WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.879 I want you to close your eyes for a second. Well, 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:04.540 not if you're driving, obviously. Right. Keep 00:00:04.540 --> 00:00:07.160 your eyes on the road. Yeah, please. But if you 00:00:07.160 --> 00:00:09.220 can, just imagine the sound of your childhood. 00:00:09.580 --> 00:00:12.039 And I don't mean like the voices of your parents 00:00:12.039 --> 00:00:15.400 or the sound of the school bus. I mean the electronic 00:00:15.400 --> 00:00:18.780 pulse of the 1980s and 90s. Oh, absolutely. The 00:00:18.780 --> 00:00:22.800 classics. Exactly. The frantic, accelerating 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:25.399 tempo of Tetris when the blocks start stacking 00:00:25.399 --> 00:00:28.960 up way too high. Or the eerie alien silence of 00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:31.699 landing on planet Zeebies in Metroid. Or even 00:00:31.699 --> 00:00:34.439 just the weirdly tropical bouncy vibe of Super 00:00:34.439 --> 00:00:36.500 Mario Land. It really is the soundtrack of a 00:00:36.500 --> 00:00:39.200 whole generation. But it's also something much 00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:41.799 more specific than that. It is the sound of a 00:00:41.799 --> 00:00:44.659 very specific type of hardware pushing against 00:00:44.659 --> 00:00:46.880 its own limits. Right. Because we tend to think 00:00:46.880 --> 00:00:49.219 of these as just, you know, Nintendo songs. Like 00:00:49.219 --> 00:00:50.880 they just appeared out of the ether. They were 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:53.380 all cranked out by one giant corporate music 00:00:53.380 --> 00:00:54.840 department. Which couldn't be further from the 00:00:54.840 --> 00:00:57.719 truth. Exactly. Looking at the research you've 00:00:57.719 --> 00:01:00.359 pulled together for us today, it turns out the 00:01:00.359 --> 00:01:03.479 sonic fingerprint of the Game Boy, the NES, the 00:01:03.479 --> 00:01:06.739 Famicom... It isn't just a corporate style at 00:01:06.739 --> 00:01:10.219 all. It traces back largely to one single human 00:01:10.219 --> 00:01:13.519 brain. It does. Today, we're doing a deep dive 00:01:13.519 --> 00:01:16.180 into the life and the mind of Hirokazu Tanaka, 00:01:16.780 --> 00:01:19.819 or, as he was known then, Hip Tanaka. And as 00:01:19.819 --> 00:01:22.280 the cool kids know him now, Chip Tanaka. Chip 00:01:22.280 --> 00:01:24.959 Tanaka, yeah. And the biggest misconception we 00:01:24.959 --> 00:01:28.099 really need to clear up right away is the idea 00:01:28.099 --> 00:01:30.219 that he was just a composer. Okay, let's unpack 00:01:30.219 --> 00:01:33.480 this. Because usually in game development, especially 00:01:33.480 --> 00:01:35.900 back in the early days, you had the hardware 00:01:35.900 --> 00:01:37.980 guys soldering the boards in one room and the 00:01:37.980 --> 00:01:39.879 creative guys writing the tunes in another room 00:01:39.879 --> 00:01:42.459 entirely. The distinct lanes. They really didn't 00:01:42.459 --> 00:01:44.859 cross over. Right, but Tanaka didn't have a lane. 00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:48.079 He basically built the road. I mean, he was an 00:01:48.079 --> 00:01:50.959 electronic engineer who literally designed the 00:01:50.959 --> 00:01:53.159 audio hardware for the Famicom and the Game Boy. 00:01:53.319 --> 00:01:56.219 Wow. And then, after building the chips, he sat 00:01:56.219 --> 00:01:57.840 down and wrote the music that played on them. 00:01:57.920 --> 00:02:00.239 See, that is the hook for me. It's like finding 00:02:00.239 --> 00:02:03.799 out the guy who painted the Mona Lisa also, I 00:02:03.799 --> 00:02:06.340 don't know, invented the canvas and mixed the 00:02:06.340 --> 00:02:08.199 chemicals for the paint himself. That's a great 00:02:08.199 --> 00:02:10.419 way to put it. So we have this figure, Tanaka. 00:02:10.800 --> 00:02:13.219 He's responsible for the music in Metroid, Kid 00:02:13.219 --> 00:02:16.520 Icarus, Earthbound, Tetris, basically the Mount 00:02:16.520 --> 00:02:19.580 Rushmore of 8 -bit audio. But his background 00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:22.840 isn't classical music, is it? Far from it. And 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:24.919 this is where the story gets really, really interesting. 