Documentary chronicles the sounds of console gaming's early years

When it comes to video games, more often than not audio gets the short shrift because, well, you can’t see music in a screenshot. It’s with that in mind that Red Bull (yes, that Red Bull) is putting together a documentary series about the scene surrounding classic Japanese video-game music called Diggin’ in the Carts. The first episode focuses on the early days of the industry at Namco Bandai and Nintendo and features interviews with, among other luminaries, the first person in charge of game music for the Mario company, Hirozaku “Hip” Tanaka. Tanaka would go on to produce the iconic scores for Balloon Fight and Metroid, as well as design the sound chip for the first Game Boy. This premiere episode, embedded below, also showcases just how early soundtracks were composed. Spoiler: it involved more wave-forms and soldering than it did keyboards and drum machines. Interested in seeing more? A new clip is scheduled to release every week for the next month-and-a-half.