Latest / OverClocked ReMix Podcast / September 2026

Transcript

September 2026 · OverClocked ReMix Podcast

• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: Hello, and welcome to the Overclock Remix Podcast.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_04: This is episode number 23, covering the month of September 2026.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_04: My name is Zach, and it is spooky season.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_04: I'm currently doing a playthrough of Luigi's Mansion with my brother, which is a game I never actually finished and haven't really even thought about in about 25 years.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know that it's flashy enough to have been a good Game Launch game.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_04: But it does still show off the power of the game game.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_04: Luigi's Mansion looks miles better than any contemporary N64.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_04: Which means you can head to the forums at OCRemix.org slash community, go to the competitions section, and download some sweet, sweet persona slash fire emblem mashups.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_04: Douglas will hear a bunch of these come out as mixed posts over the next few months, but why wait?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: I'm excited about what the next GSM might look like.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_04: As usual, I am down for more RPG mashups.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_04: Final Fantasy vs.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_04: Dragon Quest.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_04: Album-wise, hot and cold still seems like it's progressing nicely.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_04: On the forums, Diluck and Murphy are recruiting for an Illusion of Gaia album and a Final Fantasy Dimensions album, respectively.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_04: If you have interest in either of those and some musical talent, go check out the projects section.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: We've got new tracks to get to.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_04: But first, I have a new orange to do to.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_04: If you like this podcast, I hope you'll consider checking out my other podcast, This Week in VGM, where we investigate video game history one birthday at a time.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: You can find it at HTTPS colon slash slash thisweekinvgm.buzzsprout.com.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_04: Or in the podcast description.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_04: Our news music this month was Find Me by Mac Haytman from Castlevania Bloodlines.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_04: Let's get to some new releases.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: What if I know what's all the fun?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm cold, so the fuck.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: What if I called it still all the child the prison of a my lost and confused?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: Nevertheless, nothing left for me to find.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_04: So coming back from the first block, that was Cassie's Fortune by Daniel Caton from Uncharted Drake's Fortune.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_04: So when I saw this track tagged as cinematic and orchestral, I was really not expecting the electronic elements, which I think really set it apart from the source material.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_04: Makes it sound a little less Hollywood and a little more Metal Gear Solid 2.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_04: After that we had No Allegory Here.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_04: Move Along by Cyril the Wolf, J.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_04: S.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: A.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_04: Blixer, and Paradiddles Josh from Mighty Gunvault Burst.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_04: I say it's from Mighty Gunvault Burst, but the source material you hear first is definitely not Mighty Gunvault Burst.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_04: That is pure, unadulterated Mega Man X4, Cyber Peacock Stage.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_04: I know that OST like the back of my hand.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's not until you get pretty deep into the track that we actually get some Mighty Gunvault source material, but it is a groove.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_04: And speaking of the Mega Man X material, that opening riff is killer.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_04: Some kind of mash-up track between two games with thematic similarities.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_04: Alright, yeah, you guessed it.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_04: This is from GameSet Mash 4, which was Mega Man vs.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_04: Mega Man Spiritual Sequels.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_04: And when you're doing Mega Man Rock, Cyril the Wolf is your go-to guy.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely love the guitar work on this one.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_04: After that was Voyage of the Fallen by Prophetic Music from Monster Train, and hey, we talked about this one last month.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: This is another track from Prophetic's album Fall and Rise.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_04: Monster Train is a very fun game, so go check it out if you haven't played it.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_04: And I know this is blasphemous, but I like it more than Slay the Spire.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_04: After that, Burial at Sea by the Man PF, Numa Joe, and Zach Chapman from the game Soma.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_04: So I've been listening to a lot of Tesseract in my free time, and I legit thought a Tesseract track had gotten into my monthly OCR playlist at first.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_04: This track is legit.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_04: The ManPF clearly knows what's up with Frog Metal.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_04: It's got some real chugga-chugga to it, but I wouldn't quite classify it as jet, which isn't a genre anyway.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_04: You guys know I'm a prog head, so yeah, standout track for me.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely incredible work.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_04: This is going straight into my prog playlist.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I've never played Soma.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_04: Don't know anything about it.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_04: Alright, let's get to some more music.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_04: We have Frontier of the Federation by Prophetic Music from FTL Faster than Light.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_04: Which is another familiar track if you listen to last week's episode.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_04: This is from Prophetic's album Fall and Rise.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_04: We talked about FTL some last month when I interviewed Prophetic.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_04: It is a great game if you haven't tried it yet.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_04: After that was Azurite Horizons by Rom Tom from Donkey Kong Country, and we've got a newcomer here.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_04: Rom Tom brings us in real aquatic ambience in the way that it feels both classic because of the use of samples taken from the game and fresh with sort of a reggae-inspired rhythm backing a trippy square wavelength.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome Rom Tom! After that was Zoom, Zoom by Land Party from Grand Turismo.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_04: This track has that some absolute classic electronica courtesy of Land Party, whose child of light mix we covered pretty recently.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_04: I've gotta talk about the joke here a little.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_04: So the source material is Mazda Dealer, and the name of the remix is Zoomzoom.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_04: People roughly my age will get it immediately, but I do recommend the younger folks hit up YouTube and search for Mazda Zoomzoom.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_04: After that was Pull of the Minds by Prophetic Music from Dome Keeper, which is another fall and rise track that we talked about last week with the remixer himself.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_04: Alright, let's get to some more music.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_04: Name a more iconic duo.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_04: JayN Wake and Synth Lead Frog.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: There's some real Hagen energy to the section starting around 2 minutes 20 seconds.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_04: I'm jazzed how great this sounds, and given the source material is not exactly my favorite on the Undertale OST, I think JN Wake did a fantastic job.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_04: After that was Speaker of the Dust by Prophetic Music from Nowhere Prophet.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_04: And again, this Prophetic guy, which is everywhere this month.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_04: This is another one we talked about last month with the man himself from the album Fall and Rise.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_04: Last but not least, we have No More Secrets by Demonds and Trainbeat from Chrono Trigger, which is vibey.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_04: This forest has secrets, and they take the form of a Cynthia sound bath.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_04: I've always felt that Falling Green, the Cedar Woods music from Breath of Fire 3, is uncannily similar to Secret of the Forest.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel the sound palette of this remix just makes that even more clear.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_04: This track is definitely a lot more upbeat, though.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_04: The guy in drums clearly drank like six cups of coffee before going into the studio.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_04: That's it for new music this month.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_04: Let's get to a segment where I talk with remixer JSA Blixer about what it's like to write triptoons.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_04: Hello! I'm here with JSA Blixer, and we're gonna talk about Triptunes, which I mean growing up with hated games, of course I love triptunes, right?
