Hidden Gems: Diggin’ in the Carts

Today we are going to talk about a series that Red Bull produced back in 2014 and that series is Diggin’ in the Carts. Diggin’ in the Carts is a love letter for 8-bit and 16-bit video game music and those who were and or inspired by the music. Red Bull’s Official Synopsis of the series is as follow:

The faces of Japan’s most influential video game music composers are brought to the forefront in this exclusive documentary. Meet the men and women who inspired a generation while creating what is arguably Japan’s biggest musical export.- Red Bull

This mini-series documentary was 6 episode long, and they average about 15 minuets each. Here are the name of each episode:

• Episode 1- The Rise of VGM
• Episode 2- The Outer Reaches of 8-Bit
• Episode 3- The Dawn of a New Era
• Episode 4- The Cool Kid
• Episode 5- The Role of Role Play
• Episode 6- The End of an Era

Each episode talks about a different part of video game music history and meets the people who left a mark on this media, An excellent example of this would be episodes 1-4, each episode had a famous person talking about what they did, how they did it and shared stories that you wouldn’t hear about at all. Here are a few samples of each episode:

1. Junko Ozawa talks about her time in Namco and how she made music with minimal technology.
2. Masashi Kageyama talks about his time at Sunsoft and how they let him explore and his Magnum Opus-Gimmick!
3. Yoko Shimomura talks about her time at Capcom and creating the music for Street Fighter 2.
4. Hiro on working at Sega and a look into why he made the choices for many of the now legendary game music for the games he works on during that time.
5. Yuzo Koshiro on how he brought club music to 16-bit gaming and why.

If you have the time, please watch this mini-series, and you won’t regret it. Red Bull did a part two to this, but via podcast and sadly didn’t do these six episodes justice at all. If your wondering which episode was my favorite it’s this one.