[RM#33] The Relationship Between Musical Imagery and the Feel of Controls (Patreon)

Mickey Mousing

There is a term called "Mickey Mousing." It refers to a technique used in visual works such as TV animation and movies, in which music (BGM) and sound effects are perfectly synchronized with the movements of characters and images. As the name suggests, it is said to have originated in early Disney animation, where sounds were timed to match characters' footsteps, blinking, jumping, and other movements.

In my childhood memories of watching foreign animated works on television, the impression of this Mickey Mousing technique remains very strong. Even in scenes where the cat Tom chased the mouse Jerry, frantically moving his legs, every action had its own sound effect or short musical phrase.

It created a strong sense of presence, making everything feel so real, almost like watching a stage performance right in front of me. The flashy presentation, which matched the simple and straightforward story settings, always made children's hearts beat with excitement.

Such techniques were also used in Tezuka's animated works, including ASTRO BOY, Kimba the White Lion, and Princess Knight, and they became one of the distinctive characteristics of those works. However, even as a young child (I was really very young, only three or four years old), I felt something was not quite right about it. Of course, I had no idea why I felt that way at the time, but when I became old enough to think about it, I came to feel that this style did not suit the deep and complex stories of Tezuka's works.

Tezuka's works are not stage performances. The way foreign animations presented their scenes by moving the camera right and left, up and down, reminded me of stage direction. On the other hand, Tezuka's animations moved far and near, large and small, and within images that looked like live-action movies, the atmosphere of the story itself flowed together with the visuals. No matter how much the presentation was adjusted for children, it could not soften the dark and fleeting moments hidden beneath the surface.

The relationship between images and music that exists in my mind still remains vivid today as a memory from those days. Music was not simply something used to make animation movements more enjoyable by matching them with melodies. It existed as a device for making the visual work more magnificent and more spectacular.

The Evolution of Hero Sounds

In Mega Man1, composer Manami Matsumae (development name: CHANCHACORIN MANAMI) was in charge of the music and established its own unique worldview. She was the first person to give concrete form to what the image of a near-future hero robot should sound like, rather than the familiar settings of outer space or medieval Europe that had been used until then.

The opening and ending songs of the live-action superhero shows I watched as a young child left a very strong impression on me. They had a distinctive musical world of their own, and they captured the hearts of boys of that era. All of those songs, which were created to match their respective hero works, shared a common quality: a sense of bravery and boldness.

Long ago, Kurama Tengu and The Gallant Harimao were hero shows from before I was born. The theme songs from that period were marches. I am too young to talk about postwar Japan from personal experience, but even so, when it came to music symbolizing the bravery of that era, the marching tunes reminiscent of military songs were what came to mind.

Even during the time when I was watching live-action superhero shows and animation, Ultraman and Ultraman Ace also used marching-style music. However, that tendency gradually began to change. One song that remains particularly memorable to me is the theme song of Tiger Mask. Its rhythm was no longer the marching pace used before, but instead became more like a "gallop," as if a horse were running. The composer was Shunsuke Kikuchi. After that, his works continued to appear in many productions, including the Masked Rider Series, Babel II, Neo-Human Casshan, and Getter Robo.

The gallop is a musical style that became popular in 19th-century Europe. As its name suggests, it incorporates the rhythm of a horse's running gait (full gallop). Familiar classical pieces such as Orpheus in the Underworld and The Comedians' Gallop spread throughout Europe at that time, particularly among young people.

Later, music from American Western movies was influenced by this European classical music and incorporated the gallop rhythm. This became what is commonly known as the "Western gallop," with horses racing across the wilderness. I believe this style became the original model for Japanese hero songs.

Gallop-style music has a strong sense of speed, and the melodies are always exciting and thrilling. Until then, "bravery" had been expressed through powerful marching tunes that brought battles to mind. But gradually, these were replaced by galloping tunes that seemed to emphasize the action itself.

Other memorable examples from that period include Isamu the Wilderness Boy by Chumei Watanabe, which used the gallop style itself, and Triton of the Sea by Hiromasa Suzuki, which conveyed both a sense of speed and a feeling of vastness.

