Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 1

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The Veteran Gamer: The Canonization and Commodification of Nostalgia in Anamanaguchi's 8-bit Video Game Soundtrack / Megan McKittrick

Abstract While there are many contemporary 8-bit-inspired video game scores, the article points to the original soundtrack for the 2010 Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game (Ubisoft, 2010) as an example of game music canon formation, arguing that Anamanaguchi designs their music to hail gamers who share their sense of nostalgia, referred to as veteran, aging, or mature gamers. Anamanaguchi not only canonizes 8-bit music by hailing veteran gamers; they commodify it, as well. Recognizing the market for this style of music, they employ what Christina Baade and Paul Aitken have described as the nostalgia aesthetic to sell their music and sell the game. Postmodern artistic production is inherently driven by capitalism, but this monetary value suggests cultural value, thus contributing further to the formation of the game music canon. Anamanaguchi generates additional cultural capital by designing their songs to match the techniques and complexity of Baroque and Minimalist music, thereby elevating chiptunes to the level of art.

Using Fredric Jameson’s notion of pastiche as a critical lens, this article examines the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack as an artifact of game music canonization and nostalgia aesthetic commodification. This article explores the problematic history of video game audio as well as shifting interests in the video game industry. In doing so, it situates Anamanaguchi’s technological choices within design practices and market trends over time, while tracking elements of pastiche style in the design of key songs in the soundtrack. Ultimately, the article finds that Anamanaguchi evokes a connection to the past, celebrating and preserving it in an effort to contribute to the game music canon, yet their nostalgic contribution actually destabilizes the canon by problematizing its sense of historical progression.

Keywords Arcade; Video Games; Culture Studies; Music; Rhetoric; Modernism/Postmodernism; Art History

<1> Ostinati

<2> Unlike the literary canon, with its lengthy history, heated debates, and extensive scholarship, the game music canon is virtually non-existent, which opens opportunities for exploring the initial forces that influence canon formation. In this article, I argue that canon formation relies, in part, on a nostalgic drive to preserve and revitalize the past. According to literary canon specialist Eric Rothstein, scholars are hailed as “inventors of English literature because they [keep] the past, and its sense of pastness, alive” (qtd. in Terry 81). While there are many contemporary 8-bit-inspired video game scores, I point to the original soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game (Ubisoft, 2010) as an example of game music canon formation, arguing that Anamanaguchi, the band commissioned to compose the 8-bit soundtrack, is an inventor of video game music in Rothstein’s sense because they revitalize outdated technology and celebrate 8-bit sound, thereby “keeping the past, and its sense of pastness, alive” (qtd. in Terry 81).

Figure 1: Anamanaguchi. Photo credit: Jalapeño via Compfight cc

<3> Anamanaguchi (see Figure 1), a band motivated for arcade and early console and computer games, designs their music to hail gamers who share their sense of nostalgia, those I will refer to as veteran, aging, or mature gamers. Designing their nostalgia-driven music with a specific demographic in mind ultimately contributes to the development of a cultural identity, which lays further groundwork for canon formation. Anamanaguchi not only canonizes 8-bit music by hailing veteran gamers; they commodify it as well. Recognizing the market for this style of music, they employ what Christina Baade and Paul Aitken have described as the nostalgia aesthetic to sell their music and sell the game. Postmodern artistic production is inherently driven by capitalism, but this monetary value suggests cultural value, thus contributing further to the formation of an 8-bit music canon. Anamanaguchi generates additional cultural capital by designing their songs to match the techniques and complexity of Baroque and Minimalist music, thereby elevating chiptunes to the level of art. Using Fredric Jameson’s notion of pastiche as a critical lens, this article will examine the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack as an artifact of game music canonization and nostalgia aesthetic commodification. This article will explore the problematic history of video game audio as well as shifting interests in the video game industry. In doing so, I will situate Anamanaguchi’s technological choices within design practices and market trends over time, while tracking elements of pastiche style in the design of key songs in the soundtrack.