00:02:25.419 --> 00:02:27.039 If you want to understand the Nintendo sound, 00:02:27.539 --> 00:02:29.759 you don't actually look at Japanese folk music 00:02:29.759 --> 00:02:31.860 or classical orchestration. You have to look 00:02:31.860 --> 00:02:34.759 at Jamaican reggae. Which is, I mean, that is 00:02:34.759 --> 00:02:36.939 the very last thing I expected to find in the 00:02:36.939 --> 00:02:39.560 biography of a Japanese engineer in 1980. I know 00:02:39.560 --> 00:02:41.580 it's wild, but it's the key to everything he 00:02:41.580 --> 00:02:44.139 did. But before we get to the reggae, we have 00:02:44.139 --> 00:02:47.460 to place him in Kyoto. 1980, Tanaka just graduated 00:02:47.460 --> 00:02:49.860 from university with a degree in electronic engineering 00:02:49.860 --> 00:02:52.740 and he applies to Nintendo. But his motivation 00:02:52.740 --> 00:02:54.879 is, well, it's kind of hilarious in hindsight. 00:02:55.219 --> 00:02:57.620 He wanted an easy life, didn't he? I read that 00:02:57.620 --> 00:03:00.060 he thought making toys would be relatively stress 00:03:00.060 --> 00:03:02.919 -free. Exactly. He thought, he's a toy company. 00:03:03.259 --> 00:03:05.400 How hard can it possibly be? Right. He basically 00:03:05.400 --> 00:03:07.240 wanted a job where he could coast a little bit 00:03:07.240 --> 00:03:09.800 and just relax. And instead he walked right into 00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:12.460 a meat grinder. An absolute grinder. Remember, 00:03:12.479 --> 00:03:14.620 this was the absolute dawn of the video game 00:03:14.620 --> 00:03:17.159 industry. We're talking about shifts that started 00:03:17.159 --> 00:03:19.539 at 9 in the morning and didn't end until 2 or 00:03:19.539 --> 00:03:22.419 3 in the morning the next day. Good grief. And 00:03:22.419 --> 00:03:24.199 the environment wasn't what we picture today 00:03:24.199 --> 00:03:27.020 at all. There were no sleek dual monitor setups, 00:03:27.219 --> 00:03:29.759 no visual development interfaces, none of that. 00:03:30.020 --> 00:03:32.860 They were working on TTY devices. Yeah, I've 00:03:32.860 --> 00:03:35.099 seen that term in the source notes, TTY. For 00:03:35.099 --> 00:03:36.860 listeners who haven't really dug into computing 00:03:36.860 --> 00:03:38.800 history, can you explain what that actually looked 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:42.629 like in the room? Sure. TTY stands for Teletypewriter. 00:03:43.469 --> 00:03:46.189 So imagine an actual physical typewriter connected 00:03:46.189 --> 00:03:48.409 to a mainframe computer. There is no screen. 00:03:48.530 --> 00:03:51.169 Wait, no screen at all? No screen. You type your 00:03:51.169 --> 00:03:54.090 code, your assembly language, or your hex values, 00:03:54.349 --> 00:03:57.569 and you get a physical printout on paper. You 00:03:57.569 --> 00:03:59.849 are essentially coding blind. So if you're writing 00:03:59.849 --> 00:04:02.210 music, you're doing it by typing numbers onto 00:04:02.210 --> 00:04:04.210 paper. You can't just hit a playback button and 00:04:04.210 --> 00:04:06.530 see a waveform on a monitor. Exactly. You type 00:04:06.530 --> 00:04:09.849 the code, you compile it, burn it to a ROM, physically 00:04:09.849 --> 00:04:12.050 plug it into the hardware, and then just listen. 00:04:13.129 --> 00:04:15.349 Tanaka actually said that the history of games 00:04:15.349 --> 00:04:18.050 and the history of computers totally overlapped 00:04:18.050 --> 00:04:20.990 for them. They were literally inventing the development 00:04:20.990 --> 00:04:23.470 tools at the exact same time they were trying 00:04:23.470 --> 00:04:26.089 to make the games. That is insane. If they needed 00:04:26.089 --> 00:04:29.319 a tool to visualize a sound wave, They had to 00:04:29.319 --> 00:04:32.500 pause and code the tool first. Everything was 00:04:32.500 --> 00:04:35.240 handmade in the most literal, technical sense 00:04:35.240 --> 00:04:37.459 of the word. That puts a whole new spin on the 00:04:37.459 --> 00:04:39.120 8 -bit aesthetic. It wasn't an aesthetic choice 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:41.399 at all. It was a survival mechanism. Precisely. 