John Williams's influence on videogame music

[Sunshine Reger 3,697]

I don't know to what extent this topic has been researched in the academic world, but I suspect that the more ephemereal nature of game scores (less likely to be released as standalones, nevermind complete, re-recorded, or picked-up by niche labels) means that nobody except certain generations that have actually played the respective games will ever realize the extent of Williams's influence on the genre.

 

To establish a common ground for the discussion, let's start with the fairly established view that Williams's extraordinary commitment to the quality of his film scores, particularily in the 1975-2008-ish period, made a difference in the overall attractiveness of orchestra-based music in Hollywood film productions. I am deliberately saying "Hollywood film productions", because in the 20th century the UK and USSR for instance were two effectively independent centres and bastions the use of Romantic orchestral music in film.

 

In the discussion of Williams's influence, I would like to make a distinction between direct (genre-style) influence, such as Star Wars => Star Trek: The Motion Picture / Stargate, or Indiana Jones => Mummy Trilogy, or Return of the Jedi => Predator, and indirect influence (a general attractiveness of a large orchestra and the Romantic idiom).

I allow myself to add a hopefully uncontroversial hypothesis that Williams also set a bar very high for hummable themes and motifs and at the same time did show the industry professionals many effective ways of creating those. There would probably be no History of the Ring that we know without the E.T. piccolo opener, nor Lighting of the Beacons without the Asteroid Field.

 

Now let's look at the nascent 'cinematic' games. For reasons of technological limitations in digital data storage in general and gaming hardware specifically, orchestral music in videogames only became viable in the 1990s. The feasibility of making games 'cinematic' through graphic design, cutscenes, dialogues + score, and the way games were structured, was also developed in that time. Steven Spielberg has been involved in the game adaptations of his film projects since the 1982 Atari game based on E.T.. He went as far as to become a game producer over a decade later, being involved in scripts and IIRC picking the young Michael Giacchino to first score a game based on Jurassic Park and then a Medal of Honor game that followed in the footsteps of Saving Private Ryan. This facilitated a bridge between Williams's music and the language of expression in games in genres overlapping with those of the films he scored (as if the media composers born in the US between the 1960s and 1980s needed any further encouragement to draw lessons in dramaturgy from film music in general and Williams's scores in particular).

 

In video games, the genres that I had most contact with in the 2000s and 2010s, were history-oriented, which invited traditional orchestral music. Michael Giacchino composed the music for the WWII first person shooters of the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series, drawing, sometimes very literally, not just from Williams's music, but also from the action cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, and sometimes even from more obscure sources like John Barry's 1964 Zulu (let us not forget Giacchino, just like Elfman, has been a film and film music nerd since he was a kid). This trend, developed and driven almost singlehandedly by Giacchino, ended about 2008/2009, when shooter games ditched historical settings for modern warfare.

 

Example: Christopher Lennertz - Dogs of War (Force Theme / Hymn to the Fallen) alternatively: Siegfried's Funeral.

 

It has to be noted that WWII-themed games of the 2000s quite often had a very coherent America-centric genre of WWII music influenced by Williams, Goldsmith, Michael Kamen (Band of Brothers) and probably their elder colleagues like Elmer Bernstein or the British composers. In fact, there was even a bridge between film and games personified in Goldsmith - only not Jerry - Joel! Check out Joel Goldsmith's Call of Duty 3 (2006) and then the Company of Heroes music by Jeremy Soule / Inon Zur from the same year. Granted, the orchestration of horns, trumpets, strings, and snares, and sometimes wordless choir is rather obvious in the context, as is the textbook diatonic harmony, but I quite appreciate how different composers managed to each create their own memorable take within those constraints. And it is different music than what composers in the Soviet cinema would have composed about World War II given the same instruments.

 

Then there were film IP-based games where for obvious reasons Williams's music was emulated (ex. Indiana Jones games, Star Wars games) just like they have been in ex. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in the 1990s. Since lists of such games and the music and music credits in them are easy to study, I will not be going too deep into this. 

