A Link to the Past : Nostalgia Turned Metal

 Video game music/audio is one of the biggest unsung heroes of game development. A good theme can be as iconic as the game itself. Among gamers and non-gamers alike, you would probably be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn't immediately recognize the themes from Super Mario Bros and Tetris. Even a certain Street Fighter theme has found life as a running gag on YouTube. But whenever I reflect on themes that have stuck with me, I always go back to the heavier, more guitar-driven ones. Even further reflection made me realize the amount of times I've listened to the Mega Man X OST outside of actually playing the game is a tad embarrassing.



Years later, when I would go on to fall into the depravity that is heavy metal fandom, there was something in my brain that kept trying to make connections between the metal I was into and the video game themes I was into. It was a connection that was never cut and dry but at the same time I have never been able to completely disregard it. This abstract idea has bugged me for years and was the impetus for putting this article together. Thankfully, there were other like-minded individuals out there who were more than excited to dig deep into this. These interviews were approached as a free flowing discussion about connections between metal and video game music from the perspective of metal musicians, not necessarily to prove or disprove any theory of mine. But there certainly were some interesting revelations.

Read the interviews after the break!