00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:43.519 But let's circle back to the music itself. You 00:04:43.519 --> 00:04:47.399 mentioned reggae. How does a stressed -out, overworked 00:04:47.399 --> 00:04:50.300 engineer in Kyoto become obsessed with the Jamaican 00:04:50.300 --> 00:04:53.199 dub music? It started with a very specific moment 00:04:53.199 --> 00:04:56.000 in the 70s. Tanaka's mother had actually made 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:58.560 him take piano lessons as a kid, but he rebelled 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:01.620 against that. Fast forward, he's a young guy 00:05:01.620 --> 00:05:04.040 eating pasta at a restaurant in Kyoto that had 00:05:04.040 --> 00:05:07.699 live music or a DJ playing, and suddenly he hears 00:05:07.699 --> 00:05:10.980 this track called Negreya Love Dub by Lin -Val 00:05:10.980 --> 00:05:13.259 Thompson. And the story goes that he literally 00:05:13.259 --> 00:05:16.019 stopped eating. He completely froze. He was so 00:05:16.019 --> 00:05:18.379 confused by what he was hearing. Because in dub 00:05:18.379 --> 00:05:21.100 music, the engineer at the mixing board is basically 00:05:21.100 --> 00:05:23.920 the lead artist. They take a traditional reggae 00:05:23.920 --> 00:05:26.639 track and they strip it way down. They drop out 00:05:26.639 --> 00:05:28.500 the vocals. They drop out the guitar, leaving 00:05:28.500 --> 00:05:30.920 just the heavy drums and the bass. Right. And 00:05:30.920 --> 00:05:33.399 then they use these heavy exaggerated tape delays 00:05:33.399 --> 00:05:35.579 and echoes. So he's sitting there hearing these 00:05:35.579 --> 00:05:38.000 massive gaps in the sound. Right. He kept stopping 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.120 his fork because he genuinely thought the restaurant's 00:05:40.120 --> 00:05:42.810 audio equipment was He's thinking, why is the 00:05:42.810 --> 00:05:45.129 sound cutting out? Is the tape snapping? But 00:05:45.129 --> 00:05:47.329 then it clicked for him. He realized the silence 00:05:47.329 --> 00:05:50.689 was intentional. The gap itself was the instrument. 00:05:51.449 --> 00:05:53.970 He later said that deep bass sound, that heavy 00:05:53.970 --> 00:05:56.730 vibration, and the strategic use of silence, 00:05:57.170 --> 00:05:59.290 it just hooked him completely. And he didn't 00:05:59.290 --> 00:06:01.550 just fanboy over it from a distance, right? He 00:06:01.550 --> 00:06:03.949 actually started a band. He did. He started a 00:06:03.949 --> 00:06:06.089 band called The Shampoos. Which is just an S 00:06:06.089 --> 00:06:08.509 -tier band name, by the way. It really is. And 00:06:08.509 --> 00:06:10.029 they were legitimate, too. They weren't just 00:06:10.029 --> 00:06:12.370 some garage cover band. They actually opened 00:06:12.370 --> 00:06:16.550 for reggae legends Sly and Robbie at the Reggae 00:06:16.550 --> 00:06:20.370 Sunsplash Festival in Osaka. That is serious 00:06:20.370 --> 00:06:22.790 street cred for a Nintendo engineer. No kidding. 00:06:23.189 --> 00:06:25.269 So connect the dots for us here. How does playing 00:06:25.269 --> 00:06:28.629 Jamaican dub in a club in Osaka translate to 00:06:28.629 --> 00:06:31.009 composing the music for Wrecking Crew on the 00:06:31.009 --> 00:06:34.329 NES? This is really the core genius of Tanaka's 00:06:34.329 --> 00:06:37.529 entire career. Yeah. The NES hardware, the Famicom, 00:06:37.629 --> 00:06:40.029 was incredibly limited. You had a very specific, 00:06:40.110 --> 00:06:42.889 tiny number of sound channels, two pulse wave 00:06:42.889 --> 00:06:45.670 channels for melody, one triangle wave for bass, 00:06:45.769 --> 00:06:48.449 and a noise channel for percussion. And that 00:06:48.449 --> 00:06:50.810 is it. And usually in those old games, if you 00:06:50.810 --> 00:06:52.370 play a sound effect, like a character jumping 00:06:52.370 --> 00:06:54.410 or a bomb exploding, it has to basically steal 00:06:54.410 --> 00:06:55.930 one of those audio channels, right? So the music 00:06:55.930 --> 00:06:58.439 just cuts out for a second. Exactly. And most 00:06:58.439 --> 00:07:01.300 composers absolutely hated that. They tried to 00:07:01.300 --> 00:07:03.660 write these dense continuous melodies and just 00:07:03.660 --> 00:07:05.259 sort of hoped the sound effects wouldn't ruin 00:07:05.259 --> 00:07:08.540 the song too badly. But Tanaka went the complete 00:07:08.540 --> 00:07:11.699 opposite direction. He applied his dub philosophy. 00:07:11.779 --> 00:07:14.439 Ah, I see where this is going. He realized that 00:07:14.439 --> 00:07:16.740 if he voluntarily cut holes in his own melody, 00:07:17.339 --> 00:07:19.699 if he deliberately left silence in the track, 00:07:20.279 --> 00:07:23.740 it accomplished two massive things. First, it 00:07:23.740 --> 00:07:25.519 left room for the sound effects to act as part 00:07:25.519 --> 00:07:27.819 of the rhythm section. So the sound of Mario 00:07:27.819 --> 00:07:30.319 jumping or a block breaking essentially becomes 00:07:30.319 --> 00:07:33.240 the snare drum for the track. Precisely. And 00:07:33.240 --> 00:07:36.100 second, he used the listener's own brain to fill 00:07:36.100 --> 00:07:39.560 in the gaps. He called it his dub bass structure. 