 

Instead, I would like to name some less obvious titles that show Williams's influence. The biggest arena for it were, I believe, strategy games. In the strategy genre, players

typically spend many minutes overlooking broad, slowly changing canvas, and the music has a chance to paint an emotional image to accompany the visuals.

 

Some examples are very speculative, for example some music by Inon Zur in Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War had passing melodic fragments that reminded me of  various Williams scores such as Jurassic Park  (Island Fanfare), Empire Strikes Back (Bespin Yoda's Theme) and The Patriot (some marching / assembling scene). I am leaving such examples aside, but it is worth aknowledging that many professionals by now probably have Williams's music solidly ingrained in their subconscious musical prediction / muscle memory. Cultural DNA if you like.

 

Other examples could be argued as more likely inspired by Elfman, Shore, Zimmer, or a general trend of main themes in film and television that pre-dates Williams's blockbuster scores, but even so it is worth considering that the aforementioned baby boomer composers were themselves riding the waves Williams's scores caused in the industry.

 

A mixed example is The Battle of Lodi from Napoleon: Total War by Richard Beddow, resembling both Elfman-like orchestrations / filigree interruptions, and, at least to me, Williams's music for the battle on Hoth:

 

But there are some more probable items.

 

Exhibit 1: the Age of Empires series, utilizing that typical Williamsian leap into several short notes contour, that is furthemore used in a malleable fashion, just like the Force Theme in Star Wars would be.

.

Exhibit2: Company of Heroes 2 with it's Schindler's List-like haunting main theme by Cris Velasco.

 

Exhibit3: in Titant Quest, in the hack&slash genre, one can find the following music that plays when one passes the gate into the tomb of Rameses (composed by Scott Morton / Michael Varette)

 

I am sure I've encountered many more, but none come to mind at the moment.

 

What I am not aware of, but I hope exists, are some less mainstream influences by Williams, such as by crazier and wackier passages in the Temple of Doom or Prisoner of Azkaban.

 

Either way, I find the topic fascinating and would gladly hear other examples from you. Cheers!

[The Score Cleaner 9,272]

 

That Battle of Lodi also sounds a bit like Goldsmith's First Contact, and The Rowing of the Galley Slaves...

[Marian Schedenig 11,162]

A very interesting topic. I can't say I've got a good overview of game music from the last two decades, because my time management is too bad for lots of gaming, so I'm only picking out individual games and occasionally franchises to play. I was a much more active gamer during the 90s and early 2000s, but for most of that time, I couldn't afford the latest hardware (I got a C64 in 1989 when it was on its way out and the Amiga was the big player; then an Amiga around 1995 when that was on its way out), so even then my first hand experience is limited.

 

But it's a curious topic from a historic perspective. I'm a big fan of some of the earlier chiptunes music (the C64's SID sound chip was capable of amazing things). Most of the composers doing those probably didn't have the training and experience to write something in the style or scope of Williams, and they certainly didn't have the resources (memory & processing power) to write anything on that scale. At the same time though, I'm sure they were heavily influenced, consciously or subconsciously, by Williams's soundtracks - and not just them, but the other developers working in video games at that time as well. Video games first became big during the heyday of the original Star Wars trilogy, when Williams's music was *everywhere*. A considerable percentage of the people working in games at that time were young geeks and nerds in their 20, or even teens, who had actively grown up (in fact, were still growing up) with Star Wars - and Jaws, and CE3K, and Indiana Jones, and E.T.

 

(Going off on a quick tangent here, I think it's hard to grasp how much influence Williams probably had on almost anything in popular culture since the early 80s. Without him, Star Wars might have gone relatively unnoticed, we may never have gotten Indiana Jones, Spielberg might not have been successful (and inspired) enough to do CE3K and move on to stuff like E.T. and later Jurassic Park. One thing that at first doesn't seem to have anything to do with Williams, but which I'm pretty sure would be completely different today (or more likely not exist anymore at all) is LEGO - which almost went bankrupt in the early 2000s and was saved by getting and focussing on the Star Wars licence; now that and Harry Potter are two of their biggest themes, and with Jurassic Park/World, Indiana Jones, and several other sets like the McAllister house and the new Jaws set, Williams is directly connected to hundreds of LEGO sets)