<4> Point and Counterpoint: The Popular Music Canon Debates

<5> Although there are numerous publications devoted to the evaluation of popular music produced by music critics and consumed by fans, there is little academic work dedicated to canonizing popular music. The reason “behind this is that the notion of canon is deeply immersed within high art traditions” like orchestral productions of Baroque and Classical music (Danielsen 55). The few efforts to canonize popular music have been met with skepticism over the last thirty years as scholars debated over the appropriate method for assessing music artifacts (Danielsen 56). When selecting a piece for the canon, musicologists have tended toward one of two approaches: “The first can be linked to a notion of cultural significance, while the other springs from a belief in aesthetic value” (Danielsen 56). Scholars who assess music based on their aesthetic value tend to examine the quality and complexity in the design of the music; however, in the 1980s, New Musicology suggested that “the aesthetic criteria in debates on aesthetic value in music are neither given nor universal, but are to a great extent linked with social and historical conditions” (Danielsen 58). The culturalist position, therefore, held that any attempt to canonize music without regard to its cultural context was problematic. In this regard, scholars must examine “music that really means something to someone, someone here definitely not referring to the academic or critic or any other elitist expert listener, but rather to a class, or a group, or a group within the group: a subculture, or simply the people” (Danielsen 60). The challenge in music canon formation, therefore, lies in balancing the cultural context of music with its aesthetic quality and complexity.

<6> One way scholars have successfully achieved this balance is through the concept of the nostalgia aesthetic. In the article “Still ‘In the Mood’: The Nostalgia Aesthetic in a Digital World,” Baade and Aitken explore the “social and cultural ramifications of the aestheticization of nostalgia” (372). In their discussion, Baade and Aitken identify a powerful “nostalgia demographic” that has spurred the reissues of classic, canonical works like Glen Miller’s “In the Mood” on CD. As a result, this demographic has effectively generated “the beginnings of ‘nostalgia’ as a music marketing category” (Baade and Aitken 353). Nostalgia reissues are “best defined by their embodiment of ‘pastness,’ which is crucial to their marketing” (Baade and Aitken 353). The nostalgia aesthetic, therefore, can be understood as the sound design techniques that evoke a sense of the past and generate nostalgia for listeners. By exploring the relationship between music design principles and target demographics through the commodification of nostalgia, Baade and Aitken achieve an effective balance between cultural context and aesthetics. Within this nexus, Baade and Aitken are able to explore the way “nostalgia reissues call attention to music as commodity and meaning maker, the persistence of older listening practices, and the shifting tropes of nostalgia” (371) in the music industry. Like the nostalgia demographic and its influence on the Glenn Miller reissue CD, I argue that veteran gamers have a similar influence on the Scott Pilgrim video game soundtrack, and at the core of this relationship between 8-bit music and the veteran gamer is the technology used to produce this soundtrack.

<7> The Greatest Hits of Game Music Technology

<8> There is little research on game sound and music, and there is even less on its history. Collins points out that, “despite thirty years of technological development in games, academic research into games audio has been slow to develop” (Pac-Man 6), and many references to video game audio are embedded in discussions of film music. Although the role of sound in multimedia contexts, like television and film, “has had years of scholarly theoretical assertions and empirical study, to date there is a surprising dearth of literature that concerns the use of sound” (Gersic 145). Overall, Erica Kudisch indicates that there are only about eight “notable books” on the topic of game audio, and nearly half of the scholarly articles on the topic before 2007 were written by Karen Collins (189). Often viewed as a contingent genre, supporting other media like television and film, music receives little attention from rhetoric and cultural studies; however, much can be gained by exploring the impact of video game music.

<9> Collins offers a historical timeline that is constructed around the introduction of new technologies, their impact on composing practices, and fierce competition among game developers. This timeline begins with the repetitious loop of “four … chromatic descending bass notes” (Collins Pac-Man 2) in the game, Space Invaders (Midway, 1978).Before Space Invaders, video games had no soundtrack and were often silent aside from a few basic sound effects. Technological limitations of early arcade games restricted the soundtracks to “one- or two-channel tunes either as quick title themes or two- to three-second in-game loops” (Collins Pac-Man 2). The music of this time period was simple but memorable for those who frequented arcades in their childhood (Farnell 14).

<10> The Commodore 64, the “best-selling computer of all time” (Collins Pac-Man 3) was released in 1982 as a gaming computer by design, and its sound chip offered composers a wider range of waveforms and effects, opening up creative opportunities for audio designers. For example, the 1981 arcade version of Frogger (Konami, 1981) could only run basic sound effects and a brief title tune; in contrast, the 1983 Commodore 64 version of Frogger could run background music like ‘Yankee Doodle’ and ‘Camp Town Races’ (Collins Pac-Man 3). Needless to say, the technology for sound in video games was slow to develop in this era (Collins Pac-Man 2). With arcade games, “only one or two channels of sound were available, but as computing power grew, software mixers capable of delivering 4, then 8, 16 and 32 channels of sound emerged” (Farnell 14).

