It was really interesting to read about the history of the jungle genre, and hear some examples, but I was hoping for a bit more about why jungle was so well suited to 90s games. My guess was going to be that jungle as a genre is so heavily sample based, and the 1990s was when game hardware became powerful enough to play samples (not just beeps and FM synthesis), with decent polyphony and fidelity, in complex sequences. Not many other styles of music are built in quite that way, so jungle was a natural fit.
The article does talk about the availability of CD audio being a factor, but that doesn't explain the N64, nor why jungle specifically (lots of genres benefit from the availability of CD audio).
Thank you for the OP for sharing our blogpost. And I agree, I will expand to include more info on the why jungle was a good choice (besides good timing).
This was such a well-written article. Thank you so much.
I was working in game dev in the UK in this era, and I can tell you, all the devs, artists, musicians were mostly listening to what is now called EDM. I was in charge of music tooling at one point, but never had the chance to sway the music to some 180bpm DnB lol
Great stuff! I was speaking to one of the developers from Psygnosis (they worked in the MS-DOS port of Wipeout) and he also mentioned the same thing. And living in London for some years it was clear that jungle and drum'n'bass just fit the place.
The article does talk about the availability of CD audio being a factor, but that doesn't explain the N64, nor why jungle specifically (lots of genres benefit from the availability of CD audio).
I was working in game dev in the UK in this era, and I can tell you, all the devs, artists, musicians were mostly listening to what is now called EDM. I was in charge of music tooling at one point, but never had the chance to sway the music to some 180bpm DnB lol