The PC speaker (or beeper) was the first sound system to be used in IBM compatible PCs. It is unable to play more than one tone at the same time, thus truly polyphonic music was impossible on a PC for many years. This was the reason it was often nicknamed a 'beeper'. However, some innovations on the part of composers and audio programmers meant aural polyphony could be achieved. This was done by using minute gaps in between each 'beep' resulting in an aural polyphonic effect. This technology led to some games being able to mimic speech. Today the PC speaker is used to show basic errors or warnings on a computer, though it can still be used to its full potential should the need arise. The beeper was followed by the introduction of "sound cards" to computers. These were expansion cards to the existing technology of a PC, that could be installed by the PC owner. The first computer to feature a digital sound processor was the Commodore Amiga released in 1985. Before 1988, sound cards for PCs were rare. The cards were introduced specifically for audio software such as music composition tools or speech synthesis, and could play either one or the other. AdLib was one of the first companies to produce a card with two modes. One mode used nine pre-programmable voices and the other used three voices to produce five independent voices giving a total of eleven. However, it was a monophonic card. Creative Labs brought out a stereo audio card around the same time called the "Creative Music System". It had twelve voices, but the basic technology behind it was essentially a squarewave generator. It sounded like twelve simultaneous PC speakers, and so it never caught on the way the AdLibs audio card did. Creative Labs then produced the Sound Blaster card. This
was basically an AdLib clone, but it added the ability to interface to MIDI equipment, such as synthesizers, a sound coprocessor to record and play back digital audio, and a game port for adding a joystick. The Sound Blaster eventually dominated the market. This line of cards led to technology which could add recorded dialogue to computer games and even reproduce reduced quality motion video. When games company Sierra On-Line chose to make music for add-on hardware instead of the built in PC-speaker, the concept of PC music changed in a huge way. Sierra opted to make in-game music (for King's Quest 4), for both Roland and Adlib synthesizers. The popularity of Roland's synthesizer (the MT-32) lead the way for the adoption of both General Midi and MPU-401 standards as the definitive means of playing ingame music until the mid-1990s. Examples of Midi music being can be found in games such as Doom. (example given on CD). General Midi systems allow a computer to hold a fixed number of sounds, like a synthesizer, and basically map out which part is to play where in the given music.4

"Any one instance of music has various relationships, to other music, both within the film and more generally". (Kassabian: 2001)
Again, this statement can be applied to game music aswell. One cannot look at music in games only from the "in-game" music standpoint; all musics must be considered.
Other musics may appear, but they are the type that might come from radios or have a visible source within a game, and are considered diegetic. However, as Whalen has observed, music can also form part of the action, as in Super Mario Bros. or Digger. In these cases, musical motifs can be used as accompaniment to certain specific actions, such as jumping. This is a subtle method of letting the player know that they are succeeding in musical as opposed to lingual or visual ways.
From a developers point of view, the title screen music is very important. This is the first music one hears when playing the game. For example, when playing Hitman 2: SIlent Assassin, Jesper Kyds rousing choral work accompanies the title screen. It makes a big impact on the player. An image of Hitmans head on the screen is visible, with darkened eyes, and wielding a gun. [see audio example 2] The music itself sounds not unlike Carl Orff's O Fortuna. These two elements, the music and image, together create a tension, and one which infuses the Hitman character with power, and since the player will be controlling Hitman, the feeling of power transfers to the player. It is not uncommon for the same music to appear in 19
the game at some point. This happens in Hitman 2. Since the power of the Hitman figure has been established, this music can now be played at certain points in the game where his power has been shown, typically after he has succeeded in a major part of a mission. Thus the title music is important due to it being the first music the player hears, its usual re-occurence within the game and the fact that it can establish something hitherto unknown about the games narrative, tone and atmosphere.
In-game music usually consists of cued musics (this applies to more recent titles), or in older games, as background music. Both are usually looped in some way due to the uncertain time restrictions of the game. Cued music is music which is triggered after a specific event in the action of the game occurs.
There are many ways in which game developers can choose to use these musics. There can be cued and non-cued background musics and cued action musics. Another type is ambient or atmospheric music, and it can be put under the heading of background musics. On top of this, we have music as action mentioned above, and cut-scene music. The last category is music as theme. Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time demonstrates this well. This also occurs in games where the aim is to make music. Using terms like in-game music however, do not help, when the main focus of study here is the in-game music. So, I will break them down further.