00:07:40.339 --> 00:07:42.699 By creating a really heavy bass line on the triangle 00:07:42.699 --> 00:07:44.860 channel and then topping up the melody, he made 00:07:44.860 --> 00:07:47.660 the music feel much bigger than the tiny little 00:07:47.660 --> 00:07:50.199 chip could actually support. He was using the 00:07:50.199 --> 00:07:52.500 hardware limitation as a texture, exactly like 00:07:52.500 --> 00:07:55.680 a dub mixer uses silence. He was basically hacking 00:07:55.680 --> 00:07:58.079 our psychoacoustics because he physically couldn't 00:07:58.079 --> 00:08:01.120 hack the chip any further. Exactly. He realized 00:08:01.120 --> 00:08:03.939 early on that on an 8 -bit chip, you simply can't 00:08:03.939 --> 00:08:05.959 simulate a grand orchestra. Just sounds like 00:08:05.959 --> 00:08:09.480 garbage. But you can simulate a raw, gritty, 00:08:09.800 --> 00:08:12.980 bass -heavy dub track. It fits the digital medium 00:08:12.980 --> 00:08:15.870 perfectly. Speaking of hacking the chip, we really 00:08:15.870 --> 00:08:17.689 need to talk about his work on Donkey Kong. This 00:08:17.689 --> 00:08:20.370 is 1981. He's doing the sound effects. And I 00:08:20.370 --> 00:08:22.790 read this anecdote in the sources about the footsteps, 00:08:22.850 --> 00:08:25.589 which I think perfectly captures exactly who 00:08:25.589 --> 00:08:27.649 this guy is. Oh, the footsteps story is a perfect 00:08:27.649 --> 00:08:30.209 example of his absolute obsession with detail. 00:08:30.870 --> 00:08:34.129 So in 1981, memory on a game cartridge was incredibly 00:08:34.129 --> 00:08:36.730 expensive. Every byte mattered. If you had a 00:08:36.730 --> 00:08:39.190 sound for Mario walking, standard practice was 00:08:39.190 --> 00:08:41.830 to just play that exact same tiny file over and 00:08:41.830 --> 00:08:44.480 over. Doot, doot, doot. Right, just a loop. But 00:08:44.480 --> 00:08:46.559 Tanaka hated that. He thought it sounded rigid 00:08:46.559 --> 00:08:48.519 and robotic. So what did he do? Did he just make 00:08:48.519 --> 00:08:50.179 more sounds? He couldn't. There wasn't enough 00:08:50.179 --> 00:08:54.019 memory. So he programmed a subtle algorithm that 00:08:54.019 --> 00:08:56.860 slightly altered the pitch and the decay of that 00:08:56.860 --> 00:08:59.559 single -footstep sound every single time it triggered. 00:08:59.820 --> 00:09:02.759 That is wild. It's almost imperceptible to the 00:09:02.759 --> 00:09:05.919 conscious mind, but your brain registers it as 00:09:05.919 --> 00:09:09.200 organic. It sounds like physical shoes hitting 00:09:09.200 --> 00:09:11.720 different parts of a metal girder. rather than 00:09:11.720 --> 00:09:13.980 a computer beeping. He's barely sleeping, he's 00:09:13.980 --> 00:09:16.559 working on a typewriter with no screen, and he's 00:09:16.559 --> 00:09:19.139 spending his time hand -coding microscopic pitch 00:09:19.139 --> 00:09:21.899 variations for virtual shoes. That was his level 00:09:21.899 --> 00:09:24.440 of commitment. But not every experiment of his 00:09:24.440 --> 00:09:26.460 worked out, right? There was the whole help me 00:09:26.460 --> 00:09:28.820 incident. The help me incident, yes. This is 00:09:28.820 --> 00:09:30.860 a classic failure story from his early days. 00:09:31.279 --> 00:09:34.320 So in Donkey Kong, Pauline, the lady that Mario 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:36.559 is trying to save from the giant ape, she is 00:09:36.559 --> 00:09:39.039 supposed to scream for help. Tanaka wanted to 00:09:39.039 --> 00:09:42.490 use actual voice... for this. Which in 1981 was, 00:09:42.870 --> 00:09:44.850 I mean, ambitious is probably an understatement. 00:09:45.009 --> 00:09:46.750 Ambitious is definitely polite. The technology 00:09:46.750 --> 00:09:49.809 was totally primitive. But he synthesized a voice 00:09:49.809 --> 00:09:52.250 saying, help me, trying his hardest to make it 00:09:52.250 --> 00:09:54.710 sound human. But before he could go in the game, 00:09:54.809 --> 00:09:57.409 he had to present it to the ultimate test audience. 00:09:57.850 --> 00:10:00.450 And it wasn't a focus group. It was the daughter 00:10:00.450 --> 00:10:03.549 of the company president, Hiroshi Yomochi. And 00:10:03.549 --> 00:10:06.629 Yomochi was famously a terrifying figure in Nintendo 00:10:06.629 --> 00:10:09.090 history, very strict. Absolutely terrifying. 00:10:09.850 --> 00:10:12.049 So Tanaka brings in this tape. He plays this 00:10:12.049 --> 00:10:14.549 synthesized robot scream for Yamaki's daughter. 00:10:14.909 --> 00:10:17.009 She listens to it, looks at him, and just says, 00:10:17.649 --> 00:10:20.649 that doesn't sound like, help me. Ouch. And that 00:10:20.649 --> 00:10:22.769 was it. Feature cut. Back to the drawing board. 