ABSTRACT
There are three types of game-music history: technological histories, game type histories, and reception histories. These historical perspectives intersect and overlap, but they each have something in particular to reveal about the music of video games. A historical perspective based upon game genre reveals several dimensions of genre dynamics: similar musical-aesthetic emphasis in a genre across a chronological span evolving traditions of music implementation and functionality within each genre, and different musical approaches to similar game mechanics across time. Because video games are necessarily technological entities, video-game music is inherently bound up with the computer technology used in its creation. Perhaps the most traditional way of understanding game-music history is in terms of chronological stages of game music as defined by audio apparatus. Video-game music has become part of an audio context that now includes recorded voices, ambient sound, Foley, and sound effects processed appropriately for a virtual 3-D environment.
