Course: Video Game Design and Development: A Bit-by-Bit History of Video Game Music: Video Game Sound and Music

In this video, we’ll summarise what we’ve learned in the first week, and look forward to what we’ll be exploring in next week’s activities. Please note that my book, Bits …

Before we begin to explore the history and development of video game music, it’s worth taking a moment or two to think about what makes game music different from other …

The Commodore 64 was really the first 8-bit machine that had a sound chip that was sophisticated enough to allow composers to create cover versions of popular music. Jean Michel …

In the previous video step, we heard Rob Hubbard describe how his workflow adapted to suit writing music in code on the Commodore 64. He described how programming and the …

The SID chip was complex, and Commodore’s implementation of BASIC made it very difficult for new users to work with it. Even seasoned developers needed time to explore all of …

Professor James Newman is an academic at Bath Spa University, and spends his days teaching and research creative computing. James is particularly interested in the Commodore 64, and in this …

Commodore’s C64 was a musical powerhouse. Its Sound Interface Device – the famous SID chip – gave it the functions of a three-channel digital synthesiser. In this video, we’ll look …

Although the ZX Spectrum’s beeper was rudimentary, it wasn’t long before developers managed to work out inventive ways to use it. In this video, we’ll look at the development of …

The ZX Spectrum, even for its time was a simple machine, and yet it almost single-handedly kick-started the UK games industry. In this video, we’ll look at the launch of …

Over its lifetime, a number of games, both good and bad, were released for the Atari VCS. In this video, we’ll review a few of those that I think are …

The Atari VCS was the machine that domesticated video games and established Atari as the dominant player in the gaming industry… at least for a time. In this video, we’ll …