The Video Game Music Hour: Episode One

Hello, dear readers and listeners. I apologize for my absence from the blog and the podcast. Suffice to say, I've had quite a bit on my plate recently. I'm not going to bore you with details, but I'm getting ready to reboot this whole deal. First of all, the Armchair Gamer Podcast is going to be less frequent in its' release schedule, hopefully I'll do an episode a month. 
Instead of focusing so much of my time on AGP, I've decided to follow another of my ambitions, and start a weekly online radio show. Since I'm a very nerdy fellow, rather than playing the newest pop song- I'm going to play retro video game tunes that came out in the 1980's and 1990's, mainly 8 bit and 16 bit music. Since it's a radio show, I'm going to be taking Skype callers with requests for music . The show will hopefully be live at 7 Central Time at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-video-game-music-hour

I'll also be making videos after the show where you can listen to the week's music at the Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheArmchairNerd?ob=0&feature=results_main (Please Subscribe)

Also, here's the video

Video Game Music Hour Notes

Track One: “Moon” from Duck Tales

Track from Duck Tales, a NES platformer developed by Capcom and released in 1990. The composer on this game was Hiroshige Tonomura, who was involved with a few other titles in this era.

Track Two: “Vegetable Valley 2” from Kirby’s Adventure.

This is a track from HAL Laboratories 1993 platformer on the NES, Kirby’s Adventure. Two composers on this game were Hirokazu Andu and Jun Ishikawa.

Track Three: “Stage One” from Blaster Master

This next track is from the 1988 Sunsoft title Blaster Master, a run-and-gun game composed by Naoki Kodaka.

Track Four: “Bloody Tears” from Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest

This is a track from the 1987-1988 side-scrolling, role-playing game Castlevania 2 from Konami. It was composed by Kenichi Matsubara

Track Five: A Track I Couldn’t Find a Name For from Rygar.

This next track is from Rygar, which was an arcade cabinet that got ported to the NES in 1987. I don’t have a composer right here, though I imagine it would be pretty easy to find.

Track Six: “Escape from Tourian” from Metroid

This track is from the 1986 title Metroid, published by Nintendo on the NES. It was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka. It was one of the earliest games to really embrace music as a way to give character to a game.

Track Seven: “Fever Theme” from Doctor Mario

This is from the classic puzzle game Doctor Mario, released on the NES in 1990 by Nintendo. It’s a very catchy song on a game full of catchy music composed by Hirokazu Tanaka, who will be in a lot of episodes in the future.

Track Eight: “Sacrifices” from Actraiser

This is from a 1990 Enix-published game, which is absolutely fascinating from a gameplay and musical perspective. It was composed by Yuzo Koshiro.

Track Nine: “The Best Appears” from Actraiser

Track Ten: “Who Turned Out The Lights” from Earthworm Jim

This next track is from Earthworm Jim, a platformer released on all kinds of different consoles by SEGA. This was composed by Mark Miller.

Track Eleven: “Intro Stage” from Mega Man 7

This track is from Capcom’s title Mega Man 7 released in 1995. This game had three different composers, and I don’t know which one did this song. Anyway, this series has tons of great music that I will further explore in this show.

Track Twelve: “Memory of The Wind” from Final Fantasy III

This track is from FF3 released by Square on the Famicom, and that’s why my inclusion of this track is problematic. The version I played probably came from the re-release a couple of years ago on the DS, the first time Americans legitimately got to play this game. Regardless, the series has great music, and this song was composed by Nobuo Uematsu.