Pixel Soundtracks: Exploring Video Game Music through Twenty Games

Tim Summers provides an engaging introduction to video game music aimed at gamers, music enthusiasts, budding composers, music professionals, and anyone with an interest in the topic. Pixel Soundtracks explore a wide variety of topics, including:

• the history of game music
• sound technology and chip music
• interactive and generative music composition
• how game music tells stories, creates worlds & characters, and evokes emotions
• classical and pop music in games
• battle and boss music
• nostalgia, remakes, and fandom
• game music concerts and albums

Summers dives deeply into twenty beloved games across the decades to illustrate crucial concepts. These games include Space Invaders, Super Mario Bros., BioShock Infinite, Dark Souls III, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, and more. The book is separated into five stages and a "final boss," and sections build off each other into increasingly broader topics--starting with the specifics of computer chips and ending with questions of game music's engagement with identity. The "final boss" brings together ideas presented throughout the book.

Based on the latest research, this book will allow readers to better understand the fantastic experiences and meanings that arise when games and music fuse together.

Tim Summers is senior lecturer in music at Royal Holloway University of London. Summers co-founded the European Ludomusicology Research Group and was a founding editor of the Journal of Sound and Music in Games. His books include Understanding Video Game Music, The Queerness of Video Game Music and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - A Game Score Companion. Tim regularly contributes to articles, podcasts and radio programs on the topic of video game music.