Biography
Grim Fandango may refer to:
1. Hardcore / Punk Rock band from Perth, Western Australia (www.myspace.com/grimfandangomusic)
1. Formed 2006 in Perth, Western Australia, Grim have finely crafted a unique sound that transcends their hardcore/punk roots. Characterized by intertwining jangling guitars, abrasive three-way vocal melodies and a tight driving rhythm section Grim Fandango write ferocious, discordant songs beaming with an undeniable presence of pop-sensibilty and optimism. In their relatively brief time together Grim Fandango have had the honour of sharing the stage with Bad Religion, NOFX, The Gaslight Anthem, The Ataris, The Bouncing Souls, Samiam, The Bronx, Smoke Or Fire, Strike Anywhere, Avail and A Wilhelm Scream.
2. The video game by LucasArts, please change your tags to Peter McConnell who composed the soundtrack for the game.
2. "Grim Fandango" is a graphical adventure computer game released by LucasArts in 1998, the title derived from a line of a mournful poem read by one of the characters in the game.
The score is composed by Peter McConnell who worked for about 10 years as an in house musician at LucasArts. He has been co-composer on Monkey Island 2, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and he has been lead composer on Full Throttle and Psychonauts, apart from Grim Fandango. The music is largely inspired by the Film-Noir genre, with influences from Jazz, Blues, and Mexican music like Mariachi.
The game has received a lot of praising, including numerous awards in the game industry, including 'Best PC Music (1998)' and one of 'The Ten Best PC Game Soundtracks' by GameSpot.
It was the first adventure game by LucasArts to use three-dimensional graphics, as it runs in the GrimE engine. Grim Fandango was lauded by critics and adventure game fans as one of the best games in the genre and beyond, but was not a commercial success.
In July, 2006, rumors surfaced that Tim Burton may have been interested in obtaining the rights to create a movie based on or following the events of this game, but later the rumors were revealed to be a hoax, originating from the same source on several different websites and blogs.
The game is set in the Aztec afterlife and charts Manny's four year journey through the Land of the Dead towards the final destination of all dead souls — Mictlan, the Aztec underworld.
The story unfolds in four episodes, each set a year apart on the Day of the Dead. It is from this festival that much of the game's imagery is drawn — most of the game's characters are skeletal calaca figures (based on the work of Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada). Various flowers are also used as tools of murder, in the form of a substance known as "Sproutella", which reacts with bone, destroying it by causing flowers to grow in it extremely rapidly. Characters refer to this manner of death as "sprouting". There is also unique fauna scattered throughout the game, such as bone-eating fire beavers and gigantic cats used for racing.
Unusually, the game combines this mythical underworld with 1930s Art Deco design motifs and a dark plot reminiscent of the film noir genre. Manny, whose job combines the roles of Grim Reaper and travel agent, turns detective when he discovers that deserving souls are being denied their rightful post-mortem reward of direct travel to Mictlan, bypassing the four-year trip that all other souls must take. Manny's investigations draw him into a tangled web of corruption, deceit, and murder.
The second part of the game, when Manny is running a nightclub, is inspired by Humphrey Bogart films The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo and Casablanca. In the game, the gambler Chowchilla Charlie is extremely reminiscent of Peter Lorre, and the town's corrupt police chief is based on Claude Rains's Captain Renault. Despite this, Tim Schafer stated that the true inspiration was drawn from films like Double Indemnity, in which a weak and undistinguished man (an insurance salesman, not a detective) is involved in murder and intrigue.
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Fandango)
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