Pong wasn’t ten years old before games began borrowing the music of opera. As noted by the scholar Tim Summers, these quotations, which appeared as early as 1981’s Route-16, were “not often presented in terms of staged opera.” Instead, they appeared in “general playlists of ‘classical’ art music, or as intertextual references to quotations of opera in other media.” But given the unprecedented growth of game development, and the resulting opportunities for composers of every taste and training, it was only a matter of time before opera moved from bit part to starring role. Black Bird, the latest curio from Onion Games, derives much of its drama, and not a little strangeness, from Hirofumi Taniguchi’s absurdist opera soundtrack.