At the Philharmonie de Paris, video games enter the history of music. Until 1 November 2026, Video Games & Music traces fifty years of gaming’s sonic evolution, from the first beeps generated by electronic circuits to orchestral scores, electronic music and the adaptive sound systems of contemporary video games. It is a history in which technological development progressively changed not only the quality of sound, but also the way music is composed and experienced. The story begins in the arcades of the 1970s. In Pong, released in 1972, rudimentary sounds were generated directly by the machine’s circuitry, the introduction of dedicated sound chips soon made it possible to create recognisable melodies and give sound a specific role within gameplay. With the arrival of home consoles in the 1980s, music became an increasingly important part of the identity of individual games and platforms. Japan in particular produced some of the composers who would define this new musical language. Kōji Kondō created instantly recognisable themes for Super Mario Bros. in 1985 and The Legend of Zelda in 1986, with Final Fantasy in 1987, Nobuo Uematsu laid the foundations for a form of video game music that would eventually embrace orchestral writing, while Masato Nakamura’s music for Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 accompanied the rivalry between Nintendo and Sega. Meanwhile, video game soundtracks began to be released as albums, performed by orchestras and brought into concert halls. The distinctive nature of video game music, however, remains closely tied to interaction. Unlike a film soundtrack, it does not necessarily follow a predetermined sequence: it can respond to the player’s actions, change, accelerate, stop or layer different elements. Computer code therefore becomes part of the compositional process, while the technical limitations of early machines contributed to the development of specific musical forms and sounds. The exhibition continues into contemporary culture, where Video Game Music has moved far beyond the screen: it is performed in concert, streamed, sampled and remixed, and interacts with pop, rap, cinema and music videos. The exhibition ranges from Final Fantasy to Resident Evil, from Just Dance to the adaptive music of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, covering musical languages that extend from orchestral scores to chiptune. The exhibition itself is structured like a video game. Visitors can freely construct their own route through 29 playable titles, audiovisual installations, consoles, instruments, photographs and artworks. Five environments, or “biomes”, transform the exhibition space into a series of visual and sonic landscapes. Gaming thus becomes a means of tracing a musical history that has developed over half a century alongside the machines that made it possible.
