Conference Agenda

Following post-World War II U.S. occupation and disarmament, Japanese manufacturers carefully navigated the degree to which they imbued exports with Japanese cultural iconography. Koichi Iwabuchi applies the historical concept of mukokuseki—the removal of Japanese cultural markers in media exports—to the postwar era of Japan. The Pokémon franchise resists this erasure by embracing Japanese sounds, imagery, and folklore, especially in Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal. Scholars such as Rachael Hutchinson, Hiloko Kato, and René Bauer have highlighted Pokémon’s use of the kawaii aesthetic to reclaim a version of Japan that is both hyper-modern and rooted in tradition.

“Ecruteak City”—a central plot location in Pokémon GSC—proclaims itself as, “The city where present and past concurrently flow in history.” Within this Kyoto-inspired location, the player encounters NPCs dubbed “Kimono Girls” in the “Dance Theater.” The “Kimono Girls” exhibit a historically-informed Japaneseness that draws on traditional Edo-period music and attire. Upon entering the “Dance Theater,” the player is transported to the past itself. The hyper-feminine nature of the “Kimono Girls,” the Western associations of the geisha image, and the traditional Japanese musical aesthetics signal a renegotiation of mukokuseki on a global stage.

Go Ichinose navigates the affordances offered by the Game Boy Color’s 8-bit hardware creating musical cues such as Edo-period scales, evocations of classical Japanese rhythms, synthesized traditional instruments, and seasonal aesthetic associations. Within this digital sound world, Ichinose musically asserts that the “Kimono Girls” exist in the past. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Iwabuchi, Hutchinson, Kato, Bauer, Arjun Appadurai, Kelly Foreman, and Edward Saïd, I argue that, by positioning the “Kimono Girls” and their music in the past, Ichinose fabricates a mediated nostalgia which reconfigures Japan’s cultural representation and influence in a worldwide video game market.

The techniques of "8-bit" sound can be found in popular music outside of video game soundtracks and chiptunes, in two particular genres which are examined and contrasted here. Lofi hip hop, which emerged in the 2000s, and the more recent microgenre of hexD both often utilize a "bitcrushing" filter to produce the sort of digital distortion that characterizes the 8-bit tones of gaming systems like the NES, as will be explored via an influential release upon each genre: respectively, Madlib and MF DOOM's collaborative album "Madvillainy" and the 2019 mixtape "Rare RCB HexD.mp3." The use of bitcrushing in both of these genres is rooted in nostalgia for an earlier age of digital devices, although the effect is used in amounts varying from subtle to extreme. I contend that these genres represent two different approaches to the use of bitcrushing: while lofi hip hop uses it as a manipulation of sonic content, hexD uses it as a manipulation of the form(at) of digital audio, much as earlier artists experimented with past forms of audio storage by using, say, locked grooves on LPs or hidden tracks on CDs. Both lofi hip hop and hexD rose in prominence due to circulation on YouTube or SoundCloud, and their digital means of distribution suggest an evolving relationship between form and content in Internet media, such that the word "content" alone is now used to describe such media, as documented by scholars such as Kate Eichhorn. In fact, as the information density of audio storage formats has increased, the manipulations of hexD represent about the only such manipulations that can be made within the form(at) of digital audio, evincing the domination of content in the digital content/form dichotomy.

This paper expands Agawu’s (1991) “universe of topics” by developing what I dub the “encounter” topic in the video game series Pokémon, adding it into the topical universe of video games. I argue that this topic was developed due to the limitations of the Game Boy soundfont, and achieves two ludic goals: thematic continuity, and gameplay immersion. Specifically, the topic helps to connect the Pokemon games thematically, and acts as a signal to the player to ready themselves for a battle. I take a sequential approach to define the topic, using the first appearance of this topic on the Game Boy as a basis. I then analyze five subsequent tokens (Hatten 1994), describing their musical features in comparison to both the original and each other. Through the comparison of these tokens, I find similarities that link each token to each other, and in turn define the “encounter” topic through these similarities: extreme chromaticism, relentless sixteenth note rhythms, and contrary melodic lines between the bass and melody.