The next section will briefly look at the main functions of these different musics and two widely accepted reasons for why they exist in games.

Background music

Earlier games included the use of purely "background music". The music had no immediate ties to the action or (narrative, if any), in the game. It occurs during the main gameplay, and not during title screens or cut-scenes. This music works in just the same way as the music which accompanied the earliest silent films worked. It was usually an attempt to mirror the mood of the gameplay, and would typically be lighthearted, such as that in Carnival, which was the very first game to feature continuous background music. Games were for play, and so the original music mirrored this: play is a lighthearted activity. Another example worth noting is Super Mario Bros. (The huge success of this particular background music has become a sort of internet phenomenon, which I will be examining in my case study). As has been proven, certain musics elicit certain reactions from listeners6, and there is a general concensus as to what type of music may refer to what emotion.
see Prologue to Anahid KASSABIAN, Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in
Contemporary Hollywood Film Music, (Routledge Ltd. 2000) and Claudia Gorbmans essay Why Music? The Sound Film and Its Spectator from Unheard Melodies, 1987. 25

Ambience

Computer game music can, on top of being background music, also create an ambience, an underlying feel to the action. It can set a scene. By using the musical conventions mentioned above, newer games seek to accentuate the action in a game. Music in this way not only parallels the action, as programmatic music will, but also helps create the actual environment in which the games narrative is set. For example, the game Timesplitters 2 for the Playstation 2 uses different musics for each level, each of which are set in different points in history (and the future). The 1920's Chicago level employs music with a muted trumpet and sounds blues influenced, while the Space-Age futuristic level uses techno music, equating technology and the future with dance music, as many films also do. The Chicago level uses music influenced by actual music from the time in which the level is set. This a) creates an ambience, thus "setting the scene" b) brings a lot of connotative information to the level, exploiting people's preconceived associative notions about jazz, blues and gangsters and c) acts as background music.

the outcome of a game, the music must be able to "choose" which path to take after the player makes a certain decision. The differences between film music and computer game music however separate the two, rather than bring them together, as the next section shows. These musics are prgrammed to play at different stages of the game, and the way they are programmed was apparently pioneered by LucasArts. They produced a series of Dark Forces games in 1995 that had two different levels, "Dramatic" and "Standby", each level including different loops of music. The two levels os music had two different 'feels'. This is essentially trying to mimic the way a film-score works, but due to the uncertainty of the outcome of a game, the music must be able to "choose" which path to take after the player makes a certain decision. The differences between film music and computer game music however separate the two, rather than bring them together, as the next section shows.

CHAPTER 8

Film music versus Computer game music
Some film music theory can be successfully applied to computer game music. Anahid Kassabian's composed and compiled scores would seem to be one of them. As mentioned above, many games use pre-existing music, which will bring their affiliating identifications. Others use their own music, and offer assimilating identifications. See the example of 'Elite' above. [see audio example 13] People who are familiar with Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey will immediately be reminded of the film when they see a 3d object (a spaceship) spinning and hear the beeper title music playing Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube Waltz. This is obviously intentional on the part of the programmers. Luckily, when discussing computer games from that era, the composer was usually the programmer, and so intention is not such a problematic issue. Others however, who never knew about the original, will only associate that music with that game, and identify it primarily this way. The music here has changed to suit the technology which plays it, here the PC speaker or "beeper", which is a far cry from the orchestral version. Here Kassabian's "immediate threat of history" which compiled scores may bring to players (she applied it to viewers) might not be so blatant, given the separation of the original music from it's PC speaker facsimile. No harmonies are possible here, and pauses in the orchestral version do not appear in the PC version. As Kassabian states in her prologue to Hearing Film: "Film music, while born out of the traditions of nineteenth century European symphonic music, was never meant to be an absolute; it has always been considered a meaning-making system by its producers" (Kassabian: 2000) 40

