Future of Virtual Music Experiences

Eight, seven, seven, three, nine, three, four, four, four eight Aoon by us so first so fine gotot a number provider liveving be h. let's get online. thirty a month gonna blow your mind. F ves don't hesitate. Luck it in now before's too late, eight, seven, seven, three, nine, three, four, four, four. eight tes apply. See optimum dot com for details This this july fourth at Lowe's, get up to forty five percent off select major appliances. Plus, save eighty dollars on a seelect Charboyal Performance Series gas Grill, now two hundred ninety nine dollars. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's Loos, we help you save. Valid through seven A. while supplies last, selection varies by location. Silos d. com for more details Visit your nearby Lowe's on Tonenell Avenue in North Bergen on this week's show, Sonic the Hedgehog lands on the spectrum. CD thirty two gets an optical drive emulator. and we go inside the world of video game soundtracks with Matt O Bl. Rro our podcast is brought to you every Friday with our good friends and our sponsor at BitmapBooks. Now if you love fighting games. Have you seen their brand new volume just dropped in the last couple of weeks dedicated to Fatal Fury or Garo Densetsu as it's known in Japan. Now this massive four hundred sixty page volume features rec concept art from SNK's archives, exclusive interviews with the developers and covers the entire series from the early No Go cllassics to the latest City of the Wolves. You can get your copy right now and check out the rest of their retro gaming collection at bititmapBooks dot com d Andw with our mates at PCB wayay. Now, I'm sure you've heard of PCB wayay, big supporters of the retro community, and they can do it all for you. fully featured custom PCB prototyping, low cost, fast turnaround quality boards, and then stuff like three D printing, injection molding, CNC milling that can do the full service and check out their shared project section for some great retro ideas. Get an instant quote right now PCBway. com Hello and welcome to the retetro Oour podcast episode number five thirty four, yourour weekly dose of retro gaming and teechnology news with me Dan Wood me Rabi Aberts and me Joe Fox. And great to have for joining us for the podcast every Friday of course, brings you up to speed on all the big stories. The big talking points from the world of retro gaming and technology. and welcome on. Vveterans of the industry and just really interesting people. associated with retro games and technology onto the show for an interview every week. Welcome back Ravi as well. I know you want too well last week when we did the podcast. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't doing well, but I think you guys did a good job. It was like headline story's got to be an amager one. I think Jo on. It was good Gs. I look great. Although before you got sick, you did do a bit of moonlighting last week I saw on a Mayabouse podcast. I've been cheating on you guys ye. So I went on sonicstate. com's retrocast which is Quite a cool cast. It's usually about music, about synthesizers, you know, Paully Alex Bat. hosts and we lovey Paul Paully does some amazing music and also really insightful in this kind of area. So we talk about music but Of course I have to talk about something hackery and like geekery. So we go into pirate radio. and I talk about like the technology behind that because I dabbled, but, you know I learnnt a lot about it because I used to go on all these forums and look at it and be fascinated with transmitters and stuff. So if you want to hear something a bit different Check that out. It's a great brocast. I've had other guests on as well In its early stages, I think I was a third guest on the podcast. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. So like you said, early days of that podcast, but yeah if you want to hear a bit of a Rabby's kind of pirate radio history, mayaybe the stuff that we don't talk about too much on this podcast. that is available right now. all the usual podcast platforms and YouTube link up the episode in the show notes as well. actually quite well timed because this week we are going to be Fcususing on the world of video game music with our special guest, Matt Ombla, who's going to be in part two of the audio podcast. And if you're a YouTube viewer, you'll get that as a separate video next week Yeah, I think it's going to be a really interesting interview. I think a lot of people will love this one. We do go quite modern at the end. because of Matt is a he is the head of music and gaming partartnerships. for a record label called Laced Records who specialize in music for video games. So not only do they help create music for video games, etcetera, but they are basically they sell records, you know, like vinyl records very like high end, you know, for a lot of lot of B IPs, Zelda, Resident Eil, you know, they've got all these great licensing deals So he's the head of Gaming partartnership music and gaming partnerships there. and he's got an interesting background. he worked at game for a couple of years and then also was a freelance journalist where I used to cover a lot of video game and video game oddities, but basically all around He's a video game music expert. So we kind of go into the world of that and his memories of that. But then we also kind of talk about modern music game, kind of like mic game, modern video game music And where that's at now with a lot of like, you know like the online like in Fortnite and Roblox and how they kind of present you know, they do these big gigs but online and basically the future of that and what that looks like. So it's quite interesting because he's got retro rootes, but then He covers all that stuff. so we cover a bit of that at the end as well, which is reallying. I was looking through my record collection the other day, you know just sorting them out and getting them in the right sleeves and stuff. I started to realize there's a lot of video game vinyl that is creeping into this collection. I think a quarter of it now is like, you know, streets of rage and stuff like that. So I'm seeing these vinyl releases. it's really interesting to the story of how they become. Yeah I think the most recent one I bought was your last kickstart event, you know the sensible software ye Yeahah, which was a really sensible band. Yeah. Yeah. so you're right, Rabby. there is just something I mean, obviously you can listen to them on Spotify that kind of thing, but having vinyl, you know with the beautiful artwork on there and hearing all the the cracks and pop pops and stuff there is definitely something about that isn't there? So I think and obviously it's a growing ustry again, now, isn't?' me the day because HMV, which for people outside the UK is kind of a longest running kind of music specialist high street store. I think they've gone bankrupt twice Hven't they? But they are back now there's a big focus on them. They're saying basically that their plan to reinvent the brand and they're actually reopening a lot of their old shops again that closed down a couple of years ago. on vin vinyls at the time On the high street we've got like hairdressers, vape shops and then record shops overwh there as well. was I was just in London recently and There some areas where there's really specialist record shops but tons of them and now DJs in them and stuff it' amazing. Great to see Yes, they're going to be an interesting one this week. videoide game music expert all about the worldall of licensing, vinyl releases as well. Matt Ombla, our special guest coming up on this week's show. But of course, if you're a regular listener you'll know first bit of the podcast. that's when us nerds have a bit of a chat about what's been happening. The big stories that we've been seeing on our timelines this week and the stories our listeners have been sharing as well. in Discord. A few of them have come from out this week. so we always appreciate that. And it does seem like every other week we're talking about Sonic the Hedgeog get imported to a platform that it probably shouldn't run on. And there's another one We need a name for Sonic. You know how we've got like Castlevania cororner resident evvil roundup? We need a Sonic one as well At the Sonic everything needs a. Everything needs one. The Amiga what's the Amiga onene? I don't know what A amiga one can be yet put it it. So sit down. I like that. okay. So this time we did talk about there's been ports to the Amstrad. there's a Commodore sixty four version of it. we've covered on the show in the last year or two as well. This time though, I think this looks particularly impressive. Someone's got the it is again, the master systemstem version, which it generally tends to be when they do these kind of eight bit home computer ports. But it's running rather nicely. It's only kind of work in progress at the moment, very early stage. And I think this looks pretty good for the Zed ex spepectrum next? weird for me before I let Joe speak, sorry. I've got no I've got no point of reference for the spectrum next because all I know is like I haven't got one. You've got one down and all I know is It on on specs with like paper. So if I see an Amstrad, Rning now. I've got a kind of idea of you know, what the Amstrad was capable and stuff. But spepectrum next to me is a machine that I'm I'm still kind of to finding my head where it sits and and what it does. So I'm not sure if this is impressive or not. It's an eight bit system Yeah But yeah, I know it's got lots lots of speeds and changes. So I guess someone with the hardware you'd be able to actually tell and know what that kind of point of like power and what it's capable of. Yeah, I mean, it can run I think it's twenty eight megahertz which is like about eight times faster than the Abriigginal machine. five hundred and twelve cols on there as well, which in the original spectrum were eight, didn't it? with a few different variants And then you've also got yeah, two hundred and fifty six color pixels on there how comparable is it to a megarive? That's my kind of Yeah, I mean, I'm similar to Ravi. like I've not got a point of reference with the Zedx spectrum next B But me from my mind's eye You know, I had the original Sonic the headjo. I say the original the version of sy the hedgehog for the game gear, which was the same as the master system game but it was obviously just in slightly more And watching this short demo of it, I was like, That looks and sounds exactly the same as how I remember it for the game gear And it's running quite smooth as well and I was and it sound the thing was is it sounds like it. I think I've bashed in the past, you know, like the Amstrad version of Sonic and I've been like, oh, I don't like that sound a that. That sounds a bit bit crushed up and stuff, but this sounds nice. it sounds like how I remember that eight bit game gear version of it which I know this is a port of the master system version. They were the same game, the same master systemstem and the game gar version of Sonic the headshog. they were both the same game. So There's not much difference there, but For me, that point of reference from that game, I'm like once again go from a mind's eye, but it looks exactly the same. So I'm like, okay, this is pretty impressive because when I think spectrum I think Al is bl on a black screen as well. but this is a spectrum next. I don't know that much about it But ye it looks good from what I can say. I mean in terms of the meega dririve itself, I'd say, I mean, looking at the specs of them both side by side, I mean, the spectrum next does have more memory and it does have a quicker can you know basically it has got a faster processor in there in terms of clock speed. But obviously the mega dririve has got that custom hardware and the parallax scrolling and the audio chips better. so I mean And it'silt built for that, isn't it as well like looking at this, this is obviously the kind of straight port, but it's got all the stages in there in the enemies, special stages, music, sound effects Everything in that, but it's a work in progress, i. e, like fixing bugs and you know, testing and playing about with it. so u It's good to see that, you know he's putting it out there at the moment and I don't know if we've mentioned who it's actually by. It's Dave eighteen, Dave Douglas who he also ported the master systemstem G Iame Asterro wararrior to the spectrum next as well. So I mean is obviously