12 Things You Didn't Know About Video Game Soundtracks
11. Nintendo Hated Metroid's Soundtrack
Hirozaku ‘Hip’ Tanaka had enjoyed a successful yet not particularly noteworthy tenure composing serviceable albeit largely generic scores for a series of early Nintendo Famicom titles, before he was put in charge of the company’s ambitious new space adventure, Metroid.
The game, which followed intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran's journey to the desolate Planet Zebes in order to retrieve the eponymous parasitic life, featured bleak, cavernous environments which exuded a foreboding and cloying sense of isolation - the sort of atmospheric setting which had seldom cropped up in a game to that point.
Game music had largely settled into a niche of the cheerful and chirpy, with melodic tunes lacking any degree of ambience; exactly the sort which would be utterly incongruous in Metroid. Determined to hasten the maturation of the genre, Tanaka considered his new project as the perfect one to take video game soundtracks in a new direction.
The composer drew influence from film scores to construct a dankly brooding, minimalistic score that perfectly complemented the game’s similarly foreboding atmosphere. Almost entirely lacking in melody, and replete with silence, the low-key score encapsulated the mood of Samus Aran's lonely journey to Zebes almost to a tee.
By contributing to the game's claustrophobic character, the soundtrack was one of the first examples of video game music that had a tangible impact on gameplay. Nevertheless, when they heard the results, Tanaka’s superiors absolutely hated the score. "The music was all so dark...it wasn't well received," recalled Tanaka.