CREDIT: JACOB BROWN

Originally, video games had no sound at all. Even when home consoles were introduced in the ‘70s, they were still completely silent. Pong was introduced as the first arcade style game in 1972, and the only thing heard was the hypnotic, electronic blip of the digital ball going back and forth. Midway Games imported Gunfight from the Japanese company Taito, which used a microprocessor and a one-channel amplifier for mono gunshot sounds.

The Atari VCS was released with nine game cartridges for the Christmas of 1977, all of which had sound effects, but no music.

Pac Man was released in 1980 and had intro music, but was filled with the sound of chomping dots during game play. Shigeru Miyamoto composed the music for Nintendo's Donkey Kong on a small electronic keyboard in 1981.

Rock music and video games collided or the first time in 1982 when Atari released the game Journey Escape, in which you play as the rock group Journey band members who run from swarming groupies. The game featured digitalized version of the band's music.

In 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System was released, and resulted in some of the best known 8-bit music around like tunes from games like Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, Frogger and Mega Man.

The Super Mario Brothers theme was composed by Koji Kondo and is still considered his first masterpiece. This is when video game music took a different path from cinematic conventions. In 1987, Kondo also wrote the score for The Legend of Zelda.

The Final Fantasy series also began in '87, and it's been argued that Nobuo Uematsu's score is the best video game music ever made, and he's been called the Japanese John Williams. It has continued to impress gamers over the years through produced albums and compilations alongside the official game soundtracks. Uematsu wrote the music for the original Final Fantasy up to Final Fantasy IX by himself, and worked with other composers on X and XI. He only wrote the main theme for XII, but returned to solely write the music for Final Fantasy XIV.

In 2004, the first North American Final Fantasy concert was held. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale performed music from the series at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, after such concerts being held in Japan

The Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, and with that system came games like GoldenEye 007, which had a soundtrack that was a famous revamping of the James Bond theme by the German electronic band Kraftwerk.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was also released on this console, and was one of the first games to include music as a part of the game play. Quake, which was released on the PC as well as Sega and N64 featured music composed by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. There are even points in the game that have the band's logo stamped on them.

In 1997, the soundtrack of Konami's Castlevania: Symphony of The Night also included dark heavy metal riffs, as well as gothic classical tracks.

In 1998, Konami released Dance Dance Revolution which started as an arcade game, and was then brought to home consoles with portable dance pads. This game where the point is to dance on the beat of the song led to other games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band where the player has to keep the beat and play or sing the right notes through songs in order to win. Most of these games include a variety of artists to play as, but there are editions dedicated entirely to single bands, such as The Beatles: Rock Band.

Some of the first games to include actual bands in their soundtracks were Thrasher: Skate or Die, which featured a soundtrack of hip hop artists like Run DMC and Public Enemy. Its competitor, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series was home to alt rock playlists including bands like The Dead Kennedys, Goldfinger and Sublime. Music like this eventually became standard in the extreme sports game genre.

In 2000, Io Interactive began a tradition of commissioning an entire orchestra to score a soundtrack with the Hitman series. The Budapest Symphony Orchestra performed the music for the first game in the series as well as its sequels.

In 2001, Microsoft brought out the Xbox and boasted that the system had movie quality sound and music. The Halo series on the Xbox had a soundtrack made up of classical music as well as heavy electric guitar riffs by the band Breaking Benjamin. That same year, Nintendo retaliated with the Game Cube console, which had new versions of classic games like Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers and these games also included remixes of the original soundtracks.

As graphics and interactivity improve with next gen consoles, so does the music to accompany them.