<11> In 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) reached the United States, and its “built-in five-channel sound chip” represented a significant improvement on 8-bit sound (Collins 3). Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) composer Koji Kondo became an instant sensation with his creative use of “percussion, catchy melodies and smooth looping capabilities” (Collins 4). Also during the mid-80s, sound cards designed for computer games introduced a “wide range of instruments and sounds” for game developers; however, until CD-ROMs, designers were unable to control how the music would sound due to the variety of sound card technology (Collins 4).

<12> In her chapter titled, “Insert Quarter to Continue: 16-Bit and the Death of the Arcade,” Collins points out that competition between home consoles began to center around audio technology in the late-80s and early-90s, pressuring sound designers to innovate with new technologies in order to sell games (39). Collins provides further details, showing that Sega introduced its 16-bit console, Genesis, in 1989, and Nintendo soon followed in 1991 with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), both offering “more ‘realistic’ instrument sounds” (Pac-Man 4-5). The 1996 Nintendo 64 raised the bar to 64-bit sound, and 128-bit machines in the late-90s, like Sega DreamCast and Xbox, would enable games to “produce DVD quality audio with multi-channel surround sound” (Collins Pac-Man 5). By the early 2000s, audio technology on PCs and consoles became fully equipped to support game soundtracks “recorded with full orchestras and choirs” (Collins Pac-Man 5).

<13> Technology Remixed by Nostalgia

<14> Collins constructs a useful timeline for researchers, focusing on market trends and technological advances in the game industry, but other factors influence and problematize this progression of events. In the video game industry, technological advances and the emergence of new tools and platforms do not necessarily mark the end of older tools and technologies. The console did not completely replace the arcade, for example. The two existed – and still exist today – in the same cultural contexts. Market trends have simply altered their meaning.

<15> A case in point can be found in Anamanaguchi, a contemporary band composing contemporary music, but which regularly adopts 1980s technologies to produce an 8-bit-inspired form of dance/electronica. To generate an authentic 8-bit sound, the band hacked into a Nintendo Entertainment System which is incorporated into their composing practices: “Anamanaguchi writes their melodies, layers conventional instruments on top (like electric guitars, bass, and drums) and then feeds them live through an NES while performing” (Korallus-Shapiro). One of the forces behind Anamanaguchi’s revival of old technologies is nostalgia: The band is often described by popular sources as “driven by nostalgia” (Gitlow) or as having a “unique sense of nostalgia” (Korallus-Shapiro) due to their video-game-inspired sound.

<16> Ultimately, Anamanaguchi preserves and reinforces the significance of chip music by reintroducing it into contemporary music production. If 8-bit music is produced and consumed in the present, it’s not necessarily a style of the past. Nostalgia, therefore, complicates what should be a clearer timeline for video game music. Unclear timelines are a common symptom of postmodern art. When analyzing architecture, Jean Baudrillard uses the term “temporal utopia” to describe Disneyland’s mixture of real and unreal, past and present; likewise, when analyzing postmodern music, Frederick Stocken uses the term “temporal village” to describe the blending of time periods among producers and consumers (536). Because contemporary music enthusiasts can enjoy a composition from a past time period, that composition “cannot, of course, be considered old-fashioned” (Stocken 536). As a result, the postmodern temporal village challenges the way music can be “understood as a product of a particular time in history” (536). Contemporary gamers still respond to arcade-style sound design, and when video game composers like Anamanaguchi adopt 1980s technologies in an effort to celebrate and canonize retro gaming aesthetics, they make these tools relevant and problematize their definition as “1980s” technologies.

<17> Market Trends Remixed by Nostalgia

<18> The modernist emphasis on a linear progression of computer game technology influences definitions of the market as well. Because sale figures follow technological advances, the industry has declared the arcade dead; for example, the 2010 Games Software Industry Profile for the United Sates omits arcades from their report altogether, defining the games software market as “the total revenues generated through the sale of console games and PC & Mac games (…) mobile and personal digital assistants (PDAs)” (6). These analysts define the industry according to technological innovation and dollar figures alone, overlooking the nostalgia aesthetic at work in contemporary video game production. Even though many arcades have permanently shut their doors, the arcade is still alive and well in the nostalgic pastiche of productions like the Scott Pilgrim video game.