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_04: I know on the Time Shift album, you were the one person who since you were born after Overclocked Remix, you had to remix older games.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I think that's how that worked.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_04: So I guess my question, uh, since you are um from this millennium, unlike a lot of the people I've interviewed for this podcast, uh, how did you get into Overclocked Remix and Jim?
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_05: So that's the story.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I I when I was like in middle school, I got the legend is on the Link to the Past and a game called Your Shape the Beats.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_05: About the same time, and I got like really hooked on both of them.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_05: A Link to the Past was this like the Game Boy.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_05: This was um whatever was on the 3DS's eShop.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_05: Oh cool.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_05: Um so I started listening to Zelda music and like Chip Chips features a lot of chip tunes in it.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I had like grown up uh with my dad's NES, right?
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_05: So I still played like a lot of older older games when I was young.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_04: I also grew up with my dad's NES, just you know, like 15 years earlier.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um yeah no, so I've I have a lot of fond memories of the console.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_05: And I think like hearing that sort of same style of music, just like changed and morphed in such a cool way was like really inspiring to me.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_05: So that sort of like I think got me into music in general.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um and then obviously at the same time I was like, So I was like, oh what if I what if there are like other versions of music online?
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_05: And um big giant circles who is featured in your computer.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um A remix of Song of Storms.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know if that was my first one, but that was one of them.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_05: It was either that or it was uh what's it called?
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's mirror something.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_05: It's the Link to the Past album.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um that Will Roger did.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_05: Uh what one is?
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_05: Is it just Mirror's Image?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's Mirror Image, yeah.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it is mirror image.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_05: Good album.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_05: I like it a lot.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_05: But it was either that or it was um Thunderstruck by Big Giant Circles.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_05: That was sort of my first exposure to overclocked remix.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_05: And I kind of just couldn't get enough of it.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_05: I listened to it, I I followed it a lot for a long time.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um and now I'm here.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, that's you know, I I was wondering, uh, again, since yeah, I don't want to harp on the age thing too much.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's just I know this factoid that like you were the representative of the youths on Time Shift.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I was wondering, like, as the representative of the youths, would you have a different origin story for OC Remix?
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_04: And no, like everyone has the same story.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like, oh yeah, I was looking for music for this game I really liked, and OC Remix came up.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, that's fantastic.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_04: So um, I want to ask about uh the writing process of chiptunes, but before we get into music theory and stuff, I want to talk a little about the tools that are used for chiptunes because I think they're fascinating.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_04: To my knowledge, unlike anything else in music production.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_04: So uh what kind of tools do you personally use?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_05: So I use LSDJ, which runs entirely on the Game Boy.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um occasionally I will I say occasionally, I think more often than more time has passed.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and I've wanted to work on more than one thing at the same time.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I've used emulators um to just run LSDJ.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but it's still like the same program, um, just generally newer versions with more storage capacity.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_05: Any case, it runs on the Game Boy, it's a very like simple, like bare bones tracker.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but there's like still a lot of depth to it, um, with what you can do with like the various like sounds, like the wave or pulse channels.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_05: There's like a lot of like ways you can manipulate like these really at their core simple sounds that is just so compelling to me.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, uh, I I haven't done much music writing myself, but what little I have done has been in chip and trackers.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_05: They're a lot of fun, yeah.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_04: It yeah, that's a great word for it.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_04: They're just fun.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_04: Although, really quick, let's step back and explain what a tracker is for listeners who uh haven't heard of one.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so I guess how how would I describe a tracker?
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's a music production program with an interface that's sort of like Microsoft Excel.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's that's a pretty good um that's a pretty good description.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_05: Like there's not like in in FL Studio and like a I I mean that's the one dot that I know like relatively well in like a Raj Band.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but you have like the piano roll to input notes, right?
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_05: Um, which is great.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_05: The tracker, I think, very specifically does not have that.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_05: And instead you just like have to figure out like notes are like indicated by the note name and the number next to it indicating what octave it's on, you know.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_05: Rather than like occupying a physical space, it's like a data point.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's like every column of your quote unquote spreadsheet is a different channel that the set and usually for chiptunes, it's like you have one column per channel that your sound chip supports, and then every row is like what note should be playing at that time with maybe with some effect applied.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um okay, so I have a question about LSDJ specifically, because the tracker that I've been playing around with is Furnace Tracker, which has the benefit of a keyboard, right?
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's a PC program, it runs on you know Windows, Linux, everything.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_04: I cannot imagine inputting music with only Game Boy controls.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, yeah, no, for sure.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_05: I it is it is like pretty hard to like come up with like melodies and chords like doing it.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so like at least for me, I guess I don't know like for other people who use software, but like things come like a lot more natural to naturally to me, like on a piano or a keyboard.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_05: Um so that's often what I will do is when I'm like sketching out ideas, I'll just sit at a piano and play around with stuff.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_05: Um or but like yeah, I mean that's that's that's often what I do.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_05: Um when I don't do that, it's usually because I already had a pretty strong idea of what I wanted to do going in.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then I was willing to just let the idea build out from that, you know.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I know um uh Jake Kaufman will I know this because you know I I backed Mina the Hollower and Kickstarter, but he'll do these yeah, he'll do these streams where he's like, Yeah, let's compose a track for Mina the Hollower, or let's do a one-hour compo or something.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_04: And the dude is just like a tracker machine.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_04: That's wild.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's it's incredible to watch.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_04: I don't I don't know if there's any on YouTube, but if if there are, you should absolutely watch one of them.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_04: There's some fun, yeah.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_04: It's they're super cool, and I think he mostly I think he does Furnace now, but I know he used to use um what's it uh Fammy Tracker, which is like an NES.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_04: So um here's a question.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh uh which question do I want to ask first?
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so when you're writing music for Chip Tune, uh what does that look like in terms of like the the songwriting process?
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_04: I can't I I imagine it's different from something like writing a rock song where you're like, okay, what's the guitar doing?
