For Episode 128, Brent and Rob focus only on titles which were released the same year their respective consoles were released, exploring the way composers approached working with new hardware. And they do it chronologically, so you can hear the technological progress over the years. Full track listing below.
Game – Composer – Song – Company – Console – Year (North American release unless otherwise indicated)
Donkey Kong – Yukio Kaneoka – Title BGM – Nintendo – Famicom – 1983
Donkey Kong Jr. – Yukio Kaneoka – Level 1 BGM – Nintendo – Famicom – 1983
Great Soccer – unknown – Main Game – Sega – Sega Mark III – 1985
Bikkuriman World – Shinichi Sakamoto – Round 1 – Hudson Soft/West One – PC Engine – 1987
Shanghai – unknown – Round 3 – Hudson Soft/Activision – PC Engine – 1987
Victory Run: Eikou no 13,000KM – Takeaki Kunimoto – Race Music 3 – Hudson Soft – PC Engine – 1987
Super Thunder Blade – Sachio Ogawa (Sting Saito) – Stage 1 – Sega – Mega Drive – 1988
Super Thunder Blade – Sachio Ogawa (Sting Saito) – High Scores – Sega – Mega Drive – 1988
Super Mario Land – Hirokazu Tanaka – Ending – Nintendo – Game Boy (Japan) – 1989
Makai Toushi SaGa – Nobuo Uematsu – Forbidden Tower – Square – Game Boy (Japan) – 1989
Super Mario World – Koji Kondo – Vanilla Dome – Nintendo – Super Famicom – 1990
Zan Gear – Masaaki Uno – Spring of His Life – Wolf Team/Telenet Japan – Game Gear (Japan) – 1990
Final Fight – Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, Yoko Shimomura, Toshio Kajino (arr.) – Mad Gear Gang – Capcom – Super Famicom – 1990
Actraiser – Yuzo Koshiro – All Over the World – Enix – Super Famicom – 1990
Soukoban – unknown – gameplay – Riverhillsoft – Game Gear (Japan) – 1990
@Joe Hi, about the hardware/sound processors, we’ve covered a lot of that kind of stuff in previous episodes, so we didn’t really get into it for this episode. But if you’re interested, check out Episode 21, which is is a focus/interview on/with Jeff van Dyck, and in that episode, we really get into detail about the hardware for the NES, SNES, and Genesis. For the Game Boy, I think we talk about the hardware in the handheld console focus, Episode 71. And for the TurboGrafx-16, we talk about the hardware in Episode 57, which is a focus on TurboGrafx-16.
http://legacymusichour.blogspot.com/2012/03/legacy-music-hour-episode-71-handheld.html
http://legacymusichour.blogspot.com/2011/11/legacy-music-hour-episode-57-turbografx.html
http://legacymusichour.blogspot.com/2011/03/legacy-music-hour-episode-21-jeff-van.html
Something I feel that should have had some discussion was the sound hardware used in each game console. What were the sound processors and their capabilities. For instance the Gameboy. It had a single speaker but you could plug in a set of headphones and hear the music in stereo. Quite by accident I discovered that if the 3.5mm plug wasn’t inserted all the way the the songs would be somewhat muted except for the parts that were specific to each ear.