![]() Despite disapproval from his Nintendo colleagues, Tanaka was allowed full creative freedom on projects, and even had a fluctuating role in influencing some games' content and play style. He was inspired by the film Birdy (1984) to create a game score that was dark until the very end, where the player would finally receive music with a strong melody. For Metroid (1986), Tanaka acknowledged that games were becoming more complex, and his scores were becoming more like a film's, desiring in Metroid not to "repeat the same game-melody cliches," although he recalls that the game's soundtrack was not well-received within Nintendo because of its dark atmosphere. Tanaka did not personally see a difference between the music he composed for video games and the music he composed in his off time. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" (1967). Sometime in the late 1980s, they recorded the 45 rpm " Thunder Dub" which prominently sampled the opening drumbeat from the Beatles' " Sgt. While working full-time at Nintendo on two or three games a year, and sometimes two simultaneously, Tanaka continued playing gigs in Osaka and Tokyo with the Shampoos. There was a continuous stream of new jobs and you'd go from one to the next. For instance, we made our own development tools. We learned as we went, built our own systems, and built them again. I think our generation of Nintendo employees were all the same. I studied all about computers after I joined Nintendo. If anything, I think it was more of the history of the evolution of computers. We talk about the history of games, but for me, the history of games and computers overlap. I'd work from 9AM to as late as 2 or 3 in the morning. Sometimes designing hardware, and sometimes creating software. We had computers for work but they were TTY devices they had no monitors. From morning to night, we made new circuits and developed software. No one else was doing it, but it was what I wanted to do." Tanaka described what he remembered as a "typical day" at Nintendo in the brief period following the release of the Famicom home game console:Įverything just stayed the same. I'd play the melody in some parts, then cut it off and insert a part with just drums and bass, and vice versa. I figured that, to get the most out of the game music, a dub-based structure would be a really great solution. So that turned out to be an idea for working around the limitations of the game software. His approach to game composition carried on from his dub obsession: "For instance, if you listen to the music in Wrecking Crew (1985), you could recognize that some parts are drum and bass only. ĭonkey Kong 3 (1983) was the first game where Tanaka acted both as composer and sound effects designer. Tanaka noted that he learned "a lot" from series creator Shigeru Miyamoto due to his perfectionism and "level of commitment". He attempted to insert voice synthesis for the game's damsel-in-distress, but the idea was vetoed by then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi's daughter, who did not feel that the sample sounded like the exclamation "help me!". Usually, the same sound effect was repeated across many different actions, but Tanaka's approach differed where he invented subtle variations. Following this, Tanaka worked on Donkey Kong (1981), providing the sound effects for Mario's footsteps and jumps. I thought toys would be relatively stress-free, so I applied." The first game Tanaka worked on was Space Firebird (1980), where Tanaka was composer and constructed a new sound chip for particular sound effects. He did not initially want to be an engineer, but Nintendo were accordingly scouting for "different sounds or toys or something at the time. In 1980, after graduating from university with a degree in electronic engineering, Tanaka successfully applied for a job at Nintendo as a sound designer. On The Shampoos, Tanaka described it as an obscure local band which did gigs in Tokyo about once or twice a year, and that it was "never a formal thing". Tanaka did meet the duo during those times. For the music event "Reggae Sunsplash" held in Osaka, the Shampoos were an opening act for Sly and Robbie on more than one occasion. In his teens, he was also in a reggae band, which was known variously by the names the Shampoos or Roots Rockers. He has held a longstanding obsession with reggae music. His first band was formed when he was in middle school, a Beatles and Elton John cover group, which sometimes performed concerts at his school. Born to a schoolteacher mother who had Tanaka undergo piano lessons, Tanaka recounted that he first began paying serious attention to music while in elementary school, and attempted to form a band during that time.
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