So, the fact that film has a narrativity which is only "one-way" separates it from a game, which ultimately has an unknown outcome and thus an unknown narrative. Music in film usually helps the narrative, being employed at sections to inform the viewer of what someone might be thinking, feeling or trying to communicate, or merely echoing the nature of their actions with preconceived musical conventions. 42
Film music is usually seen as a starting point from which to write music for games:
The following is taken from Matthew Belinkies insightful look at game music composing, "Video Game Music: Not Just Kid Stuff":
"We want to take the experience that everybody has at the movies and make it into something that you control," says Liam Byrne. "You're playing through your own adventure. We're used to constant soundtracks in your entertainment. The more exactly the video game soundtrack matches your experience, the more involving that experience is going to be."
(Byrne in Belinkie: 1999)
Liam Byrne is, or was at Belinkie's time of writing, a sound technician at Creative Labs, a company who were pioneers in sound card production. He goes on to posit that someday, computer game music technology should be able to compose the actual music as the game is played. That has not happened yet, but as is visible above, the technology is at least breaking the music up now, and able to fuse different musics together. This is the major difference between game and film music. This will never happen in film music. And computer game music is becoming more and more intelligent as technology evolves. Thus the future of game music is a future which looks nothing like that of film music.
James Hannigan, composer for Eidos Interactive's 2003 Republic: The Revolution, has written at length about the problems inherent in approaching game music and indeed, games
in general from a filmic perspective. The following is from an interview with him undertaken by the online computer game magazine, 'Gamespy':
". I do concede the two mediums are visually led and, in some ways, share a similar purpose for sound and music. Having said that, I see no reason why some styles can't be shared by both industries. Part of me feels that by deriving ideas from film we are enforcing the perception that games are secondary in some way, and mere spin-off material generated by another, more senior entertainment industry. Overall, I would say the future quality of soundtracks in general depends partly on how much developers are willing or able to spend on them and how seriously they take the implementation of sound and music in games".
With new technology game music is managing to do this. Still, many are still under the mistaken impression that computer game music and film music are the same. This is also due, in part, to the media's portrayal of certain games which mimic film. The television advertisement for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas featured stylish camera moves, rock music and explosions. Also shown were cut scenes from the game. Cut scenes are usually the only purely cinematic aspects of a game. Thus the media, or the people promoting the game, promote it in such a way as to make it emulate cinema. This is a common way of promoting games and is down to marketing departments of games companies, which today are closely tied to that of the film industry, as the next section will show.

"Over the past decade, the internet has helped spawn a new movement in digital music. It is not academically-based, and for the most part the composers are self-taught.unfortunately, cultural exchange between non-academic artists and research centers has been lacking" 52

(Cascone: 2000)