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_04: What's the bass doing?
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, or you know, orchestrating something.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, there's still similarity.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_05: You've got so many channels.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_05: Well, right.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_05: But I I think it's funny that you mentioned rock specifically because I think the process is actually at its core relatively similar, considering in a rock context, you still only have four instruments.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and those instruments are really good.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_05: Those instruments can do more things um than like in the context of a Game Boy.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_05: But fundamentally, rock music is built from four voices, those being the guitar, bass, singer, and drums, right?
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, which is effectively also what's going on in LSDJ, um, where you generally will have one pulse doing melodies, you'll have the other pulse doing like chords or arpeggios or anything else to fill out the space.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_05: You'll have bass doing the kick drum and the bass line, and then you'll have the noise channel doing general per other percussion, right?
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_05: So I like I actually think I guess I of course I haven't like written for rock specifically, but like I imagine the process is very similar.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's uh that's an interesting uh thing that uh this brought to mind is like I feel like uh I mean to to some degree every genre of music is defined by the instruments you use, but like do we call chiptune a genre?
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_04: Like you can write all kinds of genres of music on Game Boy.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_04: I've heard about like there's I've heard Game Boy songs that sound like rock.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_04: I've heard Game Boy songs that sound like blues.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_04: Like, what what do we I mean?
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_05: That is a question for someone far smarter than me.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_05: So what what quote unquote genre would you say you like to work in?
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_05: I do whatever I want to at any given moment.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_05: You know what?
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_05: I don't generally think of genre when I'm putting things on the tracker, it just sort of turns out being like something, you know.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, I I want to be clear, I would be thoroughly unsurprised if you could fit all of my music into a consistent genre.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_05: I just don't know what that would be because it's not a consideration for me when I'm writing.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like this is a thing for a lot of video game music fans, where like video games sort of pick and take from all kinds of different genres, and it ends up being this delightful blend, uh esoteric blend of different things.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_05: And I I love music that's like that, even like outside of context of video games, right?
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_05: Like music that is just off doing its own thing.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_05: Like that just it tickles my brain in a really fun way.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, most definitely.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I I'm uh in particular, I'm a big fan of the band They Might Be Giants, uh, who really just like really just do their own thing.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, and uh another thing that I I like about video game music is it does sort of it stealth introduced me to genres that I didn't know were genres until uh there was another video game podcast that I listened to, the Super Mercado Brothers.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_04: And uh the the hosts of that one are like legit uh composers.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_04: They have like degrees in music theory and know all of the terminology that I don't know.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but they they mentioned that like, oh yeah, a lot of video game music has its roots in Japanese jazz fusion.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and suddenly I'm listening to like yeah, suddenly I'm listening to bands like Yellow Magic Orchestra going like, oh my god, this is NES music, except it was recorded with a band in the 70s.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_04: That's awesome.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's so yeah, it is kind of or um uh at Magfest last year, uh I saw this talk that was basically like, hey, if you like katamari music, this is what the genre is called.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_04: Which is uh so cool, yeah.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, uh Shibuya K is apparently like this, you know, uh sort of subculture of indie music in Japan from the uh 90s and 2000s.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah, the katam the Katamari soundtrack is this.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, oh, so so just being a fan of video game music has exposed me to genres I didn't even know existed.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_05: Uh-huh.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I I think that's my one of my favorite things about video game music is that because it is so broad, and because you often just get introduced to it by virtue of playing the games themselves, uh, you get exposed to just so many different kinds of music that you otherwise just wouldn't get, or like you wouldn't hear, or you would hear like once it'd be like, oh, that's neat.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_05: But if you're hearing it for like an entire game, then you really grow to understand and appreciate what's going on in the music, and I it's so cool, it's such a cool thing, and you just don't get that from like anywhere else, like that just that happens in video games, I think, far more than it does in like any other musical context, and I think that's so neat.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I yeah, I 100% agree.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, even you know, like I I know people who are fans of movie soundtracks, but there's just not the variety there that I crave, apparently.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, like, there are there are unique and interesting movie soundtracks out there for sure.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_05: But when I think movie soundtrack, I think Star Wars, I think Indiana Jones, right?
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_05: I think I think John Williams.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but like when you think of video game music, like it just feels so much more broad.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_05: And this is to be clear, there's a bias here because we play a lot of video games in a way that I doubt we do for movies, so there is that, but at the same time, uh there's it's really hard to categorize video game music into one into a monolith, right?
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_05: Because there's just it's so unique so consistently, like because games are so unique so consistently, right?
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, if nothing else, another thing you hear with context is like uh you know, you watch uh Indiana Jones and you enjoy the main theme of Indiana Jones, right?
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_04: But there's like all this incidental music in different scenes that you only hear once over the course of the entire movie.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's not like for sure, yeah.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it it's not like oh yeah, I I know the uh the Bowser's Castle theme really well because you gotta go through eight of those.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_05: You you remember the recurring motifs, you don't remember any specific iteration of them, right?
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_04: Unless there's like one on the title screen, yes, uh, but for a lot of video game music, especially video game music made, you know, uh before the turn of the century, sometimes the recurring motifs are just like the same song again, right?
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_05: There was only so much cartridge space, right?
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_05: So you would just you would just hear the same songs and you would understand it as that, or even in more recent games that have like I play a lot of Fire Emblem, um, and like all of the modern Fire Emblem games have like really, really strong um motifs that play throughout the soundtrack, but you hear those motifs still in a lot of different contexts, and you can pick out which song is specifically is playing that uses that motif, um, in a way that you don't often with movies, right?
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, one of my favorite um things in RPG soundtracks specifically is uh character themes.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um especially in I the Final Fantasies do this a lot in particular, where something will be the theme of a specific character, and but they use it in a certain context in like storytelling or in gameplay, even so you don't realize it's actually tied to this one specific character.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_04: You're just like, Oh yeah, this character happens to be in all the scenes where this song plays.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, like uh Final Fantasy VI, uh Locke's theme.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_04: I did for the longest time I didn't know it was Locke's theme.
• 1:21:27
  SPEAKER_04: It was just like, oh yeah, this is the like adventure music.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, like oh, it this is this song that plays at this time, and there's not necessarily a specific character, it is just oh, this is the music that plays right now, yeah.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_05: And I know this music devoid of other context.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, this is a tangent, but of course, uh Fire Emblem has gotten a big new release.
