perturbator on the hotline miami soundtrack, that might count?

added, also reminded me haven has danger on it

does disco elysium ever make any big deal of british sea power doing its ost? they were at least a decently big name band back in the day and i dont think i ever saw any promotional material indicating they did it minus them selling the soundtrack.

also what the fuck bonnie prince billy took the pic on the spiderland cover????

YEAH HE DID its like his most famous work but no one knows its his, which is so funny to me. and i dont THINK thats the case with bsp and disco?

oh also, stewart copeland on the early spyro games?

sonic the hedgehog 1 and 2: masato nakamura from dreams come true
dragon quest (basically the entire series): koichi sugiyama was a renowned composer in japan prior to becoming gaming's #1 despised composer in the west
spyro the dragon 1~4, reignited trilogy: stewart copeland, the police


does ian gillan singing in blue dragon count? mario kart 8 also had satoshi bandoh (t-square) on drums, but if we were to talk performing credits like that i imagine we'd be here literally all day

also theres a les rallizes denudes song in space funeral but its just straight up stolen so i doubt that counts

@guttertrash yeah im not counting ones where the artists didnt have input

@mellotron do you what kind of stuff sugiyama did that would rival his stuff with dq? im honestly not familiar.

Furi's ost has Lorn on it and so does Killzone: Shadow Fall. Also I don't know if it counts, but Sting from The Police played a prominent role in Where The Water Tastes Like Wine.

@GutterTrash didnt know this wtf lol. guess i have to play space funeral

there are quite a few games yoko kanno (cowboy bebop/the seatbelts) composed for, including like napple tale, dunno if that counts.

omikron the nomad soul had fucking david bowie heavily involved. i dont remember his involvement being marketed much, i think it's literally just some small bullet point on the back of the box

trent reznor also did the theme song for black ops 2

worth noting the coil who did gitaroo man is a completely different coil to the one most people know. i can barely find their stuff online (i think they have some stuff on spotify)

@ludzu sugiyama composed for tv series, films, and for young pop stars before be worked on DQ. The Dq2 theme was simultaneously written as a pop single.
https://youtu.be/y9Is20PwQ08
https://youtu.be/o-uffyJKR1o

not exactly a video game but squarepusher made a startup sound for super nt

hiroyuki sawano did the xenoblade x soundtrack. he's v well known in anime (attack on titan, kill la kill).
joe hisaishi (of ghibli fame) did ni no kuni 1/2. 1 involved ghibli but 2 didnt. i dont think 2 really marketed him in any way

Harry Gregson-Williams composed for metal gear and cod games

tekken tag 2 just straight up has a snoop dogg song, snoop dogg stage, and he cameos in the stage

i did think of adding ones like gregson-williams before but i wanted to make it biased towards artists who record music for themselves under their name and are specifically famous for that, rather than composers with well regarded scores in other mediums. its kind of a slippery slope once you allow famous composers in general so im prob not gonna put him or sugiyama up on the list, sorry!

@turdl3 had considered omikron but in my experience bowie's presence was very much marketed with the game.

i think the katamari damacy games have a bunch of tracks by guest musicians and stuff, but I don't know specific names

fuck youre right AGHHHHHHHH

bravely default 1 and 2 had revo from sound horizon, that band's been around for a while and has a decent fanbase
bravely second had ryo from supercell, v big j-pop band
bo en's been involved in a lot of game stuff despite being a decent name in electronic music. he's v casually in omori

Ian McDonald from King Crimson worked on the soundtrack for Sega Saturn SRPG Wachenroder

Brütal Legend might be because the u has an umlaut and the search is a bit broken for some characters rn. i'd try searching "legend" and scrolling to get it btw

minimalist pianist and film score and opera composer michael nyman did the ost to enemy zero. not sure about how much of a selling point this was, pretty sure it wasnt, i just learned about it through the story of how he became the composer (essentially kenji eno stood outside his hotel room and blocked him from leaving for like 10 hours until he agreed)

gustavo santaolalla seems to have been pretty big in argentinian rock, dude produced stuff that won grammys/latin grammys. he then went into film soundtracks (brokeback mountain) and he ended up doing tlou1/2
ill stop spamming now sorry lol, id have posted them all at once if i knew id come up with more

DMC: Devil May Cry has music done by Combichrist and Tekken 7 has a song by Bataar.

it's worth noting keiichi suzuki was also on earthbound (but not mother 3).
i should have also clarified, the spyro reignited trilogy music was largely done by toys for bob staff stephan vankov; copeland came back to write the main menu theme which is reminiscent of the spyro 1 theme, but not identical.

apparently parappa and vib-ribbon composer (and designer) masaya matsuura was initially the head of band Psy・S, which was well-known enough in japan to have a decent discography from 1985 to 1996 before they disbanded and matsuura founded nanaon-sha. i've never heard his band before, but they definitely didn't play up matsuura's prior reputation for those games, especially not outside japan

also, i'll admit, i'm uncomfortable not recognizing sugiyama and other composers like him coming from the pretty intertwined classical/film scoring world of music (michiru oshima is another good example) here. is it their fault for not writing music in a style that's considered commercial enough to let them publish music """for music's sake"""?

i mean, i get it, these are subjective, and i should make a list that includes them if i really am this insistent about it (read: i'm not insistent enough to make my own list). but as a music student who finds the study of media soundtracks often shafted in academia aside from lesser acknowledgements, it's just... i don't know.

classical music was written largely for specific aristocratic patrons who would sponsor composers in exchange for writing music the way they wanted to hear it. there's a level of creative control you're often expected to give up going into working with a music label that we've seen artists voice their dissatisfaction with. how's composing for media much different?

i don't know. ignore all this, really. it's your list. i won't stop you.

@mellorine the entire basis of this list was considering the first 3 as connected in this specific way and then thinking "haha these 'big' and 'cool' and 'indie' or whatever performers quietly did these things in games, i should make a list based on this, as long as i keep the guidelines strict it wont be too long (<-clueless)". im not making a value judgement on constraints composers working in the entertainment industry are put under, saying their music isnt as meaningful or anything, as much as making an arbitrary rule for my own sanity. the list is already MUCH longer than i was foolishly expecting even after leaving out composers that worked in media outside games. and since ive been counting composers like keiichi suzuki, just bc he was originally known for being in a band before he scored video games, or even with ryuichi sakamoto, the rule might've been rendered meaningless from there. ill just leave it like this before it gets worse lol

@guttertrash i so badly wanted to put enemy zero on here but it breaks the stupid rules i set. nymans soundtrack is so good and so interesting in itself though

sorry, i should probably clarify - bravely default 2 and bravely second are two entirely different games. the former only has revo from sound horizon, the latter only has ryo from supercell. yes the name scheme is ridiculous, the series goes bravely default -> bravely second -> bravely default 2 lol. dont ask me why

I'm not sure exactly how popular they were beforehand but a band called Health composed the Max Payne 3 soundtrack.

Susumu Hirasawa composed the music for two Berserk games, Sword of the Berserk and Millennium Empire.

red dead redemption 2 d'angelo, josh homme...