Wagner and Wagnerism intersects with video game music in three main categories: games that borrow musical material from Wagner, games that use musical material in Wagnerian ways, and games that show aesthetic affinities to Wagner’s music. Games in the first category include several explicitly based on the world of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen that include musical excerpts from the operas as well as The Dig (LucasArts, 1993), the soundtrack of which (composed by Michael Z. Land) is created from around 300 instrumental chord snippets (2 to 10 seconds in length) extracted from recordings of Wagner operas combined with original MIDI compositions. While the Wagner samples are not immediately recognizable as such, the use of Wagner’s music is included as a selling point on the game’s packaging and is thematically relevant to the game’s narrative. In the second category, games such as Loom (LucasArts, 1990), Halo (Bungie, 2001) and Final Fantasy VI (Square, 1994) employ leitmotifs in the Wagnerian style to add musical depth to their narratives. The third category includes the soundtrack to Monkey Island 2 (LucasArts, 1991), which uses the new iMUSE music engine to alter the soundtrack’s leitmotifs based on active gameplay, leaning further into the Wagnerian ideal of dynamic composition.

Works: LucasArts (developer): soundtrack to Full Throttle (199); Sierra (developer): soundtrack to King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (199); Michael K. Land: soundtrack to The Dig (199, 201-4); Maelstrom/Psygnosis (developer): soundtrack to Ring Cycle (199-201); Arxel Tribe (developer): soundtrack to Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen (199-201), soundtrack to Ring II: Twilight of the Gods (199-201); Nobuo Uematsu: soundtrack to Final Fantasy VI (207-8).

Sources: Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (199-201), Lohengrin (199); Ennio Moricone: soundtrack to A Fistful of Dollars (207-8).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet