Yeah.
So when we were young, we had this drawer full of Atari games.
Yes.
(18:54):
We got like a garage sale or something, you know, and there were a couple of those really
old ones that you could tell they didn't put any effort into the sound and it was like
annoying sound.
Yeah.
I don't play the game, man.
It was just like annoying to play it because you'd hear these weird noises, just repetitive
again and again and again, you just like, just turn the sound off, dude.
(19:17):
I don't even want to play this.
And I can't name you the games because I decided not to play them.
And so I don't have like much memory of them anymore.
You know, I just know enough that at the very, very oldest games, they didn't put much effort
into it.
And you can totally tell not long after that they noticed sales probably that you had to
(19:39):
get the sound at least decent or that would affect sales, I think, you know, like people
wouldn't like the game.
Yeah.
The oldest games that I remember are the Atari 1600.
Those are the ones I remember playing, but like even some of them didn't have music at
all.
Just noises.
Like joust.
Just like you could just hear the little bird you're flying.
Jumping.
(20:00):
Yeah.
And that's it.
And that's it.
Yeah.
So Alyssa and Kayla, have you guys gone back and played like any of the old like regular
Nintendo or regular Sega games back in the day?
Well, we have a, you know, like the kind where you have those cartridges and you blow on it.
Yes.
You have that kind.
Yeah.
The what's it called?
Super Mario.
(20:21):
Yeah.
That's Super Mario.
That was the regular NES Nintendo entertainment system.
So that's classic.
Yes.
Yes.
That's what we have.
And we have like the old Aladdin.
We have the old Mario Brothers.
We have the old Mario Kart.
Yeah.
Any thoughts on the soundtracks or music from those games at all?
Well, we also have Tetris and Dr. Mario.
(20:41):
Oh yeah.
I love Dr. Mario.
Dr. Mario is my game.
Yeah.
And like it brings me back because I would play it at my grandma's house against my cousins
and that was fun.
Yeah.
Nice.
That's cool.
That's a fun one.
And I like it too.
Because just like Tetris, the like the closer you get to dying, the faster the music picks
up.
(21:02):
So it gets like intense.
Yeah.
Dr. Mario is a fun one.
Sam and Tetris, they speed up.
Yeah.
Sam and Tetris.
And like you can go buy those little mini-Nintendo's that has like 30 games pre-packed onto it
and stuff like that.
And I think they do that with the other systems as well.
But yeah, you should do that and kind of go back and see the games that the us old people
(21:22):
played.
Yep.
I just love that Alyssa described it as that thing with the cartridges that you blow on.
Like, and we're all like, oh yeah, we know that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's classic.
Yeah.
That's class.
Instantly what you were talking about.
Yeah.
What about you, Kayla, any thoughts on the old original games, any kind of thoughts about
their music or sounds?
(21:44):
I think for me, it just depends on the game because even with like, yeah, when you introduced
us kids to Super Nintendo, right?
Is that?
Yeah.
That's the next one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like most of the games on there, there were some catchy songs like Yoshi's Island or Donkey
Kong Country.
Yes.
Oh yeah, DK Country.
Yeah.
Street Fighter.
(22:04):
But then there were some games where like the music sounded kind of like weird.
Metroid was one of them.
That one was a little like, hmm, I don't really like it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think with Metroid is like, that's the intent.
It's supposed to be kind of creepy weird.
And I get what you mean by it being like, not pleasant.
But yeah, I think, I think they did all right.
(22:27):
But yeah, I agree.
So with the 16 bit, we moved on from the bloops and bleeps to more like powerful sound chip
type stuff and more channels and a wider range of the sounds, right?
So it's kind of like going from like the cheap Casio keyboard to like a full on synthesizer.
Yeah.
So we're talking about like Super Nintendo, the Sega Genesis for the most part.
(22:49):
That's kind of where that was.
And I'm games like Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Metroid.
And Kate Lidget mentioned Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter.
Yo, that's very recognizable too.
That's a good one.
But you know, they stepped it up.
They had to.
They had to step it up and composers ended up like pushing the limits of what these sound
(23:11):
chips could actually do within the game.
So you know, they created this complex harmonies, catchy melodies and even use like some techniques
like sampling to get more realistic instrumental sounds in their games.
And the audio fidelity kind of crew leaps and bounds from what it was in the 70s and
80s to what Sega and Super Nintendo were.
(23:35):
Yeah.
So I actually grabbed some.
These are some of my favorites from that era, Super Mario World, because it was the
first one I was introduced to in the 16 bit era.
But those songs were catchy and Donkey Kong Country, like Kayla said.
We had Kirby's Outlandish, which is similar to like Dr. Mario Tetris.
(23:56):
And you can and it stressed you out as you got hired to the top of the screen.
F zero is great.
Street Fighter 2.
