A Video Game tune, sometimes the Background Music, is turned into a huge orchestral version by the game developers. (Or, in some cases, another band.) It is not often used within the game or series and is only available online or in stores, though there's a chance it could show up in a remake or sequel, depending on the budget.
This is usually done because the game itself has limitations on the quality of the music if it is an 8-bit, 16-bit, etc. game.
The music is not always the same thing, and is sometimes extended. It may also be worse than the original music depending on who you talk to.
Not always limited to video game music, but is rarely seen in other media.
Not to be confused with Orchestral Bombing. See also Boss Remix.
Examples:
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Action Adventure
- The Legend of Zelda with most songs.
- The group Zelda Reorchestrated rearranged each one of the game soundtracks. For a starter, here's the Light World dungeon theme
from A Link to the Past.
- Then there's Nintendo's own 25th Anniversary Special Orchestra album included with the Special Edition of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
- The group Zelda Reorchestrated rearranged each one of the game soundtracks. For a starter, here's the Light World dungeon theme
- Done with many Castlevania themes, such as "Entrance Hall & Chandeliers" from Super Castlevania IV.
- The themes from Astyanax's first two stages (NES version) were arranged into an orchestral suite by DCT and GrayLightning.
- Blake Robinson orchestrated the Super Metroid soundtrack as Super Metroid Symphony.
- The Metroid Prime series features orchestral versions of the "Samus's Appearance" and "Item Acquisition" fanfares, "Brinstar"(in the Tallon Overworld), "Lower Norfair"(in Magmoor Caverns), and "Escape."
- Ridley's theme has a techno version in Prime, and a proper orchestral version in Metroid: Other M.
- The Metroid Prime series features orchestral versions of the "Samus's Appearance"
- The UM Gamer Symphony did this for Kid Icarus.
- Blaster Master: Overdrive's soundtrack consists almost entirely of orchestrations of the original game's music. The only unique music piece is the final boss theme.
- Bionic Commando (1988)'s NES soundtrack was given a techno update in its Rearmed remake. On the other hand, the 2009 sequel uses actual orchestral arrangements.
- ActRaiser, scored by the legendary Yuzo Koshiro, had a "Symphonic Suite" orchestral soundtrack released in Japan in 1991. The score was also orchestrated for the 2021 remake.
- The 2017 remake of Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap has an orchestral soundtrack arranged by Michael Geyre, along with the original Sega Master System PSG music by Shinichi Sakamoto.
Adventure Game
- The original Leisure Suit Larry theme song was composed for the PC speaker - which can only produce single-tone sine waves. For the seventh game they redid it as a full-blown professional jazz recording.
- The sax was played by none other than Larry Laffer's spiritual father: Al Lowe. Get the intro from here, and all of the other tunes from the game(s).
- The sax was played by none other than Larry Laffer's spiritual father: Al Lowe. Get the intro from here
- The 7th Guest's in-game music is MIDI-based, but the bundled soundtrack CD features orchestral arrangements of the major songs, including a rock version of the main theme, "The Game".
Fighting Game
- Super Smash Bros.:
- Double Dragon I and II both have professionally arranged OST albums, whose arrangements were used in the Double Dragon Trilogy released on Steam and mobile devices. More recently, Jake Kaufman reworked several of the series' iconic tunes for Double Dragon Neon, including the title theme, "Arrival of the Black Warriors"(City Slum), "The Great Fray"(Industrial Area), "Abobo the Giant Appears"(the Green Abobo cave theme, which gets a literal orchestra arrangement in the Haunted Forest level, and two power metal arrangements for Skullmageddon), "Old Nemesis Willy"(Hideout), "Unleashing The Ogre"(DD II Mission 1), and the Stage Clear and Intermission jingles.
First Person Shooter
- Marathon 1's CD edition includes RedBook recordings of seven songs from the game's MIDI soundtrack.
- Halo: Many tunes from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 were orchestrally remastered in Halo 3, and the first two games' soundtracks were also reorchestrated by Skywalker Sound for their Anniversary remakes. The "One Final Effort" and "Halo Finale" arrangements of the main theme are especially awesome.
- The original MIDI music to Descent was heavily dependent on specific sound card models. Fortunately, the Macintosh version was given RedBook recorded music, which included awesome arrangements of several of the PC tunes. Compare the PC version of the Lunar Scilab BGM to its Mac counterpart.
- Perfect Dark: "Air Force One is Down!" [Crash Site Confrontation OC Re Mix]
Platform Game
- Super Mario Bros. The main theme especially gets this treatment, considering how well known it is.
