Now we all have heard the OSTs to countless games, everything from Mario to The Last of Us, but that ISN'T what I'm after here. No this is more geared to licensed music tracks from an artist and used in a game, something sports games do A LOT. Thing is, my audio library has been opened up thanks to video games, and there have been times where I hear the songs on other media afterwards. So my fellow Escapist, have you any experiences?
F1 2012: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - AKA... What A Life! Dirt 2: Biffy Clyro - Mountains Dirt 2: Elbow - Grounds for Divorce about half of the Dirt 2 tracks actually
NBA 2K12: Middle Class Rut - New Low
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There are others, but this should do.
My prime example would be Avenged Sevenfold. Their Blinded in Chains was one of songs in NFS:Most Wanted and it was my favorite track.
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Also I've discovered E.S.Posthumus, Audiomachine and Two Steps from hell thanks to a bunch of different game trailers.
Crazy Taxi 3 presented me The Offspring
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken presented me to New World Revolution (the music clips were the best part of the game)
Like most people who played Borderlands and thought "hey, that opening songs pretty cool", I got listening to Cage the Elephant.
I have SSX to thank for this one (I'd heard of Architecture in Helsinki before, but I looked em up and got their album after hearing this on the demo).
And finally, the Bioshock Infinite trailer introduced me to this beast of an artist (oh the puns)
This is not exactly what you said, but the music of The Great Giana Sisters was covered/remixed/rearranged by Machinae Supremacy, which led me to all of their other songs.
First off, music's ALWAYS been a big thing for me, and music in video games even moreso. I remember the "original" custom soundtrack fondly, just turning the TV down and playing music while playing the game of my choice. Some games had to be heard though, the Streets Of Rage series, Super Castlevania 4, Sonic 1 & 2...amazing scores. I'd listen to the sound test modes of those for hours!
I can remember as far back as Road Rash 3D back in 1998 as the first time I heard licensed music in a video game. I think to my knowledge that was the first game to actually have commercial music as it's soundtrack-correct me if I'm wrong of course. But anyway, that was the first time I had heard of Sugar Ray (back before they went pop)
and Kid Rock (ditto).
Two years later, Madden 2000 was the first time I (or anyone for that matter) heard Ludacris' crazy ass with that awesome theme song in the intro.
Xhibit did the theme for the next year's game, which was the first I heard of him as well. Back them EA was really the one doing the most with licensed soundtracks, particularly with their sports games and Need For Speed. I'll try to make a short list here of artist and/or songs I first heard in games over the years...but that might be a while, lol.
The most recent discoveries came while playing Saints Row 4, which put me on to Gigamesh
and Hackman in GTA V.
So it's still happening for me, and I love it when it does.
I've picked up so much music thanks to the GTA games. Not just the songs themselves, but often whole genres associated with them.
Radio X on San Andreas was huge for this. Although I'm pretty sure I was getting there anyway (I already had a lot of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and was aware of the rest of the 'Big Four'), Radio X helped me get completely hooked into early nineties grunge by introducing me properly to their kings: Soundgarden
I'd already heard Black Hole Sun, but that doesn't count. This is 'proper' Soundgarden and I ended up getting four of their albums in the months after playing San Andreas thanks largely to this song, and coming across Fell on Black Days because of it. And of course, the 'troubled middle child', Alice in Chains:
This eventually lead me to Screaming Trees and Smashing Pumpkins, and while I don't listen to much 'original grunge' anymore, I still count these two among my favourite bands.
Later in the series, I got massively into 'dance-punk' and such similarly ludicrously named sub-genres thanks to GTA IV's Radio Broker, most notably:
and the wonderful !!! (their name is punctuation!):
These both came at a time when I was heavily changing my music taste, dropping the hilarious childish, snobby attitude that my generation's music was crap, and things not released between 1968 and 1996 weren't worth listening to. I probably would have still got into dance music, indie and hipster crap thanks to the influence of my friends anyway, but Radio Broker certainly gave me a kickstart, and I had a couple of years where I was constantly delving into music journalism for new bands, new sounds and hipster attitudes and I got a lot of mileage introducing stuff to my friends that they actually liked, rather than me trying to force Mellon Collie on them for the umpteenth time.
There's a load more, but those are the ones that spring to mind right this minute.
(Incidentally, I was super stoked that early on in GTA V I found a radio station that played Toro Y Moi, one of my favourite artists at the moment. Disappointingly, though, it seems I've broadened and defined my music taste enough that GTA V hasn't introduced me to anything I didn't already know, or liked enough to look deeper into. Sad times, but I guess we all evenutally grow up).
remedy games and the band poets of the fall. their first song was the ending credits music for max payne 2 and they created original songs for Alan wake where they played as a fictional in game band, thats how i found out about them. now their my favorite band and i own all their albums. I really recommend others to check them out
Rock Band introduced me to so many songs that I ended up learning on real instruments, so that was pretty cool. Grand Theft Auto always had a good habit of showing me some really cool songs as well.
Most recently I would say Borderlands introduced me to Cage The Elephant. Great band.
Prince of Persia Warrior within introduced me to my favorite band (Godsmack)and favorite type of music. And til this day "I stand alone" by Godsmack is still one of my favorite songs that was featured in Warrior within.
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