00:10:22.950 --> 00:10:25.690 Brutal. But that failure really seems to be an 00:10:25.690 --> 00:10:27.870 outlier in his career. He talks a lot in the 00:10:27.870 --> 00:10:30.169 sources about how he learned a kind of perfectionism 00:10:30.169 --> 00:10:32.610 from another Nintendo legend, Shigeru Miyamoto. 00:10:33.090 --> 00:10:35.840 Miyamoto's influence on him was huge. Tanaka 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:38.139 saw how Miyamoto would obsess over the physical 00:10:38.139 --> 00:10:40.820 feel of a jump or the exact acceleration speed 00:10:40.820 --> 00:10:44.080 of a character on screen. Tanaka took that and 00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:46.710 applied the exact same rigor to the audio. He 00:10:46.710 --> 00:10:48.870 realized sound wasn't just background noise. 00:10:49.269 --> 00:10:51.990 It was crucial player feedback. That philosophy 00:10:51.990 --> 00:10:54.809 really peaks with Metroid in 1986. And looking 00:10:54.809 --> 00:10:56.789 at the notes, this seems to be the moment Tanaka 00:10:56.789 --> 00:10:59.230 officially decided to stop trying to be catchy. 00:10:59.690 --> 00:11:01.669 Metroid is absolutely the turning points. Up 00:11:01.669 --> 00:11:04.610 until 1986, video game music was basically all 00:11:04.610 --> 00:11:07.690 major key, high tempo, very upbeat. Think Super 00:11:07.690 --> 00:11:10.169 Mario Bros. or Pac -Man. It was very gamey. Right. 00:11:10.529 --> 00:11:13.590 Tanaka wanted to completely destroy that cliche. 00:11:14.570 --> 00:11:17.990 He was inspired by a very specific film score 00:11:17.990 --> 00:11:20.750 for a movie called Birdie. Wait, the Nicolas 00:11:20.750 --> 00:11:23.870 Cage movie? That's the one. He loved that the 00:11:23.870 --> 00:11:27.610 music in Birdie was dark, atmospheric, and really 00:11:27.610 --> 00:11:30.759 uncomfortable. It actively withheld giving the 00:11:30.759 --> 00:11:32.960 audience what they wanted until the very end 00:11:32.960 --> 00:11:34.700 of the film. And that's exactly what Metroid 00:11:34.700 --> 00:11:37.340 is. You land on Zeebies and it's definitely not 00:11:37.340 --> 00:11:40.799 a bop. It's this bubbling, ominous, almost dissonant 00:11:40.799 --> 00:11:43.559 sound. It feels like you are actually trapped 00:11:43.559 --> 00:11:46.639 in a hostile alien cave. It creates an intense 00:11:46.639 --> 00:11:49.370 sense of isolation. And internally at Nintendo, 00:11:49.830 --> 00:11:51.710 people hated it. Oh really? They pushed back? 00:11:51.830 --> 00:11:53.429 Oh yeah, the development team was super confused. 00:11:53.549 --> 00:11:55.190 They kept coming to him and asking, where is 00:11:55.190 --> 00:11:57.269 the melody? This is a video game. It's supposed 00:11:57.269 --> 00:11:59.889 to be fun. This music is just depressing. So 00:11:59.889 --> 00:12:01.750 how on earth did he get away with it? Why didn't 00:12:01.750 --> 00:12:03.870 upper management just make him change it to a 00:12:03.870 --> 00:12:06.929 happy 8 -bit samba? This is the fascinating contradiction 00:12:06.929 --> 00:12:09.950 of Nintendo in the 1980s. Today we think of them 00:12:09.950 --> 00:12:12.789 as this very tightly controlled corporate entity. 00:12:12.960 --> 00:12:16.500 But back then, the sound team had zero quotas, 00:12:16.840 --> 00:12:20.000 no sales targets, no marketing team analyzing 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:21.860 the retention rates of the background music. 00:12:22.379 --> 00:12:24.960 Tanaka basically had absolute creative autonomy. 00:12:25.159 --> 00:12:27.159 That is unimaginable today. You'd have a committee 00:12:27.159 --> 00:12:29.279 of 12 different executives analyzing the churn 00:12:29.279 --> 00:12:32.580 risk of scary music in level one. Exactly. But 00:12:32.580 --> 00:12:35.179 because he had that freedom, he could execute 00:12:35.179 --> 00:12:37.620 this brilliant psychological trick on the player. 