Helluva Composer: Behind The Music of DOOM and more

PC Gamer has a great interview (and over-view) of the work of Mick Gordon, who most recently won praise for the bone-crunchingly, demon-slayingly hard rocking soundtrack to the recent DOOM reboot. As they introduce him:

“Back when Bethesda and id Software were making announcements about the recently rebooted Doom... [it was announced that] Mick Gordon was onboard to compose the soundtrack  His work on Wolfenstein: The New Order and Killer Instinct is cherished among those games’ playerbases, and the intensity of both owe a lot to his anarchic (but still impressively subtle, when it needs to be) approach to getting visuals and music swinging to the same beat. Based in Australia, Gordon’s been around for a while. He’s worked on two Need For Speed games, as well as Shift 2 Unleashed and ShootMania Storm, to name a few examples. Currently he’s working with Arkane Studios on its Prey reboot, which—as he relates below—will mark a departure from his recent, foot-to-the-floor audio rampages.” 

I'm not kidding about the DOOM soundtrack being awesome. One of the few complaints about the handling of the game's release was "why wasn't the soundtrack released on day one with the game?"-- though that was eventually rectified with the release of an official soundtrack. Gordon himself released an in-depth look at his process behind the music in a two part video series on his official youtube channel, available below:

Inaugural Video Game Hall Of Fame Inductees Announced

The Nation Museum of Play announced the formal formation of the World Video Game Hall of Fame in Rochester, NY last year. This week, they announced the first inductees into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and the games chosen for the very first inductees are certainly trail-blazers each in their own way.

At left are the games chosen: Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., DOOM, and World of Warcraft. These games beat out others in a finalists' field of 15 video games.

I think the Museum picked a great series of games to start out with. All of these had a significant impact on the industry, and were all game-changers (pardon the pun). However, I really feel like they should have allowed more than 6 for the inaugural session-- if for no other reason than help shore up the displays in the hall a little, and then fall back to six for every year after that. The pulled froma lot of history, especially for an inaugural year. I think that of the other announced finalists-- Angry Birds, FIFA, The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, The Oregon Trail, Pokémon, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog and Space Invaders-- will be future inductees to the Hall of Fame.

What do you think, readers?