We're once again joined by our guest host from the last episode, KVGM host Hammock and his father figure Craig Stadler in this milestone show. It's Expansion Pack XXX - Episode 169, covering the music from adult visual novels and adventure games. Hammock is an expert spelunker in the world of adult VGM jams and the numeric convergence was just too good to pass up. We've got a selection of tunes both sexy and unusual in this show, and we hope you enjoy it! In other golf related news, happy belate...
Oct 23, 2022•1 hr 5 min
KVGM's host Hammock joins us once again in this expansion pack to talk about the many lovely tunes produced for T&E Soft golf games over the years. We also have the voice of another special guest from 1995's hit game Pebble Beach Golf Links, arguably the crown jewel of T&E golf games. Kick back, relax and and enjoy an Arnold Palmtree in the golf clubhouse along with some relaxing tunes. If you like what you hear, check out more from KVGM - The Last Wave on iTunes or your favorite podcatc...
Oct 07, 2022•55 min
The hotly anticipated Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge is here for your listening pleasure! The game saw several releases between 1992-1994 on the SNES, Genesis, Game Boy and Game Gear. It was developed by UK games company Software Creations Ltd., published by LJN on Nintendo systems and by Acclaim subsidiary Flying Edge on Sega systems. It's a bad game where you control 5 different characters: Spider-Man, Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops and Gambit in a gauntlet of tedious stages with grea...
Sep 20, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Another year another MAGWest, we're back in person this year exploring the depths of what makes 'water music' with a legend of VGM analysis, 8-bit Music Theory! We put him through the paces as we goof off in our usual Pixelated Audio style. First we 'get to the bottom' of what makes water music sound so wet with some examples and audience commentary, followed by a silly but fun quiz! Check out 8-bit Music Theory's YouTube channel. 8bmt is a music theory expert, drummer, pianist, and all around n...
Sep 01, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Trying out a new format today with MIDI Spotlight starting on a PC98 title called Mime, published and developed by Studio Twinkle and composed by Hiroaki Sano. For a while now, VGMRips stalwart ValleyBell has graciously streamed music to our Discord channel featuring somewhat less common MIDI versions of the soundtracks on authentic hardware. We wanted to share his work more broadly with our audience and we hope you enjoy it. Due to timing it's Bryan solo today, but it's a lightweight radio prog...
Aug 03, 2022•1 hr 52 min
Pixelated Audio joins the many podcasts participating in the Masters of VGM (@MastersofVGM) event organized by bedroth, host of Very Good Music and BGMania. Masters of VGM is a month long event of participating podcasts and their own take on who they think are the best of the best! We picked 8 veteran VGM Masters and aimed for a good blend of well known and lesser known tracks to keep things interesting. As always we hope you enjoy! Track List: 0:00:02 Flower Garden - Yoshi's Island (SNES) by Ko...
Jul 02, 2022•1 hr 16 min
We're joined today by another amazing and prolific guest; composer Jeff van Dyck. Instead of focusing on a specific game we take a tour through Jeff's entire career from Skitchin' all the way to recent games like Unpacking. Jeff began his career in 1992 with EA (Electronic Arts), working on games like the FIFA, NHL series, and Need for Speed 1 & 2. He went on to do music for many of the major games in the Total War series, starting with the original Shogun: Total War, and continuing with the...
May 20, 2022•1 hr 40 min
We had a great time at VGMTogether presenting our talk on game audio logging and the dedicated communities around the world that have spent years archiving music as accurately as possible. It's a commonly overlooked topic that nevertheless supports a lot of activities in the game music scene. You may have heard it referred to as "VGM ripping"; logging is the process of accessing, capturing, organizing and ultimately archiving game music in more accessible ways. There are a few ways that game mus...
May 03, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Today we're joined be returning guest Jesse Bishop aka Street Cleaner to talk about Roadkill! It's an Amiga and Amiga CD-32 top down combat racing game released around early 1995, developed by Vision Software and published by Acid Software, both New Zealand based studios. The game's music was written by Blair Zuppicich, a composer and demoscene artist that went by the handle BaZ. Jesse fills us in on some cool discoveries he made ripping the sound and music, along with some technical discussion ...
Apr 14, 2022•48 min
The 8-Bit Big Band is a 30-65 member Jazz/Pops orchestra (led by Charlie Rosen) that formed to celebrate and realize some of the best musical themes written from various video games. The members of the 8-Bit Big Band come from all around the world, but most reside primarily in New York City, and are some of the most highly sought after musicians and performers, all gamers at heart who enjoy playing their favorite games of all time! Charlie Rosen is extremely talented; he's a composer and arrange...