BGM That Guides the Gameplay

In Mega Man2, the composer changed to Takashi Tateishi (development name: OGERETSU KUN). He was the same age as me.

During Matsumae's time, everything was a first experience, and she was fully occupied with conveying the worldview of Mega Man through music. Even so, she understood it very well, and every piece she created was wonderful music that was perfectly suited to this new game.

I explained the image of Mega Man to Tateishi and allowed him to compose freely until the stages were completed. However, based on my experience with Mega Man1, I already had certain ideas about BGM.

Matsumae's music for Mega Man1 took the image of the hero anime and live-action superhero shows that had existed until then and brought it into the world of Mega Man. They were highly accomplished compositions with a solid musical structure. They expressed the hero's bravery, sense of speed, and melancholy, qualities also found in the theme songs of anime and superhero shows. My impression was that her music had created an entirely new world called Mega Man.

As we began production of Mega Man2, I was thinking about the possibilities and changes that could be made to this BGM. The question was whether creating music based on the image of each stage was really suitable for the game system of Mega Man. The near-future setting, robots, and images of enemies were all important elements when creating stage BGM, but the only element that offered room for variation was the image of the enemies.

For a long time, I had been thinking about what kind of game design would be appropriate for the unusual game system of Mega Man. I came to believe that the BGM also needed to be created in a way that suited this system. Having good music simply blend into the background was no different from previous action games. I wanted to move away from that and give the music a different, new role.

When the image settings for each stage were ready, I had a meeting with Tateishi. He had already composed several pieces on his own and played them for me. They were soft and cute pieces of music. They were quite far removed from the image of the previous game, and every one of them was a surprise to me. It seemed that he was imagining Mega Man himself as seen on the TV screen rather than the image established by the previous game.

Certainly, Mega Man has a cute and charming appearance. When I listened to the music again with that in mind, every piece made sense. So I once again explained the story and worldview of Mega Man in detail, as well as the gameplay aspects of it as an action game.

Then I brought in a large number of cassette tapes containing American rock and hard rock music from my personal collection and had Tateishi listen to them. He was a music professional. I believe he already had all this knowledge, even without me doing something like this. However, I wanted him to feel that this rock music, with its drums, bass, and guitars, was an important factor in creating the new image of Mega Man.

At that point, I made one proposal. Rather than composing music based on the visual appearance or worldview of each stage, I wanted him to create music based on the feel of the controls when playing each stage and the emotions I wanted the player to experience.

The reason I requested this kind of music was that it was one of the major specification changes in Mega Man2. The sense of discomfort I had felt in the gameplay of Mega Man1 led me to realize that its action-game structure was the same as that of previous games. As a result of aiming for level design that suited Mega Man's unique game system, I arrived at the answer: one stage, one gimmick, one challenge.

The characteristics of the eight different stages were not their worldviews or the images of their enemies, but their gameplay. When players (users) thought of a particular stage, I wanted them to remember the feeling of actually playing it rather than the images of its enemies or background. For example, the feeling of despair when a platform suddenly pops out, the nervous excitement of jumping between tiny platforms in midair, or the patience required to keep climbing ladders for a long time. My goal was to create stages that would leave these kinds of gameplay impressions in the player's mind.

There are many different types of gameplay in action games, and each person has different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to them. Someone might be bad at dealing with platforms that suddenly pop out, but good at progressing by timing jumps between small platforms. Another person might dislike the tension of running quickly to escape a giant laser, but find it enjoyable to carefully climb ladders. In this way, each player's personality comes out through the way they play.

I was thinking about expressing these characteristics of each stage through music in a way that could be felt instinctively. A rhythm resembling the movements and timing of climbing ladders. In underwater stages, rather than simply swimming, I wanted to emphasize shooting action while conveying a sense of buoyancy. In the giant laser stage, I wanted to express its sense of speed. I expected music that would evoke the movements of these gimmicks and the player's physical sense of controlling the character.

It was a way of using sound as a dynamic form of presentation, much like Mickey Mousing. Of course, I was not asking for sounds to be played in synchronization with specific movements. However, this BGM was not simply background music. It had a major role in deeply entering into the player's sense of control and leaving a strong impression.

