SNES

Video game soundtracks can make up a huge part of a player's overall gaming experience; hearing just a couple of notes from your favourite games as a child can instantly transport you back to that world, bringing back all those feelings you thought you'd forgotten. Once they've entered your head for the first time, it's hard to forget those classic moments like Ocarina of Time's Song of Storms, or Super Mario Galaxy's Gusty Garden Galaxy, but composing music for games has always been an incredible challenge.

This especially rings true on older systems, where the technology available to composers placed some very heavy restrictions on the types of sound, amount of layers, and particularly the file space available for use. This new video (down below) from Nerdwriter1 on YouTube explores how music and sound were created on the SNES, offering a fascinating look into the tech under the hood and even some case studies. Even if you already know a great deal about sound production for games, we'd urge you to check this out.

The video takes a look at the sound chips inside the system, the programs available to composers, and provides an in-depth look into David Wise's work on Donkey Kong Country. One section reveals how the SNES could only accommodate 64KBs of audio RAM for the entire soundtrack of one game - that's only a hundredth of the available space needed to store a single three-minute song downloaded from the likes of iTunes today.

If you're interested, you can check out the video in full right here:

Do you have any memories of your favourite gaming soundtracks? Any classic SNES games with music which particularly stood out to you? Share them with us below.

[source youtube.com]