Pixelated Audio - Vgm And Retro Gaming

Pixelated Audio is back from another VGMCon in Minnesota, this time about space! Joining Gene once again from last year are Pernell from Rhythm and Pixels and Carlos from Heroes Three! We did a similar panel last year; we take a broad theme and make it educational, and then use it as an excuse to cram in all sorts of VGM examples. We had some tech issues and lost some of the recording but we were able to rescue it with a more laid back "part 2" we recorded in the hotel room as a way to fill in gaps and riff for a while. Prepare for launch on this massive double episode clocking in at almost 2 hours! We discuss space, its influence on games and computing, and a wide range of games that have a direct or sometimes tenuous link to space. We've got a ton of music this episode so we hope you enjoy it. Pardon the noise in the background, it was the best we could do with a portable recorder. If you'd like to follow along with our slides that we used during the talk, feel free to click through. If the presentatio

Our show takes us back in time to the pleasant summer vibes of Malibu Bikini Volleyball, a no-frill sports game released in 1993 for the underdog Atari Lynx handheld, developed by Hand Made Software and composed by Paul Tonge. Hand Made Software was a boutique first- (or second-) party game developer that produced original games exclusively for the Lynx and Jaguar from about 1990 to 1995, with a handful of previously unreleased games making their way out in the early 2000s. While this game is a pretty self explanatory late era volleyball game for the Lynx, the music is definitely worth checking out. English composer Paul Tonge is a multi-talented musician, sound driver developer, musician, game producer and music director that worked from the late 80s to the early 2000s, starting on the C64 and Amiga and eventually retiring from games around the GBA era. He worked on games such as: Tinhead, The Tick, George Foreman for Real, and Samurai Jack: The Amulet of Time as well as working on a number of sound driver

Today, we're looking back at Astyanax, an action platformer released for arcade and NES in 1989 and a game we both grew up playing. Sometimes referred to as "The Lord of King" or "The Astyanax", the original arcade game was developed by Aicom and published by Jaleco, with the NES version developed and published by Jaleco. Both versions share some similarities, like fighting hordes of mythological creatures, but the key difference for our show is they feature completely different soundtracks. We'll be focusing on the NES soundtrack written by Toshiko Tasaki with an occasional detour to the arcade original composed by Kiyoshi Yokoyama. Composed by: NES: Toshiko Tasaki Arcade: Kiyoshi Yokoyama Tracklist 0:00:00 - Opening Story (NES) 0:00:21 - Title (NES) 0:6:08 - Introduction / Round 5 Cutscene (NES) 0:9:22 - Round 1 - Remlia Castle (NES) 0:18:53 - Stage 1 - In the Forest (Arcade) 0:23:03 - Boss Intro + Boss Theme (NES) 0:25:32 - Round 2 - Redroad Forest (NES) 0:31:49 - Round 2 Cutscene (NES) 0:35:47 - Rou

In this installment of Pixelated Audio, we're taking a stroll through the soundtrack of Blades of Steel. Originally, Konami released this fact-action hockey game in the arcades in 1987 but it really gained popularity a year later when it was converted to the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. However, most of us (at least your hosts) tend to forget that two sequels were released: NHL Blades of Steel '99 and NHL Blades of Steel 2000 which we’ve got some tunes from as well. Composed by: Arcade/NES: Shinya Sakamoto, Kazuki Muraoka, Atsushi Fujio, Kiyohira Sada GameBoy: Hidehiro Funauchi, Akiko Itou GameBoy Color: Matt Simmonds Nintendo 64: Kazuhiko Uehara (sound producer), Nobuyuki Akena (sound director), Takahito Uenishi (SFX), Mitsuteru Furukawa (Sound programmer) PlayStation: Kazumaru Yui, Norikazu Miura Tracklist 00:00:00 - Game Start / Warm Up (NES) 00:05:23 - Selection Theme (NES) 00:13:04 - Intermission (NES) 00:16:52 - Bonus Game Unused (NES) 00:17:26 - Bonus Game (Arcade) 00:18:16 - Won Fi

