Slashdot | EA To Sell Game Music on iTunes

Those who doubt the hit potential of video game theme songs probably haven't seen Billboard's Hot Ringtones chart lately, where Koji Kondo has sat right near the top for 55 weeks. Who's Koji Kondo? He composed the theme for 'Super Mario Bros.,' which ranks this week right between the Black Eyed Peas and Bow Wow featuring Ciara.

I had a similar thought last night when my random iTunes shuffle put on one of the songs from Halo. Video games are an outlet for a type of creativity (musical composition) that's had its traditional showcases all dwindle in popularity -- the symphony, the musical comedy -- or else become crowded with pop music -- e.g. motion picture scores. Seems to me that as the gaming industry expands, it will provide more and more opportunities both to showcase and to subsidize creativity. That's cool.

I also got to thinking about how the intelligent interweaving of music into gameplay has a lot to do with the value of a game. Sunday I played a little of Rockstar's The Warriors with A-stock. A rockin' good time. The gameplay is fantastic, but very different from GTA. I see it as a logical extension of the Double Dragon, Final Fight side-scrolling beat-em up. Very well done, and it has context-sensitive music which is often used to clever/ironic effect.

Yeah, I think if I ever get rich, I'll invest in making video games. Not coding them, but directing. Get some smart people to do the nuts and bolts (or more likely license a kick-ass engine) and really run wild with the creativity aspect.