Context is king. Which is what makes this afternoon’s performance in a busy Kyoto hall all the more interesting, really. Behind a small table on which a pair of laptops and some mixing desks are neatly laid out, two well-presented middle-aged Japanese people study their screens for a few moments, exchange a couple of nervous glances and then let rip with a high-pitched arpeggio that’s soon joined by a kicking four-to-the-floor beat. It sounds , with all the drive and swagger of a clubhouse classic. And of course it’s the soundtrack to a video game that’s coming up to 30 years old.
It’s hardly the first time that an 8-bit soundtrack has been used to fill a dancefloor, though I do detect a slight sense of bemusement from the two performers when I speak them elsewhere that day. Keiji Yamagishi and Kaori Nakabai are two veterans of the Famicom era, reunited at this year’s BitSummit for a live performance of the Ninja Gaiden 3 soundtrack, and brought together by the resurgence of interest in 8-bit soundtracks in recent years.
Maybe that’s because they’re an endearingly humble pair, giggling their way through our brief interview and clearly enjoying the opportunity to reminisce. Both worked at Tecmo in the 80s, Yamagishi getting his break on the US version of Star Force while Nakabai worked on the likes of Captain Tsubasa and Ninja Gaiden – though they both had different entry points into the industry.
“When I started, there simply weren’t many video game composers around,” explains Yamagishi. “I just got very lucky – my only real formal training was playing in a band at college. If that happened today, there’s no way I’d get the job, as there’s so many people better qualified than me!”
Nakabai, meanwhile, did have the qualifications, having trained as an electric organist. “I could make all these sounds myself as an organist – if I’d have studied piano instead, I would not be a game composer! As an organist, I started making and writing music and then working with a computer – game companies were looking to hire, and I thought it looked like something I could do, and it looks fun. So why not give it a try?”