• 1:21:50
  SPEAKER_04: Have you played Fortune's Weave?
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yes, so so much.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_04: I am okay.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_04: Don't don't tell me anything.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_04: I literally picked it up yesterday and I haven't had a chance to start it yet.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_04: It's so good.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_05: I I am so happy that we have had a release like this.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_05: It's so good.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I know uh I I really enjoyed Three Houses, and then engage was just sort of like I mean the gameplay was good, but I see that's the thing.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_05: I I am a I am a staunch engaged defender, I love that game.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_05: The story is one with it, the story was awful, it was so so bad.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_05: So it's but like, and then you can go back to three houses, and I love three houses.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_05: I want to be extremely clear.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_05: That is probably my one of my favorite games, if not my favorite.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but a lot of the gameplay is just extremely drawn out and uninteresting in a way that you don't often get in Fire Emblem, like it is kind of uniquely slow compared to a lot of other Fire Emblem games, and it is hard to go back to, even loving it as much as I do.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't and while Fortune's Weave still has like a lot of content and a lot of like repeated stuff, um, it just feels so much more compelling because the moment-to-moment maps are just made better than they were in Three Houses.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, three houses had a lot of maps where I felt like this map design was not good.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_04: No, not very good.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_04: I I felt like you spent a lot of time like, oh, there's a group of enemies to the north and a group of enemies to the east, and they're both very far away.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm going to spend most of these battles just like moving units and not having any action.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_05: And there's just like not other objectives on the screen.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_05: It is like it's like it's just enemies.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_05: Like you just go and you defeat all the enemies, and you did it, you beat the map.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that works really well in like the battle at Gronder Fields, both of those.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_05: Like, I I really love those maps, but like I could not tell you what a lot of the maps in Three Houses look like because they're just not very memorable.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_05: No, they're not.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, how's the how's the music in Fortunes Weave?
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_05: It's so good.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_05: I I like Three Houses music more, um, but it's it's so good.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_04: I I've uh I've got a long trip uh coming up uh to see family for Thanksgiving, and you better believe I'm going to be spending every minute of my travel time on Fortunes Weave.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you better.
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's uh yeah, no, I was I was playing it earlier today, and it's just it just has not gotten I've like I've been playing it since it came out like that long, and it's like still going and I'm still not bored of it, which is really impressive considering I'm probably only like halfway through the game.
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_04: Oh wow, yeah, okay.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_04: So now I'm gonna do that like obnoxious podcast host thing and be like, I gotcha, I got a gotcha here.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, if you like fire emblems so much, how come you haven't done a remix of it yet?
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I have.
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I don't see one posted.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_05: Am I just blind?
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_05: I might be blind.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_05: There was one time shift.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_05: It wasn't, I didn't get that one posted.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't submit it, but it's on time shifting.
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, oh, oh yeah.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_04: You okay, you are correct.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_04: You have one album.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_05: I hope that's good enough.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh but also, also, uh, game set mash happened recently.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and I didn't know.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_05: That is true.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, okay.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll be soon.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_05: We'll be posted soon.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_05: I say we'll be posted soon.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_05: We've not submitted it.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_05: We will submit it soon.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you know, I I've seen uh in the time I've been doing this podcast, uh, I think it's maybe not quite half, but a lot of the game set mash uh stuff gets posted eventually.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'm not at all worried about it getting posted.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_05: I think unbiased, of course.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_04: Well, oh man, I was so excited.
• 1:26:33
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I had two reactions when Dark Sword announced the theme of GSM5.
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_04: One was uh persona versus fire emblem.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_04: Didn't they do that on the Wii U?
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and the second one was ooh, this is gonna be good.
• 1:26:48
  SPEAKER_05: It was it was really good.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it was it was the first game to mash I was like really passionate about like one of the games in it, which was so neat.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um, because like I I liked Metroid, like of course, um, but I probably only played like red.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but I've probably played like half of the Fire Emblem games out there, so it was like really cool to see a series I love so dearly be represented in such a cool way.
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_05: Like I had a lot of fun in games at MASH.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and you've done I think all of the games at MASH, right?
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I didn't do the first one, I've done all the other ones.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_04: Ah, okay.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_04: Fair enough.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I mean, when the first but we didn't know it was gonna be like this series of events.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I wasn't in Overclocked remix when the first one happened.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, fair enough.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:27:45
  SPEAKER_05: So your first games at MASH 2 was uh was the first one that I knew of.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, your first posted mix is 2023.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_04: Uh okay, so while I'm looking at your your uh list of remixes, I do have.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_04: Have a question.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you've done a lot of collaboration with people, and how do you collaborate with LSDJ?
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_04: Are you just like sending rendered uh rendered tracks as stems or uh yeah, pretty much so what I do, um because you can't like really render things in LSDJ, right?
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_05: Um, what do you do is I just record it and then through whatever means.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_05: Which um for actually my first posted remix, all I did uh was I stuck both of the Game Boys next to a microphone that my mom had, um and just recorded it from there.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_05: Which, you know, it sounds fine, um, with the context of that being the case, right?
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um you hear it a lot more.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_05: But uh beyond that point, I started um just like using the headphone jack on the Game Boy to plug um plug it into whatever computer um and then record it from there.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_04: How do you do I mean I assume you're doing just this this with just like effects in the tracker interface, uh, but I I I feel like I need to ask, how do you do like mixing and mastering?
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I don't the answer of champions.
• 1:29:33
  SPEAKER_05: I I write the music until I think it sounds good, and then I record it, and then I'm done with it.
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um that is why, in no small part that I have collaborated a lot more recently.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_05: So other people will do the mixing and mastering.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_04: I yeah, I have to say, like uh just in editing the podcast, the the mastering portion is what I enjoy the least.
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I'll sit down and I'll learn how to do it one of these days, and that day is not today.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sure my listeners can tell this is the thing I enjoy the least.
• 1:30:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um, on the topic of like just putting uh a speaker next to a microphone, there there's uh a somewhat infamous overclocked remix track that reminded me of uh what number is this?
• 1:30:25
  SPEAKER_04: OCR number 872, The Battle of Strings and a Cell Phone.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_04: Are you familiar with this one?
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, I've not heard that one, but that sounds like a good time.
