'Lumines: Electronic Symphony' conceived as Daft Punk game
PlayStation Vita launch game and reviewers' favorite Lumines: Electronic Symphony was very nearly a Daft Punk special, said James Mielke, producer at game studio Q Entertainment.
The studio is well known not only for the Lumines series but also for Rez HD, whose Dreamcast predecessor Rez was designed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who founded Q when colleagues at Sega were transferred over to work on the Sonic franchise team.
"Originally when I first thought about re-booting Lumines I thought maybe it would be interesting to attach it to a big license," he explained, speaking on February 24th's 8-4 Play podcast, "so I originally pitched this as Daft Punk Lumines."
"Ubisoft were totally on board, they were really excited, and of course there is that French connection [between Ubi and Daft Punk] -- plus Mr Mizuguchi had met Daft Punk and they knew his games."
"They were working on the Tron soundtrack so they didn't have time. The timing just didn't work out but there was goodwill from both sides."
Instead, the synaesthetic block puzzle game went for a 34-song soundtrack spanning Air to Aphex Twin, Goldfrapp to Bebel Gilberto.
"I wanted to take people on a historical overview of electronic music while introducing people to new music -- everybody's heard of Tiesto, but how many people have heard of Anything Box?"
Lumines official website: ubi.com/US/Games/Info.aspx?pId=10367
8-4 Play podcast: 8-4.jp/blog
