Classical music references in a video game?

[eyeresist]

My ear was recently caught by a video game review that mentioned the hero being a "Scythian" and the villain being a "Gogolithic Mass". Assuming that this latter is a misspelling of "Glagolitic", the creators of this game may be unusually cultured, albeit dylsexic.

http://dagandawke.posterous.com/the-mythology-of-superbrothers-sword-sworcery
http://www.148apps.com/reviews/superbrothers-sword-sworcery-ep-review/

[Mirror Image]

In the Super Metroid (SNES) soundtrack, there's a musical passage (I can't remember where exactly) that is almost a blatant rip-off on a theme from the last movement of Nielsen's 5th. Someone has good taste at Nintendo.

[Luke]

One of my teenage stepsons has a bad case of video-gaming; the other day as he was playing something or other (Destiny?) I noticed that Tchaik 6 was playing, and I was sure it wasn't coming from anything related to me. Turned out that a large chunk of the first movement plays in the background of one level, I have no idea why (it is ambient to the scene, rather than background music to the scene).

[Jaakko Keskinen]

That opera scene from Final Fantasy VI really sounds like Uematsu was heavily influenced by several opera composers, especially Rossini and Donizetti... with touches of Wagner and Tchaikovsky here and there.

Not that influenced by something = reference.

[jut1972]

Eternal Sonata involves collecting Chopins music

[CRCulver]

My ear was recently caught by a video game review that mentioned the hero being a "Scythian" and the villain being a "Gogolithic Mass". Assuming that this latter is a misspelling of "Glagolitic", the creators of this game may be unusually cultured, albeit dylsexic.

One sees fanciful things like this in the English translations of Japanese video games. Sometimes the references in the original Japanese version are so culturally specific that they cannot be translated into English. Instead, the American publisher just has to make up something completely new, and the translators are free to drop little references to their particular hobbies or interests.

[ibanezmonster]

That opera scene from Final Fantasy VI really sounds like Uematsu was heavily influenced by several opera composers, especially Rossini and Donizetti... with touches of Wagner and Tchaikovsky here and there.

Not that influenced by something = reference.

That was the very first thing that came to mind for me lol.

I can't think of any classical music references in video games, though I can think of probably a dozen in anime. If Uematsu is composing, I'd actually rather hear his stuff than any other music I could just play at the same time (ok, I did replace the theme in Jeuno from FF11 with Prokofiev's 1st, but...) 

[Rinaldo]

My ear was recently caught by a video game review that mentioned the hero being a "Scythian" and the villain being a "Gogolithic Mass". Assuming that this latter is a misspelling of "Glagolitic", the creators of this game may be unusually cultured, albeit dylsexic.

The mispelling is intentional (actually it's not a mispelling, just a quirky twist on the original word).

Beautiful game, btw.