‘The original Game Boy sounds the best’: A very nerdy conversation with legendary Nintendo composer Hip Tanaka

While most people associate Koji Kondo with Nintendo’s music, due to his work on the Mario and Zelda games, I think of Hirokazu Tanaka because of his work on practically everything else.

Hirokazu Tanaka is video game music royalty, having worked at Nintendo from 1980 until 1999. Tanaka started his career at Nintendo making the sound effects for its early arcade games like Space Firebird, Radar Scope, Heli Fire, and a little game by the name of Donkey Kong.

As the company shifted its focus to home systems, Tanaka became one of its most notable composers, creating the music for such iconic titles as Metroid, Kid Icarus, Super Mario Land, Balloon Fight, Dr Mario, and the Game Boy version of Tetris.

More than just a composer, however, Tanaka was also involved in software and hardware development. He played a role in creating the audio hardware for the Famicom (the NES in the West) and the Game Boy, and it was his work on the latter in particular that led some to consider him the father of chiptune music.

Essentially, when you think of ‘retro’ video game music and you hear that NES or Game Boy sound in your head – even when you think of stuff he was never directly involved in, like the Final Fantasy or Mega Man soundtracks, or chiptune music from modern bands like Anamanaguchi – Tanaka’s work on the hardware meant he played a huge role in how they all sounded.

As someone who’s owned every Nintendo console since the NES days, and who fell in love with his music from an early age – I have a distinct childhood memory of the title screen theme of Kid Icarus (see above), so it’s fair to say I was delighted to have the opportunity to sit down with the composer at Kyoto’s BitSummit event earlier this year.

“When you think of ‘retro’ video game music and you hear that NES or Game Boy sound in your head, Tanaka’s work on the hardware meant he played a huge role in how they all sounded.”

Incredibly, Tanaka’s last full game soundtrack was more than two decades ago, in the form of Chee-Chai Alien, a 2001 Game Boy Color game he also designed as part of his role at Pokémon co-owner Creatures, Inc. Tanaka joined Creatures, and eventually became its president, in 1999, after Nintendo took issue with him creating music for the Pokémon anime in Japan.

Although he’s continued making his own music, I’ve always wondered why Tanaka hasn’t created a full game soundtrack for nearly 25 years now. I asked him if it was to do with the fact that making video game music is somewhat ‘easier’ these days, in that music can simply be imported without the need to program each instrument and note into the game as there was in the 8-bit and 16-bit days.

“In terms of whether or not there’s an achievement in doing it, the achievement comes in when you create a soundtrack, or music or sound for games, that people like,” he replied. “When it’s popular, and you know people like it, that’s where the true achievement lies.”

He added: “When you’re a composer for game music, there’s actually a lot of things that people don’t know. Back in the day, it wasn’t just making music, you’d have to make all the sound effects as well. So you’d have to keep in your mind not just, ‘I need to make the music’, but also ‘I need to make the sound effects, I need to program everything into the game’.”

He added: “This is something that is not common knowledge, but when you’re making all the music and sound effects for a game, balancing how they sound against each other, and how loud one should be, and how loud they’ll sound when playing with the others, is something that you have to play around with. For me, that was really fun, it was a sense of achievement to do it.”

Given that he had also been involved in programming and hardware design (as well as production in his later years at Creatures), I was reminded of Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai’s recent claim that it’s harder these days to find a director with a wide range of skills, given that developers tend to be hired for single disciplines now. I wondered if Tanaka agreed with him.

“There’s actually a lot of things that people don’t know. Back in the day, it wasn’t just making music, you’d have to make all the sound effects as well.”

“I think it’s really hard to give a general answer to that,” he replied. “I think there are some people who are really good at what they do without having that broad experience of trying different things, and there are some people who maybe could have used that experience. Everybody is different, so it’s really hard to give an answer.

“One thing I can say, though, is that if you have experience doing all of these various kinds of activities as part of the game development process, you know how it feels – how the people who are making it, how they think, and how they feel. And this is something that can help prevent difficulties and quarrels within the development staff.

“In game development, there are a lot of times where people are butting heads over design and creative decisions. And if you can put yourself in the shoes of somebody else because you’ve been there and you’ve done that, it really helps you cut off those things and prevent those kinds of quarrels from happening or growing out of hand.”

