29 February 2012

Episode 70: Free Play 7

Brent and Rob close out Season 7 with another Free Play.  No category restrictions and we hear music from just about every 8-bit and 16-bit console.  Also, for Rob, this episode becomes a little bit of a David Wise focus.  See you in Season 8!  Full track listing below.



Game - Composer - Song - Company - Console - Year (North American release unless otherwise indicated)

Championship Pro-Am - David Wise - Name Registration - Rare/Tradewest - Genesis - 1992

Gimmick! - Masashi Kageyama - Lion Heart (Stage 5) - Authentic Entertainment/Sunsoft - Famicom - 1992

Treasure Hunter G - Mitsuhito Tanaka (John Pee) - Sad Freedom - Sting/Square - Super Famicom - 1996

Paperboy - Hal Canon, Nick Eastridge (arr.) - Main Theme - Tengen/Mindscape Inc. - NES - 1988

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest - David Wise - Hot-Head Bop - Rare/Nintendo - SNES - 1995

Crystalis - Yoko Osaka (Yoko.O) - Fields - SNK - NES - 1990

Magical Chase - Hitoshi Sakimoto - Variations on a Ra Melody (Stage 6: Sanctuary) - Quest/NEC - TurboGrafx-16 - 1993

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Koji Kondo - Guessing-Game House - Nintendo - SNES - 1992

Aguri Suzuki F-1 Super Driving - Motoaki Takenouchi - unknown - G-Amusements/Logic - Game Boy (Japan) - 1993

Granada - Motoi Sakuraba - Take a Chance (Stage 7: Destroyed Base) - Wolf Team/Renovation - Genesis - 1990

Romancing SaGa - Nobuo Uematsu, Kenji Ito (arr.) - Heartful Tears - Square - Super Famicom - 1992

The Lone Ranger - Yoshinori Sasaki (Moai Sasaki), Kenichi Matsubara, Kozo Nakamura (La Nakamur), Tomoya Tomita (Gorgeous Tomita), Kenji Fukui, Satoko Minami - Overworld (Night) - Konami - NES - 1991

Battletoads/Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team - David Wise - Open Space (Stage 4) - Rare/Tradewest - Genesis - 1993

Bloody Wolf - Shogo Sakai, Takafumi Miura, Yuji Suzuki, Yusuke Takahama - Stage 5 - Data East - TurboGrafx-16 - 1990

Contra - Kazuki Muraoka, Hidenori Maezawa (arr.) - Stage 3: Waterfall - Konami - NES - 1988

14 comments:

  1. The bloody wolf track was hype as shit!!!

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  2. The drum fill in Magical Chase reminds me of Always Something There To Remind me.

    I'd like to find out what kind of sound chip Zombie Nation has, whether or not it has the same chip as Gimmick. Those ZN tracks have so much going on in them. Where do I find that kind of info?

    Are you guys planning a second Taito focus? I've been hearing a lot of really great Taito stuff recently that I had never heard before. There's a Panic Restaurant track in particular that blew my mind.

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    1. Zombie Nation uses the standard sound chip found in most NES games, but the reason it sounds like there's more stuff going on is because it's utilizing the sampler to not only play drum noises, but also to play the bass. This frees up the triangle wave to do other things like add more counter melodies. Also, for certain tracks, the triangle wave is being used to create a sustained, ambient-type background noise, which also makes it sound like a lot is going on. Basically, with Zombie Nation the sampler is just really being used a lot more than usual, when usually with NES games, the sampler is used to just make fuller sounded drum beats. Super C also uses the sampler a lot, but it's used to garnish the melody and it's certainly not as crazy and quirky as Zombie Nation.

      Another Taito focus won't happen anytime too soon, but I did have plans to choose something from Panic Restaurant on an upcoming episode. I think we're gonna do a food episode soon.

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  3. Awesome, thanks for the info. Yeah, Super C... this all makes a lot of sense.

    I don't know the name of the Panic Restaurant tracks, I was playing it while hearing it. But it's the level where you're inside a freezer, with ice skating ice cream cones. I know that doesn't help, but that's the level. It sounds like an underwater song that seemingly turns into a completely different song in the middle. Very pretty, and very strange.

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  4. Hey, you guys list the Battletoads/Double Dragon track title as "name registration." Isn't it actually called "Open Space" (Stage 4)? I only point this out because it was tougher for me to find the track without the correct name. By the way, I really like the track.

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  5. Wow, that music from "Aguri Suzuki F-1 Super Driving" was a cool surprise. I've never heard of it, and don't usually get into racing games, but that track really had heart. It felt sort of "sentimental," if that makes any sense. Great choice!

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  6. I love your show, but I'm unsubscribing and taking it off my pod-device. The singing along with the music just shits me too much. It's fucking awful and I really don't care that you like that trill bit or that bass line or whatever. All the best. Good bye.

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    1. This is a podcast where they really dissect each track and talk about the parts that stick out and make the track in question special. If you don't like it, it's not the fault of the podcast, but your own personal problem. Good riddance.

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  7. This is the first episode of Legacy Music Hour I've listened to and I'm looking forward to many more! :)

    Magical Chase is my favorite discovery from this episode. Seriously awesome tune, and it's reminding me that I should get better familiarized with TurboGrafx soundtracks.

    Gimmick! is the only game to use that particular chip for sound expansion. Batman: RotJ and some other Sunsoft games had the FME-7 chip, but it wasn't used for extra music capabilities. What Gimmick! uses is a slight variant known as 'Sunsoft 5B', but a lot of sites / players / etc simply call it the FME-7 anyways.

    The European version of Gimmick!, Mr. Gimmick, has a differently arranged soundtrack because it does not utilize the sound expansion (only the Famicom allows this, so it was out of the question for the European NES). For some reason it doesn't have its own NSF though! At least not that I've been able to find...

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    1. Hey, thanks for checking out the podcast! For more TurboGrafx stuff, you should take a listen to Episode 57, which is a focus on TurboGrafx music, and it's got some really good stuff.

      Also, thanks for the info on Gimmick!

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  8. I'm currently listening to this episode and had to pause it to write in: the Magical Chase track was so awesome, it got featured in your podcast twice! It reappears much later in episode 142 (Leading Women), which I'd already listened to before backtracking to this one.

    It only jumped out at me because I'd loved the track so much when it appeared in 142. It's what's inspired me to look into TurboGrafx music, which hadn't been on my radar before -- so a big thanks to you both on that!

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    1. Uh oh, that was a mistake. We're not supposed to repeat tracks. LMH regrets the error, but is glad you liked that track so much.

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  9. I'm midway through this episode and it's jam!

    The one thing that threw me for a loop was Rob's comment about SFII genesis and using 3 buttons. I bought the game when it came out, with 2 6-button controllers and have never even played it with 3. How is that even possible? At any rate, respect due because SFII can't be properly played without that controller.

    I gotta say, I do love my Genesis, but the 6-button was the primary reason the Genesis SFII was better than the Super Nintendo's. In general, I liked the Genesis' more steely soundtrack a little better, but the sampled sounds on the Genesis were really hard not to hate.

    And I'm sure you guys already hashed this out, but Dhalsim absolutely can teleport on the Genesis version.

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