<19> As with any pastiche, the music in Scott Pilgrim is partly driven by the market. According to Jameson, “aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (…) now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovation and experimentation” (4-5). For Jameson, postmodern art is influenced by capitalism as much as it is by culture, and it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two: “the interrelationship of culture and the economic [is] a continuous reciprocal interaction and feedback loop” (Jameson xiv-xv). He demonstrates this concept by analyzing the Westin Bonaventure Hotel as a work of postmodern architecture by John Portman, who “is a businessman as well as an architect and a millionaire developer, an artist who is at one and the same time a capitalist in his own right” (Jameson 44). The front entrance to the building, “on Figueroa, admits you, baggage and all, onto the second story shopping balcony, from which you must take an escalator down to the main registration desk,” (Jameson 39) underscoring the importance of using the hotel as a space for consumerism, rather than a simple space for hospitality – perhaps combining the concept of consumerism with hospitality as if they’re one and the same.

<20> If a video game is the Bonaventure Hotel, the original soundtrack is the “second story shopping balcony” (Jameson 39). Games have become a commercial space, not just a site of nostalgia and entertainment, and they’ve become very good at promoting contingent genres like music. Because the video game industry is one of the most lucrative, “with worldwide sales estimates of around $28 billion dollars each year”, they drive new business partnerships and directly impact other industries, particularly the music industry (Tessler 14). Holly Tessler points to EA as an example of a video game developer that uses games to promote popular music, and vice versa, situating video games as a new medium for music consumption. Stated differently, video games are the new “music video,” and this partnership is driven by the shared demographics between “video gamers and consumers of popular music” (Tessler 15 and 17). This partnership is apparent in the online description for the Scott Pilgrim game. It describes the game as “the rock-n-roll action love-story for the 8-bit generation,” and a section titled “Relive Scott Pilgrim’s Adventures in Awesome 8-bit,” uses Anamanaguchi’s soundtrack as a major selling point, stating that “more than 30 original music tracks by chiptune heroes Anamanaguchi rock the game and can be unlocked and collected for later enjoyment” (Ubisoft). As a result, Ubisoft commercializes Anamanaguchi’s nostalgic 8-bit style, thereby using the musicians to promote the game, but the reverse is true as well. EA’s research indicates that musicians profit significantly from their role in video games: “49% [of gamers aged 13-32] learned about – and bought – a CD by a new artist after hearing a song in a game” (qtd. in Tessler 17). Because video games are the new MTV, according to Tessler, the band uses the game to sell its music and promote its work. What’s notable about the economic forces behind the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack is the fact that classic video game music styles are still marketable. The words “awesome 8-bit” can be used in contemporary promotional materials, indicating a significant desire among consumers to revive arcade and early console gaming aesthetics.

<21> Tributes and Covers: Pastiche and Nostalgic Diegesis

<22> As a response to a nostalgic market, Anamanaguchi employs techniques for producing a sound that recreates 1980s gaming, and this sound complements the pixelated, side-scrolling design of the rest of the game. Scott Pilgrim looks like a retro game, sounds like a retro game, and plays like one, offering “the seduction of a perfect past that can be replayed, a past within which players can participate” (Fenty 22). However, the perfect past represented by the Scott Pilgrim game isn’t real: Scott Pilgrim isn’t an arcade game, even though it looks and sounds like one. The mechanics and aesthetics, therefore, invite gamers to play along in a make-believe game of the past.In this way, music contributes to the reality of the game, and the game reality that Scott Pilgrim evokes is one of nostalgia where players can relive the past.

<23> Many theorists examine the layering of reality that occurs when a player interacts with and experiences a game. Although French critic Roger Caillois discusses games in general, rather than video games specifically, according to him, games “are ‘make-believe [and are] accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality or free reality, as against real life” (10). Galloway uses the terms “diegetic” and “non-diegetic” from literary and film theory as a means of defining the boundaries of this reality in video games (7). Diegesis, for Galloway, is “the game’s total world of narrative action,” of which the musical score is a large part (7). While Collins does not cite Galloway directly, she connects this concept of diegesis to game audio, arguing that sound directly impacts diegesis by influencing the way the player receives the game and the way the player feels about the experience (Game Sound 168).