A musical misunderstanding

When Nintendo released the Famicom Disk System in Japan in 1986, it designed the hardware to offer numerous enhancements over the Famicom / NES, including improved sound. Specifically, the Disk System featured an extra sound channel, which allowed for extra instrumentation that the Famicom wasn’t capable of.

Games like The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II, Kid Icarus, and Metroid actually made their debut on the Famicom Disk System first, before being ported to the Famicom / NES. Because the standard console couldn’t play the music as it was created for the Disk System, it had to be downgraded. It’s the reason why the Nintendo Music app features separate NES and Famicom Disk System soundtracks for some of its older games.

Here’s a comparison video from YouTube showing what I mean. Listen to the difference between the NES version of the Metroid theme, and the Famicom Disk System version (the one originally composed in the first place):

That Kid Icarus track that got me all teary as a child, then, wasn’t actually the way it was originally supposed to sound – not that I was aware of it at the time, of course.

I wanted to ask Tanaka how he felt about having to make these concessions, knowing that some players – especially those in the West, where NES players never got the Famicom Disk System – didn’t know their game’s music sounded different from the original.

His answer was very confusing, but having since listened back to my recording of the interview, it’s clear why that is. Not familiar with the Disk System, the interpreter asked Tanaka about the difference between music on the NES and the Famicom, not the Disk System.

For the majority of games on these systems, there wasn’t really any difference between Famicom and NES music, so Tanaka understandably was a little confused. It was a happy accident, though, because it did lead to an interesting answer that went far more technical than I had intended.

“Japan is an extremely humid country, and there’s a lot of very dry atmosphere, and the very wetness of the air will affect how the sound reaches your ears and you can hear it. So that actually also creates a different feel. Once again, it’s the same sound, but it sounds a different way.”

“I don’t know the exact details between the Famicom and the NES, but in a sense, they’re the exact same track,” he said. “It’s just the way that you hear them is different for a number of different reasons.

“One of them is because the wattage that they use in Japan and in America, and other countries, is all different. I think Japan uses 100 watts, America has 120 or something like that, and that can actually affect the sound in very subtle ways.

“This is something that you hear about in the audio nerd community, but people will sometimes buy specific amps and adjust them to change the ampage to different countries to make sure that they can replicate the sounds, because maybe they only like the sound when it comes from the American wattage or something else.

“So that’s one thing that could affect the way that you hear it. The other thing is that Japan is an extremely humid country, and there’s a lot of very dry atmosphere, and the very wetness of the air will affect how the sound reaches your ears and you can hear it. So that actually also creates a different feel. Once again, it’s the same sound, but it sounds a different way.”

As I was still trying to digest the news that Japan’s hot summers meant their Duck Hunt dogs laughed at a slightly different tone to mine, Tanaka then added: “Lastly, there is a difference in the music system that was in Zelda and Metroid on the Famicom Disk System which wasn’t in the American NES, and that might have affected something.”

“YES,” I replied. “That’s what I meant. Because we didn’t get the Disk System, the NES versions I had of games like Kid Icarus and Metroid had different music.” “Yes, correct,” Tanaka said. “Because the Disk System had an extra sound channel, we had to change it.

“Because the Disk System was the base format we used to create the music, we had to basically remove some of the sounds we had used and make different sounds for the non-Disk System versions, including the NES. And that was painful at the time.”

We got there eventually, so it was time for another question I’ve always wanted to ask Tanaka. He was responsible for the music in the Game Boy version of Tetris, one of the most iconic game soundtracks of all time. However, that game had three themes.

A-Type, the tune most people associate with Tetris these days, is based on the Russian folk song Korobeiniki. C-Type, meanwhile, is based on a piece of classical music by Bach. The fast-paced B-Type music is the only one that Tanaka created from scratch, so did that make it his favourite of the three?

“It’s less about which one is my favourite,” he told me. “It’s more like… for me, initially, when I was making them, the original song from the Apple Macintosh version was in my head. So for me, in a lot of ways, the process was like a localisation, taking this and bringing it into a new format. So I was kind of absorbing the original and trying to output something new as well.

“Of course, we have that Russian folk song [A-Type] and then we have the classic one [C-Type], which is where things started, and then there’s baroque influences as well, and so I tried to bring all of that out and create another track for the other one [B-Type].

“Initially, when I was making [Tetris], the original song from the Apple Macintosh version was in my head. So for me, in a lot of ways, the process was like a localisation, taking this and bringing it into a new format.”

