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WRITTEN:
benprunty.com
Denver Post
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Last.fm
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That Shelf
Iconic
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These are the soundtracks that help shape and define what we hear in the video games that we play. I am Nitro, and this is the M Disk Playlist Video Game Music Primer 2012
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Katawa Shoujo, composed by Sebastien "NicolArmarfi" Skaf and Andy "Blue123" Andi
https://www.last.fm/music/NicolArmarfi/+wiki
Katawa Shoujo was a different approach to the romantic visual novel type of game. Each of the main cast has at least one form of physical disability. You yourself have chronic cardiac arrhythmia and congenital heart muscle deficiency. Your condition puts you in a position where you have to enroll in a school that specializes in helping other students who are physically challenged. The game does not make light of anyone’s condition, nor does it make gags out of the platonic or romantic relationship built between the cast.
As you progress through school and decide how you want to socialize, you are accompanied by soothing minimalist music, and/or relaxing chill beats. The music is primarily provided by Sebastien Skaf, who goes by the alias NicolArmarfi. According to his last FM profile, he was inspired by the works of Beethoven, Chopin, and Prokofiev. In terms of video game composers, he is inspired by Nobuo Uematsu, and Hitoshi Sakimoto. Official information on Skaf regarding this game could not be found as of this production, but it is rumored that Skaf was unsatisfied with the work he did for Katawa Shoujo, so he took down his works wherever he was able to, and left developer Four Leaf Studios two years after the game’s first release.
The game’s secondary composer is Andy Andi, who goes by the alias “Blue123.” No other official information could be found on Andi as of this production. The game also features guest composers that have been added to the game over the course of its updates. Those composers include game producer Cam “Cpl_Crud” O’Neill, game director delta, Overcoat, and noted saxophone player Japes.
Katawa Shoujo guides you through a journey of self acceptance, friendship building, romancing, and if you want it to go that far, a journey of intimacy. Through it all, you get calming music to gently enhance the adolescent experience. The entire soundtrack can be downloaded from the game’s official website under the release; Katawa Shoujo: Enigmatic Box of Sound.
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Journey, composed by Austin Wintory
Denver Post
IndieGames Podcast
GameSpot
Polygon
The Sixth Axis
Games often need words, or set directions to guide you to where you are supposed to go. Journey completely omits any visual aid, leaving you to figure out where you are, and how you’re supposed to navigate your surroundings. The game also gives you a limited number of things you can actually do; Walk, glide, and audible communication. The task you are given is to reach the top of a mountain that can be seen in the distance. With limited things you can do, and even more limited information, it is up to the player to interpret how the story plays out, and how the player feels in the end.
Austin Wintory had an interest in music since he was a child. He was able to learn to play film scores by ear, so he started taking piano lessons at the age of 10. By the time he was 16, he became a conductor, working with the Cherry Creek High School orchestra in Greenwood VIllage, Colorado. He moved on to the Utah Symphony Orchestra two years later, and then enrolled at the University of Southern California where he met Jenova Chen, future developer of Journey. Wintory would collaborate with Chen on the game Flow, which would be the first game that Wintory scored. It was an experience Wintory described as “radically unlike [any music] he had done before.”
Journey would be Wintory’s second game score, and it would be both one of his more difficult works, and one of his personal greatest achievements. For Journey, Wintory was given the task to make the entire score depict one overarching theme; your personal interaction with your surroundings leading up to the mountain. The penultimate piece, Apotheosis, would end up being the most difficult piece for Wintory to compose. Originally, the final moment was supposed to be similar to how the rest of the score sounded. But Wintory found the original piece planned to be boring. Facing the pressure of living up to the game’s build-up, and the pressure of not having the piece ready before the game’s launch, Wintory took inspiration from Thomas Newman’s score for the 2008 film WALL-E, and began composing a piece that was uplifting in the foreground, and mellow in the background. A symbol of both the experience of the game, and a symbol of bringing closure to that experience. Another source of inspiration for Apotheosis was Tina Guo, cellist of the entire score who is close friends with Wintory, and has collaborated with him in past concerts. The game contains one vocal track, the credits theme “I Was Born for This” performed by Lisbeth Scott.
The score for Journey was so successful, it became the first original video game score to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media in 2013, losing to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score for the film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In 2016, a live dynamic concert series for Journey was funded via Kickstarter. The concept would be that someone would play the game, while a symphony orchestra conducted by Patrick O'Malley with Wintory’s direction, performed arrangements of the score based on what was happening in the game. Journey was one of the most emotional and engrossing experiences in a video game, with a score that enhanced the game in a way that raised the bar for how music enhances the experience of any game.