The adjustments were difficult. More precisely, it took a long time to make the music match the image I had in mind. The completed pieces were wonderful, with a level of quality that was hard to believe for a Famicom game. However, the image was different. When composing music based on a worldview or story, the result depends on the artist's own sense and judgment. But when composing music based on the feel of the controls or gimmicks, the answer existed only in my mind. In other words, if there were ten directors, there would be ten different versions of the music.

As a result, many pieces had to be rewritten. Tateishi had ended up joining a truly troublesome project. Even now, I have very strong memories of that period. I could see his expression gradually becoming gloomy. Even so, I could not compromise. Once I had decided on an idea, I would not change it unless something extraordinary happened.

That was because I felt that we were touching only a tiny part of the enormous potential of Mega Man. The deeper we dug, the larger the raw gem that appeared, and the more we polished it, the more brilliantly it shone. This was not limited to music. The possibilities of programming and character design were also expanding endlessly.

There is an episode that I feel sorry about. The BGM for Bubble Man's stage was completed, and because it was so good, I gave him further detailed feedback and asked him to rewrite it in order to make it even better. When he played it for me again later, it had transformed into an incredibly rich and wonderful piece of music. However, I became concerned about the length of the music and asked him to make the loop a little shorter.

Of course, this was a request that he could not easily accept. Even so, there was something that bothered me. There were several bars inserted in the middle of the music that had not been there when I first listened to it. This melody had raised the overall quality of the piece, but I felt it was unnecessary for music used during gameplay. So I asked him to remove that section and return the music to its original form.

I could easily imagine how much data he had compressed and squeezed to make room for those few bars, and how much time he had spent working out the melody. All of that would be discarded because of just one comment from me. It was an extremely harsh and cruel thing to do. Even so, I made the request.

There is another episode that I feel sorry about. The BGM for Flash Man's stage did not match my image, and it was rewritten again and again. When I finally listened to the completed piece, I felt something was slightly wrong. It had a clearly defined offbeat rhythm. This offbeat rhythm is created by shifting the emphasis of the beat by half a beat, turning a rhythm like " "Ta" "n" "Ta" "n" "Ta" "n" " into something like " "n" "Ta" "n" "Ta" "n" "Ta"" emphasizing the weaker parts of the beat. It was a difficult melody for children to hum, but it was extremely well composed and was a piece that deserved to be used.

So what did I do? In order to make the musical image fit the stages, I swapped the BGM for Flash Man's stage with the BGM intended for Air Man's stage. The music suited the feeling of playing on unstable platforms high up in the sky. On the other hand, the piece originally planned for Air Man's stage had a calmer musical tone and a kind of wavering instability rather than a strong sense of speed or exhilaration. It was better suited to the slippery maze.

For Tateishi, having the music he had worked on through repeated meetings and countless revisions simply swapped around like that was an outrageous thing to do. It would not have been unreasonable for him to feel insulted. Even so, I could not make an ambiguous decision.

The music for Mega Man2 was completed in a very short period of time, amid all kinds of difficulties. I kept making truly unreasonable requests, turning it into an extremely difficult job.

During the first eight stages, the difficult circumstances continued, but we completed the music without compromising. However, when it came to creating the BGM for the first half of the final stage, I asked him to compose freely. This was the only piece for which I gave absolutely no settings or restrictions.

My intention was to release him from the difficult circumstances of working on the previous stages and allow Tateishi to fully demonstrate his talent.

One day, he unusually came to the planning room. We normally held meetings and made adjustments in the sound team's room, so I was a little surprised. Smiling happily, he showed me a cassette tape and said, "It's finished!"

He put the cassette into the cassette deck in the room and played it. Then the BGM for the first half of the final stage began to flow. There was a melody like the wind, spreading freely without being restricted by the length of the loop or the arrangement of the musical bars.

Mega Man is now equipped with all of his weapons and is finally infiltrating Dr. Wily's castle. The real battle begins here.

(Automatic translation by AI)