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“ENTER BIT” Special Interview: Chiptune Nostalgia ~Chip Tanaka × TORIENA~
ENTER BIT開催 特別インタビュー対談 チップチューンノスタルジー Chip Tanaka × TORIENA
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-What do you think about the fact that younger performers like TORIENA are finding freshness in chip music?
Tanaka : I think it’s probably the idea of using a Game Boy as an instrument that’s making chip music feel fresh, and in fact, I’ve been thinking this way ever since I was involved in the development of the Game Boy itself. Normally you would use cheap earphones or the small speaker on the Game Boy to listen to sound, but what I would do is connect it to the big speakers we had in the office so I could listen to reggae tracks I’d programmed on the Game Boy at full blast (laughs). Looking back, I think you can say that what I was doing back then was similar to using a Game Boy as an instrument.
Tanaka : As the Internet evolves and music becomes more of a digital thing, more and more people are listening to music on their cell phones and PCs, rather than through speakers. The square waves that represent Game Boy and NES sound are a type of sound that’s recognizable no matter how inferior your audio player is, so when electronic music started gaining in popularity however many years ago, I immediately thought, “Wait a sec, this is like Game Boy!” The kind of cheap, crude sounds of electronic music felt very similar to the Game Boy’s own sound. It’s really fascinating how trends change over time; who would’ve thought the day would come when Game Boy sound would be seen as fresh again?
– Tanaka-san, as someone who was involved in the development of the NES and Game Boy sound hardware, can you tell us a bit about what the development was like?
Tanaka : Our biggest challenge during the development of the Game Boy sound hardware was to bring the specs to a similar level as the NES without spending a similar budget. Since it was based on the NES specs, it was obviously going to sound similar, so we went through a lot of trial and error during development of the Game Boy to try and give it its own unique sound. For example, the Game Boy sound hardware isn’t stereo, but we made it so that sound would come out from the left, right, and center.
TORIENA: Pseudo stereo, right?
Tanaka : Right. That’s what we were calling it.
TORIENA : I’ve always thought the great thing about the Game Boy sound is its pseudo-stereo. The NES is monaural, but I like how the sound shifts from left to right on Game Boy. I recently had an opportunity to make a track on the NES, but I really couldn’t deal without the pseudo-stereo (laughs). That reminded me of just how good the Game Boy sound is.
Tanaka : Maybe this is not the best way to describe it, but the Game Boy’s sound is kind of…ill-behaved. It’s not very refined compared to the sound in other game systems. You can hear a kind of clicking noise when you shift sounds, for example. Or when a sound first plays, there’s a buggy noise that emits. These kinds of rough noises aren’t that big a deal in the context of playing games, but when you’re outputting them through speakers they turn into a powerful sound of their own.
TORIENA: The clicking noise is certainly a thing, but without it, I’d feel like something was missing.
-It’s interesting to see TORIENA so into this topic (laughs).
TORIENA: It’s such a rare opportunity to hear these stories from Tanaka-san himself…
Tanaka : Since I was the only one in charge of the Game Boy sound hardware, I might be the only one that can really explain how things ended up the way they are.
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