well versed in doing this. Yeah, and I think it's really cool. I mean, the spectrum again, I mean, there's only seven many hs in the day I do have a spectrum next that I haven't delved into as much as I would have liked to. Is there a doom port for it, D I think there is. yeah, I think there's doom the original spectrum as well. Yeah, which is maybe even more impressive than this. But yeah, I think yeah, just again, it's one of those games that you, you know, Ravi been Comm an ammiga guy back the day, you know, it was always that thing at school, wasn't it like, Oh, you know, you need a seega system if you want to play sonic. It's never going to come out on the amiga. Somebody out there who's actually supportorting it at the moment I've been following the series on YouTube And they're doing a really good, really good port of the Amiga of Sonic two for the Amiga. Sound like two now. All right. I think it's two or yeah, we mentioned the original in light They were doing a spike detection and stuff recently. and getting all scrolling and speeds running well as well. Yeah, I was familiar with this version because I used to emulate this one master systemy one on my Amiga. whichich yeah, I think, you know, in terms of u Wh he's at with it so far looks really cool Definitely some I imagine, all spepectrum next owners will want to try out. So you can download the BTad that is for free right now. It's on his itch page. You can make a donation there if you want as well. So yeah, it looks very, very cool. So look forward to seeing where that goes. And again, another reason for me to get the spectrum next set up. the commommon of sixty four Ultimate is kind of been in its place at the moment. That might change over summer. So very cool nice to see some new spepecy next progress. Now this next story this is quite interesting now. The headline on time extension is you can now legally rip your W GameCube and Xbox discks using Blue Ray drive. and this is thanks to a project called the Omni dririve Yeah, I think that headlines kind of kind of click bay ye So I had one of these drives called an M BraM disk and I sold it on eBay. ages ago because this was a way to play. blue ray discks on the PC I was collecting blue ray stuff at the time and I didn't have a Bue ray player at home It' a standard like satur drive then, is it It's a Satur drive, yeah, but it plays it plays Blue ray, but it plays loads of forms and it willll play all of the different types of blue ray ones, so What someone's done is, obviously if you wanted to get like backups and you wanted to pay originals It was really hard to do of games for certain systems because reading it, was all it was all locked. it was all prorietry. So you know, obviously ROMs are already out there. There's been rips, there's been people that have done it before, but they've updated the firmware on it so that it can actually read some of these disks And you can take the information and suppupposedly make your own legal backups, which I don't think you can actually legally do it like I know I think it's illegal if you makeake a backup and play a Rom and an emulator according to Nintendo U I don't know how they feel about Wi games if you had your physical copy of a Wi. game, put it into this drive with this updated firmware ripped it and then played it I an emul later. I don't know the legal status of that. And that was my question. and I was going to say I think the loophole of saying it's legal is because of if you own the original game you copy it and then you play it on an original system. so you copy your W game play it on a Wii. and it's for you and you're not giving it to anybody else, then it's legal, I guess. but if you were to downownload a rum and do that and burn it onto a disk or you to give this disk away to somebody, then it's illegal I'm guessing that's. Well I've just looked at it for you, Joe. So apparently under UK law, it is generally not legal to backup your own copyright protected discs even though you bought them legally and you only intend to use the backups for personal preservation. But I remember reading like back in the day like like Aiga magazines when you you know you bought like a piece of software for the ammig L it looks pay for example is a good one. so it wasn't copy protected and I would advise you in the manual you know to make a copy of the disc run it off the copy and put the originals away. of, you know, discks are going to get corrupted. S, you know even discs, you know, like optical discs. A lot of them are getting bitrot now aren't they like the older kind of CD's and DVDs. So I think It would be a bit kind of anti consumerist if you couldn't make a copy So you know when people had like JTag and they had like pirate drives that they'd update the firmware on three sixties back in the days. That used to be a kind of way of running copied games and stuff like that. It's a bit like that, but the weird thing is we Blue ray drives They used to crack blue ray itself as well. so that was an illegal thing which was using decryption keys Now some of these games are it decrypted stuff on them anyway. So even if Do this backup is kind of seen as legal or not Pricting something is probably even worse. you know, something that's been encrypted in there. So yeah, it's a minefield, but I think it's You've got the ability to do it, but But then all this stuff has already been ripped And it's already kind of been done. I can only see This being good for preservation for something that's really rare that's not been able to be looked at and inspected by like a museum or something or they've got like a You know, a ds that they can't read on another system and they get one of these one of these drives and and use it for that legally, I guess Yeah, I mean, in terms of the legality, I don't think anyone's ever been, you know, had the door kicked down for making a backup copy of a game that they own and playing it themselves. So you know, I probably wouldn't worry about that. But yeah, I mean, you do make a good point now. if you want to get a copy of a you know, Call of Duty two for the original Xbox, Probably quite easy to find one on a certain archive website, I'd imagine probablyrobably don't need to go to the effort ripping your own. but I mean these preservation efforts have all got to start somewhere, haven't they? So someone has to be the first one to kind of do a backup of a game. And this does go up to Xbox O games as well. Yeah. So we're talking, you know relatively recent platform definitely in term of what we cover that's interesting because if it says it will do PlayStation three four and five, Xbox sereries X U and we you but they're encrypted So it's like Once again, it questions the legality of it. It's like, yeah you can copy them, but they've got encryption in them. So And the little game cube games as well that you put in the middle in the little tray in the middle and copy as well Yeah in terms of the hardware you need it, it doesn does mention that only kind of specific drives that were manufactured basically in the last year. So they got me from mid twenty twenty five and onwards using the Media Tech MT one nine five ninetine I wish I'd not sove my drive now because I guarantee the price of them would skyrocket through the roof yeah Yeah And he uses a media preservation front end MPF software and something called a Red Dumper. scan and then unlock the game partition. So I think yeah, I mean I do think you are right that probably these have already been done by other people already there might be certain circumstances where, you know, you do have something that's a bit rare or you maybe just want, you know, have your own copy of it or whatever like obviously people can mention in comments or whatever, but I think maybe the legality might be ject to different regions as well. Yeah think around the world. Yeah. like I know the Swedish laws are are totally different to other ones and stuff. so who dies? Y if you have one of those drives lying around, then they could be put to good use, preserving your game collection Now, um I did spot this story last week. wanted to get my head around this because it just seems like one of the The most impressive retro computing efforts I think I've ever seen Now a couple of people have sent me this on Facebook as well. Shout to Dan,'s sent me this over the weekend I know he's been playing with it as well. This is a project called the Virtual OS Museum Now this is basically I'd say The biggest preservation effort of operating systems that you can actually use that is out there. And this is from there's a YouTube channel Andrew's OS Lab Now he's behind this and it is a it's basically a downownloadable installed I think weighs in at over one hundred and seventy gigabytes if you want the full thing or there is a light version of it that you can download that will basically Download the operating system in stalls as you use them the first time whichich might about It's about to click download, but I realiseed we're recording the podcast andes might just totally ruin it. Might take you a while. So what this is, it's essentially a Linux Virtual machine Wed Hundreds of operating systems all set up ready to go So he's gone through and hes he said this effort is actually it's going to been twenty years in the making this So Andrew has basically gone through and u tested out each one, set them up in a virtual machine. So they're all basically plug and play. double click ' them, the launch. And God, this dates back to the nineteen forties some of the operating systems are included here This is heavenly. It's I've not used it yet, but as soon as I saw it and saw the list and saw your link I was like This is insane because there's so many obscure machines and setups that for the life of me, I could never set up myself You'd have to learn the RS to get stuff a work well installation process have been nightmare All of the right hardware, stuff like that. Yeah, it'd be crazy to do And the fact that, you know, he's gone through and done the effort of this is great because I can just go into some Really unusual machines, I L looking at all the versions of Q and X Neutrino and I'm like, oh my Godd, I want want to go back to Q and X because I played that off a little floppy disc. Oh ye that would load it at one point. yeah Yeah I mean, there's even stuff in here like the neliest examples I'll be Manchester Baby Mark onene scheme whichich is basically the earliest example of what you could consider an operating system. Getting back to nineteen forty eight U two hundred and fifty plus platforms, one thousand seven hundred plus installations on here as well. overver five hundred and seventy distinct operating systems, anythingthing from old school Unix workstations, you know, you got stuff like SunOS, IRX is set up there, even stuff like Plan nine and BSD and next step all the classic home computers the Ale two, the Commonore eight bit machines, Yari eight bit machines, Tandy, BBC micro Spectrum. U going through even stuff like u, Windows from version one point zero through stuff like Windows Vistor and Longghn beaters are in here as well. and moile as well. Windows mobile, which I've not used for years ye There some stuff like and I was talking about the the Commodore nine hundred machine that was cancellled getting that up and running in here as well. Basically he says the idea is that if a working version If an operating system exists anywhere the goal is to have it in there in a form that anyone can run easily on a modern machine. So that was his effort the effort he is put into this is really the struggle he had before is a lot of these will require a lot of configuration and kind of knowing your way around to get them working Bically t point head a templeo ass in that Oh, now you're asking. It's got it be, hasn't it? Yeahah. Yes, it is. Yeah've seen the list ye Yeah. Temable OS ision five point zero three. And the install of that must be yeah, insane. But I'd love to try out stuff like this. This is totally for like an OS nerd, but yeah. I think it's really good. And the fact it's downloadable as well. ust because if this does disappear I get it now, I think because you know, you've got so many issues with legality and stuff and ownership of bits of OSs and stuff that Download it down I think yeah, just in terms of the amount of work ' put into this if you have got any interesting kind of the history of operating systems, maybe something I mean, I'm looking on that IRx you know, I've never