Greatest Video Game Music 2
Image via X5 Music Group
Almost everything in life is better when it’s set to music. It’s the reason boring affairs like weddings and funerals come with musical accompaniment. Especially funerals. They’re depressing without having something to hum along to. The right music can turn a solemn trudge of an event into an uplifting celebration of a person’s life.
Fortunately, you don’t need to have suffered a terrible loss to know this. Imagine the final battle against Sephiroth without One Winged Angel playing in the background. Portal would never have been as big a success without the unexpectedly wonderful Still Alive playing over the credits. The opening chords of the Chrono Trigger theme are enough to send many a gamer, myself included, back to childhood.
Last November, X5 Music released an album of video game music played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra called, with very little exaggeration, The Greatest Video Game Music. You can check it out on Spotify and iTunes now. Almost a year to the day, a follow-up album is being released. With tracks chosen in conjunction with Kotaku and IGN readers, and recorded by the Philharmonic once again, the rather obviously titled The Greatest Video Game Music 2 will be released on November 6th. In keeping with the style of the first album, it will feature a mixture of music from both old and new games, with classics like Super Metroid and Sonic the Hedgehog rubbing shoulders with Uncharted 3 and Batman: Arkham City.
Obviously, it’s easy to sneer at the idea of buying music from a video game. But this isn’t just 8-bit music, re-jigged and released to make a quick buck. Some of the original composers behind these tunes – Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams – are seriously talented people, and you’ll probably recognize their names from the soundtracks to many Hollywood blockbusters. We’re not talking about some crusty bloke in a basement. For those of you who like to have mood-music playing in the background of your D&D/Pathfinder/Call of Cthulhu/Exalted/World of Darkness games – you could do a lot worse than checking these tunes out.
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