Off track

It's half past nine in the morning, Mattis has been awake since 7 a.m. and has already managed to get some of his day's work done: two short reviews of the two Age of Wonders 4-addons Empires & Ashes and Eldritch Realms here, a bit of data hygiene for the homepage there - spirits are high. He's productive - despite (or perhaps because of) his new onset of unemployment - and is looking forward to playing Hogwarts Legacy again around midday. But there's still some time before then, so he listens to the soundtrack to the new fun racer Disney Speedstorm His mood drops.

We jump back, probably several years, when a few Disney executives are sitting in a room and thinking about how to make a bit of money again. Despite not having been there, I imagine it going something like this:

Other entries in the Disney -series

Soundtrack

Disney's Aladdin (1993)

Soundtrack

Disney Speedstorm (2023)

Executive 1: *looks up from a note* Guys, we need to make some money.

Executive 2: *fights his way up from under a pile of dollar bills* Yeah, I agree. *spits out a banknote* Bah, a rack.

Executive 3: How about some Star Wars? Or a Pixar movie?

Executive 1: We do them anyway, people watch them regardless. No, something different, with video games.

Executive 4: *playing Mario Karton his Switch* No video games, sucks. DIE DONKEY - FUCK

Executive 2: *throws a gold nugget at Executive 4* Noob

Executive 3: What do the people like?

Executive 4: I HATE THIS GAME!

Executive 2: Racing games? That's also totally family-friendly.

Executive 4: BLOODY SHITFUCK I'M FUCKING YOUR MOTHER!

Executive 3: Yes, perfect, and then we can put all our IPs in there: Wreck-It Ralph, Toy Story, Cars …

Executive 2: No CarsHow are cars supposed to race?

Executive 1: Good point. But I like the idea...

Executive 3: Frozen, Inside Out, The Little Mermaid …

Executive 4: C'MON C'MON COME OOOOON ... YAAAA!!! BESTED YOU SUCKERS!

Executive 3: Pirates of the Caribbean, Mulan –

Executive 2: Yeah, we got it. Okay, so a racing video game with cars without Cars. And that's released as a mobile game?

Executive 4: *with a bright red head* And the Switch please, I'd love to play there.

Executive 1: Okay, then we've got it, haven't we? Then we'll use a company that's done something for us in the past and that'll be it.

Executive 3: One more thing: it has to be as age-appropriate as possible - after all, it's for the whole family. How do we get the spirit across?

Executive 1: Oh that's easy, we'll just give it the cuddly look and that'll do the trick. And - *interrupts himself and looks questioningly at Executive 2*

Executive 2: *lowering his hand* Music.

Executive 1: Come again?

Executive 2: Music. We'll put music underneath it that the kids know from our movies, it'll be brilliant!

Executive 3: but is that modern enough? And for a racing game? Many songs don't fit in at all and -

Executive 2: Don't worry, I just know the guys ...

The score

Jumping back to the present, Mattis has been sitting in front of his music library in consternation for a good hour, listening to the sounds of Disney Speedstorm . There are 25 pieces in total, created by the composer quartet Vincent Labelle, Martin Courcy, Nicolas Dubé and Francis Collard. He has nothing to complain about in terms of quality, the music blasts out of the loudspeakers in line with the genre and he can very well imagine how much it'd spur him on during the race.

However, he is not sitting in front of the game, but listening to the songs of his youth in a version that he would have expected to hear on a Smash CD 20 years ago. It's as if the composers had taken a best-of of Disney tracks and put well-known songs such as The Bare Necessities or Let It GoVincent Labelle4 through the techno grinder. The clearest inspiration for the soundtrack was probably Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout , whose squeaky USK 6 party music fits like a glove here and there.

Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, he finds it all the more disconcerting when well-known melodies such as A Whole New WorldVincent Labelle2 from Aladdin or I’ll Make a Man Out of YouVincent Labelle3 (Mulan) sound like hardcore dubstep/electro adaptations. What the hell is he listening to here? He knows he's not the demographic that this game and its accompanying soundtrack is dedicated to, but it feels wrong, even though it's technically just right: recognizability through familiar songs, skillfully adapted for the racetrack. In his opinion, they can stay there, unfortunately the score doesn't win him over. If you want to find out more, you can watch this Behind the Scenes video on YouTube anschauen.