Nerd Noise Game Club: C2E8 - “Our Four Favorites” (Masters of VGM series)

Today’s Broadcast is C2E8 for Theme Thursday, June 30th, 2022. Today’s episode will be Nerd Noise Radio’s contribution to the greater VGM podcast scene massive group project “Masters of VGM” (https://mastersofvgm.com) and like all “MoVGM” episodes from all the participating podcasts, will be a focus on our four favorite composers (with a surprise “East meets West” twist) - on a program that we’re quite simply calling “Our Four Favorites”

01) Earcatcher: 00:00:00

02) Hugues’ Composer #4: Yoko Shimomura!

1. Hugues’ Yoko track: Ken’s Theme - Street Fighter II - Arcade
   1. Music - 00:00:03
   2. Intro: 00:02:13
   3. Top of Show Business: 00:04:08
   4. Track (and composer) Discussion: 00:19:19
2. John’s Yoko Track: Kairi 1 - Kingdom Hearts - PS2
   1. Music - 00:24:26
   2. Discussion - 00:26:09

03) John’s Composer #4: Martin Iveson!

1. John’s Martin Track: Shop Theme - Jaguar XJ220 - Sega CD
   1. Music - 00:33:23
   2. Discussion - 00:34:48
2. Hugues’ Martin Track: Country Select - Jaguar XJ220 - Sega CD
   1. Music - 00:38:24
   2. Discussion - 00:39:44
   3. BEGIN: Bad Audio for voice (backup copy - see note after track list) - 00:40:15

04) Hugues’ Composer #3: Yuzo Koshiro!

1. Hugues’ Yuzo Track: Daiba Freezing Town - 7th Dragon 2020 - PSP
   1. Music - 00:42:38
   2. Discussion - 00:45:55
2. John’s Yuzo Track: Undiscovered Realm (in-game symphonic vers) - Actraiser Renaissance - multiplatform
   1. Music - 00:50:21
   2. Discussion - 00:52:39

05) John’s Composer #3: Spencer Nilsen!

1. John’s Spencer Track: Cathedral and Sewers - Batman Returns - Sega CD
   1. Music - 00:57:33
   2. Discussion - 01:00:44
   3. END: Bad Audio for voice (backup copy) - 01:06:09
2. Hugues’ Spencer [maybe] Track: The Vents - Ecco the Dolphin - Genesis (possibly composed by Andras Magyari and/or Brian Coburn instead - or as well)
   1. Music - 01:06:25
   2. Discussion - 01:08:38

06) Hugues’ Composer #2: Nobuo Uematsu!

1. Hugues’ Nobuo Track: The Oath - Final Fantasy VIII - PS1
   1. Music - 01:14:53
   2. Discussion - 01:18:09
2. John’s Nobuo Track: Esto Gaza - Final Fantasy IX - PS1
   1. Music - 01:25:26
   2. Discussion - 01:29:05

07) John’s Composer #2: Matt Furniss!

1. John’s Matt Track: The Red Woods - Puggsy - Genesis
   1. Music - 01:34:57
   2. Discussion - 01:37:59
2. Hugues’ Matt Track: Title - Sega Chess - Mastersystem
   1. Music - 01:42:39
   2. Discussion - 01:44:46

08) Hugues’ Composer [TEAM] #1: Hayato Sonoda and/or Takahiro Unisuga

[Falcom Sound Team JDK]!

1. Hugues’ Falcom Track: Blue Destination - Trails of Cold Steel II - Vita/PS3/PS4/PC
   1. Music - 01:51:41
   2. Discussion - 01:56:28
   3. BEGIN: More Backup voice audio - 02:01:07
   4. END: More Backup voice audio - 02:01:13
2. John’s Falcom Track: Crystal Valley - Zwei II - PC [EDITOR’S NOTE: I missed my chance to point out that Zwei (pronounced “TsvI”)is the German word for “two”. So this game is basically called “Two Two”. :-D - St. John]
   1. Music - 02:07:38
   2. Discussion - 02:10:10

09) John’s Composer [TEAM] #1: The Super Follin Bros [Tim and/or Geoff Follin]

1. John’s Follin Track: Gambit - Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge - SNES
   1. Music - 02:13:51
   2. Discussion - 02:17:56
   3. End of Show Business (and FINALLY titling the episode!) - 02:23:47
   4. Our other Programs - 02:29:09
   5. Hugues’ Follin Track Discussion - 02:31:46
   6. Sign Off - 02:34:38
2. Hugues’ Follin Track: Parking Garage - Target Renegade - NES - 02:35:33

10) Blooper Reel (contains both high and low quality voice audio - AND OUR CENSOR SOUND!!!) - 02:38:48

11) Bonus 1: The Oath - Distant Worlds Symphonic Concert Version - 02:46:29

12) Bonus 2: Rain Angel - AtJazz (post-VGM non-VGM works by Martin Iveson) - Lab Results (album) - c 2002 - 02:51:47

Total Episode Runtime: 02:58:04

NOTE ON BACKUP [bad] AUDIO - SHORT[ISH] VERSION: when Hugues and I meet, we have our Google Meet output recording, as well as each having higher quality Audacity recordings of just our own sides of the conversation. We keep the Meet recording in case there is an emergency with the Audacity recording, but otherwise don't use it in the final episode, and I just align and combine our high quality Audacity recordings. On this episode, however, (a first for Ch 2) we lost a portion of Hugues' Audacity recording, so we did have to use our fallback a little bit. At the very bottom of the show notes, I'll include a LONG[ISH] VERSION which explains more. I did everything I could to minimize the impact of the Google Meet recording in the final episode. But it is noticeable at points.

