Heart Heat Girls – PA146

Heart Heat Girls is a lightly adult-oriented Japanese adventure game released for the PC-98 in December of 1993 by the company Panda House under their Cat’s Pro label. Heart Heat Girls or H.H.G. is set in a futuristic world where humans and androids are at war. A specialized police force known as ACP (“Anti Criminal-cyborg Police”) is tasked with eliminating them. The game begins with two young police officers named Angelica and Apple receiving an S.O.S. about an attack from a mysterious cyborg and arrive to the crime scene to find no survivors. Joined by their friend and colleague detective Keith Bailey, they set out to investigate the case. Despite the name, the game focuses more heavily on the narrative and setting as opposed to lewd content. The gameplay is fairly conventional with light interactions like “Talk” or “Examine” to move the plot along.

The music of H.H.G. was written by Muse and the mysterious Panda, owner of the game development studio Panda House and its subsidiary labels Cat’s Pro and Melody, all companies largely associated with making adult games for the Japanese PC market. Little is known in the English speaking world about Panda and Muse, however they both worked on audio for the company Cocktail Soft, another adult games label.

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VGMTogether – March 12-14

Support the video game music community,
attend VGMTogether online March 12-14!

 

 

Event details
Friday March 12 at 2pm EST –
Sunday March 14 at 10pm EST

VGMTogether featuring 40+ nerdy and video game music artists and 20+ panels of game related topics

The event is free and will be streamed on Twitch and VRChat with conversation on Discord

vgmtogether.com

Music: twitch.tv/vgmtogether
Panels:
twitch.tv/vgmtogether2

Expansion Pack XXVII – PA145

It’s been a while since our last expansion pack, and the first of 2021. It’s a relaxed show with a selection of 6 deep cuts but the music is great as always. Correction: The name of the writer was actually Miyazawa Kenji not Ihatovo.

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Bonus Stage with Josh – PA144

Today we’re joined by guitarist Josh of the VGM band The Runaway Four. Together we talk about his band and their music, as well as Bonus Stage, a very important project that came into being last year in April right in the midst of lockdowns. Bonus Stage is a monthly online series of live video game music concerts that feature a wide range of bands and genres. As hard as 2020 was, Bonus Stage (formerly Virtual VGM Fest) has become a bright spot in the community for VGM lovers and performers alike.

Josh comes to us from Vancouver Canada and brings with him some fantastic and varied VGM from across the spectrum, all sourced from Bonus Stage performers. We even included a teaser track for the upcoming Bonus Stage X event on February 13 and we hope you enjoy listening to the music as much as we did. Continue reading

Splice with Dain Saint – PA143

In June of 2012, Cipher Prime Studios released Splice, a puzzle game about organizing cells into increasingly complex patterns. It’s a game that requires concentration and it’s also a bit about tampering with nature. Splice can be purchased on a number of platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, PS3 and PS4 but no matter where you purchase it, it’s a challenging and mentally rewarding game accompanied by a beautiful piano soundtrack composed by Dain Saint, who we have joining us on the show today.

Cipher Prime is a Philadelphia-based indie game and interactive art studio co-founded in 2008 by Dain Saint and Will Stallwood. With Dain as technical director and Will as creative director, the team has made more than 10 games including Pulse, Intake, Auditorium and Fractal. Cipher Prime has also been a driving force in the Philadelphia indie game scene for over a decade where they ran a co-working space and hosted numerous events for game developers over the years.

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Xixit – PA142

On the surface, Xixit is a pretty straightforward Columns clone. Go a little bit deeper and you find a columns clone with impressive coding, visual effects and music. Xixit was released for DOS in 1995 by Optik Software, a small American publisher that only ever released 3 games, the other two being a point and click called Igor and an RTS called War Inc. The gameplay is your typical match three game with a 1-player or 2-player versus mode and an impressive array of difficulty and graphics options. Continue reading