Video game cover band The 8-Bit Big Band wins Grammy for Best Arrangement

Two arrangers from the cover band The 8-Bit Big Band won the Grammy for Best Arrangement on Sunday. They won the music award for their arrangement of Meta Knight’s Revenge from the 1996 SNES game Kirby Superstar.

The cover of Meta Knight’s Revenge has won from a cover of For The Love Of A Princess from the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart. The arrangement was performed by The 8-Bit Big Band, an orchestra consisting of 30 to 65 members. The group has also played covers of soundtracks from other Nintendo games in the past, such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Earthbound.

It’s not often that video game music is nominated for a Grammy and it wins. In 2011, the song Baba Yetu from Civilization IV won a Grammy. The strategy game was released in 2005, but Baba Yetu was eligible for the music award after it was re-released on a separate album. The version on that album was sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir and accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The indie game Journey was nominated for Best Soundtrack for Visual Media in 2012, but ultimately lost to the movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.