Music-Loving Gamers Holiday Gift Guide 2024
If you know your gamer giftee loves music too, then that opens up a whole new catalog of presents to buy them. Get some ideas in this music-loving gamer holiday gift guide.
Posted 19 days ago
Buying holiday gifts for a gamer can be hard when they're so hooked into their hobby that they have all the latest releases within hours of them launching. That's why you're in luck if your gamer giftee loves music too – it gives you a double threat angle to get the perfect gift for them.
So if you have a music-loving gamer still on your 'to buy' list this year, here's a holiday gift guide that'll give you some good options that cover most of the bases, or at least may inspire some ideas of your own.
You can mount them on your wall as art, if you don't have a turntable.
Vinyl
The resurgence of vinyl as the physical media platform of choice for the discerning audiophile collector is something of a boon for the hapless holiday gift purchaser. Know a game they love? Check to see if it has a soundtrack on vinyl. You get a double whammy of "thing they already love" and "nice album art to display."
They don't even really need to own a turntable, though if they do, then that cements them as the ideal recipient for a video game soundtrack vinyl as a holiday gift. Here are some good options to consider from recent games with exceptional soundtracks, unless you know the one they'll love the most already:
For the talented gamers out there.
Sheet Music
If your intended recipient is talented, as well as just a fan of music and games in general, why not give them a goal they can work toward? Most video game soundtracks have fan-made arrangements committed to paper, and there are a few officially licensed ones, too.
Most are for piano, and a particularly nice option is this solo arrangement for the PS3 game Journey, originally by composer Austin Wintory. He collaborated with arranger Laura Intravia to bring six tracks from the original soundtrack to piano, and this collection includes Nascence, Threshold, The Road of Trials, Final Confluence, Apotheosis and, perhaps the best in the game, I Was Born For This.
An Ocarina
An ornament and an instrument, what can't the ocarina do?
You'd be surprised how many gamers became interested in music thanks to the scarecrow in Zelda's 1998 entry Ocarina of Time, which let you make your own little song. Just being able to play any note on the in-game ocarina with the controller buttons and bend notes with the analog stick was an exciting new frontier to budding musicians. So how about you commemorate the first steps on their journey with a simple wind instrument of their own?
There are plenty of ocarinas out there, but this ocarina comes with a carrying case, song book, and cute little stand for when they're not playing the Song of Storms on repeat. And, of course, it's modeled after Link's inherited ocarina from the game itself. Even if they aren't much of a wind musician, it makes a lovely ceramic ornament for a shelf.
If you haven't found the perfect gift just yet, check out Restart's other Holiday Gift Guides, full of recommendations for different platforms and other kinds of gamers: