The Streaming Revolution (But Not the One You Think): The Fate of Polystylism in Recorded Video Game Music

Speaking of streaming, there is another important revolution that is related to an entirely different – but, from a ludomusicological perspective, even more important – event. During the 1990s, video game consoles started to become capable of not only synthesizing music on board or play it via compressed samples combined in real time, but also streaming music directly from the game’s physical support. This meant that video game music could be recorded like any other kind of music and then reproduced directly during the playing experience without substantial differences. But what happens to music when the compositional affordances change so radically? In this paper I focus on that important shift in the history of video game composition and particularly on how the relationship with polystylism has apparently changed in Japanese and Western games during and after the shift. In doing so, I focus on case studies that cover the timespan of my interest, be these single games that were reissued (with “remastered” music) multiple times, single franchises and single composers. Thus, I will be able to emphasize some of the main differences between the Japanese and Western approaches, and how these could be related to the ways in which the two industrial contexts reacted to the important technological change of streamed video game music.