- Super Mario Galaxy 2 contains orchestral arrangements for the Bowser level and main level tunes from Super Mario 64.
- Super Mario Galaxy 2 contains orchestral arrangements for the Bowser level
- The Sonic the Hedgehog series has used orchestral rock mixes of the games' main themes as backing music for some of the Final Boss fights.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): "His World".
- Sonic Unleashed: "Endless Possibilities."
- Sonic Colors: "Reach for the Stars."
- The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra arranged the soundtracks of the first two games.
- Sonic Frontiers: "The Final Horizon"'s new final boss has an orchestral version of "I'm Here" accompanying it.
- Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts has many redone versions of old music, including an unused final boss theme.
- The original arcade version of Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair and its Mega Drive port had tinny FM-synthesized music, but the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 CD version received a professionally mixed RedBook soundtrack, which is quite awesome.
- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze features rearrangements of tunes from the classic games such as "Simian Segue", "Aquatic Ambience", and "Stickerbush Symphony".
- The iconic Wily Castle Stage 1&2 theme from Mega Man 2 was bound to recieve at least one of these.
- The title theme of Ori and the Blind Forest was re-recorded with fully orchestral instruments for the Definitive Edition.
- Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen reorchestrated his 1991 MOD song "Space Debris" for the soundtrack to Rochard in 2011.
- The DuckTales soundtrack was orchestrated by the aforementioned Jake Kaufman for its Enhanced Remake, DuckTales Remastered. The already epic Moon theme gets two arrangements, a symphonic rock version for the stage, and a piano version for the end credits.
- In the Xbox remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day, all of the original's MIDI tunes were re-recorded with live instruments.
- Tim "CoLD SToRAGE" Wright's Amiga Revisited 2011 EP consists of reinterpretations of classic Psygnosis tunes, namely "March of the Greentops (Tim 1)" from Lemmings, the title themes from Agony and Aquaventura, and the title and funeral themes from Shadow of the Beast III.
- Princeof Persia 1: The soundtrack of the SNES version was arranged as a big band jazz suite by Myles Wright & co.
Racing Game
- Gran Turismo 4's opening used an orchestral version of the series theme "Moon Over the Castle".
- A suite of the Rainbow Road themes from Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, and Mario Kart 7.
- Mario Kart 8 gave this treatment to the retro courses.
- OutRun 2 andOutRun 2006: Coast to Coast both include reworks of the original OutRun's FM chiptunes. For example, compare the original and modern versions of "Magical Sound Shower".
Role Playing Game
- Final Fantasy games get this a lot. Square Enix has released orchestral albums of Final Fantasy and II and Final Fantasy VI, and there are several CD's based on orchestral concerts.
- Final Fantasy VII in particular—there's an orchestral version of virtually the entire soundtrack...
- Orchestrated themes for the actual game soundtrack are pretty commonplace for the series post-VII.
- Yoko Shimomura's "Drammatica" provides another album of orchestrated versions of soundtrack pieces from Square Enix games Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Mana, Front Mission, Live A Live, and Final Fantasy XV.
- The original Mother had a soundtrack CD that, rather than containing the NES games' eight bit melodies, reproduced them as fully orchestrated and vocal songs.
- Tropers may know its first song, "Pollyanna," from the fact that it's the official unofficial theme song of the Sugar Wiki.
- OverClocked ReMix has Chrono Symphonic, a retelling of Chrono Trigger's soundtrack entirely in orchestrations.
- The original soundtrack for Dragon Quest VIII was fairly normal, but in the US release, every track was replaced with an orchestrated version of the original.
- The Ys series has redone several major themes in full orchestra.
- Konami's PS2 port of Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim was originally going to have an entirely orchestral soundtrack, but fortunately they decided at the last minute to keep the signature Awesome Music from the PC version and instead used the orchestrated tunes for the Bonus Dungeons.
- Ys: The Oath in Felghana has a particularly awesome example in the form of "Chop!!", which combines Chester's leitmotif with the midboss theme from the X68000 version of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, the game's predecessor.
- Aviators, better known for his My Little Pony filk music, has produced an orchestral suite incorporating songs from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Halo, Fallout 4, Mass Effect 3, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, The Legend of Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, and others.
- Undertale's 5th anniversary was celebrated with a livestreamed concert by Music Engine in which a Japanese orchestra gives Toby Fox's soundtrack the grand orchestral treatment. (And yes, the encores were performed by Toby Fox himself.)