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Lollipop Chainsaw, composed by Akira Yamaoka, and Jimmy Urine
Dread Central
With releases like Killer7, No More Heroes, and Shadows of the Damned, developer Suda 51 of Grasshopper Manufacture showed audiences that he is not afraid to produce content not seen in other games. Like this one. A game about a cheerleader who is also a zombie hunter dealing with a zombie invasion at her school on her 18th birthday. But what makes Lollipop Chainsaw different from the other Suda 51 games is how music is heavily integrated into the themes and symbolism of the story, when compared to his other works. The biggest example of this is that the main antagonist, Swan, enlists the aid of “intelligent zombies” each being an intentional reference to a form of rock music.
One of the intelligent zombies is voiced in his first video game voice acting job by the game’s co-composer Jimmy Urine, who was responsible for composing the game’s boss themes. Jimmy Urine is known famously for his role as the lead vocalist for the group Mindless Self Indulgence. In an interview with Dread Central, Urine talks about how fun it was to work with the game’s co-writer, James Gunn. Urine describes Gunn’s writing for his character as sounding exactly like how he would in real life. Urine and Gunn would collaborate with each other again on the 2017 film Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2.
While Urine composed the game’s boss themes, Akira Yamaoka handled the rest of the original score. Yamaoka, having earned his fame and popularity through his works with Konami, including the Silent Hill series. After leaving Konami to join Grasshopper Manufacture, he would work on games like Shadows of the Damned, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, and Sine Mora.
The lore of Lollipop Chainsaw is rooted in the various forms of the rock music genre. To help amplify the roots of the lore, it would take Akira Yamaoka, a composer who had always been inspired by the rock genre, and Jimmy Urine, whose career with Mindless Self Indulgence would make him integral to making rock, and all the elements of Lollipop Chainsaw inspired by rock, sound as authentic as it can.
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Sound Shapes
That Shelf
From the creator and composer of the 2007 PlayStation Network game, Everyday Shooter, Jonathan Mak designed a game that would combine the platformer genre with the music genre. By combining the two genres, he was able to produce a game where your actions help build more layers of the music composed specifically for the game. Joining Mak is performer Shaw-Han Liem, known professionally as I Am Robot and Proud. Mak met Liem at one of his concerts and the two collaborated with each other making different game prototypes, one eventually becoming Sound Shapes.
Despite the platformer influence, Mak is actually not a fan of the platformer genre due to all the “memorizing” required to progress. Sound Shapes, on the other hand, works like an interactive toy box, akin to games like Rez, Lumines, and Electroplankton. Mak and Liem served as both the designers, and co-composers of the game. Three other composers also contributed their own music to the game. Jim Guthrie, who previously scored the game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, and was the composer of the popular documentary, Indie Game: The Movie. Deadmau5, who had quickly become one of the most popular DJs in the late 2000s going into the 2010s. Deadmau5 has made cameos in the games DJ Hero 2, Goat Simulator, Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, and his trademark helmet appears as an antenna topper in the game Rocket League.
The last composer to contribute to the game is Beck. Beck was one of the most popular musicians in the 90s with chart topping singles like Loser, Where It’s At, Devil’s Haircut, The New Pollution, and Sexx Laws. The music he made for Sound Shapes, as well as the music by Deadmau5, and Jim Guthrie can only be heard in the game.
Sound Shapes was one of the most popular interactive games that gradually builds the music the more you progress. The musicians who collaborated on the game may have contributed to the game’s popularity, but the concept of a little sphere moving and jumping to build the music was crafted in a way that hadn’t been done before. The unique appeal of the platformer music genre combination made Sound Shapes one of the PlayStation Network’s stand-out downloadable indie titles in 2012.
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Dust: An Elysian Tail, composed by Hyperduck Soundworks and Alexander Brandon
Dust: An Elysian Tail was an entry for Microsoft’s annual “Dream.Build.Play” contest, where indie developers would make a game for a grand prize. This game won the 2011 edition of the contest, and one of the prizes was a contract to release the game for the Xbox Live Arcade store, which would have given the game more exposure than if it had been released on their Indie Games channel, as originally planned.
While the majority of the game was worked on by Dean Dodrill, the music was scored by talent who have been involved with video games since the 90s. Alexander Brandon started composing music on Ad Lib when he was 14 years old. Professionally, he would compose first for Epic Games, which includes being part of the sound team on popular titles like Unreal, and Unreal Tournament. He would also be known for scores in the Deus Ex series, and media tie-ins like The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Happy Feet, and the Ant Bully. In an interview with OverClocked Remix, Brandon talked about how Dodrill actually sent him an early build of the game, which had been unusual for him as he normally doesn’t have any material to work with, a technique he refers to as a developer telling a composer to “throw it over the fence.”