Mar 24, 2022•1 hr 42 min
Six more tracks that we love but didn't quite fit anywhere else. As always we hope you enjoy! Track List: 0:00:00 Dunk Shot (Arcade) - Toast! by unknown composer 0:07:18 Syd Mead's Terraforming (TG-CD) - Stage 1 by Katsuhiro Hayashi 0:14:16 Soldam (GB) - Theme of Sekiero Gameboy conversion by unknown, original arcade version by Atsuyoshi Isemura and Yasuyuki Suzuki 0:21:54 Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (WIN, PSP, 3DS) - Sight of Silence by Falcom Sound Team jdk, likely Takahide Murayama 0:30:51...
Feb 17, 2022•46 min
We've got a great show today with Dan Hess, the composer behind Pilotwings 64! It was released as a launch title for the N64 in 1996 by Paradigm Simulation and is the second in the series (Pilotwings, Pilotwings 64, Pilotwings Resort). Pilotwings 64 continues the tradition of a lightweight flight sim where you use a variety of flight tools like a hang glider, jet pack, gyrocopter to complete simple objectives, or just fly around more casually. Dan Hess is a composer, performer and sound designer...
Dec 22, 2021•1 hr 59 min
In this installment of Pixelated Audio, we're talking about Crisis Wing, a retro-styled 90s shmup that draws inspiration from many classic shooters. We're joined by Finnish one-man indie games developer and composer, Pauli, aka pieslice of Pieslice Productions (@PiesliceP). It's a modern take on all of your favorite retro shooters, with all of the tough bosses, bullet patterns, and FM music you can handle. Crisis Wing was released on Steam in 2020 and published for most major consoles (Switch, P...
Dec 04, 2021•1 hr 8 min
We're back to livestream for virtual MAGWest 2021, this time with composer and returning friend of the show, Chase Bethea! We talk with Chase about his music from games both released and upcoming, his process, as well as a short interactive audio demo, and some Q&A from the live chat. Chase Bethea is a Composer & Technical Audio Designer that has received many accolades throughout his career. In 2016, Chase was nominated for Artists of the Year – Independent Composer by VGMO in the entir...
Nov 15, 2021•1 hr
Today we're talking about an old school dungeon crawler RPG called Advanced Fantasian. The game was released by Xtalsoft in 1988 for the PC-88 and Sharp X1 in 1989. Xtalsoft was a small RPG-focused developer that eventually merged with T&E Soft, a topic we covered last episode. The composers Chihiro Fujioka and Yumi Satake (nee Kinoshita) did a great job with the soundtrack and more than that they're both interesting people with a long history in game development going to the present day. Ad...
Nov 02, 2021•1 hr 7 min
We're back with an episode covering Greatest Driver, a 2D Formula 1 racer for the MSX2 released in 1988. The game was produced by T&E Soft, a developer and publisher primarily known for golf games in the 90s, Red Alarm for the Virtual Boy and the Hydlide series. Composers Kazunori Hasegawa and Shigeru Tomita bring us some fun jams, especially the intro and ending tunes. Most of the music is using the OPLL / YM2413 FM chip with a few brief detours into other areas. It's a short show and we ho...
Sep 17, 2021•26 min
Today's source of great music is the Pac-Man Championship Edition series. This is an audio companion to HG101's Top47k Games: Episode 420 where we were invited to review Pac-Man CE DX+ with Xerxes and Bobinator! Bandai Namco's Pac-Man has been a mainstay for over 40 years and this is Pac-Man with a twist. You have your ghosts, your pellets and your maze, but now the maze is split in half and it's a frantic time attack with some excellent tunes to support up to 10 minutes of play at a time. The o...
Jul 27, 2021•1 hr 5 min
We're taking you out to the ball game in this short and fun episode covering music from 3 Sega System 16 baseball games: Major League, Super League and Excite League. It's late 80s baseball from Japanese arcades, so it's 2D sprites, digitized samples and YM2151 FM patches all the way down. No composers confirmed but Tohru Nakabayashi, Hiroshi Kawaguchi and Katsuhiro Hayashi are the prime suspects. We hope you enjoy the music! Composers unknown but suspected to be: Tohru Nakabayashi, Hiroshi Kawa...
Jul 14, 2021•32 min
F-1 Super Battle is a racing game from 1994 for Jaleco's Mega System 32 arcade board. It's notable features are that it still features sprite graphics fairly late for an arcade game, and the upright arcade cabinet is a somewhat unusual egg shape. No composer information in this mini episode, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the music! Special thanks to GTheGuardian for the original rip on VGMRips Check out the weird egg shaped arcade cabinet at arcade-museum.com Composer unknown Track List: ...
Jul 03, 2021•21 min
Street Cleaner: The Video Game released for PC and Switch in 2021 is a classic 2D side-scroller inspired by NES action games like Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania and Sunsoft's Batman. It was developed by Creaky Lantern Games, an indie game studio run by Jesse Bishop and Brooks Bishop (no relation). It is a very real game based on the fictional Street Cleaner 80s revenge film(s) on which Jesse based his artist name. In the game you take the role of Jack Slade whose mission is to clean up the mean stree...