really sat down with that properly. Maybe the Ccute Museum in Cambridge had a little play with it, but Auto OS as well. Yeah know, you've got like the roots of The GUI GUi's graphical user interface is a is like historic preservation here and also all stuff that changed and you see influencers of OSs in there and, you know, mayaybe features that you've forgotten about that you really enjoyed You know I think next week when we do the podcast I might be running my machine on syllable OS Not I've just se it on the list. yeah. It's cool. So yeah thats avable right now. it is free to download. So as you said, Rabbi, grab it while you can. I think would be the thing. I mean, I imagine because yeah, there are some operating systems that maybe. someome companies might be like, what's that doing in there? whichich I imagine he'd you know, if he had to change anything, he would. but it would be nice if I think this should exist It just sound like like a really important effort, doesn't it? to Yeah have these and yeah Hardlin Digital history, you preservation. needes to be preserved and he's done an incredible job. So grab that right now and from virtual osmuseum dot org More stories on the way, including the CD thirty two, getting an optical drive emulator. Interesting. and also some Castlevania news in Joe's Castlevania Cner. That's on the way in just a second. Before we do that, let's take a moment to give a massive thank you to a regular supporter of our podcast. We love them so much. Our friends at Shopify the ones with the sound, the sound of making a sale. Now Who is Shopify for Reavvi? Shopify is for anyone. You know, you might have used Shopify and you've not even noticed it as a customer. It's fantastic for setting up a store, if you like, a small entrepreneur or a huge business. One of our sponsors Bitmap Books actually has a shop toy store and that absolutely massive on it It's really good because you know, if you're setting up a store, you've got analytics and statistics which tell you what's selling, what's not selling. You can also you know promote someome of the items in there are and You don't really need to be massive coder or anything like that. You can just set up a really simple template and you know get your store going We sold our books on there. And it handled a lot of stuff like, you know, the shipping You could select zones, regions, get all the prices right. Track fulfillment of orders and stuff. Yeah it' really fantastic. It even printed out the shipp labels for you, didn't? took care of any returns? Yeah which was such a time saver that was. So, Shopify is there really if you sell anything at all online or in person. it's there with you. And as you mentioned, it kind of there it's one of these services that can grow with you. So there is massive companies, Mattel, Gymshark, they use them. to people just getting started as well No coding or anything like that required. You don't need any knowledge of that at all. It gives you a beautiful design studio, hundreds of ready to use templates all point and click. You can delve into the code if that's your thing, but it can give you a beautiful online store that matches your brand style. And you to kind of touch on some of that I think is often one thing that a lot of business owners probably ignore because it often falls down the list a bit on the priorities, but that is having Those incredible marketing tools as well. L, if you're doing something great, you need to get the word out there, otherwise no one's going to know about it and buy it. So with Shopify that can give you the tools to easily create email and social media campaigns. So that means whatever your customers are scrolling or strolling, they're there with you as well. And if you do sell in person, obviously the summer is here. If you're doing trade shows, that kind of thing, you can get those great little point of sale systems, keep your inventory twined with your online store as well notot that we've needed it, but if you do ever get stuck, Shopify has award winning twenty four seven customer support. And one great thing about Shopify is When you sign up and selly products on there You will actually get the iconic purple shop pay button It's used by millions of businesses. and actually it's trusted by consumers too, which means it is the best converting checkout on the planet. So that'll mean less carts go abandoned and more sales for you. So if you sell anything at all, why do it give Shopify a try? You know, we've worked with them for many years now, big believers in what they do. So if you heard us talking about Shopify before, and you think, Oh, I would like to give that a try one day Make today day that day, head to this link so you can try it out for just one pound a month. Using our exclusive link, the knowe that we sent you, helps out the podcast as well. Shopify. ca Uk slash retro hour. That is shhopify. ca Uk slash retro hour. I'll put that in the show notes and get ready to hear a lot more of this Right and Joe Castlelvania Cner What's the news this week? I need to do a jingle. I'm one day I'm gonna sit down and do a lot of jinkles of these, you know, like the Hall of Fame. Yeah, yours need to be metal, though. N get bash U so we we did actually cover this gosh Two years ago, I think U so when the story originally endanded Yeah, july twenty twenty four. So this is Castlevvenia. Rondo of Blood running on the Sega Mega dririve U so been supportorted by a guy called Wertton Playskin and originally It was a bit a little bit janky, a little bit kind of like that whel sega twang and it was ported just to the meegarive' last Genesis. U and for those who don't know and what Clvania Rondo of Blooders, go listen to our latest version of the After Hours where I talk about it for about ten minutes. But no, seriously, it was a disc based game for the Termographic sixteen The disc one, basically. the peripheral for that. So a bit of an obscure game that got ported to the Super Nintendo and had some other ports as well, but they were actually different dumbed down version of the game It was missing a lot of the metroidvania elements of the game from the original. so this is the original version ported to the Mega dririver. the reason I've talked about it again this week is basically released another kind of, not a demo or anything, just footage of the port again But it looks fantastic. I don't know if you guys have watched this, but if you watch the original one that we covered two years ago compared to this one The frame rate on it it's running beautifully but what's going a long way? It's come a long way. But what really stands out on it is the soundtrack. So what he's done or what they've done should I say is that actually this time around, they're using the audio CDDA playback of the Sega Ci So they're getting their original like, you know, CD based soundtrack, which is in the original game rather than the kind of like bit crushed Mega Drive I thought that sounded good for Mega Drive music. Yeah. So it's playing it's using the sound chip from The Sega CD so there's not I'm assuming This is obviously it's going to be emulation. So the There's no there isn't any further information about how they've done this, but I'm assuming Oviously they've done it on say whatever. and then when they've they've dumped it onto the EverDrive I can't remember anybody ever drive but there's another drive that use that you can put into a normal seg, well use an EDrive that you can put into a Sega Mega driver with Sega CD but will play Sega CD games before Aartridge. Yeah, so I'm assuming it's that which is then taking advantage of the CD audio playback, which I think is really smart It's it's a weird thing called u MS MSU. Right MSU MD, which is a Basically, like you said is It's the audio played through but really high quality. It's like a specialist driver. And the way that that works is with real CD hardware. so if you've got the MegacD or Segac CD, but you have to have the X Series Everdrive in there So the other drivers providing the kind of grunts, but then it's actually going through the CD system. you need to mega Ced ide here. Yeah, yeah, yeah ye to get that kind of audio. but also you can do it in the mister well interestnterestingly. So it will be able to play this audio through the mister, but it's like this really high end kind of hack, which is ye pretty awesome to be honest. Yeah. it works with the original hardware, you know. Yeah. I think that's really awesome. But yeah, you do need the Sega CD forit the chips set but you don't need an actual disc in the Sega CD. You just uses the hardware that's in the MegacD. Yeah It just takes it well, it just takes it off the ADve, uses the hardware. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's really cool. and it's got a wicked soundtrack, really beautiful soundtrack U so I'm hoping You know, fingers crossed, we see a finished product, which, you know, it's a Konami game. so won't be have the selly, etcetera but I'm hoping dumps it for us all to download and play on our Sega CDs which would be wicked. Be if definitely a game that needs more love, you know outside of just the Castlevania kind of fan base. Yeah, I think it's often a bit of a shame, isn't it when such kind of masterpieces of games like this obviously is just kind of it was The follow of the platform it was on really wasn't it? It it didn't get a wider release and people didn't play it. So yeah, hear when you talk about it in the after hours Je you've convinced me. I've never played it. but yeah, I mean, I've got Megacini over there and a little Towerer of powerower. So yeah, it looks very cool. No word on download or anything yet. when it's going to be finished. I think obviously it's been two years in the making and yeah, I mean, it looks like it's definitely A spare time kind of passion project, doesn't it? So it's probably one of these when it's done But yeah, it'll be cool if it is finally out there for us all to play before too long. So looks really, really cool U now, let's talk about A CD thirty two You still got your CD thirty two, Rab? remember you collected for a while didn't? Yeah I got a CD thirty two. I've got everything but a CD thirty two, I think. and as soon as I got rid of it like everything got good on it You always do that. didn't you sell your twelve hundred you just bought another one again Yeah Yeah. So ye' the Amigs C clawuse you back in, doesn't it? Well obviously the CD thirty two, Commodore's kind of final big product, you could say. nineteen ninety three came out. It was only on the market six months. Th think it sold how many? It was about one hundred thousand? I'm not quite sure. S months. They showed quite a lot for the CDD market at the time, but yeah yeah, it wasn't wasn't the biggest hit, was it? No, sadly not. I mean, yeah, it wasn't really around long enough to It's kind to make much of an impact. did sell pretty well over Christmas ninety three here in the UK and I do like my CD thirty two, I mean, I've got all the you the add ons that you need in there like a terrible fire card and hard discemulator and stuff as well. But one thing that the CD thirty two hasn't had until now because this is it's not actually out yet, but it is a work in progress you could say, even though you can go and get hub and all the codes on there is an ODE. Now a lot of consoles that have Optical drives in them I've received them Optical drive emulators in recent years and we've covered it on the the three D O and the Sg of Saturn, plenty for the PlayStation out there as well, which are efforts to replace the original optical drive with something more modern that can read disc images from an SD card instead of having a spilling which is very much needed because those seD two drives were were very early on in the CD world. I think there was one or two speed two speed Yeahah. and I remember actually having my CD forty two and the laser going and there was somebody selling like just replacements on eBay. the older ones, but you have to kind of fit it yourself and yeah, it's a bit of a nightmare. I can imagine a lot of them are are just dying off at the moment and people are just using WHD load on the Kipper K board or something on the back Yeah but often, I mean, if you have to use WHT Loud, you're not using really it's not the CD image is it? Yeah, you're not hitting the C there now And you don't get you see the audio that way either Yeah. But yeah, you're right because the C thirty two does use a standard, I think it's the Sony