Though Brandon has an extensive history with games, he only composed four tracks for the game. The rest of the score was composed by Chris Geehan & Dan Byrne-McCullough, known collectively as HyperDuck SoundWorks. The duo are frequently commissioned to work on music for trailers of games, but have also worked on other independent games like Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Fez, and Cosmic Star Heroine. They have also worked on the British Academy Film and Television Award winning BBC series, Last Commander.
Dust: An Elysian Tail was another indie game released on Xbox Live Arcade whose accolades helped make the game another reason for why indie games can produce the same quality of experience that games from large studios are able to. With a score that combines experience from Alexander Brandon, embodying gaming experiences of the past, and HyperDuck Soundworks, embodying gaming experiences of the future, Dust would bring together influences and techniques from all eras of gaming into one generation bridging experience.
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FTL: Faster Than Light, composed by Ben Prunty
https://benprunty.com/2014/03/03/the-most-important-advice-i-can-give-to-an-aspiring-game-musician/
https://www.pcgamer.com/ftl-faster-than-light-soundtrack-ben-prunty/
Ben Prunty was always passionate about music. High school proved to be a turning point for Prunty’s passion. He became interested in what he described as “bad German trance music.” He was so enamoured by the genre, he invested in Sonic Foundry’s loop tool ACID to produce music straight out of his computer. Despite the slow learning process, he was not afraid to take chances. He would send demos and letters to various game developers for six months, and move cross country from Maine to the Bay area until finally getting the opportunity to work with Gravity Ghost developer Erin Robinson.
Game developer Anton Mikhailov introduced Prunty to the developers of FTL because Mikhailov knew that the FTL developers were looking for a composer. Prutny described earning the opportunity to compose FTL as “luck.” But at the same time, he feels as if he would never have gotten the opportunity if he didn’t take the risks and chances that he took leading up to his job on Gravity Ghost.
The opportunity to work on FTL was so financially rewarding for Prunty, it allowed him to quit his job at the time to focus on composing full time. FTL would end up being recognized by critics as one of, if not, the best scores of 2012. And all the accolades, and opportunities became a life lesson Prunty expresses to anyone who aspires to be a musicians; “Practice a lot, make smart decisions, be friendly and social and meet game developers.”
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XCOM: Enemy Unknown, composed by Michael McCann
https://michaelmccann.io/bio/
GameInformer
Michael McCann got his career started with the release of the EDM albums Suture Persona in 1998, and Behavior: The Story of the Mechanical Man in 2001. He would further expand his resume as a film composer with films like FUBAR, and his most successful film score; It’s All Gone Pete Tong. He would enter the video game industry with scores for games like Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown would serve as a reboot of the 90s MicroProse developed game. Roland Rizzo, who worked as a QA tester for the original 1994 Enemy Unknown, worked as an audio lead for this game. He would take the sounds from the original game, composed by John Broomhall, and reimagine it for this game. Rizzo would take sections from the original score, and convert it into something that would be more ethereal and dynamic for a modern retelling of an alien invasion story.
Michael McCann’s original score, and Roland Rizzo’s improvements to a score almost 20 years old at that time, both were combined to create a haunting, and eerie experience. But one that would help make the 2012 XCOM Enemy Unknown one of the year’s most memorable scores, as well as one of the year’s most memorable games.
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Bravely Default, composed by Revo
https://www.famitsu.com/news/201206/19016586.html
https://www.oricon.co.jp/news/36643/full/
The spiritual successor to Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light would become a new role playing game franchise for Square Enix. Among unique gameplay mechanics such as using the 3DS sleep mode to replenish the time altering ability called Bravely Second, or using StreetPass to help rebuild your village, the unique approach to the game's score helped distinguish itself from other RPGs, especially those released by Square Enix.
Revo, lead composer of the self described fantasy band Sound Horizon, served as the game's sole composer. Sound Horizon throughout the late 90s and early 2000s made a name for themselves by creating an eclectic combination of symphonic orchestra with metal. In the early 2010s under the name Linked Horizon, Revo would help compose various opening and ending themes for the Attack on Titan anime, and Revo would compose the first Sailor Moon Crystal opening, Moon Pride, performed by Momoiro Clover Z. Through Sound Horizon, Revo's first involvement with video games was composing Shūtan no Ou to Isekai no Kishi ~The Endia & The Knights~, the main theme for the 2006 Chaos Wars, and Kamigami ga Aishita Rakuen ~Belle Isle~, the opening theme for the MMORPG, Belle Isle. Bravely Default would be Revo's first time composing an entire game.
Revo worked closely with producer Tomoya Asano to compose the entire score. As development of the game progressed, more pieces were composed, surpassing the number of pieces originally intended for the game. This was due to Revo feeling like certain situations in the game needed their own unique pieces instead of relying on a previously used piece. He also wanted the entire score to encompass the nostalgia of listening to music from the SaGa series, and the Dragon Quest series.
