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I'm back with more text, because I stumbled upon a discussion of this, which basically proved my point, but explained it much better than I originally could.
Veteran musician Mike Clarke puts it like this:
This meant Japanese musicians needed to have established careers and jobs to get a chance. In Europe you could be an experimental (teenage) composer who kicked something together at home, and get your foot in the door that way.
But this time I bring music - another rare case of a NES-tune that sounds like it should be on a Commodore-machine:
(Yes, I know. Give it a listen anyway.)
Veteran musician Mike Clarke puts it like this:
There wasn’t much of a computer game industry [in Japan] because almost everything was arcades and consoles, so to be able to write game music you had to have a devkit, which cost thousands, and a development license, which was nigh on impossible to get if you weren’t an actual company.
Therefore, to create music, you had to first get a job at a game company [in Japan]. Unlike in Europe, you couldn’t write your own play routine at home. The barrier to entry was way too high. The few actual programmer/musicians like Yuzo Koshiro really stood out.
The Americans have this weird fetish about Japanese game music on the home consoles when in reality it wasn’t really very good. There’s not really anything particularly impressive until the Mega Drive and even then, there are only a few standouts like Streets of Rage and Sonic.
This meant Japanese musicians needed to have established careers and jobs to get a chance. In Europe you could be an experimental (teenage) composer who kicked something together at home, and get your foot in the door that way.
But this time I bring music - another rare case of a NES-tune that sounds like it should be on a Commodore-machine:
(Yes, I know. Give it a listen anyway.)