In the third installment of this series, we go back to the vinyl that started off my collection. Furi was the first game’s soundtrack I bought on vinyl. This is a rare case in which the soundtrack is released at the same time as the game on vinyl. I bought it through Hitpoint via The Game Bakers, as they’d taken on the task of pressing it to disc instead of sending it out to iam8bit or Laced Records. While the game is a bullet-hell boss rush, it thankfully offers an easier difficulty mode for people like me, who are too stubborn to use anything but a Steam controller. But that’s enough about me.

The Furi vinyl, on two LP discs. It features selections of songs from the OST. (via Hitpoint)

Artists and Sound

Where The Game Bakers really knocked it out of the park was the sheer number of synthwave artists that they crammed into the soundtrack. You have classics like Danger and Carpenter Brut, who have found fame of their own outside of video games. Beside them, you have Scattle and Lorn, whose music might be hard to listen to outside of the game but fits perfectly when rushing a boss down. Tracks from Carpenter Brut in particular underscore many of the cutscenes in the game, and Danger fills the stage during the boss at the very end. By having so many different artists with different styles on one soundtrack, The Game Bakers gave each and every boss a personality that the player gets to know through their music.

Much like the Hotline Miami vinyl I showcased a couple weeks ago, this has that same synth sound. I’ve rehashed it a few times, but it really is something to hear music made with computers played from a medium which has been around since the 1880s, at its earliest. It’s something that really never gets old to me. One thing incredibly unique to this soundtrack specifically is that The Game Bakers put on a concert featuring the artists from the game in Paris shortly after the game launched. It’s a celebration of a new soundtrack that we’ve only seen Nintendo do with The Legend of Zelda, and it feels right to have other genres get that concert treatment.

Design

On the cover of the Furi vinyl we have a silver-embossed outline of the Rider. The cover freezes him in a kinetic pose, stepping into a swing of his sword from below. His hair and cape billow up behind him, further accenting the movement. Combined with the silver embossing, it gives off the effect of a spark coming off of a sword that’s used often in animation.

On the inside, there’s a display of the first monolith that the Rider enters, just before fighting the second boss. It illustrates the size of the prison that he’s been kept in for hundreds of years, and even then doesn’t give us the entire scope of how big it really is.

The discs are reminiscent of the color scheme of the game, much like the inside cover. The Furi vinyl comes pressed on two discs. It looks like you get two colorful discs, one in a cerulean blue and one in a magenta, but they look much more vibrant to the eye. This probably isn’t intentional, but my discs have a slight marble design to them, seen below. Unfortunately you can only really see it when light is shining through from behind it. Again, I’m not sure if this is intentional or not, but it’s a nice perk.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I’m glad that this was the vinyl to really kickstart my collection. I think it’s a great medium, no matter the reason. Maybe you’d like to give some generally cool-sounding music a warmer tone. Maybe you just like the album art. There’s plenty of reasons to collect vinyl. While my collection of specifically video game records is pretty small, I do have some more that I’m proud to share with you next week.

Cover image via The Game Bakers.