With the holiday season upon us, Gene and several other friends visited Sacramento Gamers Expo where we met some awesome game developer legends like David Crane, Garry Kitchen and Ed Annunziata. Joining Gene is Michelle (the 'voice' of Sue Kasper), AJ of VGMPorium (also on our Persona show) and last but not least Brian Stewart, one of the biggest VGM fans you'll ever find. Join us as we look back at our experience at SGE playing games, attending panels and looking back at our gaming in 2024 more generally. Tracklist 00:00 (Bedding) Wizard Theme - Warriors of the Eternal Sun (GEN, 1992) - Paul Mudra, Frank Klepacki, Dwight Okahara 06:58 (Excerpt) Azcan Wander - Warriors of the Eternal Sun - Paul Mudra, Frank Klepacki, Dwight Okahara 07:14 (Excerpt) Azcan Wander - arrangement by "Gate House" 07:58 Swamp Combat - Warriors of the Eternal Sun (GEN, 1992) - Paul Mudra, Frank Klepacki, Dwight Okahara 16:15 Penetration - RayForce / Gunlock / Layer Section / Galactic Attack (ARC, 1994) - Tamayo Kawamoto

Bryan and Gene are back for a relaxed holiday episode where we take a look back at some of the great music we heard in games in 2024. As usual it's an eclectic mix of genres and style, both in the games themselves and in the music. Tracklist 0:00:00 Title - Spilled Mushrooms (Playdate, 2024) by Philip Dexter and choosh 0:04:38 Jungle - Spilled Mushrooms (Playdate, 2024) by Philip Dexter and choosh 0:14:36 Pioneer's Horizon - Timespinner (Various, 2018) by Jeff Ball 0:21:21 Bard Dance - Baldur's Gate 3 (Various, 2023) by Borislav Slavov 0:31:28 Hanging from Threads aka "Slugfest" - Yakuza: Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth (Various, 2024) by Keitaro Hanada 0:39:36 Velgress (Stage 1) - UFO 50 (PC, 2024) by Eirik Suhrke 0:50:11 Pingolf (Gameplay) - UFO 50 (PC, 2024) by Eirik Suhrke 1:00:40 Trench -Jewelry Box- - Shinsekai: Into the Depths (iOS, Switch, 2019) by Chikara Aoshima

Pixelated Audio is back from this year's Persona themed MAGWest. In honor of the theme we threw together a quick show about the music of the mainline Persona games from Persona 1-5 with a little bit of early Megami Tensei history. We're also joined by co-host and our good friend AJ aka "rayjkayj" of the VGMPorium podcast. It's a light show with fun musical examples spanning the decades of the Persona series and we hope you enjoy it! Track list 0:00:00 (Bedding) Convenience Store - Revelations: Persona - Kenichi Tsuchiya 0:09:30 1st & 2nd Ward Shopping District (West Entrance) - Revelations: Persona - Hidehito Aoki 0:14:25 Ayase's Theme - Revelations: Persona - Kenichi Tsuchiya 0:20:50 Sumaru City Map - Persona 2: Innocent Sin - Toshiko Tasaki 0:22:55 Battle - Persona 2: Innocent Sin - Kenichi Tsuchiya 0:28:39 Maya's Theme - Persona 2: Eternal Punishment - Kenichi Tsuchiya 0:31:00 Maya's Theme - Persona 2: Innocent Sin - Kenichi Tsuchiya 0:35:31 Theme of Tartarus (Arqa Block) - Persona 3 -

