Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. (1985) score redefined video game music. With under three minutes of music, Kondo put to rest an era of bleeps and bloops - the sterile products of a lab environment - replacing it with one in which game sounds constituted a legitimate form of artistic expression. Andrew Schartmann takes us through the various external factors (e.g., the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo's marketing tactics) that coalesced into a ripe environment in which Kondo's musical experiments could thrive. He then delves into the music itself, searching for reasons why our hearts still dance to the 'primitive' 8-bit tunes of a bygone era.

Specialized.