00:12:38.220 --> 00:12:40.519 He withheld the reward of a catchy melody for 00:12:40.519 --> 00:12:43.320 the entire game. The music just builds and builds 00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:46.440 tension for hours. So when you finally beat Mother 00:12:46.440 --> 00:12:48.320 Brain and the credits roll the ending theme, 00:12:48.360 --> 00:12:50.820 which is this triumphant, highly melodic track, 00:12:51.220 --> 00:12:53.039 it hits you like a truck. It feels like a massive 00:12:53.039 --> 00:12:55.279 release of endorphins. He literally engineered 00:12:55.279 --> 00:12:57.580 the emotional payoff. He did. And speaking of 00:12:57.580 --> 00:12:59.179 engineering, we really have to underscore the 00:12:59.179 --> 00:13:01.419 hardware aspect again. Because while he is fighting 00:13:01.419 --> 00:13:03.980 for this dark artistic vision in Metroid, he 00:13:03.980 --> 00:13:06.179 is simultaneously working on the hardware design 00:13:06.179 --> 00:13:08.700 team for the Game Boy. This is the part I still 00:13:08.700 --> 00:13:11.529 struggle to wrap my head around. The Game Boy 00:13:11.529 --> 00:13:14.389 wasn't just a product he made music for. He was 00:13:14.389 --> 00:13:17.330 on the core team that invented it. He was one 00:13:17.330 --> 00:13:21.110 of only five or six people. He personally researched 00:13:21.110 --> 00:13:23.850 and designed the audio hardware. So when you 00:13:23.850 --> 00:13:26.830 boot up a Game Boy and you hear that iconic bing 00:13:26.830 --> 00:13:29.429 on startup or you hear the classic sounds of 00:13:29.429 --> 00:13:32.690 Tetris, you are hearing a physical chip that 00:13:32.690 --> 00:13:35.429 Tanaka helped build playing digital instructions 00:13:35.429 --> 00:13:38.070 that Tanaka wrote. Talk about full stack development. 00:13:38.190 --> 00:13:40.450 That's doing everything. And he didn't stop at 00:13:40.450 --> 00:13:43.090 audio either. He actually co -designed and directed 00:13:43.090 --> 00:13:44.909 the Game Boy camera and the Game Boy printer. 00:13:45.100 --> 00:13:47.220 I had one of those. It was incredibly grainy, 00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:49.659 grayscale, and just completely magical at the 00:13:49.659 --> 00:13:51.659 time. It really was ahead of its time. Yeah. 00:13:51.759 --> 00:13:54.299 Tanaka was inspired by the view cam camcorders 00:13:54.299 --> 00:13:56.480 that were popular back then. He became totally 00:13:56.480 --> 00:13:58.379 obsessed with the idea of getting visual input 00:13:58.379 --> 00:14:00.860 onto a handheld game device. He was even running 00:14:00.860 --> 00:14:03.340 wild experiments trying to get live TV signals 00:14:03.340 --> 00:14:05.360 to display on the Game Boy screen in the early 00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:08.279 90s. Watching live TV on a Game Boy, that is 00:14:08.279 --> 00:14:11.799 some serious cyberpunk ambition for 1992. It 00:14:11.799 --> 00:14:14.039 connects back to the bigger picture of his worldview. 00:14:14.909 --> 00:14:17.629 Tanaka really didn't distinguish between engineering 00:14:17.629 --> 00:14:20.450 a circuit board and composing a song. To him, 00:14:20.750 --> 00:14:23.350 both of those things were acts of creation. Whether 00:14:23.350 --> 00:14:25.929 he was soldering a connection or placing a quarter 00:14:25.929 --> 00:14:28.370 note on a staff, he was building an experience. 00:14:28.750 --> 00:14:30.690 It's all just signals and waves at the end of 00:14:30.690 --> 00:14:33.370 the day. So we move into the 90s. The Game Boy 00:14:33.370 --> 00:14:36.649 is a massive, world -changing hit. Metroid is 00:14:36.649 --> 00:14:40.149 a cult classic. But then comes Pokemon, and this 00:14:40.149 --> 00:14:44.070 shifts his trajectory entirely. It does. Tanaka 00:14:44.070 --> 00:14:46.750 had a colleague named Sunakazu Ishihara, who 00:14:46.750 --> 00:14:49.750 was the producer of EarthBound. Ishihara basically 00:14:49.750 --> 00:14:51.830 told Tanaka he should come work for the new venture 00:14:51.830 --> 00:14:54.230 he was starting, which eventually became Creatures 00:14:54.230 --> 00:14:56.570 Inc. And Creatures is one of the three companies 00:14:56.570 --> 00:14:58.470 that manage the entire Pokemon brand, right? 00:14:58.470 --> 00:15:00.409 Exactly. But Tanaka was still fully employed 00:15:00.409 --> 00:15:02.889 at Nintendo at this point. Yes, he was. So he 00:15:02.889 --> 00:15:05.549 started Moonlighting. He wrote the opening and 00:15:05.549 --> 00:15:07.889 ending themes for the Pokemon anime in Japan. 