Analyzing NES Music

<p>This study of five of Nintendo's landmark music scores offers new insights into video game music composition and creativity with limited technology.<br /> <br /> Faced with severe technological constraints on system memory composers of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sought ways to disguise repetition in music that repeats extensively. Their efforts gave rise to a set of compositional techniques for creating the illusion of variety. <br /> <br /> Andrew Schartmann distills these techniques into a theory of harmony and form for the analysis of NES music. It then uses this theory to analyze five landmark scores of the NES era: <em>Super Mario Bros</em>. <em>Dragon Warrior</em> <em>Metroid</em> <em>Mega Man 2</em> and <em>Silver Surfer.</em> Both theory and analysis are scaffolded by a detailed description of the NES hardware and its attendant constraints highlighting the ever-evolving dialogue between technology commercial demand and artistic sensibility that characterizes video game music of the 1980s and 1990s.</p> <p> <br /> <br /> </p>