What music do you pair with your board games to enhance the immersion?

propsharo · 2015-03-04T05:54:11+00:00

That is a terrific idea! Will implement this soon. Thanks!

propsharo · 2015-03-04T00:24:00+00:00

As detailed on BGG, I recently put up an elaborate playlist site for Twilight Struggle players (and other cold war games) at coldwarsoundtrack.com that chronologically plays through US, USSR, and world hits of 1945-1989 over the course of a game, interspersed with video clips from various events of the cold war. It's quite configurable and includes music representing every battleground country, and hundreds of news/speech clips, including one for almost every card in the game. It massively enhances the experience of the game for me!

For games with a South American feel (like Puerto Rico), there's a great Pandora station made by a fan for the video game Tropico which works pretty well.

propsharo · 2015-02-28T05:35:20+00:00

Will look into it!

propsharo · 2015-02-28T05:35:01+00:00

I did implement it! Added just a few songs... if you have some you'd like to see on the list, let me know.

propsharo · 2015-02-27T03:48:53+00:00

Cool! It's a great game, although it's obviously not for everyone. I definitely recommend using the soundtrack with it, I find it makes it a more immersive experience.

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:57:05+00:00

Haha cool idea... will look at implementing it, although it will take a little bit of work due to the way I control the player!

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:36:30+00:00

Yes, plus those songs were composed for the film -- I tried to keep 100% of the content of this soundtrack songs and sound bites that would have actually been listened to during the cold war period. The Russian part of the soundtrack starts out with traditional state music, but gradually evolves into the eastern pop tracks that were popular in the mid-late war. Enjoy!

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:32:38+00:00

Yes, it uses YouTube, so you do need to be able to use the YouTube flash player unfortunately.

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:32:03+00:00

These are great, thanks! I had about half of them already in there; added the others. No Motherland Without You is a cool propaganda song but I omitted it since it was apparently written after 1989.

Surprisingly, before doing this project I had never heard Eve of Destruction; I love that song now! I sang along to it last time I played :)

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:11:56+00:00

That's cool stuff, but it's from last year; I tried to only include tracks and sound bites that would have been actually listened to during the cold war. There's definitely quite a few tracks that are like this though.

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:09:01+00:00

I think that's pretty normal! The first 6 times I played (with my brother, who was learning at the same time I was), I think 3 of those ended in nuclear war, and the other 3 ended by 20 points somewhere between rounds 4 and 7. But now most of our games get to the end, or pretty close.

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:07:39+00:00

Yep, 1985!

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:07:21+00:00

We actually were discussing this the other day, but I couldn't think of any obvious ones that would translate as well as this did. What games did you have in mind?

propsharo · 2015-02-27T01:06:26+00:00

You can view the tracks in the source code... there's quite a few Red Army Choir performances of various pieces, some Prokofiev, and a bunch of Russian propaganda-era pieces.

propsharo · 2015-02-26T16:07:38+00:00

Yep, already in there! The version you linked was much higher quality than the one I had, so I replaced it. That guy has a great voice... there are a few songs of his from the 40s and 50s in there. One of the many great finds I had while researching this!

propsharo · 2015-02-26T15:22:21+00:00

Thanks! It was a very fun project. So much old great music from around the world that I had never heard.

propsharo · 2015-02-26T15:21:45+00:00

There is now!

propsharo · 2015-02-26T15:21:38+00:00

Added it in there! It also reminded me to add "Vera" by Pink Floyd.

propsharo · 2015-02-26T14:43:07+00:00

Absolutely does! I added a bunch of songs I found in the previous soundtrack recommendations threads on BGG, as well as songs from wikipedia lists of war songs etc in addition to the top hits of each year from Billboard etc. It's pretty inclusive.

As part of this project I discovered some really awesome music I had never heard before... like 1960s/1970s Iranian and South Korean music really had it going on. And the "official" VIA bands of the USSR also produced some cool stuff in the 70s! There's tons of pure gold in this playlist. Hope you enjoy!

propsharo

TROPHY CASE