00:15:08.049 --> 00:15:09.889 Wait, like the Japanese equivalent of the I want 00:15:09.889 --> 00:15:13.120 to be the very best song? Yes. The main track 00:15:13.120 --> 00:15:15.980 was called Maisier Pokemon Master. And these 00:15:15.980 --> 00:15:19.039 songs didn't just do okay, they became absolute 00:15:19.039 --> 00:15:21.700 monsters. Best sellers, topping the national 00:15:21.700 --> 00:15:23.720 music charts. So you have a Nintendo hardware 00:15:23.720 --> 00:15:26.399 engineer who accidentally becomes a chart -topping 00:15:26.399 --> 00:15:28.779 pop songwriter on the side. Which naturally created 00:15:28.779 --> 00:15:31.279 a massive corporate conflict. Nintendo had a 00:15:31.279 --> 00:15:33.559 very strict policy. Employees could not work 00:15:33.559 --> 00:15:35.840 for other companies, even friendly partner companies 00:15:35.840 --> 00:15:38.299 like Creatures. They basically called him in 00:15:38.299 --> 00:15:40.620 and told him, you have to stop writing these 00:15:40.620 --> 00:15:43.159 anime songs. You're an engineer here, not a pop 00:15:43.159 --> 00:15:45.740 star. So he had a choice to make. the stable, 00:15:45.919 --> 00:15:48.019 prestigious gig at the biggest game company in 00:15:48.019 --> 00:15:50.779 the world, or the creative freedom to write bangers 00:15:50.779 --> 00:15:54.000 for Pikachu. He chose freedom. He officially 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:57.399 resigned from Nintendo in 1999 and joined Creatures 00:15:57.399 --> 00:16:00.120 Inc. full -time. And typical Tanaka, he didn't 00:16:00.120 --> 00:16:02.580 just join as a staff composer, he climbed the 00:16:02.580 --> 00:16:04.899 corporate ladder. He eventually became the president 00:16:04.899 --> 00:16:07.720 of the entire company. The guy who stopped eating 00:16:07.720 --> 00:16:10.440 pasta because he was so mesmerized by dub gaps 00:16:10.440 --> 00:16:12.659 became the president of the company managing 00:16:12.659 --> 00:16:16.919 Pokemon from 2001 all the way to 2023. He succeeded 00:16:16.919 --> 00:16:20.259 his old friend Ishihara. That is just a staggering 00:16:20.259 --> 00:16:22.720 career arc. But did he stop making music when 00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:25.440 he put on the executive suit? Never. In fact, 00:16:25.679 --> 00:16:28.379 he's had a huge resurgence recently. He started 00:16:28.379 --> 00:16:30.700 performing live at dance clubs under the stage 00:16:30.700 --> 00:16:33.860 name Chip Tanaka. Chip, as in chiptune, I assume. 00:16:34.019 --> 00:16:36.500 Yes, but there's a funny layer to that name change. 00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:39.200 His old nickname at Nintendo was Hip Tanaka. 00:16:39.440 --> 00:16:41.740 Hip? Where did Hip come from? Well, a friend 00:16:41.740 --> 00:16:43.779 of his pointed out that Hip was way too tied 00:16:43.779 --> 00:16:46.620 to his Nintendo past. Tanaka originally chose 00:16:46.620 --> 00:16:49.279 the name Hip because he absolutely loved hip 00:16:49.279 --> 00:16:52.240 -hop music, specifically the group A Tribe Called 00:16:52.240 --> 00:16:55.039 Quest. I'm sorry, A Tribe Called Quest. Yes. 00:16:55.419 --> 00:16:58.440 Reggae, dub, and A Tribe Called Quest. His musical 00:16:58.440 --> 00:17:01.159 taste was impeccable, so he changed Hip to Chip. 00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:04.259 to embrace the modern chiptune scene. So now 00:17:04.259 --> 00:17:06.400 you have this high level executive, a president 00:17:06.400 --> 00:17:09.220 of a major company, standing in a DJ booth, blasting 00:17:09.220 --> 00:17:12.079 heavy 8 -bit beats for a massive crowd of 20 00:17:12.079 --> 00:17:14.160 -somethings who probably have absolutely no idea 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:17.019 that he personally built the hardware that defined 00:17:17.019 --> 00:17:19.480 the genre they're dancing to. That is the literal 00:17:19.480 --> 00:17:22.339 definition of legend behavior. It really is. 00:17:22.779 --> 00:17:25.400 And despite the heavy techno beats and the executive 00:17:25.400 --> 00:17:28.460 title, he never lost that deep emotional core 00:17:28.460 --> 00:17:32.559 in his music. When Satoru Iwata, the very beloved 00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:36.019 CEO of Nintendo, passed away in 2015, Tanaka 00:17:36.019 --> 00:17:38.220 released a tribute track called Dedicated to 00:17:38.220 --> 00:17:40.680 Satoru Iwata. I've actually heard that track. 00:17:40.759 --> 00:17:43.000 It's not just a catchy loop. It is genuinely 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:45.460 heartbreaking. It's a beautiful piece of music. 