River City Girls with Megan McDuffee – PA120

Pixelated Audio is excited to bring Megan McDuffee into the studio to chat with us about her work for the recently released River City Girls!

River City Girls is a classic action beat-em-up with light RPG elements, building on the long legacy of the River City (or Kunio-Kun) games started by Technos in the 1980s. It was released September 5th, 2019 for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and Steam and developed by WayForward Technologies with oversight and some publishing handled by Arc System Works.

Megan McDuffee has been making a name for herself in the music community as a synthwave vocalist and producer, electronic music composer and sound designer. She has worked on several games with River City Girls being her biggest game to date. Megan brings the heat to this soundtrack with high energy dance music, thrilling vocals, and crisp production work on over 50 tracks with her signature 80’s inspired synthpop sound.

Additional tracks in the game are provided by Chipzel, Dale North, NateWantsToBattle, and Cristina Vee, which can all be found on the full soundtrack. We hope you enjoy the music and this show as much as we do!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38:19 — 159.4MB)

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EVE burst error – PA119

EVE burst error is an adult-oriented visual novel originally released for the PC-98 in 1995 by C’s Ware with additional ports to Saturn and Windows.

In EVE you follow the interconnected stories of Marina and Kojiroh as they avoid death and danger at every turn in order to discover the truth behind their respective missions.  Combine the powerhouse compositional forces of Ryu Umemoto and Ryu Takami with the storytelling finesse of Hiroyuki Kanno (lead designer of YU-NO) and you get a recipe for a gripping game whose impact reverberates all the way to contemporary visual novels like Steins;Gate.

EVE Burst Error launched a number of sequels and remakes, but few of the soundtracks hit as powerfully as the original PC-98 where we’ll spend most of our focus. Join us as we listen to music from two of the greatest FM synthesis masters of their day; funky bass lines, hard hitting techno, soulful melodies and all.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:23 — 141.1MB)

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ExP XXIV: Celebrity Sports Games – PA118

What could be better than more sports games? Celebrity tie-in sports games!

We dug deep in the archives (and the bargain bins) and found some wonderful and obscure games with celebrity athletes representing sports from snooker to soccer (or football for those outside the US).

Whether you like sports or not, we hope you enjoy this varied selection of tunes in our latest expansion pack!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:23:55 — 120.4MB)

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Basted – PA117

Basted (バステッド) is a Japanese exclusive PC-Engine CD game released in 1994 developed and published by NEC Avenue.

The game is a very lightweight action RPG. Over the course of its rather short 3 hour playtime, you’ll see over 30 minutes of beautiful (and sometimes risque) cutscenes from AIC Spirits with the voice acting and music handled by 81 Produce.

The game uses redbook audio almost exclusively so prepare for CD audio spanning a wide range of genres from rock, dance, to honky tonk and beyond. We hope you enjoy the show and the various tracks Basted has to offer.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:13 — 86.2MB)

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Gyruss – PA116

Inspired by our talk at the Library of Congress, we have a shorter show covering the music of Gyruss over about 25 years of releases.

Gyruss was originally developed by Konami in 1983 with ports developed and published by many companies over its history. We even find the game showing up in a few unexpected places.

The original theme is based on J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor which is a fairly well known organ piece in the classical repertoire. You’ll hear a few different takes on the Bach piece as well as a few new compositions. We hope you enjoy the show!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:16 — 64.6MB)

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Quartet with Norm – PA115

Today we’re joined by long time listener and friend to the show Norm as we cover the classic soundtrack of Quartet.

Originally developed and published by Sega in 1986, Quartet is a futuristic 4-player arcade platformer with elements borrowed from Gauntlet. Quartet only saw one major wave of releases in arcades and home consoles plus a Sega Ages rerelease, but it maintains a dedicated fanbase and the music composed by Katsuhiro Hayashi plays a big role.

Katsuhiro Hayashi, a.k.a. “Funky K.H” is a composer and former S.S.T. Band keyboardist with some impressive credits. In addition to Quartet, he worked on Super Hang-On, SDI, and Galaxy Force I/II in arcades, and many other console games over the years. Since 2005 he left the conventional games business to work mostly on pachinko games but his music has left a lasting impact.

Join us as we listen to the Arcade and Sega Master System versions of Quartet along with a few brief departures.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:30:34 — 132.4MB)

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