Sue Kasper, it's a name you might know by memory but if you grew up PC gaming in the 90s you're definitely familiar with her work. Sue was the lead composer on SimFarm and the international sensation SimCity 2000! Both games were developed by Maxis, a studio known for producing simulation games since the 80s including SimCity, The Sims, Spore and many others. Sue's eclectic tunes have been ingrained in the hearts and minds of simulation game players the world over, and there's no doubt that her work on SimCity 2000 inspired a great many other composers trying to capture that iconic simulation game sound. She's a lifelong musician and guitarist that's been playing gigs in a number of bands around California since the 70s. While we weren't able to speak to Sue directly on mic, we had an excellent conversation with Michelle sitting in as proxy for Sue to answer our collective questions about her work on SimCity 2K and SimFarm. It was a ton of fun hearing her experiences rocking out, and her work with companie

Pixelated Audio is back for the third annual Masters of VGM (@MastersofVGM), which happens every June. Various podcasts come together to highlight game composers with the theme this year focusing on the amazing women in the industry. We decided to take a more narrow focus on some of the lesser known composers at Capcom and picked 4 to talk about today going from the company's earliest days through the 2000s. Check out some of the other participating shows in Masters of VGM and discover some new VGM podcast favorites! As always, we hope you enjoy the show! Track List: 00:00 Main Theme - SonSon (Arcade, 1984) by Ayako Mori 03:56 Stage 1 & 2 - Ghosts 'n Goblins / Makaimura (Arcade, 1985) by Ayako Mori 07:24 Stage 3 - Trojan / Tatakai no Banka (Arcade, 1986) by Ayako Mori 10:44 Crystal Snail - Mega Man X2 (SNES, 1994) by Yuki Iwai 15:17 City Zone B ~ Night - Tech Romancer (Arcade, 1998) by Yuki Iwai 20:48 Tenguman - Rockman & Forte / Mega Man & Bass (SNES, 1998) by Akari Kaida 32:40 No!! - Tric

Pixelated Audio is back from a wonderful weekend at VGMCon in Minnesota! Gene was slated to represent us but along the way drummed up a party including Pernell from Rhythm and Pixels, Carlos from Heroes Three, and Thomas Kresge head of the Game Brass (check out their new album Barrel Brassed)! When in Minnesota do as the Minnesotans do, as the saying goes. We had a fun time talking about all manner of VGM related to the Midwest; the region itself, games about the area and made there, as well as composers from the area. Getting more specific we cover pinball and edutainment in some level of depth before the panel devolves into talking about Shrek, cheese, and endless trips cross country. It's a fun journey through a diverse range of VGM and we hope you enjoy the show we put together. Pardon the noise in the background, it was the best we could do with a portable recorder. Track list 0:00:00 (Bedding) "The Creek" WolfQuest (Minnesota Zoo & Eduweb 2007) by Tim Buzza, additional music by Ben Woolman 0:1

Kamen Rider Agito & Kuuga Wild Battle [仮面ライダーアギト＆クウガ ワイルドバトル] is a 2001 game for the Sega Pico developed by Arc System Works and published by Bandai. It is based on the Kamen Rider superhero license property which started in the 1970s. To keep it brief, the Sega Pico is less a console and more a children's toy. Imagine the guts of a Sega Genesis / Mega Drive (minus the FM) stuffed into a colorful laptop / digital storybook for pre-school age children. For the Sega Pico, Kamen Rider is surprisingly involved and game-like compared to most of the educational software the system was built for. It features a basic 1-on-1 fighting game, a racing game, and a lightgun style shooting game. On the audio hardware side, the Pico contains the Sega Master System's SN76489 (3 square waves, 1 noise channel) and a sample channel used mostly for voice clips. Unfortunately we don't have information on the composer / arranger for the Pico version, but some of the tracks are based on the original Kamen Rider music composed by T

