This is how Nier Automata "snuck" into the Paris Olympics

NieR: Automata is one of the most critically acclaimed titles from PlatinumGames, the development studio founded by industry legends Shinji Mikami, Hideki Kamiya, and Atsushi Inaba. And as such, it has a legion of followers around it. It’s precisely this wide recognition within the recent video game scene that makes many of its elements almost instantly recognizable... and that’s exactly what happened when many saw the performance of the Japanese artistic swimming team at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games: they used one of the songs from the video game.

Japanese artistic swimming team at Paris 2024 Olympics has used a song from NieR: Automata

On August 6th, X user @KiseStrife shared a video clip featuring the Japanese artistic swimming team at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. What stands out is the song chosen for the performance; it’s none other than A Beautiful Song, from the original soundtrack of the 2017 video game NieR: Automata.

This is the complete theme:

The fact that the Japanese swimmers performed to the rhythm of these chords was a pleasant surprise not only for fans of the video game, but also for Emi Evans, the singer and vocalist of this particular theme and a veteran of the video game industry who has participated in several titles of the NieR and Dark Souls sagas.

“Thank you for sharing this! What a cool surprise!” Evans replied to @KiseStrife’s original post.

Considering the stigma that video games have had for many years from the mainstream press, especially when it comes to infamous and notorious events such as the case of the “Katana Killer”, it is good news to see how their acceptance and recognition by the general public is gradually increasing, thanks to initiatives such as the Japanese Artistic Swimming Team. It is nice to see that there are more and more moments where video games are linked to other, a priori unrelated topics, but this time in a positive way.