I grew up in the 80's and played video games (or watched my older brother play them) as far back as I can remember. Although I don't always remember every nuance of graphics or gameplay, the songs that accompanied the games I played are always recognizable and ingrained on my memory. Back in the 80's, the limits of technology (or at the time, they were seen as advances), added a certain aesthetic to the music of video games that puts it unmistakably in the decade of decadence, where everything felt like it was from the future or "in the now." That aesthetic translated into very memorable music, and those tunes are ones I hum even to this day. Super Mario Brothers, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Paperboy, among others, were all part of my daily routine. The music was simple, yet usually held a driving beat that kept me motivated to play the games over and over and over, speeding up when the time was running out, getting more mysterious as I entered an underground level, or illustrating that my foe was from a different country than the one before.
All of the songs were used to augment my experience with playing the games, make them stick in my memory and motivate me to play them multiple times. The one similar aspect of all of the soundtracks was the use of looping to create short bursts of sounds into longer melodies. Not only did this mimic how popular music was made at the time, it also created auditory cues for how I experienced the gameplay. For example, the short victory tune at the end of a Mario level, when he jumps on the flag and enters the castle. This always gave me an almost Pavlovian response of relief and joy, as if I had been holding my breath while playing and could now relax. Or when the timer came to less than 100 seconds, the music speeds up to warn the player that they need to go faster. Gameplay doesn't speed up, but the automatic response is to run and jump over obstacles and enemies much faster.
"It would appear, then, that rather than being the consequence of the limited memory available on the systems, loops were, at least in part, an aesthetic that grew as the games became more popular and more complex." (Collins, 2007)
Nowadays, students are still playing the "retro" games of the 80's and experiencing it as a sort of nostalgic aesthetic, rather than a futuristic or current one. Even though music soundtracks on games have greatly surpassed the level they once were, there is still a fondness for the way things used to be. In that, we can teach students that often when technology becomes "obsolete", it can be used in a new way or how we can use it to modify or redefine what we already do, rather than lost and forgotten. Appreciation of older technology can create that greater respect for the way things are now.
Reference
Collins, K. (2007). In the Loop: Creativity and Constraint in 8-bit Video Game Audio. Cambridge University Press.