The internet is the only forum that currently exists for game music afficionados to show examples of their work, and discuss computer game music theory. The majority of paper literature on computer game music usually consists of 'How-To' guides, as opposed to examinations of the phenomenon itself. Many of the articles referenced in this dissertation are web-based, and are not published elsewhere.
Certain websites, such as www.ocremix.org, are devoted to hosting people's remixes of computer game musics. Thus now computer game music, and the remodelling of it has formed a new subculture. There are not many advertisements on mainstream media for computer game soundtracks yet, but the internet is teeming with personal webpages devoted to it, and as seen in the 'Marketing' section above, the popularity of the music itself is huge. It is much more popular in Japan than in the West but this is gradually changing over time.
By 1999, Japan had accepted computer game music as a pop culture. The following quote is taken from Belinkie's essay, and is a Japanese games composer called Mr. Pummell speaking about games music as culture:
"Mr. Pummell explains: "We have a pretty wide distinction here [Japan] between pop culture and culture. I think the distinction over there [America] is even greater. Everyone accepts [game music] for what it is: pop culture, fun. When it's time to get serious, they get very serious.In the United States, however, the public is not prepared to accept game music even as pop culture. 53
Soundtracks are practically nonexistent". (Belinkie: 1999)
This is not true anymore. This was written seven years ago. The number of game soundtracks now available on www.amazon.com is in the hundreds. (This is a website which has most of its stockists in America - thus they supply to Americans). This subculture is finally starting to approach a pop culture in the United States.
"In the 21st Century, pop culture is culture; this is healthy and desirable, and computer technology is facilitating this important progression" (Neill: 2004)
To actually understand the culture who have this large interest in game music, we must first examine the 'gamers' themselves. A European survey has not been carried out yet on the subject, so, taking the United States as an alternative example, here are some statistics about the main body of people playing the games. The following are statistics from a 2006 survey undertaken by the ESA24 (Entertainment Software Association). These apply to the gaming culture, a large proportion of which are buying the soundtracks, remixing the music and performing the music :

"Fifty percent of all Americans play video games."
This is a staggering amount of people. Of the current population at time of writing, (295,734, 134) half were playing games in 2006.
Facts available at http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php 54
"The average age of a game player is 33 years old."
This is surprising, as games have a reputation of being played mostly by children and adolescents.
Another trend showing the reaches of game music is the professional performances of it. This phenomenon was spawned in Japan nearly twenty years ago. The first game music concert was called "Dragon Quest in Concert (Family Classic Concert)" and was held on August 20, 1987 at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Japan. The music had been composed by and conducted by Koichi Sugiyama. (The game was known as Dragon Warrior in America). Since then, the Dragon Quest music has been performed by various orchestras, including the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony, and London Philharmonic Orchestra. Between 1991 and 1996 five different Orchestral Game Music Concerts were held in Japan.
A European Symphonic Game Music Concert series took place at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig in Germany in August 2003 at which the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. performed It was a sell-out concert and was the first games music event to occur outside of Japan. It was repeated in 2004 and 2005 as part of the Leipzig Games Conference.
Two tours of video game music have recently been launched in the United States. On May a Final Fantasy concert was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall in California. It was a one-day sell-out. This led to a tour called "Dear Friends: Music from Final Fantasy", to be performed at various cities across the United 55
States. On July 6, 2005, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra also held a "Video Games Live" concert at the Hollywood Bowl. This concert featured a plethora of computer game music performances and also incorporated real-time video feeds which were synchronised to the music, as well as laser and light special effects. Twenty four dates for this to tour the States were announced, however, most of the announced concerts were cancelled
A more recent (and more successful) games music tour has been launched.The world tour of "Play! A Video Game Symphony" premiered in Chicago on Saturday, May 27th, 2006. At the time of writing, these concerts seemed to still be in full swing.25
Game music is now considered in awards ceremonies usually kept for film. The 'BAFTA Games Awards' were recently set up, at which Jesper Kyd's soundtrack to Hitman: Contracts, was awarded best "Original Music" in 2005. 26