You can find Brian and Kristen Peterson's GoFundMe here: https://gofund.me/1ef0f855. Again, absolutely zero pressure to contribute, but anything you do would certainly be most appreciated! You can find our "Introduction to Nerd Noise Radio - 2022" blog here: https://nerdnoiseradio.blogspot.com/2022/06/nnr-blog-st-john-introduction-to-nerd.html

The Masters of VGM Website, once again, can be found at https://mastersofvgm.com/. You can also follow MoVGM on Twitter @MastersOfVGM! Please do check out some (or preferably, ALL) of the other shows’ episodes in the series!

Retro Game Club can be found here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/retro-game-club/id1453018680

You can also follow Retro Game Club on Facebook and Instagram @retrogameclubpodcast and on Twitter @rgcpodcast.

Hugues’ blog (and his Sega Genesis demo) can be found here:

https://huguesjohnson.com/

You can find Nerd Noise Radio on Facebook and on Twitter each @NerdNoiseRadio. There are also two Facebook Groups: Nerd Noise Radio “Easy Mode” where we just have general video game and nerd fun, or for the gearheads among you, Nerd Noise Radio “Expert Mode” where we deep dive sound hardware, composer info, and music theory.

You can find the blog at www.nerdnoiseradio.blogspot.com. Where we sometimes share additional show notes, and inside info. You can also find Nerd Noise Radio on Archive.org, where we have remixes and super bonuses only available there (such as a music-only alternative version of today’s show).

Nerd Noise Radio is also a member of the Retro Junkies community, which can be found at www.theretrojunkies.com. And we are a member of the VGM Podcast Fans community on Facebook. St. John is also the admin of the Podcasters of Des Moines Facebook group, which features a number of other podcasters and great programs from the greater Des Moines area.

Thanks for listening! Join us again in July on Channel 1 for two separate retrospective episodes: C1E65a: “The Best of 2020 / 2021 - St. John’s picks” and C1E65b: “The Best of 2020 / 2021 - Hugues’ picks”. Then join us again in August on Ch 2 for C2E9: “Just Deserts”. And wherever you are….Fly the N!

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NOTE ON BACKUP [bad] AUDIO - LONG VERSION: When Hugues and I record, we record over Google Meet. But we also each have separate recordings going simultaneously in Audacity to capture just our side of the conversation in higher quality. He uses the same mic for both recordings, a Blue Snowball USB Condenser mic, plus, he is the one hosting the Google Meet session, so the sound quality difference between his Meet recording and Audacity recording is very negligible (though Audacity is still a little bit better). My side of the conversation, though, is where the difference becomes significant. To record my high quality audio in Audacity, I use a RØDE Podmic XLR dynamic mic through a Cloudlifter into a Focusrite 4i4, and then into the computer. Given the flexibility of Linux audio routing (Hugues and I both use Linux, actually), I -CAN- pull double duty with the Podmic as well, and use it for both the Audacity and Google Meet recordings like Hugues does. But I've found that doing so tends to degrade the audio quality of the Audacity recording. And so, I prefer to keep the Podmic and Focusrite discrete for Audacity to keep it as pristine as possible, and then use one my lower-quality mics for the Google Meet. In the case of today's episode, I just used the sludgy, boomy, poorly defined mic that's built right into my very run of the mill webcam. I mean, because hey, it's not gonna matter, right? Nobody's gonna hear the Google Meet audio anyway...right? Well, that presumes that everything goes fine on both of our individual Audacity recordings. And for this episode (a first in the history of Ch 2), we had a couple segments, one really short and insignificant, and one much more significant, where Hugues' side of the Audacity cut out. It just briefly quit recording. So, we had to fallback to the Google Meets recording for those segments. I was able to minimize the impact of those segments by replacing as much of the Google Meets audio for my side of the recording as possible with my Audacity audio, but what I couldn't do was remove the moments where I would "Mhm" etc while Hugues was talking, since to do so would also remove what he was saying. So, I had to leave those in - and that can be pretty jarring. Also, during the portions of these periods where I'm talking, I had to remove all the "Mhms" etc from Hugues because I couldn't include them without including my bad audio in the mix too. Though you don't end up hearing a whole lot of me on the bad audio, the sudden transitions from the boomy, murky "mhms" to the clean, defined high quality audio is pretty jarring - plus, Hugues sounds completely disengaged when I'm talking in those moments when he really wasn't. But it was the best we could do with what we had. So, we made do, and I think it ultimately turned out pretty alright. But I did at least want to acknowledge the issue and confirm I was very much aware of it. By the time I got to the bloopers, I was a little burned out from the granularity of splicing good audio over bad audio and cutting the bad audio back out, and so, I figured that for the bloopers it wouldn't matter, and just left some of the Meet clips alone. I suppose this has the accidental benefit of letting you hear what the Meet recording sounded like. :-)