Today we’re joined by Swedish audio production studio Sinephony to talk about the 2019 indie game 198X from Swedish game developer Hi-Bit Studios. The game is a love letter to gaming in the 80s where you play through 5 different games (beat-em-up, shmup, racing, action platformer, and RPG) merged with cinematic storytelling. It started as a Kickstarter project and is now available for Windows, Mac, Switch and PS4.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:52 — 103.0MB)
Pixelated Audio is 6 years old! A lot has changed over that time, but the one constant is our love for game music of all kinds. Our theme today is a bit silly; games that are the 6th in a series (or at least have the number 6 in the title). We stretch the theme pretty far and come up with some fun tunes that we hope you’ll enjoy.
Thanks to all of our listeners. We hope to keep doing what we love, listening to and sharing great game music.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:27 — 74.1MB)
KGB or Conspiracy is a 1992 game developed by Cryo Interactive Entertainment and published by Virgin Games for DOS and Amiga. KGB is a 1st person point and click adventure where you play as Maksim Rukov, an agent transferred to Department P and ordered to investigate possible corruption in the KGB after a former agent turns up dead. It’s a challenging race against time that takes places in the gloomy final days of the Soviet Union.
The core soundtrack for DOS was composed by Stéphane Picq, with an original track and porting to Amiga handled by Alexandre Ekian. The music is a mix of moody electronic ambience and energetic melodic flourishes and features some of the best use of the Adlib (OPL2) soundchip from that era thanks to the custom HERAD music system by programmer and Cryo co-founder Remi Herbulot.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:32:21 — 126.8MB)
Today we’re covering Psycho World, released for the MSX in 1988 and localized as Psychic World for the Sega Master System and Game Gear in 1991. The original MSX release was developed and published by Hertz, a short-lived Japanese game developer that also worked on number of ports with their final game being Vay for the Mega CD. The SMS and Game Gear ports of Psychic World were done through a partnership with SIMS and published by Sega.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:04 — 84.5MB)
We once again return to the earliest days of game sound and music and trace the evolution from 1977 through 1984 in this historically focused episode. We go from the arcade boom, to early home consoles and computers, to the video game crash, and end just before the rise of the NES. The show is a much deeper dive on historical context, although we cover a lot more music in the second half.
We were very pleased to collaborate with special guests Alex Smith and Jeff Daum of They Create Worlds, a podcast, blog and book that focuses on getting nuanced and often untold stories from the game industry, with an emphasis on the lesser talked about business side of things. Their show does a fantastic job of capturing engaging context on everything from game genres, mega hits like Space Invaders and Tetris, to the founding of individual companies.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:53:34 — 166.2MB)
What does it feel like to soar through the skies in a hot air balloon? Kaze no Notam on the Sony Playstation attempts to answer that question. Released September 1997 by the mid-sized Japanese developer Artdink, Kaze no Notam is an easygoing flight sim in the vein of Pilotwings with some light objectives, although it’s more tech demo than game.
The composer for the game is Ryuuji Nishida who also worked on a number of projects for Artdink like ‘No One Can Stop Mr. Domino’, Zeus II Carnage Heart, A-Train DS, and Sword Art Online: Lost Song. He’s an accomplished composer and has been at Artdink for over 20 years and is currently the head of their sound department.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:25:47 — 118.8MB)