Peter McConnell and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time on Top Score

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The new Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time from Sanzaru Games and Sony is Peter McConnell's third go at a Sly score.

The game has cartoon-ish art, and McConnell's score is a throwback to the sounds of Carl Stalling, Raymond Scott and especially Henry Mancini.

In addition, players spend the game as Sly or one of Sly's merry crew (Bentley, Murray or other pals you make along the way), traveling through time in different regions of the world.

This gave McConnell the opportunity to pull out every hilarious trick in the book; quaint accordion melodies in Paris, ancient reeds and strings in old England, Telecaster guitars and harmonicas in the old West.

Yet, when it came to scoring the Ice Age, McConnell initially wasn't quite sure what to do. The end result are sections of sounds emulating the creation of music, and those sounds are delightful.

McConnell takes this sort of tongue-in-cheek scoring seriously, and the insanely talented players on the soundtrack are thrilling to hear.

Hear Peter McConnell talk about Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time on the new episode of Top Score from Classical MPR, also available on iTunes.