After graduating from the Osaka College of Music in 1988, Yoko Shimomura was torn between career paths. Classically trained since the age of 3 and raised in a family of piano players, Shimomura had studied to become a piano teacher. But when she wasn't studying or playing the piano, Shimomura was popping coins at her local arcade or stomping on Goombas in Super Mario Bros. It was Koji Kondo's infectious melodies in the original Super Mario Bros. that first piqued Shimomura's interest in video game music. Not long after, Koichi Sugiyama's classical score for the RPG Dragon Quest inspired her to marry her love for video games and classical music.

Spill a glass of wine on the wooden floor at Abbey Road and the studio triggers an emergency procedure. In this, England's most storied recording venue, change is resisted at a molecular level – and not only because, in 2010, the government listed the building as a heritage site to ward off vampiric property developers. A few years ago, decorators varnished the floor of Studio Two, whose decor is somewhere between a 1950s prep school gym and a ballroom on the Titanic. The room's acoustic resonance, made famous on most of the Beatles' albums, had changed. The varnish was promptly chipped off, at vast expense.