Leet Gamxrz

2011-03-02

by Darknut

Gyusyubu Radio

http://gyusyabu.ddo.jp:8000/listen.pls ⇐ That's an audio playlist.

I've been listening to this audio stream lately (as an alternative to Nectarine). It's all music from Japanese PC games from between 1985 and 1996 (or so). The games represented by these songs all ran on non-American platforms such as the MSX, FM-TOWNS, SHARP-X, and the PC-9801. I know practically nothing about these platforms except that software on the PC-9801 was almost compatible with DOS. But that's a long story.

Despite being mostly unfamiliar with this beepy music that sounds like it's coming out of a TurboGrafx, I was pleased to recognize songs from these games:

• Legacy of the Wizard
• Space Harrier
• Super Hydlide
• Dragon Spirit
• Zeliard
• Thexder 2: Firehawk
• After Burner
• Castlevania
• Street Fighter 2
• Populous

The music from Dragon Spirit is more detailed than the NES version I'm used to (though the arcade version still has to be the best). And the Firehawk tunes sound awesome compared to the DOS port. It's interesting to hear familiar songs played on unfamiliar hardware. The sound chips in some of those Japanese PCs must be the same as in the TurboGrafx, which makes sense since they were both made by NEC. I take pride in being able to recognize who made a game based on how the instruments sound, although this is nearly impossible now that music synthesis is obsolete.

After you get tired of playing "name that tune", you can cheat by visiting this page, which shows a screenshot corresponding to the currently playing song. Some of the games I was able to recognize only after seeing their screenshots were:

• Gradius
• Parodius
• A-Train
• Shufflepuck Cafe
• Fantasy Zone
• TwinBee
• Popful Mail
• Pac-Land
• Sorcerian, and other Falcom titles

I had no idea there were weird Japanese ports of Western games Populous and Shufflepuck Cafe. Crazy!

There are also a lot of hentai games in there, some of which I recognize:

• Dragon Knight 2 and 4
• Princess Maker 1 and 2
• Variable Geo 2
• Alpha (by Squaresoft!)

There are just enough nudie screenshots in there that this page is definitely NSFW.

Anyway, this was a very entertaining discovery for me. Check it out if you're old enough to have played some of those games (and nerdy enough to listen to video game music).

Somebody told me the stream lags so much that it's impossible to listen to it for more than a couple seconds at a time. I had this problem one or two days, but it's been fine 99% of the time. Maybe you're hitting it at the same time as all the other Japanese bois?

Can't get enough? There's another audio stream just for arcade games!

http://gyusyabu.ddo.jp:8500/listen.pls ⇐ That's the playlist, and this page has the screenshots. That one might not be as interesting because those songs tend to be less memorable, and you've already played the hell out of MAME.

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