• 1:30:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, it is the Final Fantasy IX battle theme.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and basically the the guy uh in the mix post said, uh, yeah, I was traveling, I was bored, I thought I'd I'd do like a quick remix.
• 1:31:05
  SPEAKER_04: So he does like rhythm guitar for a lot of the parts of the song, and then the melody is like the teenniest monophonic early 2000s cell phone.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_05: That's awesome.
• 1:31:19
  SPEAKER_05: That's so neat.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_05: I'm wait, I'm I'm saving this.
• 1:31:23
  SPEAKER_05: I'm saving this.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_04: What was it called?
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_04: Uh The Battle of Strings and a Cell Phone.
• 1:31:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'll just send you a link really quick.
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_04: I want to listen to that.
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so uh I did want to talk about a couple of specific tracks.
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_04: Uh uh specifically uh one that I'm talking about on this month's episode, uh your mighty gunvolt burst track that you did with uh Cyril the Wolf.
• 1:31:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh oh, yeah, the um supermassive watery vortex.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_04: Or did the name get changed?
• 1:32:14
  SPEAKER_04: We want to change it.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they changed it got changed to no allegory here, move along.
• 1:32:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, that's right.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 1:32:21
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, so this was originally for GameSet MASH 4.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_04: So this gives me the chance to ask like two questions.
• 1:32:27
  SPEAKER_04: First of all, could you talk a little about a bit about what you did for the track?
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, so for that one, I think all I did um was like an arpeggio um in the chorus that played twice.
• 1:32:41
  SPEAKER_05: I'm pretty sure that was it.
• 1:32:44
  SPEAKER_05: My part of that was pretty small.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_05: I'm feel free to bring more.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not gonna stop you.
• 1:32:50
  SPEAKER_05: Well, see, I did more on the other two rounds.
• 1:32:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think I think both of the other rounds I wrote a track.
• 1:32:58
  SPEAKER_05: And then I think I don't know what else I did, but I know I wrote a track both of the other rounds.
• 1:33:03
  SPEAKER_05: So the second round is very much a smaller one for me.
• 1:33:07
  SPEAKER_04: Um, this also gives me the opportunity to ask a question that I haven't asked anyone yet is what is it what does a game set mash look like from the inside?
• 1:33:17
  SPEAKER_04: It depends on the game set mash.
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_05: Generally, it looks like just a lot of people throwing ideas at each other in a Discord chat.
• 1:33:31
  SPEAKER_05: Sure, yeah.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_05: Just at the end of at the end of it all, something gets made and then we ship it.
• 1:33:37
  SPEAKER_04: I've always sort of gotten the impression of organized chaos.
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's pretty much what it is.
• 1:33:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it seems like fun.
• 1:33:44
  SPEAKER_04: If I had more musical talent, I'd love to join one of these days.
• 1:33:49
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's a great place to learn, right?
• 1:33:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's a good time.
• 1:33:52
  SPEAKER_05: Fair enough.
• 1:33:54
  SPEAKER_05: Or I know that uh Etzero was I think I think she has started um hosting smaller combos um really just like a theme.
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_04: I need to go bother at Zero about this.
• 1:34:08
  SPEAKER_04: For sure, yeah.
• 1:34:09
  SPEAKER_04: Just because it's always fun bothering at Zero.
• 1:34:13
  SPEAKER_05: No, I entirely agree.
• 1:34:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um but yeah, no, so she's she started those up.
• 1:34:21
  SPEAKER_05: I think those will be fun, and I think those will be a pretty good opportunity if you're looking for something just like sort of laid back and chill.
• 1:34:29
  SPEAKER_05: Because as fun as GameSet Mash is, it is you know a month and a half of pretty consistent doing things or having people on your team do things, you know.
• 1:34:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I do um I do some events that are like a lot of work and a time crunch, but this is like a long weekend or a week, not like a month and a half or two months or whatever.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like it's uh that that that sounds like a marathon.
• 1:35:01
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, for sure.
• 1:35:02
  SPEAKER_05: Because like at the end of the day, you're working for like or at least your team is working for like 30 days.
• 1:35:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then there are small like intervals for breaks for like voting and like planning ahead for what's gonna happen next, right?
• 1:35:18
  SPEAKER_05: Like there's there's not a lot, like not a lot of time, um, that no one's doing anything.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_05: So if you're not doing anything, it means that someone else on your team is.
• 1:35:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um you have to and you have to still like be at least a little worried about it, you know.
• 1:35:36
  SPEAKER_04: So uh do you um if you could pick what the next game set mash theme was, what do you think you'd pick?
• 1:35:44
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, definitely Splatoon in there.
• 1:35:46
  SPEAKER_04: I think Splatoon would be great for game set mash.
• 1:35:49
  SPEAKER_04: I've I've I've got a I've got a pitch.
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_05: Splatoon versus jet set radio.
• 1:35:55
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know jet set radio.
• 1:35:57
  SPEAKER_05: I know there's um I know bomber cyber funk.
• 1:36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, extremely similar.
• 1:36:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um yeah, yeah, same same like lead composer.
• 1:36:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um, yeah.
• 1:36:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:11
  SPEAKER_04: Is Jet Set Radio like multiple games?
• 1:36:13
  SPEAKER_04: There's uh two and a half.
• 1:36:16
  SPEAKER_04: There uh the original Jet Set Radio on Dreamcast, there was a sequel Jet Set Radio Future on Xbox, and at some point there was a Game Boy Advance port of Jet Set Radio, but like porting Dreamcast to Game Boy Advance, you might as well just consider it a completely different game.
• 1:36:33
  SPEAKER_05: Gotcha.
• 1:36:34
  SPEAKER_05: But like worst case scenario, even then, you could do like two Jet Set radios and DRC.
• 1:36:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:36:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that would be fun.
• 1:36:42
  SPEAKER_05: That would be a lot of fun.
• 1:36:42
  SPEAKER_05: I think both of those, I guess I yeah, I don't know Jet Set Radio, but I know Bomber, Cyberfunk, and Splatoon have like a lot of character to each of them, right?
• 1:36:54
  SPEAKER_05: They're very colorful stylized games.
• 1:36:57
  SPEAKER_04: The first time I saw Splatoon, I thought, oh man, Nintendo needs to pair up with Sega and get some like Jitset Radio crossover in this because the style is just a perfect match.
• 1:37:08
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, for sure.