<24> The diegesis created by the Scott Pilgrim video game is one of nostalgia. According to Jameson, nostalgia is “the desperate attempt to appropriate a missing past” (19). It is a “symptom of melancholy concerning what has been, or what is considered to have been, and subsequently lost” (Duncanson 23). Nostalgia can be “best understood as a process of looking back to an unattainable past and trying to bring that past to the present” (Taylor and Whalen 3). Ultimately, it is a sentimentality for something that no longer exists – and, perhaps, never really did. Because it is focused on the absent, the missing and unattainable, nostalgia is, arguably, a “make-believe” or “second-reality” in Caillois’ sense. Games, which deal in second realities, therefore, offer a prime environment for nostalgia. In regard to video games specifically, Sean Fenty writes, “nostalgia is the yearning to return to a place – to a state of being; and video games are places – they are states of being; and because they are stored, unchanging data, they tease with the hope for a possibility of return, if only we can regain access to them” (22). The diegesis of Scott Pilgrim is ultimately an empty one, based on the sense of an unattainable past, which aligns with Jameson’s notion of the pastiche as “blank parody” (Jameson 17). The second reality presented here is, therefore, an empty one in that it represents something that never really existed in the first place.

<25> An 8-bit Bugle Call for Veteran Gamers

<26> Because Anamanaguchi designed the game’s score with nostalgic allusions to classic video games like MegaMan, the band has a clear audience in mind. They assume their listeners have a deep familiarity with arcade and early console or computer games, and they assume these people still care enough to play contemporary downloadable games like Scott Pilgrim. The consumers targeted by Anamanaguchi’s 8-bit soundtrack are comprised of veteran, aging, or mature gamers. While younger gamers may share a passion for, and knowledge of, arcade and early console or computer games, the majority of the band’s target audience is likely over the approximate age of twenty-five, making them a more lucrative demographic. As a group of gamers who are more likely to have full-time jobs to support their hobbies, they have more spending power than younger demographics.

<27> Anamanaguchi’s musical allusions to well-known classic arcade games hail veteran gamers in Althusser’s sense of interpellation. Althusser’s example of interpellation involves a police officer calling out to someone on the street who turns when he recognizes the hail was intended for him (Davis 882). Of notable interest for Althusser, more often than not, the correct subject of the hail is the one who turns around even though the hail does not clearly identify a subject (Davis 882). When connecting the concept of interpellation to games, Judd Ruggill and Ken McAllister point out that “computer games do not work so discriminatingly, directly, nor as simply, (…) instead, they impact people almost randomly, and often solicit as well as coerce” (36). Anamanaguchi’s soundtrack does not overtly identify a subject, but it’s possible that they designed their music specifically for aging gamers who could recognize and appreciate their references to arcade and early console games. Ruggill and McAllister argue this interpellation is “both invited and mandated by the medium’s aimlessness,” (37) and this aimlessness further supports this article’s view of the game and its soundtrack as a blind and purposeless pastiche in Jameson’s sense. According to Ruggill and McAllister, “any purpose that a specific computer game expresses, any aesthetic or political or commercial vision it seems to be motivated by is imposed upon it by interested parties” (37). In this case, veteran gamers project their interests and motivations onto the game by way of this interpellation. They feel themselves hailed, and they sense a connection to their memories and experiences, whether or not that connection is really there.

<28> The connection veteran gamers might feel when hailed by the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack is driven by nostalgia. According to Zach Whalen, nostalgia can be a powerful tool for the formation of a veteran gamer identity: “nostalgic themes from early games resonate powerfully with mature gamers” (1). At first, it resonates as a simple memory: “Nostalgia begins with memory, but it is more than simply the displaced memory of a past event” (Taylor and Whalen 5). MegaMan is more to veteran gamers than a childhood memory; MegaMan defines their identity. Many scholars point to games as an important element of cultural identity. Johan Huizinga, for example, famously wrote that play “promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to (…) stress their difference from the common world” (13). In much the same vein, Caillois argued that there is “an exceptional importance of play in the history of culture,” (162) writing that, from games, “it may be possible to deduce the character of different cultures” (163). Arguing for the cultural significance of games, Greg Costikyan cites Thomas Malaby’s “experience learning to play Backgammon in Greece; Greeks considered it something of a national game, and as his game improved, his opponents would say things like ‘You’re a Greek now.’ In other words, they were ascribing a cultural meaning to the game external to the game itself” (102). As these scholars point out, games reinforce cultural boundaries. As a result, games become a significant space for identity construction, and thus an important space for the exploration of nostalgia and cultural canons.