 

Video games first started to get more cinematic during the early 1990s. Graphics capabilities and memory was beginning to allow developers to add more immersive features to their games, and newer sound chips allowed composers to write in an "orchestral" fashion using multiple audio channels or even lots of them with General MIDI sound banks that didn't have to compete with the games' SFX. At the same time, Lucasfilm Games became a major player - and they were obviously tied directly into the whole Star Wars/Indiana Jones world. Even before they started doing Star Wars games (for the first couple of years, those were still licenced to other studios), many of the people they assembled went there because they wanted to be involved with the Lucas empire. When Ron Gilbert first invented the SCUMM engine and the classic point & click adventure, it was a new way of game-based storytelling that was closely modelled on film narratives - and also one of the origins of cut scenes as we know them today. That system kept evolving, and a couple of years later, The Secret of Monkey Island came out in 1990, featuring a leitmotif-based score by Michael Land (a big Wagner fan). One year later, the sequel features the new music engine iMUSE, developed by Land and Peter McConnell because he found the previous music engine too limiting. iMUSE allowed the game's soundtrack to be mixed live from pre-created sections, seamlessly blending between them based on the player's actions. That first game to feature the engine still boasts one of the best and most extensive examples of interactive, theme-based music for the town of Woodtick, where the same theme keeps playing throughout the entire town, but every screen has its own variations:

 

Another year later, we get the first combination of iMUSE and traces of Williams's music in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - it has an original score by Land, McConnell, and Clint Bajakian, but obviously makes prominent use of the Indy theme.

 

Forward one more year, and we get 1993's X-Wing, the first non-adventure game to employ iMUSE, and the first to use it extensively for actual Williams music - the score (again by the same trio) is heavily based on the original Star Wars scores. I don't remember that first game in the series well enough to recall how much original music there is beyond adapting it for interactive use; IMDb lists Williams as composer for "theme music" and the other three for "additional music".

 

Yet one more year later (the industry moved insanely fast back then), the sequel to X-Wing was released: TIE Fighter. The deal is pretty much the same, only where the first game focused on events related to the first film (culminating in the Yavin battle), TIE Fighter was based on The Empire Strikes Back - and had you play on the side of the Empire. That required brand new music and brand new themes that combine with Williams's own and result in a brilliant hybrid score that's highly interactive

 

(Around the same time as the X-Wing series came out, Origin was producing the Wing Commander series, another series of space flight simulator games, but set in an original universe. The music for at least the first game didn't have recurring themes and offered only limited interactivity (I don't know if any other studio in the 90s had anything that could compare to Lucasfilm's patented iMUSE), but it still had big "orchestral" thematic set pieces and switched between musical cues based on what was happening in the game. Origin at that time was seriously pushing the available technical limits, and in 1994 (the same year as TIE Fighter) released Wing Commander III - on (if I recall correctly) four CD-ROMs (TIE Fighter, like pretty much all other games at that time, was still released on disks), with extensive live action cutscenes starring Mark Hamill and John Rhys-Davies (would they have been cast if Spielberg hadn't teamed up with Williams some 20 years later?) and featuring a pseudo-orchestral, MIDI-based score by George Oldziey)

 

3D graphics and CD technology became standard around that time, and the third X-Wing game (X-Wing vs TIE Fighter) played music from Williams's original Star Wars soundtracks directly from CD during the game - still switching tracks based on the gameplay, but severely limiting the interactivity, because there was no original music and track changes took a second or two. (Unfortunately, around that time, the first two games in the series were re-made as well to take advantage of new technology and threw out their original scores for relatively static Williams tracks as XvT).

 

The fourth (and, unfortunately, final) game in the series came out in 1999: X-Wing Alliance. This roughly followed the events of Return of the Jedi and culminated in the battle of Endor. The music was again all existing Williams tracks (except for a little menu loop), but technology had advanced enough that that could be played from memory rather than directly from the CD, so iMUSE was able to dynamically blend between many short snippets from all three OT scores based on the current gameplay, which (unlike the earlier attempts to use the original Williams tracks) worked brilliantly.