(24:17):
Sonic has a good one, too.
To me, I felt like that was a time when I felt like so many of them were really good.
A lot.
Enough that if you played them for a couple of hours or so, you'd get them stuck in your
head.
Yeah.
And you're right.
They had multiple sounds blending together.
Now we were playing them out of beat up old TVs that probably didn't have the best
(24:41):
true so give it the full credit that it deserved because, you know, if we maybe had some high
fidelity headsets or something like that listening to probably would have been even more.
Right.
I think they work with what they had pretty well.
I was pretty impressed.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I hadn't thought about that.
The first Super Nintendo I ever even played.
(25:01):
I didn't play much of it at all, to be honest.
Was it Nathaniel Cannon's house for his birthday party?
And I only mentioned that because today is his birthday.
So shout out to Nathaniel.
That's right.
Happy birthday to Daniel.
I remember that.
That was a good time.
Yeah.
Built the sandwich on his head.
Now imagine going from the bleeps and bloops to more advanced synthesized sound and then
(25:22):
to actual orchestra music.
Video games today have a full orchestra to create beautiful composition with depth and
emotion.
Not only is the music developed for the game itself, but these orchestras put on concerts
for fans.
I mean, I've never been, but I bet it would be a great time.
Yeah, I think it would be so crazy cool.
(25:42):
But I kind of looked up these video games live concert series and they look amazing.
I mean, it's like a couple hours of playing just different video game songs and soundtracks
and full light show, you know, scenes from the games.
It looks like a pretty awesome time.
I was sitting there trying to figure out like what it would be like to be like just an audience
(26:03):
just listening to like to an orchestra and you're just trying to remember in your head
like where it was playing.
Like you got to be that much of a fan.
I guess I didn't figure there'd be like a video showing in the background, but that's
smart.
I do know one of my good buddies who took his son to a final fantasy and maybe even a Zelda
one.
Nice.
They do come through here, Houston, quite a bit.
(26:24):
And I do like even like movies do that now.
Movies or TV shows that have just been outstanding in their prime that where they do that and
they kind of took that from the video games.
Yeah.
The orchestra part.
I think they took that from them.
I've ever seen TV shows and movies do that, but prior to video games doing that.
Yep.
(26:45):
You're right.
I think you're right.
Alyssa, if you could go to one, what would you go to?
Yeah, what game?
Probably Ori and the Wild, the Wisps, because there's so much like different kinds of instruments
that they use that you probably don't even the name of.
And it'd be so cool to like watch the people use them.
Yeah, that would be awesome.
Yeah, we just got that game recently, actually.
(27:07):
Oh, I'll pretend I know what it is.
We're excited to play it.
Kayla, what about the same question?
What would you go to if they had one?
I think I'd want to listen to Breath of the Wild concert because their music is very unique
and kind of cultural to each landscape.
And there's so many different instruments that they use for each song.
(27:31):
It has a unique court.
That's Zelda, right?
Yes.
Okay.
I knew I'd get there sooner or later.
Johnny sounds so old, dude.
I am old.
I'm with you.
You see the gray hair?
You're gonna be old as me here soon.
That's right.
That's a little podcast.
I'm that dumb old enough.
Yeah, we need to add that fourth adjective.
You're right.
(27:51):
You're right.
Well, if our podcast made any actual money, we would like surprise you guys with tickets
to those shows.
Unfortunately, don't.
So I'm sorry.
But you can YouTube them.
So have fun.
I was gonna say, you know, I have YouTube some of these things and it's interesting because
they have orchestras not just doing current games, but going back and redoing stuff that
(28:14):
were like the bleeps and bloops almost, you know,
Yeah, as an orchestra.
An orchestra version of it, and it's pretty impressive to see how they vamp that up.
I think that's what I would do is go to like a Mario themed one because I mean Mario, they're
still coming out with stuff, but then it would bring back some of those old classics and
that would be awesome.
But like, yes, underwater part.
(28:36):
Yeah, underwater.
You know exactly what it sounds like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For you Zelda fans, Amazon Prime is about to they're making a massive, massive Zelda
series that's supposed to just be huge.
Oh, yeah.
Like live action or like a live action.
Nice.
Interesting.
(28:56):
Yeah, they're supposed to be dropping major money on it.
Awesome.
Well, I read actually recently that the video game industry, I don't know what it is this
year, but oftentimes it has been more than the movie industry and more than TV.
Like it brings in more revenue.
So it makes sense that they're going to put more into it.
I mean, and we're getting more video game movies in a movies based off video games.
(29:21):
So it's I wonder if that's I wonder if it has anything to do with movies getting released
straight to Netflix and Prime and Hulu and all that.
Yeah, maybe because box offices just aren't what they used to be period.
Yeah.
You know, because of COVID and all that.
