Charlie Brooker's Video Game Playlist

[Colin Sanction]

Charlie Brooker discusses his passion for video games, and selects some of his favourite game music.

Years before he created Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker was a video games journalist – reflecting a love of gaming that stretches back to his childhood. It's a passion that's cropped up throughout his career – from programmes like Gameswipe to his appearance on Desert Island Discs, where he selected a track from the Gameboy title Robocop as one of his discs.

The most recent episode of Black Mirror – Bandersnatch – even revolves around the creation of a choose-your-own-adventure game, and included bespoke music written on a vintage ZX Spectrum. As part of the High Scores series, Charlie sat down with Mark Savage to discuss how he discovered games at a local swimming pool, why he finds Super Mario Bros addictive, and how he's using Zelda to teach his children to read. Along the way, he chooses his favourite tracks from video game history.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002y9p

[Consignia]

Just listening to this now, it's pretty cool. It's very focused on Spectrum/Commodore era music, so has a tinge of nostalgia for people of the time.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Mildly disappointed he didn't bring up the soundtrack to Donkey Kong Country. It is the zenith of chip based music, as far as I'm concerned. Similar to the observation Brooker made about Manic Miner's (hideous) music, the composer had to work some clever trickery to get the SNES' soundchip to make more sounds at once than it normally could. Such ingenuity would die off once games all moved to optical disk. Here's a little video about it.

[Bently Sheds]

Oooh does he waffle on about getting high scores playing Twitter?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

He did mention social media apps using sound effects as a sort of positive reinforcement thing.

[St_Eddie]

I thoroughly enjoyed this.  Am I a big Jessie for welling up at the Zelda soundtrack?  Yes, yes I am but I care not, for it is a thing of beauty.

Oooh does he waffle on about getting high scores playing Twitter?

Thankfully, no.

He did mention social media apps using sound effects as a sort of positive reinforcement thing.

Unfortunately, yes.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Unfortunately, yes.

I thought it was an interesting little point.

[St_Eddie]

I thought it was an interesting little point.

So did I.  I was just being silly.

[Bennett Brauer]

Mark Savage is a long-time NOTBBC-er. Probably posts on here, n'est ce café?

[St_Eddie]

Mark Savage is a long-time NOTBBC-er. Probably posts on here, n'est ce café?

Non.