Distilling a full orchestral arrangement down to two-part music box harmony, keeping only the melody and the most basic broken chords—this is what composer Diwa de Leon has been doing since 2018. The "Video Game Music Box" series has since grown to over 50 arrangement albums, reworking scores from "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33," "Genshin Impact," "Deltarune," "Undertale," "Baldur's Gate 3," "Skyrim," "Minecraft," "Hollow Knight," "Sonic the Hedgehog," and "The Witcher 3," among others. After eight years, the series is finally getting a vinyl release for the first time.
"Best Of Video Game Music Box" is now available for pre-order through Materia Records. The official description says the compilation "reimagines familiar melodies through the delicate, nostalgic sound of a music box, rendering them intimate, introspective, and dreamlike." The 1LP vinyl is priced at £23 and is expected to ship later this year.
The tracklist spans "The Legend of Zelda" series with "Zelda's Lullaby," "The Great Fairy Fountain," and "Song of Storms"; "Super Mario Galaxy's" "Luma"; "Pokémon's" "Lavender Town"; "Kingdom Hearts'" "Dearly Beloved" and "Treasured Memories"; and "Deltarune's" "The Legend" and "Empty Town." "Undertale" gets the heaviest representation, with five tracks included: "Fallen Down," "Once Upon A Time," "Shop," the title track "Undertale," and "Megalovania."
In a statement, de Leon recalled how the series began: "At the time, there wasn't a single music box series dedicated to officially licensed video game music, and I wanted to see if I could fill that gap. Would anyone actually want to listen to this? I had no idea." He describes his approach as taking a full orchestral arrangement—cinematic, sweeping, grandiose big-band work—and distilling it all down into a two-part music box arrangement, "no padding, no ornamentation, just the melody and its most basic broken harmony." The result, he says, is that "people crave that simplicity"—a familiar theme stripped down to its purest form ends up sounding more innocent, more unguarded, and therefore more emotional. This vinyl, he says, is the best outcome of that experiment so far.