part, you know, the laser The pickup mechanism. That is a standard part you can buy that wasn't some Sony CD players back in the day. And yeah I've bought replacements for my CD thirty two, a couple of them over the years. But the actual CD mechanism, the rest of the drive is a custom made part just for the City thirty two. It's like a custom interface. So You can buy replacements for them, but they're not cheap now. U yeah, so Basically if your drive dies completely then it is becoming increasingly more difficult to source of replacement, which is why this I think it is quite valuable now. this is a thing called Nebula thirty two, which is an open source CD thirty two optical drive emulator. and there is a massive thread on the English Amiga board that kind of dates back ten years. Well you can kind of read through all of progress on this as well. But it basically uses a raspberry Pi Pico two to read disc images from an SD card And it can read apparently ISO files, Bin in queue NRG and MDF images. and it isn't just a simple IsSO mountter. It actually attempts to emulate the the actual CD thirty two drive side of it the communication C Aiga City thirty two uses a chip called the Akiko So I kind of drive the CD interface it communicates directly with that. So as far as the CD thirty two is concerned, it is A CD RM drive, it doesn't see any difference It is badass this is because I've seen so many ODEs come out for other systems I know' dreamcast ones there's been loads of replacements and they've all been really expensive. I've not seen a raspberry pie based one before and an open source one at that meaning you know people can contribute to the project. I think that's wicked, really good that it's based on the Pico as well, which is that tiny raspberry pi.chieve as well't They're very cheap yeah. It does bring back nightmares though hearing about. MDF and MDS files because they were like Alcohol That was the old program you used. Yeah, what was NRG hundred twenty? It was NRG NIro I think, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. and I remember o God, I think it was To towers one of those games or something, you know, Lord of the Rings ones trying to get them running on MDF it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare back then. but u This is really cool. You can use a raspberry pie Pico too Yeah W one as well if you want the web and you want the WiFi, attached to it, a little rotary controller as well and a tiny screen on there. so you can kind of select and and I want to see what this looks like when it's fully installed in the CD threety two. you know, I can guess it's going to look a bit like a GTch drive or or something like that. probably might have to cut into the case, but then they'll have external solutions. I'm sure people would have a You know, how it starts you get Frankenstein's monster with wires hanging out the side, and then eventually someone freely prints something and it all kind of looks bit a bit more sophisticated, but you got to have those first years of people taking hackshaws to f. to CDity thirty twos, come on, how much are they worth there? I think Joe was saying you're a gaming fair over weekend weren't you what were CD thirty two's going for fourour hundred quQid, I spottred one for I used to want one but now I'm not going to bother I think that's probablyap cheap, Joe is well I can't really show you know pr priced out of the market. But I think yeah if you have got a CD thirty two that has got a broken Optical drive, then this looks like it could be a good solution. Did you mention in the thread that you could basically, yeah like' say like a go tech, have a screen The mention a good place to do that would be rememoving the CD thirty two badge on the case. K of maybe embeding a screen in there. might look kind of a nice little rotary controller nextxt to it for for disc selection So yeah, the moment it' a circular screen. that would look really cool. you know, where you have the CD and the little window you had a screen that did like. Sever thisble in text, yeah, that'll be wicked Yeah, I mean, if there's any community out there that or the most creative thing Amiga fans are definitely up there, aren't they? So I'm sure we'll see some rather cool stuff with this over the next few months. At the moment, I mean Literally this has only kind of come on to Gub in the last couple of weeks orough. There' appearars to be quite a few review passes as well as it looks like it is quite in a heavily wor in progress at the moment. I haven't seen anyone kind of up and running with this yet. Kind of feels a bit more like it's experimental kind of prototype right now, but yeah, absolutely. I've not seen much about this either, which I think it definitely does deserve a bit more attention. So ye if you're a City Pty two fan, that is active on GitHub right now. Top marks for effort. look forward to seeing where that's going Now one more story for everyone else, patrons get a couple of extra in overtime. I'll tell you more about that in a minute. But this is really cool. Now we do like a good deake, don't we, Jo Yeah, man, definitely This is a Final Fantasy sixteen but the Super Nintendo version sixteen. I didn't even know it got to sixteen really? It isn't it'd be much further if they actually um numbered every single one of them, but they don't. have they have different names But yeah, Fant Fantasy sixteen came outs like Nightmare on Alm Streetah. It's further than that. Yeah, so this came out in twenty twenty three now played Final Fantasy sixXteen. I love Final Fantasy but I'm very much the old ones you know, for the Super Nintendo and the PS one, that's kind of like my my era of fininal fantasy. And I'm very pleased that this retrododo article did put the numbers one, six rather than XVI. I was trying to figure it out and then I was like, oh yeah, sixteen. So this is a moder and it's the first time He's ever actually modded or made a game he's called XV bit and he's taken U well, he's made a free demo which is about thirty minutes long of Fal Fanty sixXteen, but converted into a super Nintendo version of the game. Now isn't playable on Super Nintendo. It is for you know PC, Mac and Linux windows l It's snz like then is it? Yeah. So it' s Sz like U At least it's playable, like at least a sub substance there because sometimes we see these de makes and you're like, oh, this is cool, but it's just a thirty second five minute video or whatever or it's just for five minutes gameplay. But this is, you know, there's a full half an hour demo there U and I'm a big fan of fantasy six fan and it looks incredibly similar to Final Fantasy sixix. I believe he's using some of the sprites from that game as well which is absolutely fine because of One of the things about the Fantal Fantasy Games is they do reuse the enemies. It's obviously're just the art style and graphical style of them change over the games U so, you know, ultimately A wolf is a wolf you know, I mean or a Tomburry, which is a particular enemy from Fant of Fantasy is a toombberry. no matter. I thought I recognize those ye. Yeah, no matter how it looks kind of thing, you know, no matter what it looks like and the same with the summons sumons in the game, you know, Eritt and Shiva They are throughout the Final Fantasy games, they just look different different versions of the game. So he's obviously borrowed some sprite work from other games either way, it's Ver impressive and it looks very cool. I want to play this. It's a free download at the moment and like I say, it's about half an hour long hopefully he keep keeps it keeps up with it. It would of see the entire game, wouldn't it converted. It would be, but I'm very aware that, you know M most fininal Fantasy games are like fifty to hundred hours with many, many side quests. So you know, we'll see where he gets with it, but I fit in the backgrounds that are very pretty Yeahanet Yeahah, you've got that like snares character overlay kind of style, but the backgrounds They look a bit more jazzed up Yeahmy. It was really nice picture of his suit in that kind of modern modern fain Yeah that would have Yeah, so free download, as you said available now for Mac and Windows and he says' Linuxort as well yeah.inuxs on it. io. So I want to check that out. I'll link that and of course all the rest of the stories. You'dt have to Google around. They say they they work every week. I put them all in the show notes. so you can find them on your podcast app, video description, or you can click directly through from my website at the retrohour. com. All right, well, thank you so much for checking out the news this week. reminder. we have a patron that supports this podcast. Weould have great patrons hang out of the weekend, didnn't we? Another really good one. Pretty busy one in the end actually on Sunday, wasn't it Yeah, yeah. it's always good the patrons hang out I love our patreon crew. you know, it's going to be good actually two of them are going to an arcade and they I may myself I've not been to an arcade club yet and we always get a good reputation but also encouragement from them. you know, they're saying come to these places. they're really cool. it's good to have like a nice little review from the patrons as well and hear what they've been up to. Yeah I think Jo Joe often says that you we have made genuine mates through the hangouts in our patronons' community. and I said we have made friends with each other as well, which is lovely. So we're glad that we can bring people together in our little community. so if you'd like join us for the next Patrons's hangout there will be happening end of June. All the details will be on our patreon. you can sign it right now at the retroour. com. We did just drop a new After hours episode for Gold meembers and above, there were over fifty episodes of that you can download now, where we tried at decent games for failed consoles, didn't we? That was an interesting one And there will be a new episode of that will land this month as well. So all the details to join. our wonderful Patrons community and sign up right now, join us on the discord or the details at the retroHour. comot Right then we'll have more news for you next Friday And next going inside the world of video game soundtracks with our special guest, Nat Ombler. He's next on the retetrout podcast Estequatro de Julio E Loos, Aura stacquaineinco Porciento and Electro domestico selectors. Aemas, Auroenta doolares and Ununa Parriia Gas select a char Royal performance series, Aura Dcientos Doment Medolres. Nestejor selection Estaki and Los. Los Nuamos to Auras Maritooeato existenceces selection Bariaapoltes and Lospon. com Visita to Loos, Mastercano A Tono Avenue and North Bergen When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant You keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns With Ganger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts, and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place, so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done Call one eight hundred Ganger, click ranger. com or just stop by Ranger for the ones who get it done. You're with the Retro Hour podcast and it's time to welcome on this week's very special guest now Wes love doing episodes about video game music. And actually today we're going to be joined by someone who's got a really long history in the world of gaming music. He's had music and gaming partnerships at a company called Lace that we'll talk about, which are basically a full service creative agency and a record label who specialize in music for video games as well. Previously he's worked at B twoB Games, marketing agency, Big Games machine. also worked for publications like the Guardian, Washington Post, Wired, NME, Vice as well. lotots more that we'll get into. We're going to talk about classic video games, soundtracks, video game, music coming out on vinyl. That's been such a big trend recently as well and lots more as well with our guests this week Matt Ombla, how's it go, Matt I'm very good, thank you. How are you two gents Yeah, really good. thank you. So yeah, thanks so much for coming on and chatting a bit about gaming music with us, which is always fun to do. I mean there is one question that we always like to kind of you know set the interviews up with to find out where it started for you. I mean, let's wind it right back to day one. I mean, do you remember What first got you into video games and why did it all start for you It started my earliest video game