Diggin' in the Carts podcast/radio show

Nick Dwyer of RBMA (director of Diggin' in the Carts) has started doing a podcast/radio show consisting of interviews with some classic arcade and console musicians. Apologies in advance for not listing off accurately all the relevant consoles:

* Manabu NAMIKI -- Bomb Jack Twin, Battle Garegga, Metal Slug 6, Gradius ReBirth, Contra ReBirth, etc.
* Hiroshi KAWAGUCHI (Sega) -- Space Harrier, Out Run, Fantasy Zone, After Burner, etc.
* Kenji YAMAZAKI -- Ninja Gaiden (Game Gear), Mega Man 2 (Game Boy), Superman (Genesis/MegaDrive)
* Takenobu MITSUYOSHI -- Strike Fighter, Virtua Racing, Maimai 2
* Tsukasa MASUKO -- Bomb Jack, Mighty Bomb Jack, Arkanoid, Megami Tensei / Megami Tensei 2 / Shin Megami Tensei, T&C Surf Designs, Xexyz
* Yuzo KOSHIRO -- Actraiser 1/2, Ys 1/2, Legacy of the Wizard, Streets of Rage 1/2, Shenmue, Etrian Odyssey 1/2/3/4, etc.
* Hitoshi SAKIMOTO -- Bubble Ghost, Gauntlet 4 (MegaDrive), Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Gradius 5, Final Fantasy XII
* Shinji HOSOE (a.k.a. MEGATEN) -- Dragon Spirit, Final Lap 1/2**
* Soshi HOSOI -- Sonic Wings 2/3
* Nobuo UEMATSU -- Final Fantasy series, King's Knight, Hanjuku Hero series, Romanging SaGa series

There's also things like discussions of Hirokazu "Hip" TANAKA's works, and overall music from several companies in general (Capcom, Konami, Sunsoft, Namco, Square/Enix, Nintendo, Sega, etc.).

Here's the full breakdown of all the shows: https://www.rbmaradio.com/shows/diggin-carts/episodes

Schedule and listening links: https://www.rbmaradio.com/schedule

** -- This one may be interesting simply because the Final Lap games were done with the N163 chip we're all familiar with.

Cool, some of my favourite musicians right there. Hmm... Mega Man 2 (GB)??? That must be the absolute worst soundtrack out of any MM game on any system. :/

Yet on rainwave chiptune Internet radio, I hear tracks of it play at least 4 times a week. Someone must be trolling...

Honestly, some tracks aren't that bad, its just a bit too high pitched and out of tune.

I guess Mega Man 2 (GB) has got a bit of a cult following. I recommend checking out RushJet1's remake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STmUaIEClmY

Should be interesting.
[hr]

Phoenix Project also has a good cover of Air Man, one of the more repetitive tracks, which had some of those nasty high-pitched bits.

It's funny how there's some "pitch corrected" versions on YouTube, but there are merely "octave corrected", and they are still out of tune.

As of the cult following, I guess I can understand. I played that game when I was young, and somehow the music, especially the stage select screen one, marked me. I recalled it pretty well when I reproduced it on an custom synth on an AVR some years ago (see attachment), all from memory. Maybe when I was playing that game at that time, I somehow didn't notice how wrong it sounded. Now I can't even listen to the GB version, it makes me cringe.

Back when I was into Game Boy Advance homebrew I measured my GBA's speaker, and its response resembled that of a third-order Butterworth high-pass filter with a corner at 800 Hz. I simulated the highpass for the first loop of this cover of SMB2 underground theme, which I made to prove a point about channel 3 chords and the tuning of channel 4 short-period noise. If you listen on dinky little built-in speakers on a laptop, smartphone, or tablet computer, you will probably miss the drop when the highpass cuts out because of the speaker's own highpass.

I don't know whether earlier Game Boy models have the same response, but with a speaker that small, I'm guessing they can't be that much better. I guess that's part of why few Game Boy games use the traditional FEDCBA9876543210012356789ABCDEF waveform for channel 3: it has too much low and not enough high to penetrate the speaker. Perhaps the octave problem was a last minute workaround for notes getting lost in the highpass.

Okay, so are MP3s of these episodes archived somewhere?

Try asking @RBMARADIO or @NickDwyer on Twitter. :-)