 

In other words, the then new capability of playing back existing recorded music (combined with budgets that weren't yet large enough to allow for much live music recording, let alone orchestral sessions) and Lucasfilm Games's (now Lucas Arts) focus on Star Wars games during the 1990s resulted in a temporary step away from original scores at the studio that had one of the best and most cinematic music engines - but at the same time reverted back to the original John Williams in place of a newer generation of composers who were influenced by him.

 

Since then, video games budgets have exploded and games since I guess around the mid-00s have begun getting extensive original (and often orchestral) scores. Big studios and indie devs alike now have access to ready-made dynamic music engines that work in a similar fashion as iMUSE did. Even Star Wars and Indiana Jones games now get original scores (as they should), but those obviously retain the Williams themes. With the musical soundscape of Hollywood films themselves shifting heavily at the same time (and Williams slowly becoming the last remaining survivor of the old style), I'm sure video game music as a whole has also become more and more influenced by more contemporary film music. But I'm sure Williams, along with all the franchises he helped establish, left a mark that has strongly influenced the style, structure, and technology of video game music at least from the late 80s/early 90s to the early 00s; and obviously whatever technology came after is still building on that.

 

And finally, current-day video game composers like Austin Wintory (and formerly Michael Giacchino) were themselves raised on the scores of Williams, Goldsmith, & Co, and are strongly influenced by them.

 

 

(Please don't look too strongly for one unifying conclusion in that long post… it's 4:00 at night and I was about to go to bed before I started writing it, and ended up getting a bit lost in specific details. The result is a bit one-sided and maybe deviates from the thread's original premise as it goes on, but I think it still shows that Williams must have had a strong influence on video game music even where it wasn't directly related to his own music)

[Sunshine Reger 3,697]

@Marian Schedenig thanks for the detailed and extensive post. I am not really familiar with games from the previous century (the only game older than 2002 or so that I played was Panzer General...) so thanks for filling the gap.

 

The kind of cultural angle you are taking is probably worthy of a book in itself.

 

So you are saying, that Williams led to a rosier trajectory for Spielberg's choice of film projects AND saved the LEGO brand? I am beginning to think that if Williams was never born, Biff Tannen would be running the Hill Valley. 

[Marian Schedenig 11,162]

5 hours ago, Sunshine Reger said:

So you are saying, that Williams led to a rosier trajectory for Spielberg's choice of film projects AND saved the LEGO brand? I am beginning to think that if Williams was never born, Biff Tannen would be running the Hill Valley. 

 

Well, they started out with Sugarland Express, certainly not a typical project for either of them. Then came Jaws, with the famous anecdote of Spielberg initially not taking Williams seriously when he played him the main motif. Who knows how Spielberg might have developed with a different collaborator (even Goldsmith)? And I think it's safe to assume that Star Wars might have had much less impact without the Williams score. The video gamers and developers of my generation at least were immensely influenced by that whole butterfly effect tree that began with Sugarland Express. And yes, it's widely accepted that Star Wars probably saved LEGO, so without that, it would just be another thing people remember fondly from the 90s and before. Or to put it differently: Without Williams, Michelin would probably be the biggest tyre manufacturer in the world.

[Thor 9,334]

Enormously long posts that I won't be able to read in full at the moment, but one of the first all-orchestral videogame scores was Bruce Broughton's HEART OF DARKNESS from 1998. I don't think there's anything in it that screams Williams, but Broughton always had some Williams-isms in his music, so there's that. Obviously, there's an influence in all the games that Williams originated (be it STAR WARS or JURASSIC PARK or HARRY POTTER or whatever), but I haven't really noticed any other influences -- unless you talk more generally about the neoromantic style, of which there are plenty predecessors.

[terry93d 7]

Don't have the time or ability right now to go too deeply into this, but:

 

"The Imperial March" is hugely influential. You can hear riffs on that basic idea in Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy XII (the "Intro Movie" track from this game also has a strong Williams vein running through it), Dual Orb II, and Breath of Fire, just off the top of my head.