Ultimate Brain Games is a board game collection released for PS1 in 2003 developed by cosmigo and published by Telegames. There's not much to say about the board games themselves; things like dominoes, chess, backgammon and the like, but the soundtrack written by Zbigniew Siatecki is great! Cosmigo was a very small German developer responsible for a ton of board and card game collections from around 2000 to 2015. They still exist today, mostly as the developer on a pixel art graphic software called "Pro Motion". Zbigniew Siatecki's story is a somewhat familiar one around this timeframe. He's a Polish musician and graphic artist that got his start in the demoscene in the 90s / early 2000s (working under the pseudonym Siatek) whose music made its way into a few games from 2003-2007. Since his work on Ultimate Brain Games, and the related soundtracks for Ultimate Card Games and Solitaire Overload, he's mostly moved onto 3D graphics working on titles like Hard Reset, Shadow Warrior 1 & 2 (the 2010s series), Dark

GunMaster is a December 1994 arcade exclusive game developed by Metro Corporation. It's a single or two-player boss rush action game that's part fighting game and part platformer; think a dash of Gunstar Heroes with a Neo Geo art style. The game uses a well-established combo of soundchips: the OKIM6295 for 4 channels of ADPCM and the YM2151 for 8 channels of FM audio. Metro Corporation was best known in the 90s for their Bust a Groove / Bust a Move series. More recently they've been a contract developer for Nintendo working on several Pokemon games and the Switch re-release of the Another Code / Trace Memory games. The soundtrack was composed by a trio under the pseudonyms Famishin, MAZ, and Shadow although our information about them is limited. What we do know is that Famishin continues to work in the game industry with their company Yuzusoft, with game releases as recently as 2022. MAZ was last seen as composer for Metro Corporation's PS1 game BursTrick: Wake Boarding!!, and Shadow is as elusive as Totsuk

Gigandes (ギガンデス) is an arcade game developed by East Technology in 1989 and released in February of 1990. It is a horizontal shmup in the style of R-Type featuring all of the bio-mechanical tropes of the era. It was designed for the Taito X System hardware that used a YM2610, the same audio configuration used in the Neo Geo, and was composed by Akira Inoue and Takaro Nozaki. East Technology was a small developer based in Shinjuku that mostly worked on arcade games. The company was founded in 1987 and operated until around the mid 1990s. East Technology only produced around 10 games. Their most notable games were Double Dragon III: The Rosetta Stone published by Technos, and the games Operation Wolf 3 and Silent Dragon published by Taito. The soundtrack to Gigandes is eccentric, and in some ways ahead of its time. Full of weird and off-putting samples, the tonal whiplash is at times abrasive and at times catchy, but always compelling. Relative unknowns Akira Inoue and Takaro Nozaki put together a one-of-a-k

We’ve got a really fun soundtrack to dive into in this episode from a Jaleco arcade title released in 1989 called Plus Alpha, composed by Tsukasa Tawada.  It’s an overhead shooter similar to Twinbee, Raiden, or 1942/43 and was released on the Nintendo Switch in 2020 under the Arcade Archives series published by HAMSTER Corporation. Tsukasa Tawada brings lots of variety in this soundtrack, which is a ton of fun and also hits all the marks for an awesome arcade experience.   Tracklist: All tracks composed by Tsukasa Tawada 00:04 Triumphal Return Overture (Title) 03:26 Wind Dancer (Stage 1 Wind Country) 08:25 Into Blue (Stage 2 Sea Colony) 09:39 Bird Island (Stage 3 Flower Town) 14:20 Sun Colors (Stage 4 Snow Country) 16:08 Last Heart (Stage 5 Sand City) 19:54 Neo Baroque (Stage 7 Eden) 21:11 Boss Stage 22:06 Harmonica for Peace (Unused) 26:47 Ending Theme Thanks to ctr from VGMRips for creating the pack!

In this latest mini episode we're talking about Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos, a childhood favorite on the NES composed by Tim Follin. Solstice released on the NES in the US and UK in mid 1990. It was developed by Software Creations and published by various companies in different regions. It's a challenging isometric puzzle platformer in the vein of games like Knight Lore and Lumo. Solstice only released on NES, but it did have a sequel on the SNES called Equinox. Tim Follin is a VGM composer that hardly needs an introduction. Master of VGM folk and prog rock and putting way more effort into game soundtracks than they usually deserved, Tim worked on games like Bionic Commando and Ghouls'n Ghosts for C64, Plok for SNES, Ecco the Dolphin for Dreamcast and a tons more games. More recently he's moved into game development with games like Contradiction: Spot the Liar.