• 1:37:09
  SPEAKER_04: Um I wanted to talk a little bit about uh Time Shift.
• 1:37:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you know, as previously mentioned, you were the representative of the youths.
• 1:37:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um I was curious how how did you pick your songs?
• 1:37:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um so the first I mean, they sort of just happened.
• 1:37:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um quarters of time I picked.
• 1:38:17
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, you found it.
• 1:38:19
  SPEAKER_05: I yeah.
• 1:38:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:38:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, hey, I know that one and I like that one.
• 1:38:24
  SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna I could probably do something with that one, and then I did.
• 1:38:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, when I when I saw Corridors of Time Shift, I was like, yeah, this had to happen.
• 1:38:33
  SPEAKER_04: If we're celebrating OCR's history, you can't do that without corridors of time.
• 1:38:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it it seemed even not knowing a lot of the history, it seemed like a really fitting track, and I was like, okay, yeah, I'm um I'm gonna take it.
• 1:38:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's it's also yeah, just a fantastic track.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_05: It's so good.
• 1:38:50
  SPEAKER_05: It's so good.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um then oh, I don't know which one I did next.
• 1:38:57
  SPEAKER_05: I think I think around the same time I picked quarters of time, I picked um the Fire Emblem one.
• 1:39:06
  SPEAKER_04: Which and if I remember right, that's a that's a medley of several fire emblems.
• 1:39:13
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:14
  SPEAKER_05: It um and several not Fire Emblem tracks too.
• 1:39:19
  SPEAKER_05: There's a there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff going on in that remix.
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but I the pitch in my mind was I wanted to do something from older Fire Emblem as like for me.
• 1:39:38
  SPEAKER_05: Because I'm like, okay, I'm a Fire Emblem fan.
• 1:39:42
  SPEAKER_05: Um what could I do from an older game to put on here too?
• 1:39:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and so I decided on oh, what's it called?
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_05: It's called something different in Fire Emblem 7, and that's the name I know it by, which is a Knight's Oath.
• 1:39:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um, it's called something different in Fire Emblem 1.
• 1:40:02
  SPEAKER_05: But it's the same motif.
• 1:40:05
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and I was like, that's a good one.
• 1:40:07
  SPEAKER_05: I like that, and I can work with that.
• 1:40:09
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then I just sort of started adding more and more things to it.
• 1:40:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um and now and then it became the monstrosity it wound up as.
• 1:40:20
  SPEAKER_05: Oh well, there you go.
• 1:40:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I didn't even think about that.
• 1:40:24
  SPEAKER_04: I think the first fire emblem to actually come out in the US was Actor Overclock Remix.
• 1:40:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:40:32
  SPEAKER_05: No, it was I mean, it was it was on the Game Boy Advance.
• 1:40:35
  SPEAKER_05: It was it's a good game.
• 1:40:37
  SPEAKER_05: I wish that they had they're that Nintendo has done a better job of porting all of the other old ones to America because they haven't.
• 1:40:47
  SPEAKER_05: At least they what they remade uh one as a DS game, right?
• 1:40:51
  SPEAKER_05: They remade one, they remade three, and they remade two.
• 1:40:55
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, which one is the remake of three?
• 1:40:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I think it's the new mystery of the emblem.
• 1:40:59
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know if the remake is called something different, but yeah, they also they also did that one on DS, like with the same art style as the first one.
• 1:41:09
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, I completely missed that one.
• 1:41:10
  SPEAKER_05: I'll have to go back to it.
• 1:41:12
  SPEAKER_05: They kind of blend blend into each other.
• 1:41:15
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 1:41:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um considering they're both like the same protagonist, and even half of three is the same story as one.
• 1:41:22
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah.
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but then two got actually pretty um in-depth remake on the 3ds, which I like a lot.
• 1:41:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um wait, what was that called?
• 1:41:34
  SPEAKER_05: Did I miss this one also?
• 1:41:36
  SPEAKER_05: Shadows of Valentia.
• 1:41:38
  SPEAKER_05: Oh! So that was that was a remake of Fire Emblem 2.
• 1:41:42
  SPEAKER_05: Um I did not know that we've gotten four, five, or six in actually, I don't think we've gone six in any capacity, which is extremely unfortunate considering Roy was the Smash character.
• 1:41:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um please, please, Nintendo, Fire Emblem Six, please.
• 1:42:05
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but also Fire Emblem Four and Five, because they're both, I've heard, are really good and I want to play them.
• 1:42:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, have you ever messed around with the uh Shining Force series?
• 1:42:14
  SPEAKER_04: Ooh, I've heard of it, but I don't think I played any.
• 1:42:17
  SPEAKER_04: So they were basically uh Sega looked at Fire Emblem and they went, hey, we need something like that for our system, and Shining Force is what they came up with.
• 1:42:26
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, generally speaking, if you like one, you like the other.
• 1:42:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, I will I will give that a look-see.
• 1:42:33
  SPEAKER_04: That said, you know, talking about like messed up things in terms of like games not releasing outside of Japan, uh, Fire Emblem 3 was a Saturn game that did this thing, it came on three discs, and each disc was uh a different scenario.
• 1:42:52
  SPEAKER_04: Like it had every disc had the same overarching plot, but it was from like a different point of view.
• 1:42:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, where they brought it to the US, they localized exactly one disc.
• 1:43:03
  SPEAKER_04: So we got literally one third of a Shining Force game.
• 1:43:07
  SPEAKER_04: Oh no.
• 1:43:10
  SPEAKER_04: Oh no.
• 1:43:12
  SPEAKER_04: Being a Sega RPG fan is just pain.
• 1:43:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:43:18
  SPEAKER_04: Uh oh yeah, but back to time shift.
• 1:43:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, your third track, uh, you covered Sticker Bush Symphony, which is also just like a completely iconic piece of VGM!
• 1:44:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, um, me picking that one was sort of the same deal as Quarters of Time, even if it isn't quite as covered.
• 1:44:11
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's Sticker Bush Symphony.
• 1:44:14
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 1:44:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um you you know it, and that was and I liked it, so I was like, okay, I can do something with this.
• 1:44:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um yeah, but that one I think happened after both of the other tracks were pretty close to finalized.
• 1:44:29
  SPEAKER_05: And it was just like, I have time and I want to work on something else, so that's what I did.
• 1:44:34
  SPEAKER_04: I you know what?
