In retrospect, my judgment was totally incorrect. Video game music sets the tone for conflicts of good versus evil, characters starting as nothing and reaching the points of perfection, struggle against adversity, victories, failures, betrayals and most other things that are important in life.
The score to “The Legend of Zelda,”a game about an approximately 9-year-old boy who is given a sword and told to take on all the evil in the world, is just as heartfelt and thought out as any song about combating social ills or personal conflicts.
Video games can be deep if you let them, something that Tennessee-based “Mega Man“-influenced rock band The Protomen showed the Trunk Space Aug. 27.
It was made clear by the band that the band and audience were participating in no mere music set, but a battle. The Protomen’s discography is essentially a rock opera based upon the original six Nintendo Entertainment System “Mega Man“ titles, so the performance was completely theatrical with all of the members in costume and make-up including red and blue motorcycle hats for the characters of Protoman and Mega Man (this may be due to the band’s original interpretation of the Mega Man storyline, and also because getting sued for likeness to the characters by Capcom would really suck).
The drama is exposed in the lyrics of the songs, which tell the tale of heroes, villains and innocent bystanders faced will all sorts of moral dilemmas in the dystopian world of “the city,” and the musician/actors add dramatic flair with their movements on stage, as well as among the audience.
The music draws from all sorts of influences, including arena rock, punk, new wave and the kinds of slow jams you’d likely hear at a high school dance. “Light Up the Night” is to me one of the most instantly likeable songs by the band because it sounds fitting for an ‘80s movie montage where a character improves him or herself in the course of two minutes.
Of course, the audience had no qualms with all of this self-imposed corniness, singing along to every song and connecting with the music in ways that the aforementioned high-school me would think is impossible for a video game-influenced band.
Video game music is not my scene. I play video games and have seen the Minibosses a few times, but that is about the extent of it. To really understand the enthusiasm (the kind of enthusiasm that high school me thought was only reserved for “real music”) that people have for it, I had to talk to people in the thick of it. The first two people I talked to were ASU students and Protomen fans Japanese language junior Alexis Gelinas and mathematics junior Josh Bissell
Gelinas has a really cool tattoo of a Metroid on his arm and Bissell was wearing a Rush “2112” T-shirt, both tribal markers of legit dudes.
Gelinas claims that his interest in the video game music scene initially came from the website Metroid Metal, a showcase for artist Grant Henry, more popularly known as Stemage, to share with the world his re-interpretation of the Metroid soundtrack with more shreddage and riffage.
Gelinas decided that if just one guy could create such interesting pieces and share them with the world, he could too. He started recording his own video game-inspired material and participates regularly in Dwelling of Duels, a monthly competition in video game music supported by the local music Web site The Shizz.
He found that the video game music scene is a very “tightly knit community,” that was willing to help him out when he wasn’t sure of what kind of equipment or software to use to make a decent recording, as well as being quick to praise him when he made something great.
Gelinas’ interest in the Protomen stems from several things. First, he is inspired by the video game “Mega Man,” which according to him is set “in a world we almost wish we could live in.”
“Almost” is definitely a key word here, because the “Mega Man” universe is rife with instability under its unassuming 8-bit surface and Gelinas appreciates the Protomen’s ability to to take that world “and make it into something dark and scary.”
Second, the Protomen, with their somewhat more accessible and poppy sound, represent an aspect of video game music that can have mainstream exposure and be taken seriously.
“No one would perceive it as something nerdy,” Gelinas says.
To him, the Protomen can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of how enthusiastic they are about video games. Gelinas’ friend Josh Bissell, shared these sentiments.
Bissell also likes the original “Mega Man” games a lot and played them with his father growing up. He credits the brutal difficulty of the games with a sense of “masochism which stayed with me all my life,” and thinks that any one who plays the games using an emulator with “save anywhere” abilities is a wimp. (I am, by this logic, a total wimp.)
To get even more of a grasp on what makes the video game music scene tick, I talked with a major creative force, the Commander of the Protomen himself. He and the rest of the Protomen have this really dark vision of the “Mega Man” universe, imagining its residents living in fear of the despotic rule of Dr. Wily and his robotic machinations of evil.
The characters of the narrative deal with issues such as the benefits and costs of new technology, whether or not the strong have an obligation to help the weak, mustering the courage to stand up for what’s right in incredibly bleak situations and other things that seem more fitting for a Bertolt Brecht play than a costumed rock band. The material is heavy, to say the least, and is not something you would find on the original NES cartridge. So what motivated the Protomen to re-imagine the “Mega Man” universe?
The initial concept behind the Protomen started as a college project, as most of the members were recording students at Middle Tennessee State University. However, the dark turn in their re-telling of the “Mega Man” story came from an observation, as the Commander puts it, that “something did not match” with the original score of the game and what was going on on screen.
“The music in “Mega Man” I and II was like Iron Maiden on Nintendo… epic as hell,” the Commander says. “There was much more going on.”
The Commander attributes the very linear nature of the “Mega Man” story, fight some robot masters and then fight Dr. Wily in a castle, as a good canvas to expand upon and create something more. They did not want to make the franchise seem cute and cuddly like Capcom has done with later installments in the series.
“We didn’t want to ride that dragon,” the Commander says in regard to the direction the franchise took. “We would have preferred it to be a mean, mean bastard.”
Watching somber films like “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and reading books like “1984,” as well as embracing an adult tendency to make things more dark and cynical, helped the band form its new take on the “Mega Man” universe. The bands eclectic sound also serves as a vehicle for “pop culture comprehension” because “unknowledgeable nerds” are an upsetting thing to the band.
“If you like the way one of our songs sounds, just ask and I will show you a bunch of bands that do it better,” the Commander says in regards to anyone for whom the Protomen are a gateway into new forms of music.
The Protomen concert showed video game music scene is full of creative and passionate people who produce enjoyable things and should not be written off as invalid. Fan and musician Gelinas forecasts a “mainstream comeback” for the genre, and the Protomen really really want to tour with Andrew W.K., a musician that, statistically speaking, everyone likes. So if you are having issues with accepting video game music as legitimate music, I suggest you check out the Protomen, as well as local events such as the Dwelling of Duels competition.
Contact the reporter at mbogumil@asu.edu.
