A remix of Mice on Venus [0] is one of the few things that can make me cry on cue. There is something so powerful about it.
Doesn’t help it is often used in Technoblade tributes because of this video. [1]
>This month I contacted Luis Clemente on the freelance website Fiverr and he delivered an absolutely amazing soundtrack for Joker Poker. Really knocked it out of the park. I was very nervous about this because it was (at the time) the only money I had spent or planned to spend on the game.
Have there been that many big names in the space? Nobuo Uematsu for JRPGs, Jeremy Soule, Yasunori Mitsuda....who else has done enough that many people would have a chance of knowing their name?
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (the original) was by Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer (personally, I think the end of Contingency sounds a lot like The Dark Knight)
- Wikipedia says that both of them also helped with Crysis 2
- Lorne Balfe did Assassin’s Creed 3
EDIT: Spotify reminds me that Harry Gregson-Williams did some of the Metal Gear Solids.
I'd say that like Minecraft's music, it's good enough that it could almost have carried the game on its own.
Some indie games have licensed indie music, but generally I think it's hard to convince "big names" to make music for small games, unless they're already video game composers.
Not sure if that counts, but I suspect ZUN (Touhou) and Toby Fox (Undertale) are recognised by more people for their music than for their games. A lot of people have heard e.g. Megalovania, Spider Dance, Bad Apple, UN Owen was Her, or Flowering Nights, but don't know a single about the games they are from other than the name.
Halo 2 had Steve Vai but not really composing.
Mario Kart 8 and the new one had lots of established apanese fusion players.
I'd also recommend...
Gareth Coker (Ori & the Blind Forest)
"9999999" from the Portal 2 Soundtrack: Songs to Test By (composed by a Valve staffer)
Brian Tyler's Far Cry 3 is also a great listen (sure, he's a film composer but I like it)
Many of those hits, of famous people still around the industry, were coded while working part-time on their teens, trying to sell their creations via magazines or the local publishers.