Wow! this generated alot more response that I though it would, haha.
@Hellacia - "Did you ask this because of the few orchestral soundtrack threads in which everyone has continuously said they have no soul?" This was one of the main reasons I began to ask myself these questions. But then if you looked at the non-orchestral, western chiptune stuff (Tommy Tallarico, Rick Fox, Mark Miller) you'd hear that it wasn't as good (imo) as something Kondo would do, or Koshiro. But now that I think about it, what GoldfishX said makes alot of sense. The Japanese looked at the limitations, and made the best effort possible to overcome them and make a legit form of music from these beeps and bloops. Some western composers (I'm looking at you Mark Miller) hate it if you even mention the worked on video games. I guess they looked at it with contempt or something. "/
@Jormungand - "Certainly some composers might think about words to go along with their nonlyrical music, and to some extent that might shape their composition, but I don't think it's common if your goal is non-vocal music." Just look at Masato Nakamura who did Sonic 1 and 2. His stuff is very singable, but that may be in part due to him being in a J-Pop band haha. But I think I've read in some interview that some composers would have a certain melody created due in part to a human voice being able to sing it with lyrics. Even when they knew it would just be FM/square wave in the end. Or maybe it's just because Japanese is very simple to speak in small pieces, and 10 note simple melody could perfectly fit a Japanese sentence or something. (think
Eight Melodies from Mother)
@Dag - Yea I know about YMO. Everytime I read about a Japanese composer's influences, they almost always include YMO (and Debussy too). I think YMO basically invented that sort of music, (progressive synth pop?) and the composers that followed tried to emulate this style. (Or at least they made it mainstream in Japan). YMO also influence hip hop and electronic music in general, with the hardware they used.
@Yotsuya - This is exactly what I thought. Japanese traditional music was built around atmosphere and for specific events (festivals etc). This directly correlates to the original purpose of VGM!
Alot of good answers, thanks!
PS: 90% of the western vgm that I do like is from the UK it seems. People like Matt Furniss, Allister Brimble, Follin bros, Tim Wright, and Rob Hubbard have songs/production values that are just as good or even better than the Japanese stuff. Probably a matter of how many there were (demoscene had a huge impact over there, when US had none I think) but still interesting..