memory. I can remember it was when my uncle I still lived at my grandma's and he had a mega dririve. And the only game I remember playing was Sonic the Hedgehog I think I was probably four or five years old and I just remember going to my uncless playing on the mega dririve and that was like My very first experience with video games. And I absolutely lift And then Fast forward a couple of years Game boy with Pokemon Blue, I think like every kid, like my age did or I' like a passed interest in video games And then my first proper console was the Nintendo sixty four with Mario Kart sixty four and it was just like I think everyone's got. Like everyone I'm thirty four And it's like It was me and my best friend and we were the only kids who had like Nintendo consoles and everybody else had like a playaystation And we just we always used to get rinsed. It was that childish thing where it's like, Ohh you've got an Nintendo. It's a baby console. And I was like I'm playing Mario sixty four in like Mario Kart and Perfect Dark and Golden Eye and yeah, not to knock the Playstation or anything, but I love it as a console. but back then I felt like the lucky one with the Nintendo sixty four Yeah. I mean, I very I say very lucky. PS one and I got an N sixty four because my parents got divorced. so' you know let me buy you an N sixty four son. so the wound of me having an affair feels much better. But yeah, no, I love that. So our next question was going to be what systems did you grow up with, but obviously it was the N sixty four. Yeah, I was gonna sound manly I think a Nintendo kit byy nature, I didn't really I didn't really touch any other consoles outside of that. I remember there was a kid who lived opposite me who I still talk to know, Lad called day of power. you got to say a mega dririve as well. I do remember playing some real obscure gam on the meega drive like zero tolerance and stuff like that, which I've still like been trying to track down today because my memoryies of zero tolerance We're incredible as a k And I feel like that's one of those games where if I revisit that now I'm probably not. I'm notjoy there a tolerant. I think I wouldt reit it heldo. Yeah, don't revisit it. I think when when you play it and you realize that the screen is only like the little bit of the of the screen as well and then it's all just menu around it you know, it's an interesting game and you can, you know, link it up with another Sake of Megarive for two player if you really, really want to have a go at it, but Yeah, it's a bit of an odd one. So it's interesting that you said that you were a Nintendo boy because obviously a lot of people remember discovering uh, you know, Soundtracks, and you know with your career and stuff like that, soundtracks and bands through the likes of Tony Hawk, GTA, Wipeout, or even FIFA or burn out a little bit later And obviously in my mind, I see them as a lot of like Playsttation games and Xbox games, not so much Nintendo, which I think's quite interesting, not to say that Nintendo doesn't have fantastic music but was there any particular soundtrack that completely changed your taste in music growing up or kind of built your taste in music Yeah, one hundred percent all of those. So I eventually my sister got a PS two, a PS two slim And I remember playing some weird memories on that picking up random games because as a kid, you don't really know why you get the games you get, Dar? It's just kind of like mum or dad comes home with them one day and now it's like I'm the proud owner of Wetrics or Bugs Bunny Lost in times, you know what I mean? But I remember I remember Playing playlaying Final Fantasy nine on the PS two specifically, but then also going back. I remember I think my uncle had a play station And we ended up playing a lot of PS one games on the PS two. So I did eventually get round playing the likes of like wipe out and GTA and stuff like that. So I did play games like that, but the big one for me It was Tony Hawk's P skater, but it wasn't on the playlaystation. It was on the Nintendo sixty four. Okay, which did have the worst soundtrack like out of all of the platforms, well I guess Damn b. O Game my advance, I think it was not including, but yeah It was Tony Hawks Pkata. and then especially ondy Howks P proressk at three and four on the Nintendo Game cube Because that was when I think I was maybe going into my teens, starting to go out to like underage like alternative nightclubs and stuff like that. starting to get a bit of pocket money. from Mum and dad And I specifically remember Discovering Goldfinger through Tony Hawkes Pursata Bands like AFI, C Kennywise, CK. Yeahah, all of that good stuff. But I remember hearing those bands and then going down to hitMV And they buy in like full albums. So I bought hangups by Goldfinger open your eyes by gold finger as well and then just eventually just started buying all of these different albums. but I think genuinely like I've always said this because obviously I got into the band and ended up playing metal music and touring around the world and stuff like that and Iw a lot of that two video games, I think specifically the Tony Hawksbus get games because unless you've got parents or people in your family or close friends, maybe older siblings who are like leading the way on the music discovery front. I didn't really have that. So for me it was video games. That was where I was hearing these new bands and then being like as a kid Oh, this is what like punk rock music sounds like or Hardcore music in like Tony Hawkkss underground with like twenty five to life and stuff like that. It just blew my mind as a kid. Do you know what? I mean I had no other way of haaring bance like that otherwise. And it's really interesting. You know, I find this very relatable because of You know, I always I as a teenager screamo music, alternative music, metal music as well U But for me it was it was it was burnout free. and I remember listening to that soundtrack being like, was this a Treyu band? what's that? And then going out and buying the crimson and just having like a music awakening You know, at like fourteen, fifteen years old, Tony Hawkes. you know, played that a little bit, but I wasn't as interested in it. It didn't capture me as much, but then I look back now and I'm like, oh, these are absolute bangers but it's it's so funny to talk to other kind of like metal heads or who or who were metal heads and they just go, yeah, Tony Hawk kind of thing like and it's just they ingrained in the DNA. We got it like Obviously, when you go on tour with like a new band and stuff Like Bnding one of the first things I'd always do is try and suss out like who the gamers were in the bandon and stuff because'm I'm into sports or anything. So I was never into like football or anything. So obviously that's like a thing that always brings people together on top like. peopleeople chat about foot or sports and stuff like that For me, it was video games and yeah, a lot of people who we talk with, who would be mayaybe a little bit older than because I was taring when I was like eighteen neen twenty, twenty one twenty two and I think the fans were tourn with were a little bit older, but it was It was all music and video games, like stuff like that because I think that Like bad out three And that era of like GameCube and PS two and Xbox games, I think also shout out like Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX U the ampits games, which had like emo music and stuff like that and loads of math rock, like the AMPT games had incredible soundtracks and That was just when license in music for games was like a lot easier and a look cheheaper, right? It was just, I think Games like wipe out and Tony Hogws Pska assured people what could be done And I think once the music industry kind of cautoned ono How important video games were There's not just like a discovery platform for music, but also like a promotional platform in terms of her we could maybe like debut a song in a video game and that would be like a nice marketing day and then we can do all the festival prromo and stuff like that. like All of those good and even bad games as well You know what I mean? likeike so many nft sports games that would downies like my bad games. I think even that, you know the early early to mid nineties as well I mean you mentioned, you know, when you started playing Sonic the Hedgg on the Mega Drive, notot to downlplay the Megad Drive sound chip, that yamah hard chip in there, I think know made some great music. Sonnic being a great example, you know, an iconic soundtrack You talk about WipPN. that was only like what five or six years after So it at the hedgeg and sudenly've full CD soundtracks with like the Chemical Bothers and the prodigy on there as well. I mean, do you think that aera is like really important to kind of defining video game, music are something serious Yeah, I think so and it's It's a shame it wasn't seemen as serious now because you're right. the chip like the sound chip in the megadrive is ridiculous. I was doing a panel with Yasper Kid recently and some of the soundtracks that he was doing on the Mega drive like the adventures of Batman and Robin, L people talk about streets of rage being like The heavy club soundtrack from the Mega drive. Like does anybody listening to this who loves the music and streets of Ridge, but hasn't heard the adventage of Batman and Robin giveive it a listen because I don't know how Yes was doing that with the mega dririve, but like the This he is getting out of that is ridiculous. So I think there was a lot of like you were saying, there was a lot of good work already being done and then obviously you've got like the Um based systems, I guess out in Japan that were around like the personal computers before the Playsttation came around. But I think yeah in terms of being the In terms of being the area that really catapulted video games forward, then I think yeah, incredibly important because I think It was the likes of Tony Hawks for a skater in Wipe outut. Even like the stories Glenn tells where it's like the challenges of getting music in wipe out compared to wipe out two and wipe out three do you know? I mean, where they already had that proof case and that ammplified by the fact you've got Tony Hawkks P skatater and Dave Mirror and all these other licensed soundtracks, it was like You had the early games like, I think at the start of the PS one era who were struggling to get the music industry to play a ball and like buy into the idea of having licensed music and video games and then Going into the knot is like from ' ninety nine onwards, I think it was like smooth sailing from then on. And a lot of people's most cherished memories I don't know what it's like with you two, but I think there's a lot of People who have fond memories of kind of like playing bad games and those bad games will often have like incredible music. there's that running thing with the Furlin brrothers, isn't it where it's like Tim and Jeff Furlin like never really worked on like some incredibly good games. But Jesus, every soundtrack they did was just like a prop rock purpose. He'd leave them on just while he' tiding in your bedroom. Yeah and just pause a game. Yeah. Yeah, definitely Yeah, yeah, because of the sound test menus. That's literally what I used to do. So I used to do that with the Tony Hawks Soundtracks, like choose the tracks that I wanted and then just like as a kid just play in my bedroom and just leave the music playing. and it was brilliant I'll never forget coming home and my older brother playing the mortal combat free for the PS one but in the CD player. listening to like the, you know, the dance and trance tracks in that. As y Y ask M come back blew my mind that you could do that. didC the audio weren't there, yeah. yeah, exactly. And he used to just stick it in the CD player and it worked. so So Matt, tell us about your career. So you were a freelance journalist and you featured in the Guardian, Washington Post, Wired, NME vice what's the story there? How did you get into that? What's the kind of like career path into that and what Ave a weird one I was always good at English when I was at school And then that led to me, I think like a lot of people out age where it's like What youre going to do at university? or what are you going to do when you turn eighteen and leave school and as a kid you go I don't know and then your teachers just kind of go Oh, well you're get at this subject, aret you? so you should