CHAPTER 12

Game music, Technology and Academia
Subjects which are bound to technology seem to have a very hard time being integrated into the ebb and flow of academic musical discourse.
"Most people of artistic tastes share the widespread distrust and dislike of machinery and argue that anything pretending to be art cannot come out of a machine.the moment man ceased to make music with his voice alone the art became machine-ridden." (Barzun: 1961)
"One of the ways technology works in Western culture is to call attention to itself when new, for at that moment it has no social life.whatever is new is viewed as 'technological'." (Taylor 2001: 6)
However, film music has been recognised as something which can be studied in academia. Why not computer game music? It is perhaps the newness of the medium for which it is written. Some people do not take it seriously, and granted, there is not a lot which is 'serious' about computer games: the main reason they are played is for enjoyment. Perhaps it is the fact that computer game music is associated with younger people and play. "Play" is a concept which many musicians might not like adhering to. It literally means to "amuse oneself", and thus has nothing to do with "work", a concept which is usually ingrained into the professional musicians psyche from an early age.
If Taylors quote above is true, then computer game music is going to have a difficult time being integrated into Western culture. It's advances will be inextricably linked to technological advances: the better the technology gets, the better we will be able to adapt the music to the game, or even the game to the music. Thus, the most innovative computer game soundtracks, those heralded by James Hannigan, will arrive along with new technology, and might not get a chance to become 'normalised'.
Another factor which may dissuade people from treating game music seriously may be the crass commercialism that has now engulfed computer games in general. It forms a huge part of the entertainment industry, and I have already examined this elsewhere in the dissertation.

Thus academic discourse can help come up with a language which all game music theorists / composers / enthusiasts can use and help to further the field as a whole. Successful theory leads to better education and awareness of how music and games work together.
Yet considerable headway is being made in academia for research into computer game musics. As I write this dissertation, two conventions have been organised, one in Sweden and the other in Chicago which incorporate game music as a subject. There does however, need to be more research done in the musical arena of academia, rather than just in the gaming one.

CHAPTER 13

Case Study: The Dissemination of Mario Bros. "Overworld Theme" by Koji Kondo
In this section I am looking at one piece of music in particular. I will analyse the music itself, and then examine different productions and performances of it. The piece I will be examining is the "Overworld" theme from Nintendos 1985 release "Super Mario Bros" for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). The Guinness Book of World Records cites Super Mario Bros. as the best-selling video game of all time. There are countless different versions of the game music, as it has been remixed and reinvented by many different musicians. This case study will look at several of these versions. How is it that one song in particular has stirred up so many people to reinvent it? It may be a shared love of the video game, and thus the song. Many professional musicians have not have heard of this tune, but it is familiar to most people of my generation. This case study illustrates how game music has taken on a whole new dimension, including even that of performance, even if there is a large novelty factor in it.
[I have created a separate compact disc for use with this case study. References to audio examples will restart at number 1 on Mario Bros. CD].
To understand the Mario Bros. Overworld theme a little more, let us first delve into the world of it's composer, Koji Kondo. He was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1960. As a teenager he undertook classical music training, and learned to play several instruments. He was hired in 1983 by Nintendo to write music for its 'Famicom' systems. Kondo here found himself in a 74
totally different environment. Here he was limited to composing for only four "instruments" (two monophonic pulse channels, a monophonic triangle wave channel which could be used as a bass, and a noise channel used for percussion) due to the system's primitive sound chip. Although he eventually found a way to add a fifth channel with the help of Nintendo's developers, his music remained severely limited on the system.

Kondo has stayed with Nintendo through various consoles, including the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo in North America and Europe), the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo Gamecube and most recently the Nintendo DS. These latter systems have vastly improved Nintendo's audio capabilities, and Kondo today composes music with CD quality sound.
Kondos main influences could be said to be latin music, jazz and classical music (mainly ragtime and marches). Generally, his pieces are predominantly melody-based with little or no supporting harmony. His work is thus seen as being highly influenced by Eastern Asian music. This makes him somewhat unique among the most popular video game composers; his contemporaries such as Nobuo Uematsu and Koichi Sugiyama produce more Westerninfluenced compositions for their games.

