It seems like once a year, Brent and Rob take a brief departure from the 8-bit and 16-bit era to look at music from eras 32-bit and up.  Episode 78 marks that time of the year, and this time, they’re joined by former Battletoads Guinness World Record holder and Tetris Attack master Pablo Bert, and video game music cover artist Stedman Wilson.  Brent and Rob share tracks from the Sega CD, Dreamcast, Wii, and Xbox 360, while Pablo and Stedman focus more on arcade music of the post 16-bit period.  This episode is almost two hours long, so in this case, it might be more appropriate to call it The Legacy Music Hours, and since it’s less “legacy” and more contemporary, you might even call it simply The Music Hours.  NOTE: With arcade music, the end of the 16-bit era happens earlier than and isn’t as exact as how it was for the home consoles, because the development of arcade games progressed at a different rates, and because there is so much variation with each arcade machine, it’s a little harder to tell if a game is 16-bit or beyond, so it kind of just depends on the hardware specs of each particular game and the way the music sounds.  In other words, one or two of the arcade tracks played on this episode might be considered 16-bit.  NOTE: Stedman and Pablo played the Dreamcast version of Cleopatra Fortune, because the arcade version they brought didn’t sound right.  Full track listing below.

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

Batman Returns – Spencer Nilsen – Lair of Ice – Malibu/Sega – Sega CD – 1993

Eschatos – Yousuke Yasui – Silver Lining – Qute – Xbox 360 (Japan) – 2011

Battletoads – David Wise – Stage 1 – Rare – arcade – 1994

Virtua Tennis – unknown – Beginning A Destiny – Hitmaker/Sega – Dreamcast – 2000

Grid Seeker: Project Storm Hammer – Norihiro Furukawa – Stardust (Mission 5) – Taito – arcade (Japan) – 1992

Violent Storm – Kenichiro Fukui, Seiichi Fukami (Prophet Fuka), Youhei Kishimoto (Kishimaro) – Who’ll Be The Hero (Stage 1) – Konami – arcade – 1993

Excitebike 64  – Matt Furniss, Chris Lamb – Kyoto Japan – Left Field Productions – N64 – 2000

Wario Land: Shake It! – Tomoya Tomita – Stonetooth Cave – Good-Feel/Nintendo – Wii – 2008

Mr. Driller 2 – Masaru Shiina – Mr. Driller’s Theme (Ardenten Version) – Namco – arcade – 2000

The Terminator – Tommy Tallarico – Future Shock – Virgin Interactive – Sega CD – 1993

Kirby’s Epic Yarn – Tomoya Tomita – Outer Rings – Good-Feel/HAL Laboratory/Nintendo – Wii – 2010

Mighty! Pang – Takafumi Wada – China – Mitchell/Capcom – arcade – 2000

Rainbow Cotton – Great Nakamura – Stage 1 – Success – Dreamcast (Japan) – 2000

A Boy and His Blob – Daniel Sadowski – Subterra – WayForward/Majesco Games – Wii – 2009

Mushihimesama Futari – Manabu Namiki – On the Verge of Madness (Stage 5) – Cave – arcade (Japan) – 2006

Cleopatra Fortune – Shuichiro Nakazawa – In-Game Music – Taito/Natsume/Altron – Dreamcast (Japan) – 2001