And just I honestly don't know how movie theaters still exist as a facility because it's just
(29:43):
it takes a lot to run them and movie quality has just dropped tremendously over the last
year and a half.
So they make their money on the $20 popcorn.
Yeah, but the small for the small.
Yeah, exactly.
A handful of popcorn.
All right.
So let's turn the time over to Alyssa.
And Kayla has some comments as well.
(30:04):
What are some of your favorite video game soundtracks and why Alyssa?
This is your time to shine.
Don't mess up.
I'm not going to mess up.
I'm going to press your head.
My favorite soundtracks are definitely Undertale Kings Quest, which is like the newer one
in 2015 and or in the Will the Wisps, because I love the diversity of the songs that all
(30:28):
these soundtracks have and how new environments kind of what Kayla was talking about earlier,
how new environments sound different and the instruments and it just and also the songs
are just like so catchy.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Now I forgot to ask, do you have like a specific platform you usually play on or are there
(30:48):
a few?
PlayStation.
Okay, cool.
I used to be an Xbox person, but yeah, now I'm in PlayStation.
Nice.
Nice.
So when you're playing these games, when you're getting into the music, the games that you
play, the music actually have words or is it just background music?
It's just background music.
(31:09):
Do you feel yourself like just depending on what part of the game you're playing, does
it get more intense?
Do you feel like it means it kind of guides you through how aggressively you should be
playing the game?
Oh, definitely.
And one of the songs that we'll be listening to, the ones from Detroit Become Human have
to do like intense thinking and your choices.
It's a RPG game and your choices have major consequences later on in the story.
(31:35):
So it's really cool how it's like, oh, what are you going to do?
You know, there's going to be different outcomes.
Yeah, awesome.
What about you, Kayla?
Do you have some favorite soundtracks?
Yeah, I mean, I'm a Mario fan, so I grew up on the Mario games, but for me, top two would
be Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Galaxy.
(31:55):
Those ones are my favorite.
Both are very kind of special and quirky and fun, while also others have, like, you know,
really cool boss fight music or stressful songs or, you know, peaceful songs.
Also, yeah, like, yeah, Breath of the Wild had mentioned that one, you know, same reason.
(32:17):
And then, yeah, Minecraft.
Minecraft is also up there.
The songs are really cool.
Still kind of has a bit that, like, pixelated music.
The chipmune-like type.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it, like, fits the vibe of, like, the world that you play in.
Yeah, because it's like blocky or whatever.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And our family, we have one of our favorite gamers on YouTube is Corey Kenshin.
(32:41):
And he's so funny when he played Minecraft.
He, like, gets into it and starts, like, making up songs to, like, go with it and stuff.
It's pretty funny.
He does mostly scary games, actually, and he's hilarious the way he reacts to them.
But anyways.
All right.
A game can be fun, right?
But how important is the soundtrack to the game for your gaming experience and why, Alyssa?
(33:01):
I like soundtracks because they don't only get you invested in the game, but imagine
playing a game without music.
Wouldn't that be so boring?
Like, playing Mario without any music?
Like, you just hear the blue?
Blue?
Like, how does it?
Yeah.
Not only are some songs really catchy to listen to, but they also can get the anxiety pumping
(33:25):
and, like, the adrenaline pumping.
And they also create atmosphere in the game and are very, very important, like a main
part of a video game.
That makes sense, for sure.
What are your thoughts, Kayla?
I think music is important in video games because, yeah, it helps bring in the mood of
how to play the game.
You know how, like, sometimes if there's a moment of silence in a game and then the
(33:48):
music comes on, you can tell just by the song, like, oh, this is going to be kind of stressful
or scary or, oh, this, you know, seems nice and peaceful.
Like, I got nothing to worry about or whatever.
So it helps you get into the zone of, like, how to play that game.
Yeah, that makes sense.
It's like how they do with movies, right?
You know, it's a scary, intense part.
(34:09):
You know, like, oh, you've got to look around the corner.
Someone's coming or whatever.
I never really thought about it that way, that games are like that, too.
I'm going to write to the New York Times and tell them to add a soundtrack to Whirl.
Each guess, it gets more and more intense.
Yeah, man.
That would be cool, actually.
Guess five, we're just sweating with this intense music.
(34:33):
That's awesome.
There's some games, too, where I don't know if you guys have any of you played Raymond
Legends.
That's a sample of a game where the actual music gives you cues of when you should be
jumping and things like that.
Like, you move.
Oh.
Yeah, I used to play that.
I used to play Raymond Legends.
Yeah, and some of the levels really are very, very music oriented.
(34:57):
Like, you do it to the beat, basically, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
That's cool.
You have to jump right at the right moment, and the music is the cue of when you're going
to need to do it.
That sounds cool.
I haven't played that one, but that sounds fun, for sure.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to part one of this episode.
Stay tuned for more fun in part two.
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