Let's start with some sweeping generalisations:

Broadly, there are two types of game:

The first (Tetris, Pac-Man, Space Invaders) is the game that plays you. Your interactivity is merely a response to dilemmas inherent in the game. Move or be eaten. Shoot or be invaded. Reach the end before time is up.

The second type (GTA3, The Sims, Halo) is the game that you play. There are ground rules, but there are also choices. This is the next evolution of gaming: replicating an experience.

This kind of game is where music plays its biggest part.

Look back at some of the games that have lasted and lasted over the years. How many of these are still fun to play? Not many, I'll wager. Most of them were games that played you. And you changed.

In going back to look at a few rare games that still fly, it struck me that the graphics have almost always dated horribly, but the music - almost without fail - still succeeds. At worst, old music elicits a smile. At best, a full on emotional connection that really enhances the game.


Two examples which illustrate why:


1. NiGHTS (Sega Saturn, Sonic Team)

Nights is an extraordinary hybrid of the musical puzzle and racing genres. You fly through an aerial racing course punctuated by loops. Every time you pass through a loop, you hear a bell chime. You have three seconds to find and fly through the next hoop. Each successive chime you ring rises on the tonal scale: "do-re-me-fa..." and upwards.

If you learn courses well, you can link these chimes together at blazing speeds into a series of notes which - and this is really Naka's lifetime achievement - compliments the terrific soundtrack.

Even today, the result is organic, spirit-lifting game play. People who know the game don't play Nights to reach the end. They play it because the second-to-second experience of linking these chimes together is simply joyous. And music has everything to do with that.

The graphics? They still look nice. Once they were stunning. And in five years? They'll probably be a joke.

But the music of Nights was one of the great soundtracks of its time. And nearly 10 years on, it's still the magic ingredient in an all-time classic.

Lesson One: great music will always outlast great graphics.


2. Ridge Racer Type 4 (PlayStation, Namco)

First, I'll let you in on a little theory of mine:

Games (though this could just as easily apply to films and music) entertain by appealing to three distinct parts of the human body:

1. The mind. Games tax the brain, or inspire with their concepts and expand your horizons. Tetris, Amplitude.

2. The heart. Games that affect your emotions with happiness, sadness, or fear. Examples include Biohazard, NiGHTS, Mario.

3. The dick. Seriously. Testosterone, explosions, violence or boobies. Examples include True Crime, GTA3, DOAX, and pretty much everything ever based on a blockbuster movie license.

Unsurprisingly: games and movies that rely on dick appeal tend not to appeal to girls gamers.

If your game successfully engages the mind, the heart, or the dick -- you're probably on the way to a great game experience. But what controls all three? The brain.

And here's how it all ties together: did you know that after smell, sound is the most direct wire to the brain's memory?

Visual stimulants come third, narrowly beating out touch.

***

No one quite knows why, but certain games just click. They're evergreen years after they should be dead. Ridge Racer Type 4 is one such an example. Endlessly discussed and probed and lauded on message boards, it has outlasted even its graphically superior sequel.

I know why it's still evergreen. It's in the music.

R4 was a spectacular racing game for its time. And no one got it. Here was something vastly different from the Ridge Racers before it. Here was something vastly different from racing games before it.

Old arcadey racers had primarily been about two things: competition, and winning. Beating your friends, or mastering a racing system to shave micro-seconds off lap times.

R4 changed all that. It was a driving game, not a racing game. Think about it in real life. Imagine the exhilaration of driving in beautiful places at high speeds while listening to great music. The experience of it. R4 nails that experience.

The old school Ridge fans fans stomped through the game in five hours, before declaring it too easy and rejecting it from leetdom. But R4 wasn't about winning. It was about drifting effortlessly around neon-lit Tokyo at rocket speeds, the icy perfection of a spacey electronica soundtrack playing in the CD player. [Well, insert cool experience of your own choice here.]

After the pixel perfect frustration drifting of legacy Ridge Racer games, R4 was unusually easy to play, completely unfrustrating, and boasted an integrated design scheme way ahead of its time -- a template later used by the R4 team in everything from future Ridge Racers to Ace Combat.

Most importantly, it has one of the most surprising, most progressive (for its time) video game soundtracks of all time. In R4's final race, you expect things to ramp up. You expect the game to gear up the music, get your heart pounding; beause the last challenge in a video game is inevitably a make your dick hard moment. But something unexpected happens. As you drift into the final lap at 420 kmph, the music dims to a mellow downtempo whisper, and a calm comes over you. You're alone on the track. Fireworks explode dreamily in the distance.

Replaying it recently, the graphics have dated, but it's still liable to send chills down your spine. Because the music has lost none of its charm, and the emotional connection from that first time you experienced it comes rushing back. The final lap of the final track of the final race in Ridge Racer Type 4 is an evergreen emotional experience.

Get the soundtrack CD, put it in your car. You'll keep it there for years. Art bleeding into life, and music is the connection.

***

Video gaming is a new media, its progress still marked more by technological progression than artistic expression. As such it's the graphics that have greater potential to sparkle and impress - or even blind.

But time isn't kind to beauty, and over the years a game's visuals will inevitably be relegated to being the mere nuts and bolts of the experience. The basic structure defining the physical limits of control and gameplay.

But the music is our emotional connection. It's the experience. And it plays forever.


Justin Keeling
EMail justin