

Two decades later, many of these soundtracks echo the work of musicians still active today, be it Björk or Beck. With certain scores acting as musical gateways, you could see how young F-Zero X players became power metal enthusiasts, or why Bomberman Hero obsessives might gravitate towards house music.

Elementary school minds were introduced to music scarcely heard on the radio. The 8-bit songs of the NES days were replaced with more fully orchestrated original soundtracks. Undoubtedly these were the big improvements over past consoles, but after hours of play, another game-changer emerged: N64’s use of sound. Gameplay pushed beyond limited controls-this was a console to get lost in. N64 games toyed with 3D graphics, and compared to the look of Sega Genesis or SNES games, N64’s games were vivid. It is in tetris type category and is available to all.

It wasn’t until 1996 that the company-and video games as a whole-leveled up with Nintendo 64. Tetris is licensed as freeware for PC or laptop with Windows 32 bit and 64 bit operating system. Their follow-up, Super Nintendo (SNES), arrived stateside by 1991, but with few drastic changes to gameplay, it offered little variation between consoles. In 1985, when Nintendo rolled out its first-ever home video game console, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), in America, the company wasn’t expecting sales to rocket as quickly as they did.
