The Fate of Polystylism: The ‘Orchestral Shift’ and the ‘Redefinition of Sonic Hierarchies’ in Recorded Video Game Music

During the 1990s, with the advent of the CD-ROM, video game consoles became capable not only of synthesizing music on board or assembling it from compressed samples in real time, but also of playing entirely prerecorded music directly from the game’s physical medium. This meant that video game music could now be produced like any other kind of music and played back during gameplay without substantial alteration. But what happens to music when the compositional affordances change so radically? In this article, I focus on this crucial shift in the history of video game composition, and particularly on the ways in which the use of eclectic and polystylistic approaches have undergone multiple metamorphic processes. To do so, I examine examples spanning the period of my inquiry, from single games reissued with remastered music using new technologies to entire franchises that transformed their musical aesthetic as a result of those technologies and their newly afforded possibilities. In particular, I explore two processes – what I call the “orchestral shift” and the “redefinition of sonic hierarchies” – in relation to mainstream film scoring techniques and the new ludomusical affordances.