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Friday, October 14, 2016

Ep. 41: Self Care


This week Josh and Emily discuss some of their favorite methods of self care, which include such things as building Gundam models and IKEA furniture, because they're nerds. But more importantly, we finally get an official answer to the burning question of Emily's character class. Is she a necromancer, or is Josh just a conspiracy theorist? Place your bets! And speaking of betting, Emily proposes a half-baked idea for a Halloween contest. She and Josh are considering changing the format to a name-that-chune game on the next episode, though. Got an opinion on that? Leave it in the comments section!

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This episode was made possible by:
Game Track Title Composer(s)
Ecco the Dolphin The Lagoon András Magyari, Spencer Nilsen, Brian Coburn
World Class Baseball Main BGM Unknown
Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow Cinnabar Island Junichi Masuda
Ristar Shooting Ristar Tomoko Sasaki, Hiroshi Kubota, Naofumi Hataya
Erik the Viking Peace in the Harbor Neil Baldwin
Veigues Tactical Gladiator Mission 2-5 (Undersea Passage) Satoru Yoshikawa
TV Champion Unknown Kazuo Sawa

...and listeners like YOU.

6 comments:

  1. Opening sketch was the funniest you've had so far! You guys are nailing it.

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  2. Aw, man -- sorry to hear about your landlord, Josh. On the flip side, getting nauseous in the face of passionate fandom was one of the funniest things ever. That entire "backstory" scenario made my day.

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  3. Is the Halloween track going to be from ghost n goblins?

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  4. Hey guys, I wonder if Ecco was ever a pack-in for the Genesis? Another possibility is Adrienne's(sp) dad could've bought it used so Adrian's(sp) dad had something to keep his kid busy during visit times. This brings up good point: Would it be too much extra work to list the Patron requesters of the episode on this here blog? I ask because I have no idea how A-drEE-N's(sp?) name should be spelled.

    The Neo Geo MVS arcade system and the AES home system were released very close to the same time, if not simultaneously. SNK had planned it like that from the beginning. Because the home system was prohibitively expensive, their bread-and-butter was always the arcade. As a result, the games developed for Neo Geo were always arcade-centric.

    That Ristar track is so good, I had to check my list to make sure I hadn't also requested it! Pixelated Audio did an episode about Ristar. Check it out; it's one of my favorite episodes on account of the awesome music.

    Oh my gosh, that Neil Baldwin track is sooo good! You're right, Josh, Neil IS the best Baldwin.


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  5. I got a kick out of the debate over whether the track I recommended is either the ultimate spa music, or actually not spa music at all. I also laughed out loud when Josh said that Neil Baldwin is the best Baldwin. AGREED!

    It's interesting that Josh thought that Peace in the Harbor sounded more like PC music than NES music. I think that might be because Neil Baldwin is an English game composer who, like many other European composers, started making tunes on the Commodore 64. I think a lot of people from that region and era traded musical ideas about C64 composition, and this is part of what distinguishes Western (particularly English) composers from Japanese composers. For example, the people that grew out of the C64 scene often seem to use a lot of echo effects created by alternating notes across two channels tuned to different volumes, they tend to play arpeggios at super high speeds to mimic chords, and they have a lot of pitch bend and portamento tricks up their sleeve (which was somewhat difficult to get the NES to do). Neil Baldwin runs a blog called Duty Cycle Generator and he said that when he was making games for Eurocom, they weren't given any info about how to program for the NES, so they had to find some japanese manuals and hire some Japanese girls from the local college to help them translate the manuals so they could reverse engineer things to make games. I believe Neil actually programmed some of his own unique user interfaces to make NES music, which is also part of the reason this song from Erik the Viking is an unusual sounding NES track.

    Here is an interesting interview with Neil Baldwin, for those who want to know a little bit more about what it was like for him working as a musician in the NES days:

    http://www.originalsoundversion.com/musical-awesomeness-generator-neil-baldwin-interview/

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the track, and the info JT! MIND.BLOWN. Neil Baldwin has come out of nowhere, to rocket to the upper tier of NES composers (Well, in my mind at least). I have begun binging on his NES tracks, and reading his blog. This is amazing stuff. It's cool that he mentions playing guitar, because I feel that it really transfers into his compositions.

      I listened to the entire Erik The Viking OST, and it really is something special. I encourage each, and every patron to listen it.

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