 

Much of Yuzo Koshiro's music for ActRaiser is riffs on Williams's style. (Excepting the credits theme, which borrows the 20th Century Fox fanfare.)

 

It will be of absolutely no surprise that Gordy Haab's music for the Star Wars videogames (also Jesse Harlin, Wilbert Roget II, Stephen Barton, Kyle Newmaster, and Mark Griskey's music for SW videogames) and James Hannigan's music for the last four Harry Potter videogames—the first four HPs are scored by Jeremy Soule (who also scored the first Knights of the Old Republic) in his usual style—sound very much like JW. 

[terry93d 7]

okay, slightly deeper dive.

 

my primary area of familiarity is with videogame music that comes out of Japan, not out of America, for the most part. and in Japan, it seems like "The Imperial March" is what has had the greatest impact on composers:

• "The Imperial Army," Final Fantasy II, Nobuo Uematsu
• "Kingdom of Baron," Final Fantasy IV, Nobuo Uematsu
• "Troops March On," "The Gestahl Empire," Final Fantasy VI, Nobuo Uematsu
• "A Powerful Emperor," "The Empire," Breath of Fire, Yasuaki Fujita
• "Gorsia's Death March," The 7th Saga, Norihiko Yamanuki
• "Menace of the Empire," Dual Orb, composer unknown
• "Kardosa Empire," Dual Orb II, Yu Yoshida or Nobuyuki Hara
• "March of the King," Suikoden II, Miki Higashino
• "Grahf, Ruler of Darkness," Xenogears, Yasunori Mitsuda
• "Theme of the Empire," Final Fantasy XII, Hitoshi Sakimoto
• "The Imperial March," Ni No Kuni, Joe Hisaishi

most of these, you'll notice, come from the SNES era. it was something of a golden age for evil empires in the storyline. Fujita's riff in Breath of Fire is the most obvious of them all, particularly in the first one; Uematsu's last takes on the idea, in FFVI, are his best. Yamanuki's take isn't worth your time. the similarity between these and JW is variable: sometimes, it just borrows the rhythm, as Higashino's does. others are much more obvious. of them, the best takes on the idea are also the most recent. Sakimoto's long-form take on the idea explores its simple melody in a variety of guises—including some that are warm and heroic—making it the most interesting of them, though it does have a little bit of a meandering feeling. I believe the OST release track combines multiple in-game tracks into a single piece. Hisaishi's is likely the best: it's the only one performed by an actual orchestra, for one thing. like JW's original, or at least, the original as heard on album, it's the most perfectly structured and crafted. there are almost certainly more of these than I've listed, these are just the ones I'm familiar with.

 

outside of this, though, it's hard to say how much Williams did or didn't influence Japanese game composers. Yuzo Koshiro, obviously, heavily referenced Williams's action music style in his ActRaiser music—see, for example, "Bloodpool ~ Kasandora." (though it should be noted that, like most vgm composers, Koshiro makes liberal usage of the snare drum as an integral part of the ensemble in a way that JW never does.) in the main, though, Japanese composers don't seem to have referenced American composers very much. 

 

in the games that came out of the United States, especially in the era—the 90s—that most of my examples above come from, I really don't know how much JW was or wasn't an influence. he may have been an influence on Jeremy Soule's Total Annihilation, though for my money it's more probable that Soule referred directly to classical works, a pool that may've included the composers that influenced Williams. obviously he was an influence on Michael Giacchino's Medal of Honor and Jurassic game scores.