Bravely Default did not sound like any other role playing game out there. This was due to Revo’s decade long experience of blending genre’s in creative, unique, and exciting ways. He carried that experience with Sound Horizon + Linked Horizon, and crafted one of the most energetic, fast paced, and more dynamic scores for a role playing game.
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Animal Crossing: New Leaf, composed by Manaka Kataoka, Atsuko Asahi, and Kazumi Totaka
Video games often challenge the player, or test their talents, knowledge, and abilities. Not often does a game exist to provide both a wholesome and relaxing experience simultaneously. The Animal Crossing series is a simulation game where you build your own home, and interact with your villager neighbors by doing activities like fishing, bug catching, planting, and selling practically anything for bells to help fund your home, and repay your mortgage. There is no end-game objective. The game can go on as long as you want it to.
Kazumi Totaka has been one of Nintendo's in-house composers since 1992 with the games X, Mario Paint, Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru, and Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins. He is also known for sneaking in his own 19-note piece as an easter egg in every game he has composed music for, known as Totaka's Song. When he transferred to Analysis and Development, his role as a composer decreased somewhat. But he would still find occasion to compose for games, including the role as one of Animal Crossing's primary composers. He is even the inspiration and voice behind in-game musician K.K. Slider, known in Japan as Totakeke, a play on the Totaka name. Every Saturday night, you can ask K.K. Slider to play any song you request, and he will perform the song for you. Dozens of songs can be requested. You can even use "aircheck" versions of K.K. Slider songs inside your home, provided that you have a music player to play them on.
For every hour in the game, there is a piece of background music. And depending on weather conditions, the arrangement is altered slightly. Some of the hourly themes followed the same leitmotif as the main theme of the game. And whenever there is a holiday, you would get a unique piece of music for your town. Music is even integral to designing the town theme; a short piece that is used as town bell music at the top of every hour, and as the piece played whenever you talk to any of the town villagers.
Manaka Kataoka has been scoring for Nintendo since 2007 with the game Wii Fit. Her first involvement with the Animal Crossing series is the Wii’s iteration; City Folk. She is also well known for her works in the Legend of Zelda series, working on the scores for Spirit Tracks, Breath of the Wild, and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Atsuko Asashi has been scoring for Nintendo since 2011 with the game Steel Diver. New Leaf would be the only Animal Crossing game she would work on. She would go on to be known for games like Mario Kart 8 and its DLC, ARMS, Super Smash Bros for Wii U/3DS, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf helped entice people into buying a Nintendo 3DS to experience what was considered to be one of the most improved Animal Crossing games, and at the time, one of the best looking 3DS games. With relaxing music from Manaka Kataoka and Atsuko Asahi, under the helm of Animal Crossing’s original composer Kazumi Totaka, Animal Crossing: New Leaf would blend what made Animal Crossing’s music so charming in the past, with more serene approaches to how music can enhance the series from Kataoka and Asahi.
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Yakuza 5, composed by Mitsuharu Fukuyama
The Yakuza series has primarily focused on the trials and tribulations of Kazama Kiryu, an ex-Yakuza official who only wishes to live a quiet life with his family and orphans. And yet, he is somehow always pulled into the seedy crime-filled world of the Yakuza, and must fight his way through his enemies to protect the ones he loves. What makes Yakuza 5 stand out are the multiple stories told through different perspectives, including one featuring Kiryu’s adopted daughter, Haruka Sawamura. In Yakuza 5, Haruka trains to become an idol by competing in the Princess League J-Pop competition. The gameplay for much of Haruka’s storyline consists of rhythm game-like mechanics, matching the timing of the button pressing to the beats of the songs she is performing.
Series composer Mitsuharu Fukuyama got his video game composition career started as the primary composer of the Crackin’ DJ series. He would also be involved in franchises like Derby Owners Club, OutRun, the games in the Feel the Magic series, and the Yakuza series starting with the third game, up until this one. He would also be the composer of one of the Yakuza franchises most popular karaoke songs, Baka Mitai. Speaking of the karaoke songs, all the songs are performed by the voice actors portraying the characters who are singing. Karaoke songs Heartbreak Mermaid and Rouge of Love would reappear in Yakuza 0, and Baka Mitai would reappear in both Yakuza 0, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon, with Like a Dragon featuring for the first time, an English version of the song.
The Yakuza series can be dramatic, downright silly, or both at the same time. But throughout it all, comes the opportunity to experience the joys of singing and dancing. And Yakuza 5 was able to bring the joys of both singing and dancing together in a way that could not be replicated in the other Yakuza games.
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