Overworld Theme:

[see audio example number 1 on Mario compact disc]
The following quote characterises how many people relate to this piece of music.
"Today, 66% of college students polled can hum it's melody, even though many of them haven't played the game for years" (Belinkie 1999)
Belinkie has described the Overworld theme as:
".a sort of light jazz tune, but with so much energy pumped into each articulated note, one is not sure whether it invokes cheesy Vegas lounge music or a Dixieland band. It is sort of like mellow elevator music on psychedelic drugs. At times, it invokes the Tijuana Brass with its cheerful cheesiness". (Belinkie 1999)
The following is a brief analysis of the piece I have carried out. It has a fairly simple construction, which allows it to be looped indefinitely for however long it takes for the player to finish the level. It begins with a temporary modulation to G major, which is followed by the main theme, A, in C major. This theme usually repeats once. Theme B starts at bar 11 and repeats at bar 19. There is new material at bar 27 which culminates in the introductory few bars again at bars 33-34. Theme A repeats at bar 35. Theme C enters at bar 43 and repeats at bar 51. The new material from earlier reappears at bar 59 and at bar 67 theme C plays one more time.
This relatively simple form allows it to be performed by many people, and chopped and interchanged with the other Mario Bros. themes by remixers and bands alike. Incidentally, the remixing of computer game music is a huge phenomenon on the internet. Aswell as this tune, many versions quote the Underwater theme (a waltz), the Star theme (A frenetic rhythmic figure made up of two chords and syncopated bass) and the Underworld theme (an atonal figure, instantly recognisable by three notes, repeated in octaves played one after the other). Below are some examples.
I have endeavoured in each case to contact the authors of each piece for some sort of comment, but, as is the case commonly for internet material, some people were not available to comment on their creations, or could not be located.

Bibliography

DONNELLY, Kevin; Film Music: Critical Approaches, Edinburgh University Press, 2001 GORBMAN, Claudia, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music; Indiana University Press, 1987 KASSABIAN, Anahid; Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music; Routledge, New York, 2001 TAYLOR, Timothy; Strange Sounds Music Technology and Culture; London, Routledge, 2001 Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, eds Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, London, Continuum Publishing, 2004 KENT, Steven L. The Ultimate History of Video Games, New York, Three Rivers Press, 2001 WHALEN, Zach, Play Along - An Approach to Videogame Music; The International Journal of Computer Game Research, http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/whalen/ Volume 4, Issue 1, November 2004 BELINKIE, Matthew. Video game music: not just kid stuff, (hosted by www.vgmusic.com) http://www.vgmusic.com/vgpaper.shtml, December 1999 HANNIGAN, James, Changing our tune, from www.jameshannigan.co.uk (First published in Develop Magazine, April 2004. Edited by Dan Daley and Owain Bennallack) http://www.jameshannigan.co.uk/changing.htm HANNIGAN, James, Let us Play, from www.jameshannigan.co.uk http://www.jameshannigan.co.uk/58-uk-0505-hannigan.pdf HANNIGAN, James, The Business of Music for Games from www.jameshannigan.co.uk http://www.jameshannigan.co.uk/business.htm 91
GOULD, Glenn "The Prospects of Recording" Audio Culture:Readings in Modern Music (2004) 115 - 126 NEILL, Ben "Breakthrough Beats: Rhythm and the Aesthetics of Contemporary Electronic Music." Audio Culture:Readings in Modern Music (2004) 386 - 391. CASCONE, Kim "The Aesthetics of Failure: "Post-Digital" Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music" Audio Culture: Readgins in Modern Music 392 - 398 BARZUN, Jacques. " Introductory remarks to a program of works produced at the ColumbiaPrinceton Electronic Music Center". Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (2004) STOCKHAUSEN, Karlheinz "Electronic and Instrumental Music" Audio Culture:Readings in Modern Music (2004) 370-380.
Web Sources http://www.9inchnails.com/articles/articles.php?id=30; accessed June http://kwarp.com/music.html (Greg Lieberman); accessed June http://www.ocremix.org; accessed May http://www.boards.ie; accessed August http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koji_Kondo; accessed May 14th 2006 http://www.chudahs-corner.com; accessed July http://www.vgmusic.com; accessed July http://www.media-awareness. ca/english/resources/research_documents/studies/video_games/video_game_culture.cfm; accessed July Paul Weir Interview at http://www.music4games.net/Features_Display.aspx?id=80; accessed June Jerry McCulley review of Halo 2 soundtrack at at http://www.amazon.com/Halo-2-VolVarious-Artists/dp/B00067RF6E/ref=pd_sxp_f_i/104-8323324-0475910?ie=UTF8; accessed August 12 2006

