Between shifting bosses, arenas that evolve as the fight progresses, and all the detail that’s been pumped into new playable character, Miss Chalice, the DLC isn’t just some cheap tack-on horse armour. Because, coincidentally, the animation runs parallel to the music: there are as many animations in the DLC as there are in the base game. The result is a sound that is richer and fuller than what you would have heard in the base game – and that suits the DLC just perfectly. “The full 50+ piece orchestra is obviously a big part of that, but even the big band – which could be considered the ‘core’ of the Cuphead sound – is larger than last time.” “While there is technically ‘less’ music duration-wise in The Delicious Last Course, what is there is often much richer and fuller than what is heard on the original OST,” Maddigan tells me. The original Cuphead OST featured nearly three hours of original jazz, early big band, and ragtime music, and for the DLC – or The Delicious Last Course, if you will – “didn’t want to do more of the same”. Just like its inspirations, Cuphead is subversive and surreal – whether its rubber-hose animation based on the work of Fleischer Studios and early Disney cartoons, or the something’s-not-quite-right-here narrative of two naive cup-headed brothers wandering blindly into a deal with the devil himself, you can tell the game holds deep and significant respect for the weird and wonderful world of media in the 1930s.īut where the developers were inspired by Japanese wartime propaganda films and age-old cartoons watched on grainy VHS tapes, the composer – one Kristofer Maddigan – took his inspirations from more recognisable areas: from popular music of the 30s and 40s.

READ MORE: ‘Spyro the Dragon’, PlayStation, and The Police: The unlikely story behind a PlayStation classic.The elevator pitch for the game seemed so unlikely, so resolutely impossible, that very specific kinds of enthusiastic nerd around the world sat primed, waiting, for what promised to be a game unlike any other. The indie title – which was seemingly in development for eons before its launch in 2017 – caught the eye of animation and gaming fanatics the world over.

This week, Dom Peppiatt chats to Kristofer Maddigan, composer of Cuphead and The Delicious Last Cours e, about Fantasia, recording with a 50+ piece orchestra, and how important music is to the overall effect games have on people’s minds.Ĭuphead, already, has made a name for itself. Rock The Spacebar is a twice-monthly column investigating the great music that underpins your favourite games.

Cuphead ost review