Pixelated Audio

Today's special guest is Tom Salta, a hugely talented and accomplished artist and producer. He's worked in film, TV, ads and games for over 30 years and has produced with legends like Bobby Brown, Cher and Peter Gabriel. He's spent the last 20 years working in games including Cold Fear and Red Steel and some of the world's largest franchises like Tom Clancy, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Halo, Kil...

Today we have Nick Marinelli joining us, former head of MAGFest and longtime VGM aficionado. The focus of the show is on the development and history of the VGM community, from its awkward adolescence to the large and growing movement that it is today, which we are very happy to be a part of. Nick brings to us a selection of arrangements, covers and remixes of the most tried and true classics, with...

On today's episode we're joined by Rob aka Xerxes of Hardcore Gaming 101's "Top 47k Games" podcast. We talk about his background, how the podcast is made, the excellent resource Hardcore Gaming 101, along with our usual jovial banter. Rob brings us a selection of fantastic deep cuts of early to mid 90s Japanese VGM used in the show, most of which are intro and ending tunes. It's a really fun show...

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 po...

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. Track List: 0:00:00 Tobituki-hime - Stage 3 - MAGICAL AMBER - (PC) by Masashi Yano 0:08:42 Gekitou! Crash Gear Turbo: Gear Champion League - BGM 1 (WSC) by unknown co...

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 (form...

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 ac...

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 g...

30 years later the film Home Alone remains a holiday classic. The games, not so much. The success of the first two films spawned a spate of 13 cheap cash-in games from 1991 to 1993 across just about every mainstream game system. Co-hosting alongside us, friends and longtime listeners Norm and UtopiaNemo join in what could be considered a holiday episode. We share some joy and laughter at the music...

In the last installment we talked about Treasure Conflix, and today we're talking about the platform itself, the Nintendo Satellaview. The Satellaview was created as a partnership between the broadcasting company St. GIGA and Nintendo's R&D2 Division, the team responsible for the original Super Famicom. It was released as an add-on in 1995 and was a somewhat unique approach to an online service. T...

In early 1996, Squaresoft released Treasure Conflix and three other exclusive titles for the Satellaview Broadcast Satellite system, an add-on for the Super Famicom. The soundtrack was written by longtime composer Junya Nakano. The game is an aerial combat and RPG hybrid where you split your time between fighting other airships in real time and traveling to small caves and towns to find upgrades f...

The most interesting thing about Aworg: Hero in the Sky is that it was released on Sega Meganet, an early online service and precursor to the Sega Channel. Released in 1991 by Sega, Aworg is a short and fairly unremarkable action game where you traverse a maze in a robotic suit that can fly around, dash, and push enemies away with its jet stream. The game is short, and can be beaten in about 20 mi...

  Nothing beats Go on the go, and that's exactly what you get with 1500DS Spirits Volume 10: Igo! Game developer and cosmetics company Tasuke put out a number of these budget titles for the DS and DSiWare around 2007-2008, consisting mostly of board and card games. They're similar to the more well known D3 "Simple" series of budget titles. Igo is the 10th and final game in the 1500DS Spirits serie...

In the late 90s, programmable robot toys were becoming popular and WonderBorg was no exception. Released by Bandai in 2000 for the WonderSwan and later for the PC, WonderBorg was a kit that included a programmable beetle robot and a application called Robot Works which allowed you to send basic commands to it. The WonderBorg featured a number of sensors to give it some awareness of the world and i...

In 1995, the movie Waterworld was released and the real world was changed forever. As we pass the 25th anniversary, we attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of a perfectly competent mid 90s action film and then "dive" into the music of the many licensed cash-in games that followed the film's release. The bulk of the Waterworld games were fittingly developed and/or published in 1995 by Ocean Softw...

Aqua Kitty is an indie game success story. Developed by Tikipod and initially released in 2012 as a Playstation Mobile game, it saw continued releases with new features and improvements up to its most recent release on Switch in 2018, and it remains a blast to play today. We're very lucky to be joined by the game's composer, Mark Day (aka Electric Cafe) to talk about the music for Aqua Kitty in it...

In 1996, Sony opened the floodgates to indie console game development on the Playstation 1 through their Net Yaroze platform. Over the next several years, short games and demos of all kinds were created and distributed with game magazines on demo discs, including the focus of today's episode. Hover Racing was created by a small team of university students led by designer Tomokazu Sato and primary...

We're joined once again by Swedish audio production team Sinephony, this time listening to the mellow jams from the 2017 game Airport CEO. The game is a tycoon and management sim from Swedish game developer Apoapsis Studios where you act as CEO of your own airport, in the tradition of games like Transport Tycoon and Sim Coaster. Airport CEO is currently available on Windows and Mac. Sinephony is a...

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...

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,...

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 gl...

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 part...

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...

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...

Harald Hårdtand: Kampen om de rene tænder (or Harold Hardtooth in The Fight for Clean Teeth) or simply "Colgate" for short, is an advergame platformer released in 1992 for the C64, Amiga and DOS. The game was developed by SilverRock Productions, a Copenhagen-based Danish company founded in 1988 and renamed in 1992 to Interactive Television Entertainment (ITE), best known for developing and produci...