LIVE: Library of Congress: A Brief History of Game Audio – PA112

We’re back from the Library of Congress and what a rare honor it was to be included in their inaugural weekend long event celebrating the music of games. Our talk, which you’ll hear today, covered the early history of video game audio with a few detours into film and pop culture for context.

In addition to our talk, we also got to speak on a panel discussion alongside composer Austin Wintory (Journey) and game designer Rami Ismail (Nuclear Throne) for the world premiere of Austin’s interactive piece Arrows. We also got to meet Winifred Phillips (Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation) after her talk on interactive game audio!

The Library of Congress was a wonderful experience; certainly one for the history books (quite literally) and we hope you enjoy our talk. Here’s a link to the video of the presentation.

We did our best to make our talk as enjoyable as possible for regular show listeners but we have also included our presentation slides which help enhance the experience. Click through the presentation below to see the visual aids and video examples we used during our talk. If it doesn’t load for you, click here.

Track List:

  • 0:12:57 Pong (ARC – 1972)
  • 0:13:19 Gunfight (ARC – 1975)
  • 0:13:43 Breakout (ARC – 1976)
  • 0:14:44 Combat (VCS – 1977)
  • 0:15:38 Space Invaders (ARC – 1978)
  • 0:18:34 Vanguard (ARC – 1981)
  • 0:20:07 Gyruss (ARC – 1983)
  • 0:22:06 Alley Cat (IBM-PC – 1984)
  • 0:24:01 Snafu (INTV – 1981)
  • 0:24:40 Penguin Adventure (MSX – 1986)
  • 0:26:40 Commando (C64 -1985)
  • 0:30:54 Myth (C64 – 1989)
  • 0:34:26 Super Mario Bros. (NES – 1985)
  • 0:35:40 Journey to Silius (NES – 1990)
  • 0:38:20 Marble Madness (ARC – 1984)
  • 0:39:30 Outrun (ARC – 1986)
  • 0:45:35 Shadow of the Beast (AMI – 1989)
  • 0:48:26 Final Fantasy III (SNES – 1994)
  • 0:51:33 CANYON.MID – (PC, Windows 3.1 – 1992)
  • 0:53:54 Doom – Adlib version (PC – 1993)
  • 0:54:54 Doom – Sound Canvas version (PC – 1993)
  • 0:56:44 Ys I & II (TG-CD – 1989)
  • 0:58:00 Myst (MAC – 1993)
  • 1:00:03 Monkey Island 2 (PC – 1991)
  • 1:01:45 Banjo-Kazooie (N64 – 1998)

One thought on “LIVE: Library of Congress: A Brief History of Game Audio – PA112

  1. Gene Dreyband Post author

    Correction: “What’s Love Got to Do With It” is by Tina Turner, not Whitney Houston. That was a mistake on our part.

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