and Nick Laviers at the
BAFTA Interactive Awards 2000 In the early years of his career in the 1990s, Hannigan worked as composer for
Electronic Arts Europe before basing his studio at
Pinewood Studios in England for ten years between 1997 and 2007, where he sometimes worked as a sound designer on films alongside composing. His sound design credits include New Line Cinema's
Lost in Space, which was nominated for a Golden Reel Award. At EA, Hannigan became involved in devising interactive music playback systems for video games during the early days of digital audio and streaming, and went on to form a strong working relationship with the company. His early work at EA included
God games such as
Beasts and Bumpkins, EA Sports titles in the
F1 and
FIFA series,
Privateer 2: The Darkening, and various entries in the
Theme Park series including
Theme Park World (US title:
Sim Theme Park) and
Theme Park Inc. In the course of his career, Hannigan has worked with several well-known figures from the chip music and 8-bit gaming era, including
Richard Joseph, Mark Knight, and Commodore 64 maestro, Martin Galway. The former two were among the first to invite Hannigan into the games industry during the early 1990s to compose for titles such as
Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat and
Flight of the Amazon Queen, while Martin Galway, then Audio Director at
Digital Anvil and working on several titles for
Chris Roberts, invited Hannigan to compose for
Conquest: Frontier Wars and
Freelancer. Hannigan had earlier worked on
Wing Commander related titles such as
Privateer 2: The Darkening.
Privateer 2 featured
Full-motion video and its movie component starred Christopher Walken, John Hurt, and Clive Owen. The composer would later work on other games integrating full-cast film productions, such as
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 with a cast including
Tim Curry,
J. K. Simmons, and
Jonathan Pryce, and later,
Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. Freelancer's soundtrack was released on
Nile Rodgers'
Sumthing Else Music Works label in 2003, but was subsequently removed when the company went out of business in 2010. Certain cues for
Conquest: Frontier Wars and
Freelancer were recorded by Hannigan with a full orchestra, unusual during this era of game development. One of Hannigan's best-known themes is
Red Alert 3 Theme: Soviet March, which has been streamed hundreds of millions of times on platforms such as YouTube, and over 27 million times on Spotify at the time of writing. The theme, along with other cues including Frank Klepacki's
Hell March 3, was recorded with the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra at
Skywalker Sound in Marin County, California.
Soviet March, a parodic take on Soviet-era military music, has become a widespread internet meme. Hannigan has posted videos on the subject of his early interactive music system design for titles such as
Republic: The Revolution (designed by
Google DeepMind founder
Demis Hassabis) on
YouTube. The composer would go on to score the fully orchestral
Evil Genius, also developed by Hassabis's company, Elixir Studios, and each game would receive BAFTA nominations for Original Music at the BAFTA Games Awards in 2003 and 2004 respectively. James Hannigan provided music for the videogame
Infestation in 1999
, created by Frontier Developments. In an article posted on the composer's website entitled "Press Start to Compose" Hannigan describes himself as a BBC Micro,
Elite and
David Braben fan, citing his work on
Infestation for Braben's company as an "early career bucket-list moment"
. He also talks about his collection of vintage arcade machines. In 2018, James Hannigan and Jagex released an orchestral album of
Runescape music featuring orchestral renditions on earlier Runescape tunes along with new music by Hannigan, entitled
Runescape: The Orchestral Collection. The album was recorded at Abbey Road Studio 1 in London with the
Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Allan Wilson. Earlier, in 2013, Hannigan had recorded several new orchestral cues for RuneScape 3 with the
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2015, Hannigan contributed music for
Terraria: Otherworld, which was subsequently cancelled. A soundtrack was later released and some of the music has been used in the main Terraria game. After a period away from games, Hannigan returned to the industry to score
Steelrising and
Evil Genius 2 in 2021. Some of Hannigan's other game credits include
Dead Space 3,
Steelrising,
Transformers Universe,
FA Premier League Manager, Art Academy,
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,
Catwoman,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,
Grand Prix 4,
F1 2000, and
Call of Antia. The composer recorded his Harry Potter scores at
Air studios and
Abbey Road Studios with
Philharmonia Orchestra. Soundtracks were released for
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but later withdrawn when Electronic Arts lost its license to create Harry Potter video games. Much of the music would later be re-released on the EA Music Composer Series label in the form of
EA Music Composer Series Volumes 1 and 2, currently available on digital music outlets. The operatic score of 1999's FA Premier League Manager featured performances by soprano Miranda Keys, who would record again with Hannigan many years later for 2022's
Steelrising, which also featured performances from the Budapest Film Orchestra. == Screen Music Connect and other conferences ==