Temple of Elemental Evil theme on Tv Ok, about 15 minutes ago, got a total shock when I turned on my Tv and found Law & Order: Criminal Intent on near the beginning. I heard, plain as day, the Moathouse Combat R3 theme playing (or at least part of it). The episode is called Baggage (Season 2, Eps. 11). The episode aired BEFORE the game was released (January), but I have to wonder if perhaps whomever was in charge of the music on CI either knew someone at Atari or had some inside line on it. Edit: Ok, I totally screwed the pooch on the track. Found the right one.
Hmm that is interesting. I know a good deal about music and the music industry. When music is made for a game, it is typically a 'work for hire' type agreement where the game studio owns all the music you create. This happens a lot with the scores for TV shows and movies too. TV studios and movie studios demand it so they dont have to re-license music from the composer if the TV series goes on DVD, digital stream, whatever. There are music production houses that will create music and license it though. That might have been the case. They could have made the music for L&O or ToEE under a non exclusive license, and then found another buyer later. It is hard to say who would have licensed it first since good games start music production at the same time as all other production, so it could be a year in advance. I do know that many major TV shows, LOST comes to mind, will have a composer do all of the music for an episode within 3-4 days before the airing of the episode. They only have such a short time window to compose and get an orchestra/musicians together because they are only given a final visual version to compose to that early. The final edit is needed to work out timing of music in a scene and between scenes. Either way, nice catch!
I seem to recall someone else saying that they'd heard another ToEE piece on some A&E program or the Discovery Channel or something like that. According to 'The Troika Interviews' before and after release, ToEE's soundrack was most definitely a work for hire, although Atari handled it rather than Troika (unlike with Arcanum), so if they're to be believed, Atari must have licensed some of the pieces elsewhere ahead of time. That's a bit odd, because I think most games like to think of their soundtracks as private works that can be identified only with the game, much like with movies. But I don't think ToEE's composer (I believe his name was somthing Fisher) was an A-list composer, and Atari never did seem to be 100% behind ToEE, so maybe they didn't care. Modern composers for TV and video games and even some movies often use digital orchesrtra samples btw, which would cut down considerably on the lead time they would need to record.
I never would have noticed this, because I play the game with the music completely silenced. If I ever watch NBC, I prefer to do it with the television turned off.
:shrug: I often play the game with the graphics turned off, and when I'm not doing that I play with the story turned off. To each his own!