Jun 04, 2021•1 hr 46 min
Today's special guest is Tom Salta, a hugely talented and accomplished artist and producer. He's worked in film, TV, ads and games for over 30 years and has produced with legends like Bobby Brown, Cher and Peter Gabriel. He's spent the last 20 years working in games including Cold Fear and Red Steel and some of the world's largest franchises like Tom Clancy, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Halo, Killer Instinct, Wolfenstein and PUBG. Join us as we chat with Tom about his game music career over the...
May 14, 2021•1 hr 21 min
Today we have Nick Marinelli joining us, former head of MAGFest and longtime VGM aficionado. The focus of the show is on the development and history of the VGM community, from its awkward adolescence to the large and growing movement that it is today, which we are very happy to be a part of. Nick brings to us a selection of arrangements, covers and remixes of the most tried and true classics, with some dating back over 20 years. While we don't always "play the hits" on the show, we love them all...
Apr 28, 2021•1 hr 43 min
On today's episode we're joined by Rob aka Xerxes of Hardcore Gaming 101's "Top 47k Games" podcast. We talk about his background, how the podcast is made, the excellent resource Hardcore Gaming 101, along with our usual jovial banter. Rob brings us a selection of fantastic deep cuts of early to mid 90s Japanese VGM used in the show, most of which are intro and ending tunes. It's a really fun show and as always we hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Shout out to our friend Norm aka @normallyretro...
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 50 min
Heart Heat Girls is a lightly adult-oriented Japanese adventure game released for the PC-98 in December of 1993 by the company Panda House under their Cat's Pro label. Heart Heat Girls or H.H.G. is set in a futuristic world where humans and androids are at war. A specialized police force known as ACP ("Anti Criminal-cyborg Police") is tasked with eliminating them. The game begins with two young police officers named Angelica and Apple receiving an S.O.S. about an attack from a mysterious cyborg ...
Mar 23, 2021•1 hr 4 min
It's been a while since our last expansion pack, and the first of 2021. It's a relaxed show with a selection of 6 deep cuts but the music is great as always. Correction: The name of the writer was actually Miyazawa Kenji not Ihatovo. Track List: 0:00:00 Tobituki-hime - Stage 3 - MAGICAL AMBER - (PC) by Masashi Yano 0:08:42 Gekitou! Crash Gear Turbo: Gear Champion League - BGM 1 (WSC) by unknown composer 0:15:54 Guldkorn Expressen / Kalas Puffs Expressen - Title (C64) by Jens-Christian Huus (JCH)...
Feb 25, 2021•43 min
Today we're joined by guitarist Josh of the VGM band The Runaway Four. Together we talk about his band and their music, as well as Bonus Stage, a very important project that came into being last year in April right in the midst of lockdowns. Bonus Stage is a monthly online series of live video game music concerts that feature a wide range of bands and genres. As hard as 2020 was, Bonus Stage (formerly Virtual VGM Fest) has become a bright spot in the community for VGM lovers and performers alike...
Feb 03, 2021•1 hr 37 min
In June of 2012, Cipher Prime Studios released Splice, a puzzle game about organizing cells into increasingly complex patterns. It's a game that requires concentration and it's also a bit about tampering with nature. Splice can be purchased on a number of platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, PS3 and PS4 but no matter where you purchase it, it's a challenging and mentally rewarding game accompanied by a beautiful piano soundtrack composed by Dain Saint, who we have joining us on the show...
Jan 20, 2021•1 hr 22 min
On the surface, Xixit is a pretty straightforward Columns clone. Go a little bit deeper and you find a columns clone with impressive coding, visual effects and music. Xixit was released for DOS in 1995 by Optik Software, a small American publisher that only ever released 3 games, the other two being a point and click called Igor and an RTS called War Inc. The gameplay is your typical match three game with a 1-player or 2-player versus mode and an impressive array of difficulty and graphics optio...
Jan 05, 2021•56 min
30 years later the film Home Alone remains a holiday classic. The games, not so much. The success of the first two films spawned a spate of 13 cheap cash-in games from 1991 to 1993 across just about every mainstream game system. Co-hosting alongside us, friends and longtime listeners Norm and UtopiaNemo join in what could be considered a holiday episode. We share some joy and laughter at the music that ranges from forgettable to miserable, with a few genuinely great songs in there for good measu...
Dec 24, 2020•1 hr 24 min
In the last installment we talked about Treasure Conflix, and today we're talking about the platform itself, the Nintendo Satellaview. The Satellaview was created as a partnership between the broadcasting company St.GIGA and Nintendo's R&D2 Division, the team responsible for the original Super Famicom. It was released as an add-on in 1995 and was a somewhat unique approach to an online service. The system required a broadcast satellite just like you'd need for television, but instead it woul...
Dec 15, 2020•40 min