probably go to university and do that. Like that was English for me And I never knew what I wanted to do I just know that I had a stack of Gaming magazines like Nintendo Official magazine U all of like the hundred percent unofficial and still going strong. All of those like magazines that I forget the name of and stuff like that. Like I just used to my mum would always buy me video game magazines. I used to read them from fromont cover to light backackpage. I loved it so much. whileile I was up This my final year of six four, I started emailing editors video game websites and video game magazines and stuff like that go in I think I wantan to be a journalist, like a game journalist, but I'm not sure how to get into it And a couple of places came back U and then while I was at university, I just and then they came back and the advice was basically build a port furier. and I was like, what's a port furlier? And it was just like, port furi like things you've written. soir I started building a portfolio while I was studying at the university just like websites that peopleople like weren't have heard of now. they're probably still going, but like small websites, but it was just a place to have my writing up there So you wouldn't get paid. you'd get like the odd download code for like an Xbox live arcade game or something like that And that would be it. and then It got to a point where eventually I got a freelance gig for a website slash publication called High Steabiety which is like a fashion publication do loads of street wor stuff because my friend was the fashion editor there and he was like, We're looking for a gaming pass and you' to be some Gam is reporting for a little bit. Did that for a little bit and then obviously still sending pictchures. pitching for review copies like you do is like a inexperienced like young writer in your twenties going, what why can't I be the one reviewing like the New Zelda game or the newaro game or whatever else? And after a while I was like There's a lot of people doing this freelance journalism thing and I feel like I need to knes down then just choose something and stick to it. And I was like, you know what? L been touring as well for a while at this point. So I was like I love music Now that I think about it and reflect on my journey to where I am now, a lot of the reasons I'm doing music and I'm into music. because I also ended up promoting gigs for a little bit, which again, going back to alternative music and met before I was in the band Son Hokespreska as I was like, this seems to be this running thread throughout my life with video games and music And there was a couple of places like a couple of writers who were putting out some really good music and games journalism. Like I think genuinely like every year you get like a couple of different wipe out articles or Tony Hawksurusk or articles and stuff like that But I wasn't seeing anyone who really had that down as a niche. So I was like, I'm just gonna make that my thing and spent literally like some of persistent and stubborn bastard to be honest, so hadad to go through a lot of ners or people just not responding. you do always remember the editors that responded like big shout out to Mike Diver who spent a lot of time at Vice, but I think I think he's agency side now, but I think Mike's worked pretty much everywhere He's busy all the time, but he was always someone who even if it was a bad pitch He would just be like, than you not for me or whatever else. Or if it was a good pitch and it wasn't the right fit for vice. He was one of the cool guys who would be like Matt I think you've got something good here. You should send it So this person like Keseric, the Guardian or something like that. So I've always remembered like the people because there are some good people in games journalism who genuinely want to help like other people out and that was really nice. And I think stuff like that me going in because for every pitch you send as a freelance journalist, it's if you send like fair, you maybe get one back. Yeah. So yeah first like proper boy piece of journalism I get was a ase in Vice, which was literally I discover all the music in my life through video games and I'm not alone and that was just everything we've spoken about so far in terms of discovering music through video games U and then yeah went on to freelance for the likes of the Guardian Wired and stuff like that and it was all building an a myself in terms of like being in that game, music guys, so I just Sometimes I just spend hours on Wikipedia every day just going into different rabbit holes and just finding out weird stuff about sound chips and then findinding out weird stories about games and stuff like that and then just trying to craft something around that. Doing that for a while jumped out because I'm sure you've seen now the game journalism industry is not a good place to be right now. Rates were always historically low as I got older and I was like, I've got my own house, now I've got a mortgage to pay. I need kind of like a b jobs I started moonlighting where I was working at agencies during the day and then doing the freelance stuff on the night. And then I met the earner lacest records at a Fal fantasy concert, Final Symphony in Birmingham and the final Symphony concerts are basically What if we take the music from Final Fantasy But instead of just arranging it for an orchestra, we give it like the full symphony treatment where You will maybe hear like Seven or eight identable seconds of a Final Fantasy melody, but the rest of it is completely interchangeable and full blown symphony So the boss of Lacest Records was there Um, I think on the night I was just like Can you please give me a job? Like please I'll be your friend. Yeah. I've been buying Laced Reords. like my vinyl collection is disgustingly big and half of it is Laced Records. And I was just like because I've been seeing all of these partnership stories as well because this was like around the time where Travis Scott was doing Fortnite and stuff like that. I think that was like a year or two before I met Danny It onees last. I was like, I want to join List Records and I want to start doing partnership stuff like akin to what was happening. In the ninetineies where video game studios were doing these like dance remixes and stuff of their game soundtracks. I was like I want to do that, but for your clients And then started working there a day a week U to my hours, I'm there pretty much full time now and Yeah, I think the rest is rest is history and just the I mean I' music person now, which is a title I'm glad to have. Well, I mean, we'll definitely get more into what you're doing at L now because I mean, you know there's some great stories and great stuff that you're doing there. I mean it's kind of going to your journalism era. I mean, I'm interested in any kind of memorable places that it took you to or any people you managed to like interview or speak to. anything that kind of sticks in yourind as like highlights from that era Nil Rogers was nice. defefinitely the best one. So when I found out Nyl Rogers had a video game soundtrack label, which was something else music. So I knew he was involved with Hiller Um And in all honesty, I just thought that was a bit of a Haller was the biggest like game IP at the time. There was his big thing with Xbox. I just thought Niil doing the Halo thing was just a bit of star power kind of thing and wanting to attach his name to a big game and get into the space that way So pitch this article to Edch magazine, which was basically all about the music in Hiller too because obviously that's got music from Incubus in there brereaking Benjamin, Hooperank and stuff like that as well Plus another Rogers thing I was like, up There's stuff on Wikipedia, but there's nothing telling the story of like how All of this came together and why the hell Nil Rogers got involved with Hala So Mati ODonald the Hiller composer spoke to him. had a really great chat And he was like, you should get in touch with Niil. And I was like, do you think Nile Rogers will speak to me. I imagine he's a very busy man. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah airs like is Contact inver for his PR, get in touch, send an email ent his PR an email and then the email that I get back quite a lot, which I'm used to hearing is sorry N wouldn't have the time for this, but thank you very much. M was a couple of weeks later. How'd you get on with Niil, Matt? I was like, Oh, Niil Nyil's PR said he wasn't available and Marty was like, I'll drop nil a message. Let me take care of that, sir Long story short, Marty drops Niil a message, H his PR suddenly comes back and goes, yeep, Niil can find the time And yeah, just chatting to him about His passion for video game music genuinely glewing me away Like it wasn't a facade at all. It was like Nile Rogers is genuinely likeike a huge fan of video game music And some of the stuff he was telling me about the Hill of two soundtrack bands that didn't make the cut Greinder submitted a song The Haler like an original song that was going to be inhaler two And I listened to it and was like, no, this isn't like, this is a good Green Der song, but it's It's not a heill or two song I don't want it in the soundtrack kind of thing. and then Just him. I don't know if you've seen this videos of Steve Vi jamming with Nil and stuff like in the studio just feeling out the iconic like melologina riff mix from Her two. So I think that's That's probably definitely one of the Coolest things I've done In terms of going out and about and stuff as a freelance journalist like I A lot of my stuff was just from home because most of the time you werent budget to go out and go somewhere, like it just doesn't happen with and If I was getting paid three hundred four hundredquid, I'm not going to spend partalf of that traveling D to London from Hull to do something, you know? I mean, I'll find a way to do a video call But yeah, Nil Rogers was amazing Wipe out story, speaking to people like Glenn Um and then Jeff Glendenning as well The I think it was headad of markarketing at PlaySation for the launch. U, That was a really cool story. We just hearing about the ray of days and stuff and like I think Lenn was talking about it as well, putting these like playlaysttation consoles in like UK nightclubs and stuff like that. And ye, this is Gen O'onnelly, we had on the podcast a couple of weeks ago just to let the audience know if they missed that one, yeah. Yeah, that's. I was like, now how Rogers and And I looked up and I was like, Oh yeah, now how Rogers. I love that Rogers. go. I mean big guy Yeah. and then um Uu Matsu as well, obviously, Nob Matsu that was all that that was a weird interview because that was when I did for Washington Pur And given, I think it were Matsu is my favorite compososeer all time. I mean, the final Fantasy soundtracks are just ridiculous artley and given fact you want to be so Yeah. How was it? Incredible. Yeah, we to go by a translator. Yeah, it was an event in Norway. Yeah Yeah it was yeah, just yeah, just again, a legend, isn't they? So yeah it was Deinite an incredible moment and just loves I got I like got into Progue Rk a couple of years ago as well. So the interview mainly, I got the interview like on the basis of not asking him aboutb like the video game soundtracks is composed. It was more just about his life and the music that he listens to and stuff like that. But that got me otherwise I would have just been asking him about Final Fantasy nine probably for an hour anyway. So I've got one more question about your journalism days. So you've had a column called Hey Listen And me which was bi weekly or twice a month, I think it was where you often covered obscure game facts or music game facts, how did that come about? and is there any Funny ones that come to mind with that Aain, it came about just from being cheeky and like really wanting to there's another journalist who's like just as much into like game music as I am, like reallyally lovely person, Don Peppiat. Whats it you' gam and now And they had a column on game music, but it was a little bit different to like a column that I would have done because this was at the time where like I was saying, I was just going on Wikipedia. and just trying to find weird stuff but also going deep into YouTube and just finding these obscure game soundtracks, s emailed the games editor at enemy and was like I want to coln please ere are some ideas for the kind of