“Really, it wasn’t because this was my favourite track and I wanted to do it, it was more that each of the tracks is good in its own way, but if you listen to one forever, you’ll just get really bored. So I wanted to create a nice way for people to take a break from different sounds.

“Actually, before we finished the Tetris music, we sent [Tetris creator] Alexey Pajitnov a Game Boy with the music in it and asked him ‘can you check this? Is it okay?’ and he gave the okay.”

It’s a little-known fact that the first 25,000 or so copies of Tetris had completely different A-Type music, before it was replaced with the ‘main’ Tetris theme we all know and love today. Sadly, given that it happened more than 35 years ago, Tanaka couldn’t definitively confirm why.

“That’s true,” he told me. “I don’t really remember why we did it. It’s been a while, but I don’t think there was a problem that we had to fix, we just changed it for some reason.”

Beatle Juice

Then came the question I was most nervous about asking. Dr Mario, the Famicom game that was sitting there in my bag, is one of my favourite video game soundtracks ever, but its main theme, Fever, has always reminded me of the Beatles’ Lady Madonna.

Indeed, 16 years ago, in my past life working at the Official Nintendo Magazine, I put together a (badly edited) video pointing out the similarities:

It’s maybe not the most flattering question to ask a musician if someone else’s stuff inspired him, but Tanaka revealed in a previous interview that he was, in fact, in a Beatles cover band when he was growing up, so he’s never shied away from the fact that the band was a clear influence on him. So I asked him if the Dr Mario theme was ‘inspired’ by Lady Madonna.

A long pause. Then a look of surprise, then a laugh. “Oh, it’s similar!” he replied, before singing it – “dada, dada, dadada”. A smile. “No, no, no. It’s a coincidence,” he insisted. “I definitely wasn’t trying to be influenced by Lady Madonna!

“But when you think about it, the Beatles were heavily influenced by Black American music, like blues and gospel. They were kind of imitating that, and for me, it was me bringing out the same musical influences in my music, that kind of three-chord progression, and that kind of blues-rock style. Now that you mention it though, I guess it does kind of sound similar, doesn’t it?”

He thought again for a while. “I think that would happen to every artist – if you took every artist and compared them to something else, you’d find somebody who’s very similar, and there’s tons of websites out there recently who are doing things like this.

“When you think about it, the Beatles were heavily influenced by Black American music, like blues and gospel… for me, it was me bringing out the same musical influences in my music”

“It’s kind of awkward, but in a lot of ways, we’re all influenced. We’ve all grown up listening to the same stuff. So in our heads, it’s the same sort of influence and the same base from which to create music, so there’s going to be some crossover at some point, right? But Lady Madonna… nobody’s ever mentioned that to me in all of my decades since that song was created! And now decades later, I’m like, yeah, I can see that.”

In fact, Tanaka told me that he had experienced the opposite shortly after the game’s release.

“Thinking back to when Dr Mario came out, at one point, there was a Japanese song that came out slightly after it that was also really similar to it,” he recalled. “And I got a call from Nintendo one day, going ‘hey, there’s this song that sounds a lot like your song’.

“I was like: ‘Really? How does it sound?’ And they were like “da-da, da-da, da-da-da”. And I went: “Oh yeah, that does sound like it. Alright, whatever.” So this sort of thing pops up. I can’t really explain the Lady Madonna thing, but that kind of phrase in there, it’s something you can play with your left hand on the piano when playing bass notes on the piano. It’s a common scale or phrase in music.”

One of my favourite pieces of music ever is the closing credits theme from Super Mario Land (even if the accompanying cutscene does feature the objectively rubbish Princess Daisy), but it was the game’s main theme I had a question about.

Specifically, I wanted to know if Tanaka was aware of the hip-hop remix of the Super Mario Land theme that had made its way to number 8 in the UK charts thanks to Ambassadors of Funk – one of my guilty pleasures (along with the dance version of his Tetris theme which made it to number 6 and was secretly the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber).

“Yeah, I was super happy when I learned about it,” he smiled. “I think they were some people who were in university at that time. I got a call from Nintendo saying ‘hey, we made this, and they did this remix which is number 8 in the charts,’ and I was like ‘oh, that’s so awesome’. “That artist actually came to Japan at one point, and they came to Nintendo and said hello to me, and we got to meet.”

