While you don't need audio to play a game, the music and sound effects drastically impact the gameplay experience of any video game. Knowing this, we wanted to establish our musical themes early. The first notes of a game set the tone for the for the player's experience and influence their emotions before they experience anything else. Getting it right means everything.

One of the many challenges of the 8-bit era is the audio limitations of the hardware. Because we're building Bug Squashers to run on a real cartridge and NES system, we had to stick the limited sound channels. This actually fits our game perfectly, given the overall influence the Tron franchise has on Bug Squashers and the digital realm setting of our story. Melding the orchestral feeling synth work of the original film's trailblazing composer, Wendy Carlos, and the deep, driving bass of Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy soundtrack was difficult enough. We also needed to maintain a sense of hope and positivity. Tron plus Mario, if you will.

Did we succeed? I certainly think so. Our composer and musician, Matias Hein, absolutely nailed it. The main melody went through a few iterations, but even that figuring out process was transformative for the game's overall development. For all the design work I've done so far, commissioned art work, and planned out marketing, I was struggling with the game's story. I knew HOW it would play, but not WHY we'd be planning. 

Story may not be the main focus of many NES projects, but it was important to me. Hearing the theme sparked an explosion of ideas. I ran from my office to find my wife and run these ideas by her. 20 minutes later, she forced me to go write everything down so I wouldn't forget it. Now we have a central plot, our main villain (the Bowser to our Mario), and even plotted out how the tutorial level will work. All from a less than 30 second clip of chiptune music.

Like I said, getting it right means everything. Matias got it right and now I'm even more excited about this game than I was last week when we started this journey. I hope y'all find the right sound for your games as well. It'll make a world of difference.

You can listen to the track in the linked YouTube video now. I'm working on getting it (and the rest of the soundtrack) on music streaming services as well, but that's a whole process that I don't have time for just yet.