Week Eighteen - Sounds Such As Mario’s Jump

If you spend a day in our lab, every time a phone goes off more than likely you’ll hear a sound from either metal gear or final fantasy, or some other game noise, so I think this already proves sound in games is highly important. But this is one kind of game sound and I think there are two categories, sounds such as Mario’s jump or a coin collected, and then the ambient soundtracks, giving the atmosphere of a scene.

Going back to earlier games the sounds were not interested in ‘real’ sounds as such, but rather those 8 bit sounds we all love, and every time I hear one of those little noise clips it brings back a feeling of nostalgia. Now these sounds are still created from time to time, but with people obsessed with realism in games, real sounds are needed. If you take Call Of Duty 4 for example, the sounds of the guns, breathing, and footsteps, all are made to be as real as possible, the sounds of real battle fields just gives that bit more illusion your actually there.

There’s then the ambient sounds, which are subtly in the background increasing then tension, or making a fast paced chase even more heart racing, and it’s good composers who create these atmospheres. This is why there are now dedicated people who make sounds for games, and often film sound specialists make sounds for game as well. And this can be anything from a huge orchestral piece, to recording the sound of footsteps.

This is one reason why I like my big epic games, when your playing though and an epic piece of music comes on it just makes the whole atmosphere much more impressive.

Something that’s becoming more popular as well is playing your own music in game, which is easier now with consoles which have hard drives (one day for the Wii hopefully). But I played Excite Truck, and at first thought it was good, then put my own play list on, which took a while to make as I had to get those just damn good driving songs, and it made the game so much better.

So sound is highly important in games for creating mood/atmosphere, illusions of what’s going on, and this is all down to it being one of your sense, of which at the moment the only other sense is vision, so maybe one day we will have other sense’s addressed.

Now normally I’d put a few pictures in, but as this is about sound I thought ill include some video clips with some sound, enjoy!

Classic Game Themes Orchestrated!

The Legend Of Zelda!

Mario Theme Tune On Guitar! (There are loads of others as well)