The music of Pokémon has evolved significantly over the years from its 8-bit origins. The series began with Pokémon Red and Blue for the Nintendo Game Boy, released in 1998 worldwide. The most current iterations, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet for the Nintendo Switch, released in 2022. No longer are we limited by the four sound channels of the Game Boy, and thus video game composers have much more freedom when composing for newer consoles. However, the foundations of the music lie within the cues of the original games. The wild battle cues in particular are ones that any experienced Pokémon player would recognize as the signifier of a wild pokémon battle, and immediately be prepared to engage. In other words, any “competent listener” would recognize this intro as a topic.

This poster session will examine Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010) in light of its inventive use of 8-bit musical aesthetics, exploring how the film both celebrates and transforms chiptune traditions. Although Edgar Wright’s adaptation features numerous nods to classic NES-era culture—pixelated graphics, arcade-style transitions, and chiptune motifs—it does so with only minimal depictions of actual gameplay. This paradox showcases the flexibility and power of 8-bit aesthetics in contemporary media. Central to this study is the interplay between older video game music repurposed in high-fidelity arrangements and original score pieces remade as 8-bit tracks. For instance, songs historically performed on limited audio processing units acquire new resonance when shifted into modern production environments. Conversely, newly composed tracks rendered in 8-bit form evoke nostalgia for a console era that shaped the listening habits and musical expectations of many viewers. By comparing these two angles, the poster will investigate how fidelity and instrumentation affect listener reception, emotional cues, and intertextual meaning. At the same time, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World uses a wide range of visual and narrative references—e.g., on-screen power-ups and exaggerated boss battles—to evoke gaming experiences. Despite these stylistic flourishes, the film depicts very little explicit videogame activity. This tension underscores a broader phenomenon: an 8-bit aesthetic can signify gaming history without requiring interactive elements. The poster will thus address the cultural and historical dimensions of chiptune tropes, linking them to nostalgia, performance practices, and the ways film can reconfigure key symbols from the NES generation. Ultimately, this proposal aims to highlight how 8-bit sounds continue to inspire and transform media landscapes.

One of the issues with old gaming systems, such as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), was the technological limitations that restricted how 8-bit audio was perceived. Existing ludomusicological scholarship has addressed issues pertaining to audio design due in part to the technology that was readily available in the 1980’s (Braguinski 2018; Collins 2007, 2008; Lastra 2000; Martin 1983). Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPG) were also restricted by those technological limitations, but while others strived for higher resolution audio in their video games, JRPGs reveled in the “8-bitness.” This paper adopts Medina-Gray’s “modular- smoothness” theory (2019), to analyze the Nintendo Entertainment Systems JRPGs use of 8-bit audio, and how the timbral difference entering a battle-zone evokes a sense of danger specifically in Mother (1989) and Dragon Warrior (1986).
Collin’s (2008) describes a phenomenon in audio studies known as “pulse code modulation,” which is practically the resolution of the sound produced from a system. In order to differentiate between timbres, a “smooth” timbre is associated with a sine wave (smooth timbre) and a sawtooth wave (sharp timbre). The appearance of the sawtooth wave during battle-zones is what evokes a sense of danger.
In Dragon Warrior, whenever “the Hero” walks idly there is a sine wave, yet when encountering enemies on their journey, the 8-bit music slightly adds a saw tooth timbre. The two modules which we can associate the sine- and sawtooth-waves are disjunct, and the appearance of the sawtooth module is what insinuates danger in battle. Similarly, Mother demonstrates the same type of disjunct modules. However, there seems to be three modules, one with sine, sawtooth, and a combination of the two (mix) when entering a battle. The sine-wave module is heard during idle, the mix module, which transitions the player into the battle-zone and the sawtooth module suggesting imminent danger.