• 1:44:35
  SPEAKER_04: I remember that coming up uh when I when I interviewed a bunch of people for Time Shift.
• 1:44:40
  SPEAKER_04: They're like, oh yeah, we only had three before tracks, and then Blixer heroically did a third in on short notice.
• 1:44:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:44:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:44:50
  SPEAKER_05: Pretty much.
• 1:44:51
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, like, there to be clear, it wasn't like that like close before the album finished, but it was like well into the album's lifespan.
• 1:45:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh one thing that uh you mentioned in passing earlier that intrigued me is you mentioned uh sometimes you're doing two Game Boys.
• 1:45:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um how does your songwriting process differ between using one Game Boy and two?
• 1:45:17
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so it doesn't overall that much.
• 1:45:20
  SPEAKER_05: And I I feel like that's like I feel like Chiptune at its core is still built off um the four channel restriction.
• 1:45:31
  SPEAKER_05: So even when I'm going past that, it's like, well, the core of my song should still feel like a chiptune song.
• 1:45:42
  SPEAKER_05: And that means that I'm still writing most of the song, or not even like most of the song, but like there's one Game Boy that's like doing most of the content of the song to the point that the song would probably work with one Game Boy, it just wouldn't be as good.
• 1:46:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um and then the second Game Boy is just covering like filling space, or if I want one um sometimes what I'll do is I will do um one wave channel which is audible and one which is far less audible, so the other one can like cover more ground, right?
• 1:46:26
  SPEAKER_05: Or like I'll have one just like doing a low drone and then the other is actually like doing melodic content, um, which you can't do with just one Game Boy, right?
• 1:46:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:46:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um one of the cool things about Furnace Tracker that I really like is you can sort of like create your your dream game console sound because you can be like, I'm gonna create a track that uses the Game Boy sound chip and the Sega Genesis sound chip.
• 1:46:52
  SPEAKER_04: Ooh, yeah, that's that's neat.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_04: It's super fun.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_04: Well, which prompts another question, actually.
• 1:46:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so I know Game Boy is your happy place.
• 1:47:01
  SPEAKER_04: Have you considered messing around with any other sound chips?
• 1:47:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I've considered it, but I like I think were I to mess around with other sound chips, it would probably be the SNES one.
• 1:47:12
  SPEAKER_05: Um yeah, that's legit.
• 1:47:14
  SPEAKER_05: Like sample-based would be a whole new world for you.
• 1:47:17
  SPEAKER_05: Right, right.
• 1:47:18
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and that would be in no small part because it's like still like Nintendo and I'm like really familiar with it.
• 1:47:26
  SPEAKER_05: Um yeah, that would I think and it also is like not like still like 8-bit, right?
• 1:47:34
  SPEAKER_05: Um I'm not like doing the NES, right?
• 1:47:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um like I'm I'm getting a very unique sound out of the SNES while still maintaining the sort of chip vibe.
• 1:47:48
  SPEAKER_04: Right, yeah, because the NES sound chip compared to the Game Boy is like, well, it's basically the same thing, but a little worse.
• 1:47:55
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that's interesting.
• 1:47:58
  SPEAKER_05: Cause the because the NES sound chip um is the same thing with a worse wave channel, um, but you can sample things in a way.
• 1:48:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's true.
• 1:48:09
  SPEAKER_05: You can't with the Game Boy.
• 1:48:12
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you can, um, it's just a process.
• 1:48:17
  SPEAKER_05: I've heard Game Boy games with voice samples, they don't sound great.
• 1:48:21
  SPEAKER_05: No, and I mean, like, neither do NES samples, but like the NES, but the NES has a designated sample channel, whereas you're sacrificing melodic content to do samples.
• 1:48:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:48:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, even though you know, the NES games with samples, it's usually something extremely minor, right?
• 1:48:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like a game might have two, like uh the only one I can even think of off the top of my head is Mario 3 has like a timpani sample that it uses occasionally.
• 1:48:51
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:53
  SPEAKER_05: Um, yeah, the sample channel definitely gets a lot more used out of like sound effects.
• 1:48:58
  SPEAKER_05: Um but even then, like that does affect how you write chip.
• 1:49:03
  SPEAKER_05: Um because in I mean, I guess it doesn't really affect yet how you how you write it now, but it did.
• 1:49:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um when sound effects would also be taking up space on the chip, right?
• 1:49:16
  SPEAKER_05: So you would have to figure out what part of the song was least important for it to function so you could have sound effects.
• 1:49:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:49:25
  SPEAKER_05: And you had to do that, I think, a little bit less on the NES because you had a designated sample channel.
• 1:49:31
  SPEAKER_05: For sure.
• 1:49:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:49:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:49:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I do tend to uh uh think of the NES as a four-channel system just because that sample channel was in fact used so sparingly.
• 1:49:42
  SPEAKER_04: No same.
• 1:49:43
  SPEAKER_05: For sure.
• 1:49:44
  SPEAKER_04: And it's yeah, it is 100% all down to uh uh memory space on NES cartridges was just that precious.
• 1:49:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:49:53
  SPEAKER_05: And that's that's another thing that's really nice about um using two Game Boys is that LSGG has a lot of built in.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um sampled like kits or that's gonna like create speech.
• 1:50:05
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but that's all designated to the wave channel.
• 1:50:08
  SPEAKER_05: So if you are going to use that, you're doing so at cost of having generally a bassine or more unique tones in your music.
• 1:50:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um but not with two Game Boys, in which case you have that and you have another one with which you can do whatever you want with any sound effect that's on there, or anything you can add yourself, which I don't think I'm ever going to do with the um actual hardware, but I have experimented with doing on emulators.
• 1:50:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, how would you I guess you'd have to use like a flashcart or something?
• 1:50:42
  SPEAKER_04: How would you do that even do that on actual hardware?
• 1:50:45
  SPEAKER_05: I'm pretty sure that is how you do it.
• 1:50:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's legit.
• 1:50:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um in terms of sound chips, uh I've always hated that the Virtual Boy uh failed spectacularly and immediately.
• 1:51:00
  SPEAKER_04: Like I mean, for one thing, it's it's a cool piece of hardware, but also I really like the Virtual Boy sound chip.
• 1:51:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's just got a nice sound.
• 1:51:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I don't know that I've heard a lot of Virtual Boy music.
