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Posted by Jimmy Brown on 09-03-2009 at18:31:

  TST in the Oct. 2009 PC Gamer

PC Gamer for October 2009 has an article written by Jonathan Coulton, composer and geek icon, in which he says some nice things about Terry Scott Taylor's work on Skullmonkeys.

"I had to look up Skullmonkeys on the internet just now, because even though I spent many hours playing it back in 1998, I can barely remember anything about the game.... The only thing I do remember is the bonus room--and that's because of the song.

It was called "The Li'l Bonus Room" and it was composed by Terry Scott Taylor.... The thing that amazed me was that it was an actual song: It had lyrics, it was sung, and it was played on acoustic guitar. I had never heard anything like it in a game. I actually saved right before the bonus room so I could quickly get in there and listen to it over and over. I can still sing it all the way through.

That experience was a big inspiration to me when I wrote "Still Alive" for Portal. Without Terry's example, the idea that we were going to cram what was essentially a musical theater number into a videogame would have felt even crazier than it did. After all, most of the history of game music has been about creating a kind of film score to accompany the story and enhance the mood. This is not to say that it's easy or unimportant.... but the idea that music can play a different role in games is still relatively new."

Edit: Fixed a typo.

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Posted by Ritchie_az on 09-03-2009 at19:36:



Leave it to Terry to be forward thinking even in a video game soundtrack.

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Posted by audiori on 09-03-2009 at19:50:

 

Cool deal. THanks for alerting us to that.

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Posted by Jimmy Brown on 09-04-2009 at22:59:

 

You're welcome. I was pretty sure y'all would want to know.

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Posted by wakachiwaka on 09-05-2009 at00:48:

 

Now, if Terry and Jonathan worked on a project together, that would be the apotheosis of cool...