Daft Punk, the famed French electronic music duo formed in 1993, has broken up. While many of their fans are obviously upset by the news, Q Entertainment producer (and ex-game journalist) James Mielke took the opportunity to share his own fond memories of the musicians, explaining that they were meant to be part of a PlayStation Vita project that eventually became 2012’s Lumines: Electronic Symphony.
These are details Mielke has shared before, most notably in an almost decade-old development blog for Gamasutra, but today seems like a perfect time to revisit the story (or, in the case of Kotaku, cover for the first time). It goes like this: Q Entertainment successfully pitched a Daft Punk-themed Lumines game to Ubisoft, and the musicians themselves were down to contribute.
The only problem was Daft Punk was too busy working with Disney on Tron: Legacy at the time to collaborate on the puzzle game. And it’s too bad because, as Mielke tells it, the boys were interested in creating all-new music for Lumines rather than sticking with their old tunes, which would have been a real treat for fans.
“What I wanted to do was put the player in the cockpit of Daft Punk’s pyramid-shaped DJ booth that they tour with, and—as Daft Punk—rock the crowd by performing big combos in Lumines,” Mielke previously wrote on Gamasutra. “Everything in the game was going to be Daft Punk-ified, from the HUD, to the soundtrack, to the bassy aural ambiance found on their 2007 Alive live album, to the special effects, real-time lighting, bouncing 3D crowd, etc.”
Sadly, Q Entertainment had to move on without Daft Punk, but the resulting Lumines: Electronic Symphony was apparently pretty fantastic in its own right, even without the duo’s spicing things up. And, hey, maybe now the French musicians will have enough time to pursue these types of projects now that they’ve hung up their flashing robot heads.