The Impact of Jungle Music in 90s Video Game Development

Author here. Thanks for sharing the blog post on HN; it was a nice surprise to see it in the first page.

cool to see ace combat 2 in there cause i love bullet hell games. was wild trying it on MAME instead of an arcade cabinet, hooked up to a subwoofer and realizing what genre it was cause your typical cabinet doesn't go loud enough to hear like half the song in the sub bass

also funny how you can beat the game as a dolphin flying a plane haha

FYI you have a typo in there. You wrote "JTL Bukem" but it should be "LTJ Bukem". LTJ being short for "Long Time Junglist"

Also "Examples of popular drum brakes" should be "breaks".

You have gotten the history here dead wrong:

> The techno scene originated in Germany, reached the UK, and it was later associated with the Chicago & Detroit EDM scene in America.

Techno was invented in Detroit, house music in Chicago. Germany like techno. In no sense whatsoever did they invent or originate it.

Drum brakes is an excellent typo tho ahah

Now I desperately want to see drum breaks made with brake drums.

You’re right, but it’s also worth noting that the Belleville Three [1] were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk (electro)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belleville_Three

For this set I'm gonna need a 5HP turntable with dual 4-jaw chucks

I'd argue the article gets the history of jungle itself quite wrong too... there's no mention of breakbeat hardcore, no mention of Shut Up and Dance collaborating with Ragga Twins, etc.

Fabio and Grooverider are seminal figures to the scene, yes, but they did not originate the sound.

I've had this argument too many times, and it's not worth repeating. Yes, techno is from Detroit, influenced by Kraftwerk, influenced by Stevie Wonder, influenced by Stockhausen etc etc. Where it comes from is defined by where you draw a line in the sand.

The sidebar about pirate radio, while factually correct, seems to heavily imply that pirate radio started in the jungle era, but Radio Caroline was broadcasting in the 60s

Thanks for the heads up. It's funny how we encounter different sources telling us different things about the history of these subgenres. I'll go back and review/expand that paragraph soon.

Hi there. That was probably just a small mistake on how I tried to explain the paragraph or the poor choice of words/terms I used. Thanks for the heads up.

It seems quite silly to mention it, but the the phrase 'EDM' here really made me more upset than it possibly should. Call it 'House' genericlly, call it 'techno' generically, but please don't call it EDM generically, as that as many other's have mentioned is a sub genre coined way later to describe a bland watered down distant cousin of 'House' music. It really detracts from the great article in a Steve Buscemi with a skateboard kind of way.

this is also incorrect, EDM has multiple meanings over time and space - are you being annoyed at the contemporary American use of it to mean "inoffensive dance music"?

wikipedia has a whole section on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music#Termino...

Honestly it's more complicated than that. At the same time that techno was being created in Detroit, EBM was being created in Germany and the UK. When techno came back over from Detroit, it as influenced by those things. So modern techno can be said to have both European and African American roots independently. I would say its more accurate to say it originated in Detroit since that is the main basis for the sound, but it is extremely transatlantic.

Agreed. EDM just means Electronic Dance Music. The issue is that it has also become the name of a generic genre of such music that is terrible and that is the visceral image most people get when you say the acronym. But that image is inaccurate.

I agree. To be honest, I don't think I ever used the term EDM before in my life, but I went with the same expression that my sources used.

Influenced by DJ Kool Herc more than any of those, I would wager.

I was AFK all night after posting this, but I actually regret not acknowledging international contributions to techno music and culture, which was and is huge.

But I can't agree with this:

> Where it comes from is defined by where you draw a line in the sand.

There was a time before anyone called music 'techno', and a time after. That's the line, and the part of history which crossed that line happened in the Detroit Metro area. There's no disputing this.

Techno parties are all about having a good time and welcoming everyone, no matter who they are or where they're from. The music is absolutely a blend of influences from all over, and Germans took to it (hard!) for a reason. But roots is roots.

I totally agree that there's no disputing the origin of techno, but personally I'm not convinced it matters much to the broader history of jungle. Two reasons: house predates techno by several years; and the historical connection from house to jungle is a bit easier to trace than any influence of Detroit techno.

Both Chicago house and NYC/NJ Garage house developed in the early to mid 80s, whereas techno (as a term as well as a cohesive sound) didn't become a thing until the late 80s.

To be clear, I'm not trying to downplay the absolutely massive importance of the Belleville Three at all. But I would consider Juan Atkins' early work to be electro, rather than techno. And meanwhile Kevin Saunderson's best songs always felt more house-like than techno to my ear.

Anyway, jungle's most immediate predecessor was UK breakbeat hardcore, which combined breakbeats from funk and hip hop, with synth influences from acid house (Chicago) and new beat (Belgium), among other house-derived genres. I guess I just don't hear much of a techno influence in early jungle. In my view, that doesn't come in until some slightly later drum and bass subgrenres like techstep.

That all said, definitely agree that the timeline described in the article (which gave credit to Germany and the UK) is just plain wrong.