stuff I want to write about like That's right about Book Bumble because no one's ever written about the Book Bumble soundtrack before at this time game and that's got a banging got a banging UK Gared soundtrack. Let's find out how that was put together Um They're finding weird stuff. I think the weird one M Bumblefoot, who used to be the guitarist for Guns and Roses I did a video game soundtrack and this was for a game called Wild Woody on the Sega CD. and I think it's fair to say it's not a very well known or very good game and the music is like what you would expect from like a experimental kind of proroy guitarist, but Just doing DAast stories like that and then I think the one I'm most proud of because I'd not really seen many people in the West talking about him And this might not be the case because I'm not deep into the retro space, but I remember when I heard about Kenjina for the first time The developer is made games like D two and stuff like that. And I was just like This man just sounds like everybody goes on about like Kaojima, Hidea Kojima being like a cher of the games industry. and I was like, Kenjina seems way weirder. I mean This is the guy who went out of his way to develop a game for people who are blind because it was just something that he wanted to do And then to broker the publishing deal with Sega, I think it was, he got Sega to promise that He would done it thousand Sga meega drive consoles. or maybe it was P playay station con consoles. I can't remember which but he would he made them promise to donate all of these consoles to a blind charity Eo would match that with donations of the video game Stuff like that, he was so ahead of his time. So just learning more about him That's the fun thing as a journalist. It's for me, it was always Speaking to people Landning stuff and the actual writing I couldn't stand that R what once I had once I' spoken to someone interviewed it and stuff like that that was me done then. I just got the mental fog at that time It was like I just need to get it out now, but Yeah, the fun was over at that point Yeah, I feel that Are they looking up Wild woody as well? He's a talking pencilil. Yeah a little pencil. I kind of want to play that there.. Yeah why would play it and let me know what you think. But I think bit of a weird risky on the cheat kind of game, I think Yeah apparently it was basically Sega's final game for the the Segacidi as well. so Yeah, interesting you know one that I'm familiar with, but yeah, it said it really bizarre to find out who's involved sometimes in these kind of projects that kind of go forgotten. so I mean let's talk a bit more about roll laced records, then I mean, you know, for maybe our audience who are not familiar with kind of you roll there and laced records. Tell us little bit about the company and kind of what you do there day to day, then. Yeah, so List records is u There's quite a lot of us now but we're basically a video game soundtrack record label. So We work with companies like Nintendo, Bandai, Capcom, Devolver, publishers and developers that basically release their game soundtracks on CD or mainly vinyl, which is what we're known for And also on digital music services as well. So Spotify, Apple music and stuff like that while a lot of people know led because of the record side. we also have different divisions of the business as well. So there's list audio, list music, list publishing So it is literally if you're a game developer or a publisher and you need help with any aspects of game music or audio, whether that's sound design, music supervision for trailers or for a game soundtrack, licensing, all of the paperwork that comes with that through to publishing and the administrative rights for reporting and stuff like that, we basically do all of that So it's been amazing. I've been there for three years now My role specifically is head of Music and Gaming partartnerships. part of my role is basically J also got a lot friends a touring and still in the music industry. And one of the constant things therere always saying to me is I would love to get into games. How do I get my music on a game soundtrack or how do I work with the game studio? How does all that kind of think come about? So Part of my role is trying to connect our clients or pitch nice shiny ideas in terms of getting People from the world of the music industry. to collaborate with our clients on the game side. Um So a nice kind of carease study for that is a project that we did with Massive Monster and Devolver who made ull of the lamb They came to us where they'd worked with a producer, they'd made a metal version of the soundtrack for Cult of the Lamb and came to us and we're like, right, we've got these pre production tracks of this metal album for Cult of the Lamb Do you know anyone who could do vocals? we would love to get Howard Jones from Killswitch Engage involved that landed on my desk at the same time I had literally been building a database of like metal artists who want to get into the video game industry because one of the first things they when I joined us was put this big spreadsheet together Weve started reaching out to various labels and talent agencies go in, can you please give us a list of what your artists are playing, who's playing what? what platforms do they earn So I went back to Massive One to evvol there said we can get how it journs yes, but I think you might struggle to get him into sing on S songs, especially if he's not played Cult of the Lamb. so why don't we get two vocalists, but better still, why don't we get a guest guitarist on every song as well to make because we've got like a nice solo artist and that gives each track on the album a nice little bit of flare So that evolved into getting people from trivium while she sleep, malevolence. U Paliffia U Animals as leaders And yeah, Howard Jones from Kill Switch. So doing stuff like that There's a couple of things in the works at the moment that I can't talk about which is similar. But yeah, doing that and then Because my background in journalism and PR while I was on the agency side Obviously in a lot of the PR campaigns for our soundtrack releases too. So looking after PR for stuff like the Breath of the Wild soundtrack that we did on Vinyl, which is like a dream come true to work on something like that working with DSPs on marketing campaigns for stuff like Pokemon because we've got all of their digital back catalog and stuff like that and it's the thirtieth anniversary this year is a big year for Pokemon, soir coming up with ideas and stuff on the side. But yeah, it's a work to work at a company like list As someone who all he does is talk about video game music is absolutely incredible We mentioned the Vinyl. ide of what you do, with him. I'm looking at your website now, three hundred and thirty vinyl reccords you've put out, which you know, is incredible But also I'm looking through the the format say. you've also put out a cassette soundtrack and a miniisc as well for a vampire the masquerade Blood hunt. What was the thinking behind kind of doing these Rro platforms because we have heard that cassette had a bit of a revival recently. I mean, is that something you think you might explore more I definitely want to do. Mar cassettes the thing that people do obviously needs to be everything that you need to do, it needs to make commercial sense. the business and yes, there is a big set revival right now. And to be fair, just physical media revival in general, like CDs are selling really well as well at the moment, which is something again soundtracks on CD only rarely used to do well in Japan We never really did well in the West outside of like once we kind of got out of like the CDDs. But yeah, looking to do more stuff like that. I think in terms of vampire and masquerade, that was more of a client wanting to do that specifically, but couple of cool projects we're working on at the moment where peopleeople can expect to see more cassettes and other weird formats like that Um But yeah, we just need to be always, something we need to be always mindful of is does it make commercial sense Is it something the players want? because what you find with Game soundtracks is You've got your natural target market of the video game vinyl collllectors and the game soundtrack market and there is a huge thriving market there. There's like Reddit groups, there's discord servers, there's Facebook communities, like all of these passionate lightes. underground groups of like really hardcore video game music fans and vinyl collectors So we want to keep them happy, but then it's also a case of When we're releasing a game soundtrack for like a big AAA par something like that doesn't, just because the gameess had millions of sales that doesn't naturally convert into a soundtrack cell or a cassette sale or a CD sales, do you know? I mean there's a lot of things you need to consider and then as well This is something that a lot of people weren't The amount of time Gs into quality checks. for not just vinyl but for cassette and CD as well, especially for bigger game soundtracks because and it can be a case sometimes where you can go through like three or four or five different rounds of that where if you get something, it doesn't sound quite right get a new version come in still doesn't sound quite right? Okay, cool. there' some dust on the record? Is something wrong with our record player? Do we need to send it back so there's all of this behind the scenes stuff that goes on as well because Everyone at least is genuinely so passionate about video game music we want to make sure it's the kind of ' always of the same level of quality where I've I bought it as a record or if anyone else bought it as a record in the business and we got that and we played it We want it to sound the way we'd want it to we'd want to hear it Do out I mean, as video game music fans found a follow up on something of you mentioned a moment ago, which I found really, really interesting U I would imagine I'd like to think quite surreal. you mentioned earlier on in the interview you know you grew up with Pokemon Blue on the Game Boy, and then Later on in life when you were becoming a journalists, why can't I review Zelda And now you work for a company where you get to work with Pokemon in the music side of things and you get to do PR on a Zelda record And then also being a metal fan and for our listeners who might not be metal fans, How Jones and Killenngage, in my opinion, is one of the greatest metal vocalists who ever lived Do you ever have these moments where we have to kind of take a step back and just be like, okay, this is kind of crazy. L how did this happen from doing an English degree? Yeah, I think when stuff comes down, yeah, is like it's really nice. and I think to hear it as well is really cool because you don't realize a lot of the time I think The most I realize is like when I'm out at conferences doing a panel something like that And then I'll have a couple of beers and then the night it's like you reflect and go go's because I think when there's like a phical side to it where' like when you're a different country talking at like a video game conference, like going down to Melma recently with Jess McKid to talk about Assassin's breed in Bordardllands and stuff like that is moments like that where you go Oh yeah, this is like genuinely cool. But I think honestly, I think the best thing is like just seeing ve seen so many game studios take music in their gamees seriously right now. And it's not even a case of like Let's just do vinyl because everybody else is doing it or we want to make some money or whatever else like For a lot of these video game studios, the money that they make from music like vinyl and stuff like that, it's a drop in the ocean compared to what they'd make on a game so a wideer merchandise, Do you know what I mean? For them it's just kind of like We want to give something back to fans We know there's a massive market there for game music. We want to make sure that our fans are happy. And if we're doing a physical soundtrack release or a digital soundtrack release We want to make sure the tracklist is perfect. We want to make sure it sounds perfect. And if we're doing vinyl and we're doing like a nice collectorss boxet or whatever else, we want to make sure that it's like a nice collectors piece as well. Like prime example of that is the silent Hill two box set wooded with Konami that had like a copy of like Mary's letter And then when you took the