Get Wired: The Secret History of Video Game Music

Think about your favorite video game growing up. You can probably imagine exactly how it sounded and even hum some of the tunes. As it turns out, a lot of the iconic video game scores of the 80’s and 90’s were created by a group of women, young Japanese composers - sometimes just out of college. This music has such a strong legacy - but it’s almost impossible to find information about the women who wrote it.  So for this episode of Get Wired, Host Lauren Goode talks to Dia Lacina--a writer and video game music expert. Dia recently went on a journey to find out more about this group of composers—who they were, and what they worked on—and ultimately, how these women shaped the scores we know so well, despite working in a male-dominated gaming industry. And then later on in the show, we hear from Eímear Noone, a conductor who has brought 8-bit video game music to the symphony.