In this bite-sized installment we're exploring the soundtrack from Bomb Jack on the Nintendo GameBoy composed by the legendary DMG DJ, Alberto José González. Bomb Jack released on the Game Boy in the UK in 1992 and Sweden in 1993. Adapted to the handheld  by Bit Managers and New Frontier; published by Infogrames. Bomb Jack has had dozens of ports derived from the Tehkan Arcade game from 1984. CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 16, 64, Amiga, PC88, SG1000, ZX Spectrum, and even things like Java ME. Alberto José González is a Spanish video game graphic artist, music composer, designer, and pretty much everything else. Notable games from French publisher Infogrames helped shed light on his early career and eventually helped found Bit Managers and later Abylight. Twitter | YouTube | SoundCloud  

Another titan of the game industry, George "The Fat Man" Sanger, joins us live at MAGWest! George has done so much to shape the course of game audio in America that the best we can hope for is scratching the surface with this post. During his career he's worked on numerous games, alongside his legendary group of cowboy composers under the moniker "Team Fat" which consisted of himself, Dave Govett, Joe McDermott and K. Weston Phelan. A short list of projects that George and Team Fat worked on: Thin Ice for Intellivision, Maniac Mansion and Rad Gravity for NES, Zombies Ate My Neighbors on SNES, a litany of computer games including Loom, The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour, Wing Commander I and II, Ultima Underworld, Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon, Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, Pajama Sam 3, and many other games. He's done work for so many companies it'll be faster to just link to his Wikipedia or Mobygames pages. His influence in PC game music is especially strong. He's created think tanks and collaborated with audio compani

Today we're joined by composer g3ntlebreeze for a unique behind the scenes look at his work on Castle in the Clouds, a Castlevania-inspired hentai game (NSFW - not safe for work). The game was developed by Libra Heart and pixel-teishoku and published by Critical Bliss. Castle in the Clouds is a 2D pixel art platformer released on Steam in 2021 with lovingly crafted art and an incredible soundtrack. This "hornyvania" puts you in control of bounty hunter Lily on her quest to defeat hordes of monsters and maybe get a little something extra. Critical Bliss is a rapidly growing developer/publisher that focuses on international releases of raunchy, fun, and unique erotic games that started around 2016. Libra Heart is a developer best known for their work on this game as well as the "Succubus" series, with additional help on Castle in the Clouds from pixel-teishoku. g3ntlebreeze mixes together sultry sounds, nostalgic chiptune vibes, jazz and some truly wicked solos in this and other erotic games. He's worked on T

Pixelated Audio is back for the second annual Masters of VGM (@MastersofVGM), an event every June where podcasts come together to highlight some game music composers, either personal favorites or some that deserve a bit more attention. The event was created by bedroth, host of Very Good Music and BGMania podcasts. Check out some of the other participating shows in Masters of VGM and see what people are up to, or discover some new VGM podcast favorites! We picked a selection of 8 more VGM Masters, all of them amazing women composers, covering a mix of music from the 80s to today. Track List: 0:00:00 Ruins - Brandish (PC-98) by Mieko Ishikawa 0:09:25 Goodbye, Adol (Unused track) - Ys II (PC-88) by Mieko Ishikawa 0:15:35 Centaur Man - Mega Man 6 (NES) by Yuko Takehara 0:18:19 Charlie's Theme - X-Men vs. Street Fighter (ARC) by Yuko Takehara 0:24:37 Shoo-Bee-Doo Hullabaloo - Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PS4/PS5/Win) by Winifred Phillips 0:33:30 Area 4 - Planet Ocean (Aquabomber) - Bomberman World (P