Figure 2: Screenshot from Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game

<29> The nostalgia aesthetic in Scott Pilgrim is canonized and commodified through a pastiche of elements that, as in Baudrillard’s temporal utopia and Stocken’s temporal village, challenges the modernist view of a linear progression of styles. Imitating the style and structure of 8-bit music, Anamanaguchi’s soundtrack mixes arcade and early console gaming with contemporary styles and contexts. As art that brings the past into the present, the pastiche often alludes to previous works. The Scott Pilgrim soundtrack consistently alludes to 1980s video games within its song titles and musical structures. For example, Anamanaguchi titled one of their tracks “Technoman,” which could easily be the name of a MegaMan boss, like Magnetman, or Metalman. Likewise, the style of the song is similar to the MegaMan II (Capcom, 1989) soundtrack, particularly the latter half of its title song. “Technoman” plays during the third section of the final level, where Scott Pilgrim battles robots to reach Gideon Graves, the final boss. Interestingly, Scott finds himself in a holographic projector room, revealing Gideon behind the machine at the end of the final battle, which is precisely how MegaMan finds Dr. Wily at the end of MegaMan II (see Figure 2). It’s fitting, then, that the music would align with the tempo and style of MegaMan II. Tempo is determined in musical compositions by its time signature – that is, how many beats are allotted per measure – and each measure emphasizes shifts, or repetition in the melody. The most direct similarity between Anamanaguchi’s version and MegaMan’s title song is the structure, marked by the driving, percussive beat that occurs on the second and fourth note of every measure in 4/4 time. Anamanaguchi designs “Technoman” to generate an emotional impact on aging gamers by mixing elements of MegaMan II the song. The enormously popular MegaMan series, beloved by veteran gamers, is often used as a cultural standard: those who played MegaMan II, one of the most difficult games ever designed, enjoy significant bragging rights and a firm sense of identity as a mature gamer. Anamanaguchi’s Technoman, therefore, uses nostalgia to hail veteran gamers.

<30> The track employed during the second boss battle is called “Skate or Live,” a clear reference to the NES game Skate or Die (Palcom, 1988). In Scott Pilgrim,the second boss, Lucas Lee, ultimately dies at the end of the battle by skateboarding off the rail of a staircase. The Anamanaguchi song has a similar bass line and tempo to the Skate or Die song titled “Scores for Ramp.” Based on the tempo and structure of “Skate or Live” and “Scores for Ramp,” they are likely written in 2/2 time, wherein there are two beats per measure and the half-note marks the beat. Most notably, this time signature is employed in marches or fast-paced, upbeat music, and “Skate or Live” is particularly fast-paced to support the gamer’s experience during the boss battle scene, which requires a degree of rapid button mashing. Its logical structure, therefore, supports gameplay, enhancing the gamer’s experience as he works quickly to vanquish Lucas Lee.

<31> As an allusion to a well-known retro video game, “Skate or Live” is designed to hail aging gamers and generate nostalgia, but the differences between this song and the music in Skate or Die are just as important as the similarities when viewing the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack as a pastiche. Despite the fact that Anamanaguchi uses NES technology to produce their sound, “Skate or Live” sounds much more contemporary than the music in Skate or Die, which has an 80s pop sound. According to Jameson, when the past blends with the present in the pastiche, it gets “refracted through the iron law of fashion change and the emergent ideology of the generation” (19). For Umberto Eco, postmodern art is a “leveling of pasts” that results in the “flattening of real against fake and the old on the modern” (10). The pastiche is not, therefore, a direct copy of the past; instead, it results in a mixture of styles that leans toward the contemporary, and “Skate or Live” conveys this with a contemporary punk rock sound.

<32> Topping the Charts: Canonizing Game Soundtracks

<33> As a salient example of arcade-like repetition, Anamanaguchi’s “Shrine Bros.,” – a nod to Super Mario Bros. – follows common video game music composing strategies that are intended to work within the limitations of the medium. Collins indicates that video game music, particularly for arcade or early console games, has a reputation as “repetitive, incessant bleeping” that causes gamers to “[shut] the sound off to get a bit of peace,” and causes composers to work toward “creating more variability in their soundtracks” (Pac-Man 1). She points out that the repetitious nature of video game music is caused by the fact that “gameplay length is indeterminate: A player may get stuck … or may start and stop a game repeatedly” (Game Sound 140). As a result, game music is built to loop, and players may hear a song over and over before finishing a level. “Shrine Bros” loops around a single theme with three variations that shift every ten seconds, and each variation increases in the number of notes per measure, becoming increasingly complex and technically challenging for musicians to play. In “Shrine Bros.,” the more complex variations are highlighted by the fact that they repeat three times each, versus the main theme and its least complex variation, which are repeated only two times each in the span of one-and-a-half minutes.

