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Koji Kondo's "Super Mario Bros." Soundtrack Andrew Schartmann New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Foreword, preface, acknowledgments, introduction, and notes. 208 pp. $10.75 paper. ISBN: 978162898532
Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination William Cheng New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014. Acknowledgments, foreword, notes, and index. 262 pp. $26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780199969968
Game audio has always been an integral part of game play, first attracting players to place their quarters into the coin slots of early arcade games and later not only providing important game play feedback but also creating immersive environments for gaming at home. We have, however, begun the serious academic study of game audio only during the last decade or so. Andrew Schartmann's and William Cheng's new books make varied and welcome entries into this bourgeoning field.
Andrew Schartmann, currently finishing a doctorate in music theory at Yale University, provides his engaging and wellwritten book as he continues to examine early game audio. In Koji Kondos "Super Mario Bros." Soundtrack, he offers a complete analysis of the 1985 Super Mario Bros. soundtrack. The first section of the book, "Contexts," begins with a brief discussion of the game industry in the 1970s and 1980s leading up to the release of Super Mario Bros. (SMB). Here, Schartmann emphases how SMB and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) were poised to have a major impact in the game scene. After an equally short discussion of how the NES produced audio and Koji Kondo's compositional...