backack sleeves of all the I think it was a six LP That makes the map from the first area. of the game as well. just all of those nice little finishes you can do to make something special. That's stuff that m How do those kind of collaborations come about, then I mean, if you're talking about, you know, massive. IPs that have been around for decades, like, you know, Zelda, Doom, that kind of thing. Is it going of much communication with companies like Nintendo and Capcom then? I mean, is it basically that they need to approve things? How does it kind of work then in terms of getting the physical releases out there Anyone you've had on the podcast who is a ex game developer or current game developer or whatever else. it's like, yes, there is a lot of approvals, especially especially with companies in Japan The way it works in general is to give some I guess some like ground, Danny I started the business ten years ago with a kickstarter campaign for Hotline Miami. And I think that was the first sounddrag that Lest records put out. And then after that, I think it was kind of like a lot of pitch. I don know you had a close relationship with Devolver Um And then as the company grows, you start getting more and more inbound stuff I think we're really fortunate as a label to have a lot of stuff come inbound because we've built these great relationships with studios publishers, game composers and independent developers But at the same time Like I was saying earlier because there's so many of us internally who are passionate about game music We're always doing our research as well and keeping our eyes on what games are coming out. Okay, cool. So prime example is like a state of play ing in there like new playaysttation showcase. We'll be watching that and going, okay, cool this trail look good What kind of vibes are we get in from the music with this trailer? is the full soundtrack going to be like the music in the trail or or whatever else Stuff like that and then the work in relationships with the companies with our clients Some of them are very hands on in terms of they want to input on Atwork, design, they might have ideas for collectibles and stuff like that. Others are a bit more hands off and will let us kind of lead and come up with ideas. We'll always pitch ideas in terms of what we're going to do for arwk, but sometimes game stududios want to take control of that and If they want to earn the full artwack, thinging ofan is like pp in and going maybe we can do this, maybe we can do that. We'll let them earn that, but it's rarely on a case by case basis but I think The one thing I will say Um is with the case of Nintendo, as you can probably imagine, there's a lot of other like video game record labels. I think that was like a took a long time to get over the line and Nintendo as a client just in terms of the people there There have been such a joy to work with like some of like Nintendo America Like some of the nicest people ever And again, like so passionate about making sure the tracklist for Breath of the Wild was like Absolutely perfect. And then that go over to Japan for approvals and stuff like that. and all of the records we had to send them during the initial onboard and so they could test them and make sure everything sounded fine I think yeah, think cool thing with Nintendo was PR stuff because I was doing that. I was thinking Nintendo going to want to earn this or they w want us doing PR. like they'll just want to. They might ment they might mention as if we're lucky or whatever else. but Nintendo were just like You guys, the music experts You tell us who you want to pitch to, you tell us which journalist you want to speak to. you go out there and do it. You've got like I'll fall back in And I was just like that was a pinry moment like Not only like are we doing stuff with Nintendo, but There' also being incredibly sound about every aspect of this like relationship, which was lovely. Wicked. That's awesome I was I was wondering, obviously Licensing everything incredibly complex and expensive. it's fantastic to hear Nintendo playing ball and being Well giving you free rainb to ssw of things which is well. someomewhat free rein, which is absolutely fantastic. but is there any kind of like dream IPs you would love to work with or anything from like a classic error you would love to be able to bring back and work with We always jok that If I had my wayare of deciding what pressed list records would probably be liquidated by now because I would must be doing I'd be like, yes, PC eighty eight, let's do this. Yes, meega CD, let's do this soundtrack. What do you mean? only twenty people have heard of it? Who cares? The soundtrack is amazing. Like it would it would be stuff like that. I think In terms of square Eix, obviously would be an amazing one, but they kind of just do The own thing. I think to do any of the final finantancy stuff would be amazing U M Nintendo stuff as well be amazing But I think a lot of it To be fair. I mean, lost in C got this fair player, but any of the Kenjina stuff like D two because I think the soundtrack for D two And enemy Zero Michael Nyman did that soundtrack They're incredible soundtracks. and then probably mega dririve stuff, but the problem is with a lot of this retro stuff is you don't know where the rights are sitting becausecause a lot of these studios have folded and back then it was like The lines that in agreements were roably doing a typewriter put away in a cupboard somewhere And then when the studio shut down piece of paper, Wh knows where it went You know. I mean, you would have, I think a lot of the dangerous stuff with doing these old soundtracks is And I've seen this before a composer will be like I return full rights of the music, one hundred percent of it And then it will be like, I mean, you you can see it in wider stories right outside of music where you will have like ownership arguments between like a publisher or a developer or a studio over a game from like twenty o or twenty five years ago or whatever else. and That's just kind of the lay of the land I know you've written about kind of modern music experiences and you know platforms like Robloxs and Fortnite. And even like it's not much of a thing now as it was a couple of years ago like the metaverse, for example. I mean do you kind of see that as almost like the modern equivalent to, you know, for us it was hanging around arcades or record shops, that kind of thing? Is that kind of the equivalent today, do you think Yeah, I think it is. I think in terms of what Fortnite's doing what Roblox is doing and I completely get likeike The hate for roblockx in terms of people going, it looks Naf or whatever else. but I think anyone who's got kids and has seen or has friends who have kids and like they've got tablets and Roblox is watch they're playing And Engagement on Roblox is weird because I think the way a lot of kids play Roblox is they will jump into Roblox as a platform and they will play about thirty or forty different games maybe over the course of like thirty minutes or something like that. It's like people don't just go on to roblockx to play a one game, but I think there's something there in terms of a music discovery platform within Roblox, but They've got a weird thing going on. I work boy with the details, but basically theyre signed a deal with Dr kid whichich means if you upload your music now via discircuit as like an independent artist, your music can automatically go into Roblockx. And what's happened because of the proliferation of AI, is Roblox at the moment is just like He's got so much music on the platform that people don't know what to do with in conns of developers and there's no easy way of implementing it I think Fortnite is different when you look at the stuff that's happening with like That Travis Scott concert, you know what I mean? That was like the light bulb moment for the music industry, I think that I say that was like, especially during COVID. was like the wipe out and Tony Hawk Of today where the music industry once again has kind of had its head turned and gone. Oh wow. We didn't know video games could help us reach like all of these millions of people or whatever else and help us out and stuff like that. So I think in the same way people like us discovered music through playing video games on the Mega Drive or Playsttation Xbox PS two, whatever else. I think the same thing is happening today. in platforms like Fortnite and Roblox. I think when GTS six comes out that will literally transrform all of the conversations around music and gaming And who knows what they're going to do with that I think the big thing For me will be. rememember how in GTF five they had like the you've got the comedy clubs and stuff like that and you've just got like concerts in the game and stuff like that. Yeah. I think they'll have stuff like that. But they will have like real pop up real time versions. Yeah in GTA online. And I think GTA online We don't know if that's coming at launch or whatever else, who knows because it might be a case of like GTF five, we get the single player campaign and then we get online afterwards. but I think whatever they do with GT online. I think Everything that people have been saying about the metaverse, the metaverse, if we can put all of the weird stuff that kind of tech brros and AI evangelogit, like all of those people who don't really know we can put that to aside I think that conversation in terms of this idea of being able to have just a platform where people can jump in and spend their time listening to music or playing games or socializing or whatever else, which yes, I appreciate MMLRPGs have kind of always been doing that or whatever else, but I think the social aspect and element of it. I think GTS six is going to like do that with music live music and I cannot wait to see what they do This the music industry is going to go Yeah. like and then everyone will follow up. And one of the things one of our next questions and it's interestnteresting, you know way the conversation has gone is Those on the retetro hour podcast, we often in the news section, we talk about we celebrate the preservation You know, because it was so hard a lot of it, you mentioned it earlier on, you know, the preservation of a lot of these games or soundtracks and stuff. Yeah non existent or you know, old demos or games that were never released and people are finding them now Do you think these companies are doing enough In the modern day, preserve what's happening in these virtual worlds, what's happening in these virtual gigs and stuff like that. you know for the future generations, you know, to see because as you say, this could be The next big thing it could be there will always be live music obviously and everything, but There's definitely something there like you say with the likes of, you know, Billy Iish and all these, you know, Travis Scott doing these virtual concerts by sans of things I think you spot on there get even bigger GTS six, but do you think they're doing enough? preserve these things, these events. Yeah, I think so, yeah. The events very hard and very expensive to do I think there is a requirement from the games industry. The games industry needs how to the games industry needs to figure out how they can do M music stuff L. ease at scale Absolutely baffles me that the PSBR two didn't launch with a native virtual concert app becausecause you've probably seen all of these virtual concerts, like VR concerts and stuff that are happening right now especially with K pop music I' forgotten the name of the K pop group, but even the Billy Ilish thing I think that's like a VR concert which is at cinemas rightight now So they're doing stuff like this in cinemas, but there's so many like Think of all the VR headsets where sales have just kind of gone like that And I've just always been thinking if only they had like a native, especially with a company like Surny like a label like Sony as well, Sony music where They just need to start rigging like VR and they are recording of artist concerts and you could just drop that into the PSVR. I hope we get something like that in the future And it's funny as well in it because a lot of these everything that we're talking about now is stuff that companies were experimenting with backack in the nineties. And it was just like a different iteration of it. You had like the virtual reality headset for sake. It didn't you, you had like Nintendo virtual reality headset and then We eventually got into