 

obviously, those composers working in the videogame extensions of franchises Williams defined have, usually, followed his style very closely. here's a (likely partial) list:

• James Hannigan's Harry Potter scores
• Gordy Haab's Star Wars scores
  • as well as those in collaboration with Kyle Newmaster or Stephen Barton
• Gordy Haab's Indiana Jones scores
• Mark Griskey's Star Wars scores
• Clint Bajakian's Indiana Jones scores
• Wilbert Roget II's Star Wars scores
• as well as Star Wars: The Old Republic, for which many of the composers listed previously, and many others besides, did some scoring

it seems probable that Bruce Broughton's Heart of Darkness, as well as Lennie Moore's Outcast, may have some Williams influence (Moore did some work for The Old Republic), and I have no doubt that other composers working in the Grand Orchestral style, both in America and in Europe, took influence to a greater or lesser degree—we may hope for greater—from Williams's various works in cinema.

[Jay 44,752]

Now that's the kind of original content JWFan is best at providing!  Very interesting stuff!

[Marian Schedenig 11,162]

3 minutes ago, terry93d said:

it seems probable that Bruce Broughton's Heart of Darkness

 

Generally, I think Broughton is more of a Goldsmith fanboy than a Williams one. Williams surely had an influence on him (like any other film composer of that generation), but I guess to just an average extent.

[Laserschwert 665]

My little contribution to this topic are few of my "remasters" of the soundtracks for X-Wing, TIE Fighter and a few tracks from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

 

https://laserschwert.bandcamp.com/album/x-wing-fan-soundtrack

 

https://laserschwert.bandcamp.com/album/tie-fighter-fan-soundtrack

 

https://laserschwert.bandcamp.com/album/indiana-jones-and-the-fate-of-atlantis-fan-soundtrack

 

While X-Wing did in fact rely heavily on existing themes and even whole tracks from Williams' original soundtracks, a surprising amount of original tracks and re-arrangements were included, but you'll only get to hear those when you spend enough time in the game's hangar-themed menus.

 

TIE Fighter was considerably more free in that regard, as only the Imperial March and the Emperor's theme were sprinkled in here and there. The standout piece is probably the actual main theme of the game, which masterfully turns the evil Imperial March into a patriotic, uplifting hymn for the Empire (long before it showed up in Rebels and Solo), taking rhythms and timings directly from the Star Wars main theme.

 

On Fate of Atlantis the trio went completely loose, as only the Raiders March is used throughout the game, but with even more original compositions covering everything else. Granted, I don't hear many Williams influences in the original tracks (although the Atlantis theme seems to be heavily influenced by the Grail theme), but they fit the sometimes interwoven Indy theme well enough. 

[Hristo 15]

Dino Crisis 2 comes to my mind, composed by Sayaka Fujita and Makoto Tomozawa. 

 

I read somewhere that it was influenced by Jurassic park The Lost World soundtrack. I love it! You can hear the Lost World vibes, militaristic sound, a lot of timpani and so on.

[Dr. Know 470]

There are certainly many Potter-related video game scores that are inspired by JW's work.  Among my favorites:

 

 

 

[Jim 6,125]

Forget Gordy galactic swashbuckling Haab... this has to be the most Williams-notWillams track I've ever heard. And it's a nice theme in its own right. Fast-track this guy. I thought it was actual Williams/Mancini first.

[Not Mr. Big 4,922]

3 hours ago, Dr. Know said:

There are certainly many Potter-related video game scores that are inspired by JW's work.  Among my favorites:

 

 

 

That was very good.  That kind of nice major key melody Hollywood doesn't permit anymore.  I hear equal amounts of Silvestri comedy mode though (think Stuart Little or THE CROODS) or William Ross's My Dog Skip (an underrated score)

[Pieter Boelen 1,032]

On 11/09/2024 at 9:59 PM, Laserschwert said:

On Fate of Atlantis the trio went completely loose, as only the Raiders March is used throughout the game, but with even more original compositions covering everything else. Granted, I don't hear many Williams influences in the original tracks (although the Atlantis theme seems to be heavily influenced by the Grail theme), but they fit the sometimes interwoven Indy theme well enough. 

Is your album for this one now complete? 

I saw here you were still working on the End Titles track:

http://raven.theraider.net/threads/fate-of-atlantis-soundtrack.4204/page-2#post-625910

(I just discovered your work and it seems very promising.)

