How Abbey Road got game: the invasion of the video-game soundtrack

From Tomb Raider to The Sims, games are taking over the studio made famous by the Beatles. Our writer sees a 120-strong orchestra and choir tap into its fabled atmosphere to record Final Fantasy XV

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. Complaints quickly followed. The room's acoustic resonance, made famous on most of the Beatles' albums, had changed. The varnish was promptly chipped off, at vast expense. Since the 1960s, the studio door has been repainted and the seaweed once used to stuff the drapes that hang from the ceiling swapped for a less pungent material. Everything else remains preserved, with monastic reverence.

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