This is it! Josh and Emily venture out into the overworld to feature patron recommendations, host picks, and a random selection from the haunted jukebox who, incredibly, is surviving in direct sunlight. You might want to consider this phase 3 of our podcast and it might be a good place for our new patrons (many of whom are featured on this episode) to start. And don't forget, we're going to be raffling off Josh's MOTHER 3 cartridge in a few weeks. Tune in to hear the ways you can get in on this!
Click above to listen or subscribe. Click below for the usual direct download.
Keep sending in those recommendations and bringing in those +1s!
| This episode was made possible by: | ||
| Game | Track Title | Composer(s) |
| Donkey Kong Country | Simian Segue (Title Theme) | Evaline Fischer, David Wise |
| MOTHER 3 | Monkey's Delivery Service | Shogo Sakai |
| The Secret of Monkey Island |
Mêlée Island - Forest | Michael Land, Patrick Mundy |
| Poker Night 2 | Borderlands 2 Short Change Hero Intro Song (Poker Night 2 Edition) | Jesper Kyd, Cris Velasco, and Sascha Dikiciyan (Borderlands 2); Jared Emerson-Johnson (Poker Night 2 arrangements) |
| Earthbound | Boy Meets Girl (Twoson) | Keeichi Suzuki, Hirokazu Tanaka |
| Jack Bros. | Temple of Nightmare | Hiroyuki Yanada |
| Ultimate Stuntman | Human Fly | Gavin Raeburn |
| T2: The Arcade Game | Mission 4 | Matt Furniss, Chris Granner (arcade) |
...and listeners like YOU.
Awesome episode as always, guys! To clarify a conjecture made at the top of the show a bit, Dave Wise was covering the original arcade Donkey Kong title screen tune composed by Yukio Kaneoka. Kaneoka not only went to compose the awesome Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! soundtrack, but also designed the sound hardware in the NES! He's really the grandfather of NES music. :)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmmNYTg-wSA&index=9
Thanks for all the knowledge, Ed! Do you happen to know if Yukio Kaneoka's Donkey Kong tune was introduced for the NES port? For some reason I have no memory of hearing that jingle while around an actual Donkey Kong cabinet, but now I feel like I can't be sure until I'm standing next to one again.
DeleteYou did in fact play the correct Monkey Island track! I agree with Josh that "impossibly melodic" might not be the right way to describe the bass line. I think what I meant to imply is that the bass is the lead voice of the track and goes in a few different directions before resolving. So I guess "Jazzy" might be a better description. Anyway, great show Josh and Emily!
ReplyDelete- Kimball
Hey guys,
ReplyDeleteLove the new format! You might try swinging your sword at that tall grass; you might get some coins. Hey, thanks so much for playing another Virtual Boy track. I wonder if anyone out there is using those to make chiptunes. The sound is so perfect! It's almost like the TG-16 sound, but cleaner and less gravelly. And those synth pads sound so nice!
The Mother 3 track was also wonderful. I think I'd qualify for entering into the contest, but I think I'll let somebody more deserving win. The game does sound really interesting, however, and I was thinking about buying a GBA to play it.
The guy turning the hand crank with the monkey is called an Organ Grinder. Oh, let me tell you what memories this brings for me! There was a pizza restaurant in Southeast Portland called the Organ Grinder. The restaurant was built to house a gigantic theater pipe organ. The bass pipes were 3 stories tall, and front and center was a beautiful Wurlitzer console with 4 keyboards, probably 100 buttons and switches, and assorted controls. The wall above the console was crammed full with automated drum sets, bells, piano, chimes, xylophones, other percussion instruments, and so on. The Organists would play showtunes and silent movies, and occasionally did a schtick with one of those wind-up monkeys with the cymbals.
It was a magical place. I used to go there as a kid, and I ended up working there as a teenager. I got to know and respect the owner, who is a gruff electrical engineer who started the place in the 70's as a scheme to get to build a massive Theater Pipe Organ and get paid to run it. In the late 70's through the mid 80's, the place was one of the most popular entertainment spots in the city.
Unfortunately, a freeway was built in the early 80's that changed the demographics of the east side of Portland. The street on which the Organ Grinder was located became a slummy, depressed area known primarily for prostitution and used car lots. They ended up closing the restaurant in the late 90's, a year after I left.
As a happy coincidence, I ran into the owner completely at random about 10 years later. I was doing contract work at an electronics firm that happened to share walking paths with the digital projection company he worked at after closing his restaurant. Even more surprising, I got in contact with him about a year later when I discovered he was a member of a home theater enthusiast group I had joined.
Well, that was a long and unnecessarily rambling aside. But the place really influenced how I look at music. You haven't heard bass until you've heard 3-story tall organ pipes shake an entire building while playing the theme to 2001: Space Odyssey.
Regarding reality: I personally feel reality is so subjective that our lived experiences and perceptions are, in a sense, always virtual since we typically experience the same things differently. I don't know how universal that is, though, so even that view is in flux for me. But I did have a pretty weird experience w/ reality recently at a Hatsune Miku concert. I was completely transfixed and shifted focus between the band (who were INCREDIBLE) and the projections: two different realities happening. A lot of people around me were treating Miku and the other Vocaloids as if they were real. She would wave at the audience and people would wave back. A girl next to me was posting pictures and tweeting people as the show happened, as if this wasn't real unless it was documented. Many, many realities happening in that theater for the same duration of time. The next day I was on a long flight and played a Miku game on my Vita. It was a wholly different experience but still Miku, still the songs, but no band. And she was performing in otherworldly venues. But that's really Miku, isn't it? Or is the reality of her in a live setting? Is she only as real as people perceive her to be? If she exists in games, does she exist in the pictures and videos that girl was posting during the concert? These are the biggest questions of our generation, people.
ReplyDeleteI have a million thoughts about the Vocaloids, but I can't fit them all here.
DeleteSuffice it to say that I love it when machines, programs, or digital creatures (the robot Kismet, Vocaloids, Tamagotchi, etc.) can inspire emotions in human beings so much so that we get genuinely attached to them. I'm fascinated by the bond, and I love experiencing it.
The downside is that you feel compelled to bid your old appliances farewell and thank them for what they've done for you. It's a little strange. :D
OMG, Jack Bros! Where have you been all my life?!
ReplyDelete