Pixelated Audio bmosley, jbrunner, gdreyband

Ultimate Brain Games is a board game collection released for PS1 in 2003 developed by cosmigo and published by Telegames. There's not much to say about the board games themselves; things like dominoes, chess, backgammon and the like, but the soundtrack written by Zbigniew Siatecki is great! Cosmigo was a very small German developer responsible for a ton of board and card game collections from around 2000 to 2015. They still exist today, mostly as the developer on a pixel art graphic software called "Pro Motion".



Zbigniew Siatecki's story is a somewhat familiar one around this timeframe. He's a Polish musician and graphic artist that got his start in the demoscene in the 90s / early 2000s (working under the pseudonym Siatek) whose music made its way into a few games from 2003-2007. Since his work on Ultimate Brain Games, and the related soundtracks for Ultimate Card Games and Solitaire Overload, he's mostly moved onto 3D graphics working on titles like Hard Reset, Shadow Warrior 1 & 2 (the 2010s series), Dark Souls: Remastered, and Cyberpunk 2077. His music is warm and nostalgic with all of the charming turn of the millennium demoscene vibes you can handle. While we couldn't get him on the show, we're still big fans of his work and we hope everyone enjoys it as much as we do.







All songs composed by Zbigniew Siatecki



* 00:00 Alice - Ultimate Brain Games (PS1)

* 03:51 Twilight

* 15:51 Blossom Time

* 23:04 Maya

* 31:40 Winter Morning - Ultimate Card Games (GBA)

* 36:37 Winter Morning (Excerpt) - Solitaire Overload (DS)

* 38:31 Dolphin Play - Solitaire Overload (DS)

* 41:59 Dolphin Play (Excerpt) - Ultimate Card Games (GBA)

* 48:02 "i love you" filename Syfonia.it



* also Starlight in Ultimate Brain Games (PS1)

GunMaster is a December 1994 arcade exclusive game developed by Metro Corporation. It's a single or two-player boss rush action game that's part fighting game and part platformer; think a dash of Gunstar Heroes with a Neo Geo art style. The game uses a well-established combo of soundchips: the OKIM6295 for 4 channels of ADPCM and the YM2151 for 8 channels of FM audio.



Metro Corporation was best known in the 90s for their Bust a Groove / Bust a Move series. More recently they've been a contract developer for Nintendo working on several Pokemon games and the Switch re-release of the Another Code / Trace Memory games.



The soundtrack was composed by a trio under the pseudonyms Famishin, MAZ, and Shadow although our information about them is limited. What we do know is that Famishin continues to work in the game industry with their company Yuzusoft, with game releases as recently as 2022. MAZ was last seen as composer for Metro Corporation's PS1 game BursTrick: Wake Boarding!!, and Shadow is as elusive as Totsukurzwell (from our show on Dangerous Seed). As always, we hope you enjoy this boss music heavy soundtrack.







All songs composed by Famishin, MAZ, and Shadow



* 00:00 Opening

* 01:52 Soldier Ore, Aries

* 09:39 Pearl, Onyx & Gemini

* 13:09 Leo

* 20:02 Turquoise

* 22:50 Tourmaline, Virgo

* 24:56 Aquarius, Taurus

* 28:11 Cancer, Red Amber

* 30:55 Capricornus

* 40:48 Queen Dia

* 45:45 Ending



Thanks to 2ch-H of VGMRips for creating the pack!

Gigandes (ギガンデス) is an arcade game developed by East Technology in 1989 and released in February of 1990. It's a horizontal shmup in the style of R-Type featuring all of the bio-mechanical tropes common to the era. It was designed for the Taito X System hardware which used a YM2610, the same audio configuration used in the Neo Geo, and was composed by Akira Inoue and Takaro Nozaki.



East Technology was a small developer based in Shinjuku that mostly worked on arcade games. The company was founded in 1987 and operated until around the mid-1990s. East Technology only produced around 10 games; their most notable were Double Dragon III: The Rosetta Stone published by Technos, and Operation Wolf 3 and Silent Dragon published by Taito.





The soundtrack to Gigandes is eccentric and in some ways ahead of its time. Full of weird and off-putting samples, the tonal whiplash is at times abrasive and at others catchy, but always compelling. Relative unknowns Akira Inoue and Takaro Nozaki put together a one-of-a-kind soundtrack that is worth the time to explore and we hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we did.







All songs composed by Akira Inoue and Takaro Nozaki



* 00:00 Brain Dump (Stage Start)

* 00:10 Speshul Atak Younit (Chapter 1: Round-37 Takes Off!)