- Fate/Grand Order had several pieces from the game's first soundtrack orchestrated by one of Type-Moon's composers Hideyuki Fukasawa and performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra for a special concert.
Shoot Em Up
- The fans of the Touhou Project are quite fond of making orchestral remixes of ZUN's already awesome music. For example, Emotional Skyscraper~Cosmic Mind.
- Gradius V's Stage 2 & 8 BGM begins with an orchestral version of the first few notes of "Challenger 1985", the first game's Stage 1 music. The previous games' boss themes, including the well-known Aircraft Carrier, were also reorchestrated for the returning bosses.
- Star Fox orchestra medley.
- Russell Cox from Overclocked Remix orchestrated The Guardian Legend's title theme as "Naju Overture."
- Raiden 1 got this treatment in its PC Engine CD port, and several of Raiden II's songs, along with the first game's boss theme, were updated for Raiden IV.
- Magical Trick Society orchestrally arranged Ikaruga's main theme, "Ideal", while Aojiro did likewise for "Butsutekkai", the boss theme.
- R-Type's Japan-only PC Engine CD-ROM port appropriately gives the already epic soundtrack a RedBook techno makeover.
Sports Game
- The famous fight theme for Punch-Out!! was completely redone by a rock band (with awesome horn section) for the Wii remake.
- The Light Plane theme from Pilotwings received a funk arrangement in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Stealth-Based Game
- The Syphon Filter title theme got this treatment in The Omega Strain, Dark Mirror, and Logan's Shadow.
Survival Horror
- This trope is actually inverted in Resident Evil 5. The in-game tracks are performed by 20th Century Fox Studio's Hollywood Studio Symphony, but the soundtrack features less refined, digital versions of "An Emergency", "A Big Despair", "Wind of Madness", "Deep Ambition", and "Plan of Uroboros".
Visual Novel
- The Ace Attorney series has had multiple orchestral remix albums dedicated to it, titled "Gyakuten Meets Orchestra", further amplifying the already prevalent Mundane Made Awesome aspect of the series.
Non-video game examples:
Anime
- Suzumiya Haruhi no Gensou. Aya Hirano and Minori Chihara actually gave the vocals for four of the songs performed ("Bouken Desho Desho", "God Knows", "Lost My Music", and "Yuki Muon Madobe Nite").
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, one of Nanoha's Leitmotifs, "Raising Heart, Set-Up!" was later updated with "Raising Heart, Set Up! (The Magical Orchestra)." When The Movie came, another Orchestral Version of the song was created, and one of the the Limited Edition DVD/Blu-Ray bonuses show that they hired an actual orchestra to perform it along with other similar updates to the Season 1 soundtrack.
- The Pokemon anime has a number of orchestral versions of music based on the corresponding games. Sometimes it is mixed with rock/pop style as well.
Live Action TV
- 3-2-1 Contact's theme tune inverts this trope, originally being recorded with a full orchestra, but switching to an electronic arrangement in the last couple seasons.
- The Doctor Who theme was originally created by Delia Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop through samples of test-tone oscillators, white noise and a single bass string (later arrangements of the theme in the classic series used synthesisers). The 1996 TV Movie had a fully orchestrated version. For Nu Who, Murray Gold combined samples of the original with conventional instruments, and also had a full orchestra version by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for special occasions.
Theatre
- The original cast album of the "play about a musical" Say, Darling, which had songs by Jule Styne and Comden and Green, replaced much of the two-piano accompaniment used in the production with orchestrations by Sid Ramin. Ramin and his then-uncredited assistant Robert Ginzler went on to orchestrate Styne's next musical, Gypsy.
- The original off-Broadway production of Assassins was done without a real orchestra, but Stephen Sondheim's score was orchestrated by Michael Starobin for the original cast album.
- Closer Than Ever had only a pianist and bassist to accompany the four singers in its off-Broadway production. The cast recording was orchestrated by Michael Starobin using seven additional musicians.
Web Original
- The Angry Video Game Nerd's theme tune has an orchestral version floating around on YouTube, by the fans. It was later used in his videos.
- As an homage to the Future Crew megahit demo Second Reality, Remedy's Final Reality benchmark demo has a cityscape sequence with a remastered version of Skaven's S3M music from the former demo.
Western Animation
Real Life
- There exist quite a number of traveling productions that exclusively perform re-orchestrated versions of video game songs. The most notable ones are probably Video Games Live and PLAY!.
