Western vs Eastern: Divisions in VGM

Two of the biggest terms that one encounters in VGM are west and east, and while they inherently don’t, – or shouldn’t – play a role in the quality of music, there are some appreciable differences that are worth being aware of in order to fully appreciate the music. This article will give you a brief picture of the divided world of Video Game music fandom.

Artists to Look Out for: Technodrome

Get ready to rock out to one of the newer VGM cover bands from Melbourne, Australia: Technodrome. If you expected a modest rendition of Mario and Zelda with some distortion, and maybe a good Pokemon cover to top it off. Well… you got it! But that would be understating these guys, so I’ll not only pull up their videos from youtube, but I’ll even give you an interview to show you all they have to offer.

Video Games Are Art?

As we peel off the packaging of a new game, maybe it’s Pokemon or Bioshock, do we stop and appraise it? Looking at the careful design of the artwork and think: well this probably reflects post-cubism – or some other crap like that. Most likely not, I mean, neither do I. We just throw in the game and go on for the ride. Of course, I think with a video game we’re dealing with a complete package, so you really can’t have so many of those thoughts until you really see it for what it is and try the game out. So what does this have to do with anything? Well I’d like to point out a bit about two events related to this idea of video games as art, one of them involves the Smithsonian.

The War of Mascots

Well it seems like reddit is playing host to a barrage of video game characters appearing all over the word on windows and walls in post it notes and chalk. Whether it’s Sonic or Mario, every post seems to be snowballing into yet another picture appearing. Leading to a few back and forth battles turning… musical?, and also inspiring an entire group of engineering students to post it an entire building face. I just wonder where this will go from here.

A Series of Series: Pokemon

My next string of articles will be reviewing music for games that  are in a series. I’ll start with the pokemon series and go on from there. It’s interesting to watch a series progress from game to game and platform to platform because the composers often change hands, or styles in many cases.