* 06:23 Climax Without Foreplay (Chapter 2: The Rival Arrives)

* 09:04 Propagandasm (Stage 2 Boss)

* 14:27 Populism Answer (Chapter 3: Mesopotamian Nightmare)

* 17:37 Behold! This Face (Stage 3 Boss)

* 23:36 New Order (Chapter 4: Save the Colony Part 1)

* 27:21 Vertigo Factory (Chapter 5: Save the Colony Part 2)

* 33:09 Aquarium Island (Chapter 6: Showdown at Tatarajima)

* 36:14 Fight Fire with Fire (Stage 6 Boss)

* 41:40 It Ain't a Plot (Chapter 7: The Underground Kingdom of Larzan)

* 45:15 5-Count (Last Chapter: Sleep Quietly, My Friend)

* 49:12 Unused 4

* 52:29 Exposure Over (Last Boss)

* 54:49 Loving as Much as a Wound That Heals (Name Entry 1)

* 59:07 The Warrior and the Official (Name Entry 2)

* 59:46 5.67 Billion Years of Solitude (Game Over)



Thanks to The Golden Horse of VGMRips for the pack!

We’ve got a really fun soundtrack to dive into this episode from a Jaleco arcade title released in 1989 called Plus Alpha, composed by Tsukasa Tawada. 



It’s an overhead shooter similar to Twinbee, Raiden, or 1942 and was re-released on the Nintendo Switch in 2020 under the Arcade Archives series published by HAMSTER Corporation.



This is one of Tsukasa Tawada's earliest soundtracks, a composer still active in the 2020s with work on Pokemon and Harvest Moon titles. He brings lots of variety in this soundtrack, which is a ton of fun and also hits all the marks for an awesome arcade experience.



 







Tracklist:

All tracks composed by Tsukasa Tawada



* 00:04 Triumphal Return Overture (Title)

* 03:26 Wind Dancer (Stage 1 Wind Country)

* 08:25 Into Blue (Stage 2 Sea Colony)

* 09:39 Bird Island (Stage 3 Flower Town)

* 14:20 Sun Colors (Stage 4 Snow Country)

* 16:08 Last Heart (Stage 5 Sand City)

* 19:54 Neo Baroque (Stage 7 Eden)

* 21:11 Boss Stage

* 22:06 Harmonica for Peace (Unused)

* 26:47 Ending Theme



Thanks to ctr from VGMRips for creating the pack!

In this latest mini episode we're talking about Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos, a childhood favorite on the NES composed by Tim Follin.



Solstice released on the NES in the US and UK in mid 1990. It was developed by Software Creations and published by various companies in different regions. It's a challenging isometric puzzle platformer in the vein of games like Knight Lore and Lumo. Solstice only released on NES, but it did have a sequel on the SNES called Equinox.



Tim Follin is a VGM composer that hardly needs an introduction. Master of VGM folk and prog rock and putting way more effort into game soundtracks than they usually deserved, Tim worked on games like Bionic Commando and Ghouls'n Ghosts for C64, Plok for SNES, Ecco the Dolphin for Dreamcast and a tons more games. More recently he's moved into game development with games like Contradiction: Spot the Liar.



For more info about the illustrator of the box art, check out Michael Winterbauer's website.







Tracklist:

All tracks composed by Tim Follin



* 00:05 Title Screen

* 06:47 Introduction

* 07:10 Main Theme

* 18:50 Game Over

* 19:00 Credit ~ Continue

* 26:22 Ending



Thanks to Gnome from VGMRips for creating the pack!

In this bite-sized installment we're exploring the soundtrack from Bomb Jack on the Nintendo GameBoy composed by the legendary DMG DJ, Alberto José González.



Bomb Jack released on the Game Boy in the UK in 1992 and Sweden in 1993. Adapted to the handheld  by Bit Managers and New Frontier; published by Infogrames. Bomb Jack has had dozens of ports derived from the Tehkan Arcade game from 1984. CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 16, 64, Amiga, PC88, SG1000, ZX Spectrum, and even things like Java ME.



Alberto José González is a Spanish video game graphic artist, music composer, designer, and pretty much everything else. Notable games from French publisher Infogrames helped shed light on his early career and eventually helped found Bit Managers and later Abylight.



Twitter | YouTube | SoundCloud







Tracklist:



All tracks composed by Alberto José González unless otherwise stated



* 00:03 Bomb Order Bonus

* 02:05 Title Screen

* 12:18 Stage BGM

* 14:58 Name Entry 2 (ARC) - originally composed by Tsukasa Masuko

* 19:09 Game Over (The Last Sigh)



Thanks to The789Guy for the Gameboy pack and 2ch-H for the Arcade pack over at VGMRips!