Red Bull Highlights Japanese Video Game Composers In New Web Series

Music is one of the most important art forms of human experience, and yet many of us don’t even know the name of the composer from our favorite media forms, like video games. Red Bull Music Academy decided to rectify this disgrace by giving Japanese video game composers their due consideration in a new web series called Diggin’ In The Carts.

According to the series’ trailer, the six-part documentary aims to tell the “untold story of the men and women behind the most globally influential music to come out of Japan.” While this is a bold statement, it’s hard not to think of retro video games without remembering those 8-bit soundtracks. This series wants to reveal the “unsung heroes” behind those notes.

“These guys really had it down to an art form,” says Diggin’ In the Carts

co-director Nick Dwyer, to TechTimes. “That’s why we created all those little moments throughout the documentary when the music is heroically played to beautiful scenery: People should actually listen to it as music of its own, and not just as a soundtrack to a video game.”

The first episode, “The Rise of VGM,” went live on September 4 on Red Bull’s website, and features the stories of Junko Ozawa, an early composer for Namco, and Hirokazu Tanaka, who worked on many Nintendo soundtracks you’d likely recognize the moment you heard them.

While you’re on Red Bull’s site, be sure to check out extra content you won’t find in any of the episodes, like interviews and additional footage. New episodes of Diggin’ In the Carts will be released every Thursday, starting tomorrow, September 11, and will run through October 9.