• 1:51:12
  SPEAKER_04: I I would recommend looking into it.
• 1:51:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh uh.
• 1:51:16
  SPEAKER_04: Of all things, it's an absolutely terrible game, but I remember Waterworld, surprisingly, having a good soundtrack.
• 1:51:25
  SPEAKER_05: Interesting.
• 1:51:26
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you can say that for all of Tim Fallen's work.
• 1:51:30
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 1:51:31
  SPEAKER_04: God, what a legend.
• 1:51:34
  SPEAKER_05: So, so cool.
• 1:51:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah.
• 1:51:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh okay.
• 1:51:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh clearly you need to cover Plock at some point.
• 1:51:40
  SPEAKER_04: One of these days.
• 1:51:42
  SPEAKER_04: One of these days.
• 1:51:44
  SPEAKER_05: Or or at least Solstice.
• 1:51:46
  SPEAKER_05: Or Pictionary.
• 1:51:48
  SPEAKER_04: I think those are the things that Pictionary is a really good one.
• 1:51:50
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, you know, um, I think a fallen soundtrack that in VGM circles does not get enough respect.
• 1:51:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, Echo the Dolphin Defender of the Future.
• 1:52:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um, yeah, I don't know that I've heard a whole ton from that.
• 1:52:04
  SPEAKER_04: It's not really in his usual style that he was using in the 80s and 90s.
• 1:52:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's not like, you know, the frenetic prog rock style.
• 1:52:14
  SPEAKER_04: This is more of a uh honestly closer to like Pink Floyd sort of not psychedelia exactly, but more uh slow contemplative sort of prog rock sound.
• 1:52:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:52:28
  SPEAKER_04: But it's uh it's a gorgeous soundtrack.
• 1:52:30
  SPEAKER_04: I uh I uh I get migraines.
• 1:52:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh when I have a migraine, I pop on the Defender of the Future soundtrack.
• 1:52:37
  SPEAKER_04: That's awesome.
• 1:52:38
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's really awesome, yeah.
• 1:52:40
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so I guess um uh thank you for your time today.
• 1:52:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I I we've gotten through my list of questions and then some.
• 1:52:52
  SPEAKER_04: Uh do you have anything you wanna uh shout out or talk about that we haven't brought up yet?
• 1:52:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um not off the top of my head, no.
• 1:53:01
  SPEAKER_04: Well, alrighty then.
• 1:53:04
  SPEAKER_04: I will most definitely.
• 1:53:07
  SPEAKER_04: Could you give us a uh like a a teaser or a sneak peek about a track that you're working on currently?
• 1:53:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh what am I working on?
• 1:53:17
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sorry I didn't mean to keep you on the spot.
• 1:53:21
  SPEAKER_05: No, it's just it's it's been a minute since I've like sat down and like really like worked on something.
• 1:53:27
  SPEAKER_05: Like I think last second was was Game Set Mash.
• 1:53:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um But I have I'm I have a couple things for albums in the work works.
• 1:53:38
  SPEAKER_05: Nice.
• 1:53:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um I'm doing one for the mobile game album that Violence doing, and for the hot and cold album that Voodoo Queen is doing.
• 1:53:48
  SPEAKER_04: Hot and Cold is such a fun concept.
• 1:53:50
  SPEAKER_04: I really like it.
• 1:53:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's really neat.
• 1:53:53
  SPEAKER_05: I yeah, that one's coming along.
• 1:53:55
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, both of them are coming along pretty well.
• 1:53:57
  SPEAKER_05: It's just a matter of sitting down and doing more.
• 1:54:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, not not that I'm not looking forward to the mobile game soundtrack, it's just not quite as creative as hot and cold.
• 1:54:06
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:54:08
  SPEAKER_05: No, but mobile the mobile game soundtrack gave me a very good excuse to do uh some Starrail music, which I appreciate.
• 1:54:17
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, yeah.
• 1:54:18
  SPEAKER_04: I uh I fooled around with Genshin a little.
• 1:54:20
  SPEAKER_04: I have not played Star Rail.
• 1:54:22
  SPEAKER_05: I I mean obviously it's a gacha, right?
• 1:54:25
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but I like Star Rail a lot.
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's really neat.
• 1:54:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh have to check out the soundtrack.
• 1:54:30
  SPEAKER_05: No, I I've got recommendations.
• 1:54:32
  SPEAKER_05: They've got some.
• 1:54:33
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, send it my way.
• 1:54:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, happily.
• 1:54:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh well cool.
• 1:54:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh thank you for your time today.
• 1:54:39
  SPEAKER_04: I I appreciate it.
• 1:54:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, of course.
• 1:55:08
  SPEAKER_04: Spooky season is drawing to a climax and a close.
• 1:55:12
  SPEAKER_04: I hope everyone has a spooky Halloween and enough candy to worry medical professionals of multiple disciplines.
• 1:55:18
  SPEAKER_04: As for the usual closing stuff, here's your monthly reminder that you can support OC Remix at https colon slash slash www.patreon.com slash OC Remix.
• 1:55:31
  SPEAKER_04: You can also find that link on the OC Remix main page.
• 1:55:34
  SPEAKER_04: You can support this podcast directly at overclock remixpodcast.buzzsprout.com.
• 1:55:41
  SPEAKER_04: The podcast promise is that any money I get above and beyond DePod expenses will go to OC Remix.
• 1:55:47
  SPEAKER_04: That hasn't happened yet, but with your help, anything is possible.
• 1:55:50
  SPEAKER_04: And, if you really like the sound of my voice, do remember to check out my new podcast, This Week in VGM, where we talk about video game music on the anniversary of the release of the game.
• 1:56:03
  SPEAKER_04: Our spooky interstitial music this month was Spooky Quesos by Rakos from Super Mario World 2 Yoshi's Island.
• 1:56:11
  SPEAKER_04: Our outro music was Down by Chimpazilla and Ammunator from The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
• 1:56:18
  SPEAKER_04: Last but not least, we always play out with a track selected randomly from the remix roulette on the OC Remix main page.
• 1:56:25
  SPEAKER_04: I hope it's a spooky one.
• 1:56:27
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna roll this six-sided die, and that's a two, so we have Arboreality by About Blank from Guardian Legends.
• 1:56:36
  SPEAKER_04: Alrighty, folks, have a spooky one, and I'll see you next month.