[Laserschwert 665]

Thanks! It's far from "complete" (given there's like 3 hours of music in the game), but that's not what I'm aiming for anyway. I want it to be more of a curated highlights album, but even that requires like 10 or 15 more tracks until I would call it finished.

 

The end credits are one of the bigger chunks missing (especially since I would like to expand it a bit, to include more themes from the game and a proper statement of the Raiders March), as is the Atlantis finale, which is beast in terms of complexity.

 

Then there's several more locations I haven't covered at all yet, (like Iceland, Tikal, Monte Carlo, Africa) no proper statements of the Nazi March, the Nur-Ab-Sal theme, most Atlantis cues, the fistfight theme...

 

So yeah, there's still a bunch of stuff missing that NEEDS to be included.

[Thor 9,334]

Are you Rich Douglas, Laserschwert?

[Pieter Boelen 1,032]

15 hours ago, Laserschwert said:

Thanks! It's far from "complete" (given there's like 3 hours of music in the game), but that's not what I'm aiming for anyway. I want it to be more of a curated highlights album, but even that requires like 10 or 15 more tracks until I would call it finished.

 

The end credits are one of the bigger chunks missing (especially since I would like to expand it a bit, to include more themes from the game and a proper statement of the Raiders March), as is the Atlantis finale, which is beast in terms of complexity.

 

Then there's several more locations I haven't covered at all yet, (like Iceland, Tikal, Monte Carlo, Africa) no proper statements of the Nazi March, the Nur-Ab-Sal theme, most Atlantis cues, the fistfight theme...

 

So yeah, there's still a bunch of stuff missing that NEEDS to be included.

Ah, thanks for the update. 

I hope one day you'll get to the rest. 

After all, Indiana Jones is Better Than Everything!

[Laserschwert 665]

5 hours ago, Thor said:

Are you Rich Douglas, Laserschwert?

Neither rich nor Douglas. 

 

But no. I simply wasn't happy with any of the (many) other fan versions of the FOA soundtrack. I felt they were either to RCP-ish, or just too sloppy. No idea how well mine fares, though.

[Thor 9,334]

I like the Rich Douglas version. Beefed up a bit, but still faithful to the original. But it's getting old, probably close to 20 years by now?

[artus_grayboot 117]

On 28/9/2024 at 2:33 PM, Dr. Know said:

There are certainly many Potter-related video game scores that are inspired by JW's work.  Among my favorites:

 

 

 

First minute or so reminds me of “Somewhere In My Memory.” What an awesome find!!

[karelm 3,248]

He had a very big impact on the orchestral scores I worked on.  His name was brought up frequently for stylistic references.

[Jilal 662]

26 minutes ago, karelm said:

He had a very big impact on the orchestral scores I worked on.  His name was brought up frequently for stylistic references.

 

In a vague, undefined sort of way? "Make it sound more like JW"? Or more specifically certain techniques of orchestration, chord progressions, etc?

[Jim 6,125]

The original Star Fox on the N64 has to be the biggest and most obvious homage to the John Williams style, at least that I've heard.

 

 

 

[karelm 3,248]

23 hours ago, Jilal said:

 

In a vague, undefined sort of way? "Make it sound more like JW"? Or more specifically certain techniques of orchestration, chord progressions, etc?

 

It was usually something like "Make this sound Williamsy" and we both understood exactly what was meant but probably because of many prior hours talking about Williams' writing style.  So a bit of both.

[The Score Cleaner 9,272]

On 21/10/2025 at 9:26 AM, Quintus said:

The original Star Fox on the N64 has to be the biggest and most obvious homage to the John Williams style, at least that I've heard.

 

 

 

SNES*

[Jim 6,125]

1 hour ago, Little Ghost said:

SNES*

 

Oh yeah my bad. I forgot the cartridge shipped with the special chip installed!

[Xander Harris 8,894]

 

[JazzyNips 135]

A.I. cynicism has really made me appreciate good old-fashioned schizo-posting.

[bruce marshall 1,959]

I know nothing about this topic but....

Tonight I heard music for something called LEGEND OF ZELDA which sounded like SW/ IJ crossed with THE RIGHT STUFF