<34> Anamanaguchi’s ten-second, looping segments, typical of arcade and early-console game music, enable the song to serve gameplay at any length of time. Whether the player beats the level in ten seconds or ten minutes, he/she is able to listen to the theme in its entirety. However, this logical technique is not new to musical compositions. Thematic variation and “cyclic patterned repetition” is a common strategy of the Baroque and Minimalist era (Koay 25). Though the mood, tempo, and instrumentation differ greatly, Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D is built in much the same way as “Shrine Bros.” It centers on a single theme that grows increasingly complex toward the middle of the song, climaxes, and decreases in complexity as it concludes. This structure is highly repeatable, making Canon in D a popular choice for processionals at graduations and weddings, where there is an undetermined length of time, much like a video game.

<35> Because “Shrine Bros.” is a repetitious song that uses Baroque and Minimalist techniques to manage that repeatability, it is a pastiche that makes two distinct historical references: early console soundtracks and Baroque variation music. In fact, “Shrine Bros” is used in a boss battle scene where the Katayanagi twins are seen playing a modified organ, a common Baroque-era instrument (see Figure 3). This song, therefore, represents a complicated pastiche, blending Baroque aesthetics with mid-80s style and technology into this contemporary video game soundtrack. By drawing a parallel between Baroque-era compositions and 1980s video game music, Anamanaguchi implicitly argues that 8-bit music is just as rich and complex as classical music – so much so that it uses similar logical patterns of variation on a theme – and it should, therefore, be as timeless and widely appreciated as classical music. Anamanaguchi, therefore, is not only celebrating retro game music; they’re canonizing it.

Figure 3: Screenshot from Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game

<36> Coda

<37> Historians and market analysts typically define trends in the video game industry by technological advances and dollar figures. They mark movements in game audio by the emergence of new tools and technologies, announcing the death of the arcade or anything else considered old or obsolete. Despite these trends, however, old tools are still used in contemporary composing practices, and veteran gamers represent a powerful and lucrative demographic. As a significant market presence, this aging population of gamers influences the design and commodification of contemporary game styles, problematizing the timeline of composing technologies and driving the market for pastiched productions such as the Scott Pilgrim video game. Anamanaguchi capitalizes on this nostalgia, complementing the overall pastiched style of the game itself by setting it to an 8-bit soundtrack. Through its nostalgia aesthetic, the soundtrack contributes to a nostalgic game diegesis, one that allows mature gamers to relive childhood memories with the arcade and affords young gamers a chance to experience old-fashioned aesthetics in contemporary contexts.

<38> The paradox, though, is that nostalgia is a yearning for something that no longer exists – and, perhaps, never did. The diegesis these gamers experience through this music is, therefore, a version of the past; it is a “pastness” that is refracted through the lens of the present. Nostalgia complicates history, and history is key to canon formation. Typically, the music canon is viewed as the end-result of a process of assessing specific artists, albums, or songs on the basis of cultural context and aesthetic design. Music canons consist of works that represent historical movements, and they are built around a modernist view of a linear progression of style and technology. While Anamanaguchi alludes to specific video games in the design and titles of their songs, what they ultimately present as canonical are a series of disconnected sounds and styles built on an empty past, indicative of the emptiness in Jameson’s notion of the pastiche. For Jameson, the pastiche is a “blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs,” underscoring the lack of purpose behind postmodern art as it imitates and alludes to previous works (Jameson 17). Anamanaguchi evokes a connection to the past, celebrating and preserving it in this effort to contribute to the game music canon, yet their nostalgic contribution ultimately destabilizes the canon by problematizing its sense of historical progression.

<39> Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Kevin Moberly for the generosity of his feedback, his insights, his advice, and his time. I would also like to thank Matthew Beale and Zack Hill, as well as other members of the Old Dominion University graduate program in English, for suggesting valuable resources and discussing key concepts. Finally, I would like to thank the editors of Reconstruction, as well as those who attended the 2014 Southwest Popular & American Culture Associations Conference, for their insightful feedback.


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Anmanaguchi photo credit: Jalapeño via Compfight cc.

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