Video game music

Lore & Background

Video game music (VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Its earliest forms were constrained by the capabilities of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators and FM synthesis chips, which led to the distinctive chiptune style. As technology advanced, the range of sounds expanded significantly. Music now appears over title screens, menus, and during gameplay, and can dynamically change based on a player’s actions or situation—for example, indicating missed actions in rhythm games, signaling danger, or rewarding achievements. VGM can be either original or licensed. Its popularity has created educational and job opportunities, generated awards, and led to commercial sales and concert performances of game soundtracks.

In the late 1970s, storing music on analog media like cassette tapes or phonograph records was expensive and fragile, making it unsuitable for arcade cabinets. A cheaper digital method used a computer chip to convert code into analog sound waves in real time, also generating sound effects. Early arcade music was often monophonic, looped, or used sparingly. The first game with a continuous background soundtrack was *Space Invaders* (1978), which featured four descending bass notes that increased pace as enemies approached. *Rally-X* (1980) was the first with continuous, melodic background music. Sound capabilities were limited; the Atari 2600 could only produce two tones at once. Later, chips like the Yamaha YM series allowed multiple sound channels. *Frogger* (1981) introduced a dynamic approach with over eleven gameplay tracks that changed with player actions. *Dig Dug* (1982) stopped music when the player stopped moving. Home consoles like the ColecoVision (four channels) and the Nintendo Entertainment System (five channels, one for simple PCM samples) followed. The Commodore 64 offered filtering and different waveforms. Early games used tone generation or FM synthesis for melodies and a noise channel for percussion, while PCM samples were limited to short sounds. Music channels often shared space with sound effects. By the mid-to-late 1980s, composers with greater musical experience created more sophisticated and popular works.

Reader's Guide

Video game music began as simple, chip-generated sounds due to the high cost and fragility of analog storage media like cassette tapes in arcade machines. Early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators and FM synthesis chips, produced monophonic, looped tunes used sparingly between stages. The first game with a continuous background soundtrack featured four descending bass notes that dynamically increased pace as enemies approached. Later, a game introduced over a dozen distinct gameplay tracks that changed based on player actions, while another halted its music whenever the player stopped moving. Technological advances allowed for more sound channels, with home systems like the ColecoVision offering four channels and the Nintendo Entertainment System providing five, including one for simple sampled sound. The Commodore 64 could produce filtering effects and different waveforms. Composers used tone generation and frequency modulation for melodies, a noise channel for percussion, and limited PCM samples for short sounds or basslines. This technical environment gave rise to chiptune music, which became the defining sound of early gaming. Notable composers emerged from this era, creating iconic soundtracks for major franchises. The popularity of video game music has since created educational programs, job opportunities, and commercial success, with soundtracks sold and performed in concerts, cementing its cultural significance within the gaming field.

A Functional Category Within a Vast Taxonomy

Video game music occupies a specific but modest position within the enormous landscape of musical classification. Rather than standing as a standalone genre in its own right, it is grouped under the broader heading of incidental music—music composed for stage and screen. In this category, it shares company with film scores, theatrical music, musical theater compositions, music hall songs, and showtunes. This placement reflects its purpose: music written to serve another medium rather than to exist as a purely autonomous art form. The surrounding taxonomy is staggering in scope. A single music platform, Gracenote, has catalogued more than two thousand distinct genres, a number that includes labels coined by ordinary listeners rather than industry professionals. The overarching structure branches into classical traditions, popular styles, regional and national forms, religious music, and traditional folk expressions. Yet even this expansive list is explicitly described as not exhaustive, leaving room for countless additional categories that continue to emerge as musical culture evolves.

The Fluidity of Musical Boundaries

One of the most important things to understand about where video game music sits in the classification system is that the system itself is far from rigid. Musical genres and styles are, by their nature, difficult to pin down. Classifications are frequently described as arbitrary, and the boundaries between closely related forms tend to blur and overlap. A larger genre might contain numerous sub-categories, each with its own identity, yet the dividing lines between them are often matters of opinion rather than objective fact. This fluidity extends to the concept of folksonomy—taxonomies created not by scholars or industry experts but by ordinary music lovers who simply want to describe what they hear. For video game music specifically, this means it resists neat categorization. A single game's soundtrack might draw on electronic production techniques, classical orchestration, folk melodies, or hip-hop rhythms, making any single genre label feel reductive. The classification exists less to define the music precisely and more to help listeners navigate an otherwise overwhelming sea of sound.

Commercial Origins and Practical Discovery

The existence of genre labels, including the one that places video game music under incidental or screen-based scoring, is largely a product of commercial necessity. Most musical genres were originally created by record labels and industry stakeholders as a way to target specific audiences and market their products. The practical purpose of classification is to make music easier to find and to distribute it to the right listeners. In a landscape where a single platform can list over two thousand genres, the ability to sort and search becomes essential. Video game music, as a functional descriptor, serves this same practical role: it tells a listener that the music was composed to accompany an interactive experience rather than to stand alone as a concert piece. This is distinct from, say, a symphony or a pop single, even though the underlying musical techniques might be identical. The label is a tool for navigation, not a judgment of quality or artistic merit. It exists to help people locate the sound they are looking for within an increasingly vast and fragmented musical ecosystem.

A Soundtrack Drawn From Every Tradition

Because video game music is classified as incidental music written for a medium rather than as a fixed genre, it is not limited to any single musical tradition. The broader taxonomy from which it can draw is remarkably diverse. Classical traditions span Andalusian, Indian, Korean court, Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, and Western forms, with the Western branch alone stretching from Renaissance and Baroque through Romantic and into experimental and minimalist modernism. Popular styles encompass blues, country, electronic, folk, hip-hop, jazz, pop, R&B and soul, and rock, each with its own sub-genres. Regional categories cover African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Australasian, European, Latin and South American, and North American traditions. Religious music spans Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, and many other faiths. Traditional folk forms include fado, huayno, polka, ragtime, and numerous others. A video game composer, in principle, can reach into any of these wells, making the medium one of the most genre-fluid spaces in all of music.