The John Dunphy Experience:
The Return (at least double the fun of Shaq-Fu: The Return)

By John P. Dunphy

Welcome once again to The John Dunphy Experience, the site inspired by a radio show, inspired by a kid in High School, inspired by Jimi Hendrix. This week, in a change from the ordinary, humdrum b.s., I have decided to talk about something near and dear to my heart, videogames – more specifically, videogame music.

Now, you might be thinking when I mention videogame music, I’m referring to the blips, bleeps, bloops and the occasional bonks of such classics as Super Mario Bros., Mega Man and, if you’re really in a time warp, Space Invaders. While an occasional toe tapping to the Air Man stage in Mega Man 2 is perfectly fine by me, there’s actually a lot more out there that can be legitimately called “music” without receiving questioning glances from more dignified audio connoisseurs. Don’t believe me? Read on.

It was the year 1992. I had recently acquired a brand spanking new, fresh from the box Super Nintendo Entertainment System, arguably one of the greatest videogame systems of all time, for my birthday. It wasn’t too long after this I decided to rent Final Fantasy II from the local Choice Video, now long since out of business, replaced by an Asian Porn video store thinly veiled as a wholesome family establishment, probably since replaced by a Papa John’s. But I digress…

Final Fantasy II (also known as Final Fantasy IV in Japan) was probably my first exposure to actual genuinely entertaining (in not a campy, dopey sort of way) videogame music and would completely change my opinion of the art form of the videogame soundtrack forever.

Developed and published by Squaresoft, with a soundtrack composed by longtime composer of the series Nobuo Uematsu, Final Fantasy II was one of the first games in the United States released for the Super Nintendo in 1991 and would also be one of the first to take advantage of the system’s sound capabilities which far outclassed any cartridge based systems before it. Where up to this point gamers really did only get those bleeps and bloops I mentioned before, they were now getting full-fledged songs. Granted, they were still being written to a cartridge format so they weren’t the same songs you’d expect from your CD Player, but they were most certainly a step or four up for this gamer, and most certainly worth his attention.

So, has your mind been thoroughly blown yet? No? Good, it’s far too early in the column for that. Moving on…

The Final Fantasy II soundtrack was in fact so good to this lifelong gamer that he, on more than one occasion, through a baffling maze of wires and connections, attempted to record the soundtrack to cassette. Yes, yes he did. This meant playing through most of the game, stopping when a new song appeared, recording, moving on, continuing this through most of the game or until said gamer was driven quite nearly insane. This was of course before the explosion of the Internet, which allowed for the widespread distribution of MP3s (which I, of course, am completely against. Cough) as well as such invaluable websites as www.gamemusic.com , which specialize in, yes, videogame soundtracks, a rather lucrative industry in Japan.

Ah, Japan, probably the videogame capital of the world. While it might have been the American company Atari that brought videogaming into the mainstream in the late-1970s, it was Japanese based Nintendo that took it to the next level in the mid-1980s.

While a great many American companies, as well as companies from other areas of the world including Britain and France, have since claimed for themselves a piece of the videogame pie, it is still an industry taken quite a bit more seriously in the land of the rising sun. I mean, hell, this is the place that, when the Playstation 2 was released a couple of years ago, had incidents of children getting mugged for theirs on their way home from the store the day it came out and a place where a new installment in the Dragon Quest series of games warrants fanfare almost akin to a national holiday. Even I think that’s a little weird – just a little…

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. With a culture that feels so strongly about their videogames, chances are they would also feel strongly about said videogame soundtracks. While there are still many games with barely crapped out excuses for music, much of it has taken full advantage of the CD and DVD technology over the last ten or so years. Just last year, a concert was held in Japan honoring the music of Mr. Uematsu and his contributions to the Final Fantasy series. 5000 people showed up for the monumental event and it has since been released on CD. Try finding an event like that in the States.

Even those not of that greatly overpopulated eastern set of islands have gotten into the soundtrack gig, as well. In recent years, condensed collected works of the original Japanese scores to a number of games have been released in the U.S. in conjunction with their videogame counterparts, the most high profile being the last couple of Final Fantasy releases. Indeed, the Final Fantasy series can probably be considered the standard bearer to the recent wave of respect to come to the industry here in America, along with an approach to advertising in recent years by companies like Sony for the Playstation and Playstation 2, which has focused on the 17-34 year old demographic as opposed to the previously tapped 6-12 year old one.

Two of my favorite New Age soundtracks actually come from, I believe, a British composer. Or maybe he’s American. I don’t know, information about him is so sparse. Which is a shame because the soundtracks for the Sega CD releases of Ecco the Dolphin and Ecco: The Tides of Time, by Spencer Nilsen stand as phenomenal collections of keyboard oriented New Age music just about anyone can enjoy. Don’t believe me? Well, if you happen to see a copy of either of these games on Ebay, you should seriously pick them up. Don’t worry about picking up a Sega CD system, which might be a little harder to acquire. Back in the day, the soundtracks of many of the CD based games could be enjoyed on any ordinary CD Player. So, for all of you fine folks that got a look at my recent Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning review (or my Patrick O’Hearn review should it be up as of this posting), I highly recommend you start searching for these excellent albums.

So, have you been at all convinced? Have I converted at least one non-believer over to the side of good, the side of belief in videogame music being more than just a few farts from a PC speaker? Or has this all been just another mindless rant from a guy with way too much time on his hands and probably way too many videogames? Perhaps, but perhaps not. No, probably perhaps.

For your edification, here is a short list of some of my personal favorite soundtracks and a little additional info about them. Since most are Japanese imports, they might be a little expensive. There’s always Ebay . but you didn’t hear that from me. Have yourselves a fine week, I’m going to lock myself in my room and finish Arc the Lad II. Until next time…

Go here.

My top 5 current videogame soundtracks (this is NOT a comprehensive listing):

5. Suikoden – PSOne - Composer: Konami Kukeiha Club
4. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – PSOne - Composer: Michiru Yamane
3. Ecco the Dolphin – Sega CD - Composer: Spencer Nilsen
2. Final Fantasy X – Playstation 2 - Composer: Junya Nakano, Masashi Hamauzu & Nobuo Uematsu
1. Panzer Dragoon RPG – Sega Saturn - Composer: Saori Kobayashi, Mariko Nanba

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