game music - Killscreen

Illustrated album cover: a figure in a white fox mask sits inside a swirling purple bubble ringed by pale creatures

News

kidkanevil wrote the soundtrack to an imaginary RPG

Bubble maps a psychedelic dimension-hopper that exists only in Gerard Roberts' head—and in fourteen tracks of it.

Article

Oneohtrix Point Never talks futurism, nostalgia, and the videogame music that haunts him

The Garden of Delete musician on Metroid, touring with his heroes, and why nostalgia is unfair.

A painted portrait of composer Gustavo Santaolalla emerging from a dark red background.

The Last of Us

Beautiful Apocalypse

Composer Gustavo Santaolalla scores the end of man.

Chris Tilton

Game designers aren’t taking music seriously. One composer explains what’s gone wrong and how to fix it.

A collage of concentric red rings over a mountain landscape, a vintage radio, a cut-out portrait and floating wireframe cubes

8-Bit Mayhem

Bloop and Thunder

They couldn’t sound more different, but the twee chiptune scene and the heavy sounds of metal find common cause in passion, nostalgia and maybe even soul.

Young musicians packed close together in a rehearsal room, instruments and music stands raised, seen from behind.

Animatissimo

A Gaming Rehearsal in Three Movements

Can a local student orchestra lead a city to classical music?

Jim Guthrie

Small Communities, Big Ideas

In the strange and spectacular Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, indie rock and indie games come together and learn from one another.

Concentric teal rectangles spiralling inward on a printed field of stars, a white circle low in the frame.

brian eno

I Am Sitting In A Room

While the soundtracks in games are pushed farther and farther into the background, their composers can learn from the ambient innovators who turned background music into art.

Ocarina of Time

Noteworthy: The Music that Influenced The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Koji Kondo built Ocarina of Time’s score from five ocarina buttons, Gregorian chant, Baroque cadences, jazz planing and a borrowed Ravel ostinato.

Game Audio

Editor's Letter: The Sound Issue

Games have more in common with music than with movies, and the Sound Issue makes the case for listening closer.

A figure in a striped shirt and headphones seated inside a coiled tangle of colored cable, small objects orbiting around them

Nico Muhly

The composer on the augmented sixth chord in Mario's theme, and why influence should be worn as openly as possible.

Two figures on a hillside, one strumming a guitar, a rainbow of music streaming from a speech bubble across a green field of

Shigeru Miyamoto

I Sang to Shigeru Miyamoto

A ballad for the creator of Super Mario Bros.