Advanced Fantasian – PA155

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.

Advanced Fantasian is a dungeon crawler RPG based heavily on Wizardry and by proxy, Dungeons & Dragons. You take a fixed class (but customizable) party of 5 characters through various dungeons, walking around in 1st person Wizardry style until combat commences in a top down grid where characters move independently. We spend most of our time listening to the OPNA version of the soundtrack from the PC-88 with a short sample from the X1 version. As always, we hope you enjoy the music as much as we do!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:06:59 — 92.5MB)

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Greatest Driver – PA154

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 hope you enjoy the music!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:15 — 36.2MB)

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Pac-Man CE DX – PA153

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 original Championship Edition launched in 2007, CE DX in 2010, the CE DX+ DLC in 2013, and the NES remake in 2020. We don’t cover CE 2 from 2016 but check that one out for some great music as well. The tunes are long and dance-y and we hope you enjoy them!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:43 — 89.1MB)

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Sega System 16 Baseball – PA152

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!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:10 — 44.2MB)

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F-1 Super Battle – PA151

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

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:58 — 29.0MB)

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Street Cleaner with Jesse Bishop – PA150

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 streets of San Diego with your trusty bat and gun.

Today’s guest is Jesse, better known as Street Cleaner, a synthwave artist and video game music composer. Jesse has been producing synthwave for over a decade and in recent years his work has appeared in a number of games. Some of his projects include Wasteland 3, Hypergun, Exception and he recently had a track on Chex Quest HD! We had an absolute blast talking with Jesse about the game, the Street Cleaner project, Creaky Lantern Games, and life in general. As always, we hope you enjoy the show as much as we did!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:46:28 — 146.4MB)

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