23. Ghostmaster music: This music is created through programming that adds together different instruments playing figures of similar tempos and 'feels', depending on the fear level achieved in the game. The player takes the role of Ghostmaster, while the object of this game is to scare humans.
24. Xenon 2 title and background music: The Bitmap Brothers co-operated with the British musician Tim Simenon (operating under the name "Bomb the Bass" at the time) to include the hip hop track 'Megablast' as theme music to their spaceship game Xenon 2. There are two versions of the track in the game: a nearly faithful rendition (only missing a few spoken lines) as the loading music, and a simplified version as the in-game background music. That is what this is.
25. 'Megablast' original by Bomb the Bass: This is the original version of the music which was digitized above, with the author's help.

Game-ography

Xenon 2 Megablast is a computer game for the Amiga, Atari ST, PC, Sega Mega Drive and was developed by the Bitmap Brothers in the early 1990s. It is a vertically scrolling spaceship shooter29 game. The game has a generic sci-fi theme and almost no plot, focusing instead on presentation and gameplay. It was the quality of the music and graphics that led to the game's memorability.
Digger is a Canadian computer game released by Windmill Software in 1983. The player is placed in an underground maze, and can dig horizontal and vertical tunnels through it30. At various points on the board are emeralds and bags of gold. Monsters appear at the top righthand corner. If earth is excavated from under a gold bag, then the bag will wobble for a few seconds and then drop; if it falls more than one row, it will break open after falling, releasing gold which can be collected.
This means that the game shows a spaceship which is movable around a screen, while the
actual screen scrolls upwards at the same time.
This type of game was very common in the early days of computer games for the PC.

Elite is a seminal space trading computer game, originally published by Acornsoft in1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. The game's title derives from the player's goals to raise their combat rating from Harmless, through Mostly Harmless, Poor, Average, Above Average, Competent, Dangerous, and Deadly, before reaching their status to 'Elite'.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and released in 2004. It is the fifth game in the Grand Theft Auto series. The game involves many different specific missions and in-game games.36 Free-roaming around a huge fictional Californian city stealing cars is the other main activity. It is set in the 1990's.
In these games, the screen usually moves from the left-hand side to the right-hand side of
the level or world in which it is set, and the player is expected to control the character accordingly.
These are smaller games that exist within bigger games. For example, in San Andreas, one
can play "They Crawled From Uranus", a simple arcade game, in a bar. 102
The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time was released in late 1998. It is an adventure game which takes place in the fictional kingdom of Hyrule, and was the first 3D Zelda game of the series. Playing as 'Link', the player must battle and puzzle their way though the game, finding certain items to aid him. A dungeon typically contains a special weapon, often needed to defeat the 'Boss' at the end.
Prince of Persia was released in 1990 for the PC and is a platform game. The player plays as an imprisoned prince who must fight his way through labyrinthine dungeons while also solving puzzles.
3-Demon is a wireframe DOS game (Dos is the predecessor to Windows on PCs) based on Pac-Man. The player wanders in a 3-D maze, eating pellets and avoiding red ghosts. Eating a power pellet turned the ghosts green and gives him the ability to eat them for extra points.
Wolfenstein 3d is a computer game that is generally regarded as having popularized the first person shooter genre on the PC. It was created by id Software in 1992. The gamer plays an imprisoned American soldier in a World War II Nazi war prison. The player is looking forward, like in 3-Demon, except he has weapons now. The same company went on to make Doom.
PaRappa the Rapper (1996) is considered conceptually similar to the classic 1980s game Simon, in which the player is required to repeat sequences of sounds and light. This title demands that the player get the timing correct, and provides clips of "rap" that are triggered