What makes some video game music so beloved? Why are there numerous bands that exist only to cover songs from video games made over two decades ago? I suspect the answers to these particular questions have at least as much to do with adolescent psychology as it does with the quality of the music, but video game music does have a number of weird characteristics that make it inherently different from regular pop music, which might partially account for its fandom.
Video game music is designed to play in endless loops. There isn't really a beginning, middle, and end like pop songs because a level could last an eternity. These songs are made to be listened to over and over and over. On the other hand, video game music is designed to make an instant impact in a short period of time. This is kind of the flip side of the first characteristic. It might only be heard for about thirty seconds at a time, or you might hear the game's song for as long as you're playing it. This was also caused by the memory limitations on early games.
As a result, there's a strange tension where, for the best songs, the melody is immediately identifiable and doesn't contain that many complexities, but you aren't annoyed if you have to hear that song forty times in a row. On top of this weird structural characteristic are the technological limitations of video game music. Now, music in a video game can basically be anything. But the most well-remembered music comes from the original 8-bit era, where composers were limited to four instruments at a time. Taken all together, these requirements led to a very different kind of music whose influence can definitely be felt on popular music today. I think there's a certain purity to video game music - when you are forced to strip a tune down to its most basic elements and squeeze it into a very tightly restricted space. Limitations can be liberating, in a way.