00:17:45.539 --> 00:17:48.200 It shows his incredible range from the scary 00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:52.119 alien silence of Metroid to the goofy bouncy 00:17:52.119 --> 00:17:54.599 fun of Dr. Mario, which, by the way, he says 00:17:54.599 --> 00:17:56.740 was the very first time he truly felt like his 00:17:56.740 --> 00:17:59.119 own personality came through in a game, all the 00:17:59.119 --> 00:18:01.980 way to these deep emotional tributes. And all 00:18:01.980 --> 00:18:03.700 of it coming from a guy who just wanted a stress 00:18:03.700 --> 00:18:06.140 -free job making toys. It really highlights how 00:18:06.140 --> 00:18:08.579 incredibly unique that early Nintendo environment 00:18:08.579 --> 00:18:11.500 was. It was this wild frontier where a reggae 00:18:11.500 --> 00:18:13.779 -loving engineer could accidentally define the 00:18:13.779 --> 00:18:15.819 sound of a generation just by trying to work 00:18:15.819 --> 00:18:18.099 around arbitrary memory limits. And I think that 00:18:18.099 --> 00:18:20.970 brings us to the real lesson here. Why does Tanaka's 00:18:20.970 --> 00:18:23.710 story matter beyond just retro nostalgia? I think 00:18:23.710 --> 00:18:25.430 it's really about the fundamental relationship 00:18:25.430 --> 00:18:28.029 between constraints and creativity. We hear that 00:18:28.029 --> 00:18:30.849 phrase a lot, right? Constraints breed creativity. 00:18:31.529 --> 00:18:34.650 But Tanaka is the empirical, undeniable proof 00:18:34.650 --> 00:18:38.039 of it. Exactly. We live in an era of infinite 00:18:38.039 --> 00:18:40.619 tracks now. You use a digital audio workstation 00:18:40.619 --> 00:18:43.799 today. You have unlimited cloud storage, infinite 00:18:43.799 --> 00:18:46.720 processing power. If you want a full 80 -piece 00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:48.960 orchestra, you just click a button. If you want 00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:51.059 a gospel choir, you click another button. And 00:18:51.059 --> 00:18:52.980 you can fix absolutely anything in post. You 00:18:52.980 --> 00:18:55.180 don't need to use the silence to save memory 00:18:55.180 --> 00:18:58.319 anymore. But Sinaka had to. He had three simple 00:18:58.319 --> 00:19:00.740 tones and a noise channel. He had a few tiny 00:19:00.740 --> 00:19:02.960 kilobytes of memory. He couldn't add more sounds. 00:19:02.960 --> 00:19:07.000 He had to subtract them. And by using that Jamaican 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:09.200 dub technique of actively cutting holes in the 00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:12.359 music, he created a sound that was infinitely 00:19:12.359 --> 00:19:14.839 punchier and more memorable than a full symphony 00:19:14.839 --> 00:19:16.859 would have been on that hardware. So the Nintendo 00:19:16.859 --> 00:19:18.920 sound wasn't a stylistic choice at all. It was 00:19:18.920 --> 00:19:21.200 a brilliant solution to an engineering problem. 00:19:21.339 --> 00:19:23.559 It was a perfect fusion of electronic engineering 00:19:23.559 --> 00:19:26.140 necessity and Jamaican dub sensibilities. He 00:19:26.140 --> 00:19:28.339 proved once and for all that strict limitations 00:19:28.339 --> 00:19:30.900 aren't the enemies of art. They are the exact 00:19:30.900 --> 00:19:33.490 fuel for it. That is such a powerful takeaway 00:19:33.490 --> 00:19:36.509 for anyone doing any kind of creative work today. 00:19:36.829 --> 00:19:39.130 We're all kind of drowning in options and tools. 00:19:39.849 --> 00:19:42.529 Maybe the secret is to actively, artificially 00:19:42.529 --> 00:19:45.130 limit ourselves. Um, pluck the second monitor. 00:19:45.630 --> 00:19:47.970 Yeah. Limit yourself to four tracks. See what 00:19:47.970 --> 00:19:50.289 happens. You might just invent a whole new genre. 00:19:50.490 --> 00:19:52.569 Or at least write a really catchy tune while 00:19:52.569 --> 00:19:56.869 eating some pasta. Ideally both. Before we wrap 00:19:56.869 --> 00:19:59.609 up this deep dive, I want to leave you, the listener, 00:19:59.849 --> 00:20:02.690 with a thought to really chew on. We spent so 00:20:02.690 --> 00:20:04.329 much of our time trying to upgrade our tools, 00:20:04.589 --> 00:20:06.309 getting the faster computer, the better camera, 00:20:06.430 --> 00:20:08.970 the more expensive software subscription, but 00:20:08.970 --> 00:20:11.849 Tanaka's best, most enduring work came from the 00:20:11.849 --> 00:20:14.430 struggle of fitting a symphony into a tiny microchip. 00:20:14.779 --> 00:20:17.240 In your own life or your own work, where are 00:20:17.240 --> 00:20:19.220 you fighting against a limitation right now? 00:20:19.500 --> 00:20:21.299 And instead of fighting it, what if you treated 00:20:21.299 --> 00:20:23.480 it like a dub mixer? What if the gap in your 00:20:23.480 --> 00:20:25.380 resources is actually the most interesting part 00:20:25.380 --> 00:20:27.940 of the song? That is the big question. Thanks 00:20:27.940 --> 00:20:30.500 for diving deep with us today. Go listen to some 00:20:30.500 --> 00:20:32.839 reggae, play a little Metroid, and appreciate 00:20:32.839 --> 00:20:34.660 the silence between the beeps. We'll see you 00:20:34.660 --> 00:20:35.640 on the next one. Take care.