Returning to games

But what about Tanaka’s own music? In recent years, he’s been working on his own albums, and short of the odd guest arrangement or two every time a new Smash Bros game turns up, he really hasn’t been involved in video game music since that 2001 Game Boy Color title.

Pointing to other loved composers of his era, such as Streets of Rage composer Yuzo Koshiro, who continues to make game music to this day, I asked Tanaka if he had just moved on to other things and was no longer interested in video game soundtracks.

“Actually, if somebody came up to me and said ‘hey, do you want to make music for a game?’ I’d say ‘yeah, sure, sounds like fun’,” Tanaka replied.

Then, by coincidence, he cited the game I had been playing when I first received confirmation about our interview. “There’s a studio called 17-Bit making a game called Awaysis, created by a guy called Jake [Kazdal, former Sega artist], and I actually made a track for that game. I’m not the only person making music for that game, there’s a bunch of us, but I created a track for it.”

“Actually, if somebody came up to me and said ‘hey, do you want to make music for a game?’ I’d say ‘yeah, sure, sounds like fun’.”

Was this the plan going forward then? Making the odd track here and there, rather than full soundtracks, similar to the way Nobuo Uematsu now makes the main themes for Final Fantasy games instead of their entire scores?

“Actually, to correct that [previous answer], I didn’t just do one song for Awaysis, I’m doing 70-80% of the game,” he clarified. “But I think, for me, I spent my 20s to around 40 or so just making game music, and since then I’ve spent about 20 years where I haven’t really made any, so it’s kind of [about] getting back into it right now.

“I made a song for Street Fighter 6 last year as well, but generally for me, the thing I’m best at as a composer is to have a game theme – a single colour which kind of defines that game – and then design an entire soundtrack, an entire audio experience around that theme.

“So if anybody comes up to me and says ‘hey, can you do this’, I’d be like ‘yes, I’d love to’.

You heard it here first, developers, Hip Tanaka is waiting for your call. Our time was nearly up, however, Tanaka wasn’t ready to stop talking nerdy to me, specifically in terms of how games sounded different for each player due to numerous slight variations. And if you thought discussing different wattages was a deep dive, he was about to take it even deeper.

“Actually, now that I think more about it, just to follow up on what we were talking about earlier, the number of quirks in… not the actual music itself, but the way that chips work and the way the product is created, the amount of quirks in the amperes and power outlets and so on can slightly change the fluctuations of the sound, and that can also affect the highs and the lows in specific ways,” he started.

“And then another thing that happens, is the way the systems are made in Japan, America and other countries is slightly different, so the basic ‘machine noise’ of the operating system working will also get into the way the audio is producing sound and affect that in interesting ways too. So, once again, the actual machine parts are going to vibrate in interesting ways and change the way the sound sounds.

“And this is a really interesting side note, but the original Game Boy supposedly has the best sound of all. That’s what people say. And the reason for this is because we put a lot of thought into tweaking the way the machine noise sounds, and adjusted the way the amp works a little bit as well, so that really helped to change it.”

Tanaka continued:  “And it’s not just the case of tweaking it to reduce some noise, but also there’s somehow the perfect amount of machine noise to resonate with the music in the right way, so everybody says the first Game Boy has the best sound.

“So all these little differences that aren’t in the way the actual sound is made, but all the stuff surrounding the sound, will affect it. And as a last little point, the soldering, the way that you solder chips and the way it connects, the percentages of materials in the soldering in Japan and other countries is also different, especially in the US.

“And apparently there’s all these elements in the soldering in the US that are prohibited in Japan, and apparently all the super audio-heads are like ‘oh man, all that stuff that we’re not allowed to use in Japan makes it sound so much better’ so they go out and buy old American audio equipment with materials that I guess are banned now, and go ‘oh yeah, this sounds so good’.”

I could have genuinely listened to this for ages, but we both had other appointments, so we had to wrap it up. Of course, I asked Tanaka to sign my copy of Dr. Mario.

“Where would you like Tanaka-san to sign your game?” the interpreter asked. “Wherever he thinks is best,” I answered, “it’s his work, after all.” Then, I couldn’t resist: “As long as he leaves a gap somewhere because I want to get Paul McCartney to sign it too.”

The interpreter smiled, but didn’t translate my joke to Tanaka. Probably for the best.