-->

Friday, March 24, 2017

Ep. 60: Guac a Mile in Your Melee


In a display of incredible co-host solidarity, Josh and Emily decide to be sick simultaneously for this week's episode. Follow their nasally and potentially medicine-fueled ramblings as they discuss a future where retired rockstars get assigned to video game soundtracks, Josh details some recent bachelor party adventures (including elbow-dropping a bush), Emily adopts a new favorite phrase, and both hosts discover they were listening to the same Japanese boy band at the same time seventeen years ago. Also, get ready for ANOTHER groundbreaking patron VGM karaoke! Will YOU be the next patron to keep these consecutive karaokes going? The answer is yes. We know you can do it.

Click above to listen or subscribe.  Click below for the usual direct download.


Suggest a Track   Email Us

This episode was made possible by:
Game Track Title Composer(s)
Batman Stage 1 Naoki Kodaka, Nobuyuki Hara
Blue Dragon Eternity Nobuo Uematsu
Aero the Acro-Bat Museum 1 Rick Fox
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment Battle Theme Toshiko Tasaki,Kenichi Tsuchiya, Masaki Kurokawa
Guacamelee Caverna del Pollo (World of the Dead) Rom Di Prisco, Peter Chapman

...and listeners like YOU.

11 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Wicked Sephiroth, on beating me to the punch and getting out the world's first VGM Karaoke Rap! Well played, sir!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm working on a VGM rap myself. It's not a race! There's room for everyone!

      Delete
    2. Not a race anymore.......but man, this is awesome! Let's get the VGMK raps going on!

      Delete
  2. Good episode guys. Curious why we're down to 5 tracks instead of 6 like it's been for a while now though! Is this a permanent change?

    If anything, I'd love for there to be more tracks per episode, rather than less. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Definitely not a permanent change, AJ -- just a result of our being exhausted from our synchronized sicknesses. We're sorry! But next week we hope to be cured and back to full HP.

      Delete
    2. I recommend Elixirs! They're not cheap, but they'll replenish your HP and all your MP too!

      Delete
  3. Whoops! I messed up my story; Persona 2: Innocent Sin was the banned game, not Eternal Punishment. :P But I'm glad I got to send a track in! Love the podcast, thanks so much for keeping it up!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Keyglyph , playing Alcahest without knowing the language is amazing and ballsy. I loved doing that with 90's sci-fi Anime, but I couldn't do that with a game. I did play the original Grandia on the Saturn as an import because it was never going to come out here, but I had a fansubbed script that I CLUNG to. That's an interesting thought: I didn't mind an incomprehensible environment as long as I have no control, but taking control in an incomprehensible environment scared the heck out of me.

    But now that I think about it, I love being out of my cultural element in real life. I lived in Iceland and I've spent time in the Philippines. In both places, my favorite thing to do was to explore the cities without speaking to people. It made me feel small and alienated and alone, and I loved that.

    Josh, were you possibly thinking about "personification", or "per sauna"? Either way, I've never heard anyone pronounce the word persona with a short "O" sound.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It wasn't so much ballsy as it was an interesting experiment in how much a game can communicate its purpose to a player without stating it in writing. I had to do a lot of metagaming like, "There must be a special significance to this seemingly useless room because I had to unlock it with a key," or, "The music changed, so I must be headed the right way."

      I also have to say I was extremely lucky in choosing Alcahest for this experiment, because some of its programming decisions actively prevented me from missing important stuff. For example, in an early stage there was a locked door I couldn't find an obvious solution for, but when I walked past a fallen soldier (who I thought was just background), it automatically triggered a conversation with them and added a necessary dungeon key to my inventory. Should the game have required I press A to examine the fallen soldier and receive the item, I don't know that I would have thought to unless explicitly instructed to by some other NPC.

      The funniest thing, though, was reporting my adventures to friends who read Japanese. I told them the game was incredibly hard because the character's shield never blocked any projectile attacks, making boss battles shmup-like in difficulty. My friends laughed and said, "Emily, your shield only works if you're *standing still* when projectiles hit you... and this is LITERALLY the first thing the game's first conversation explains to you."

      Yup. I spent the whole game playing in Secret Super Hard Mode due to my illiteracy. But I did it!

      Delete
  5. The reason the phrase "World of the Dead" was in brackets, was that there are two different versions of the track. You hear each one depending upon which world you are in within the game. Here's a link to the non-World of the Dead version for comparison. https://youtu.be/lvh1NnoCqiY

    ReplyDelete
  6. Josh, Robert Plant's voice is also pretty "f***ed up" nowadays, just like Ian Gillan's (the "Deep Purple guy"). C'mon, have some respect. Don't be an asshole. These guys have been pushing their voices to the limits for almost 50 years.

    ReplyDelete