5.16.13: CASSETTE ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEMS
So there I was, enjoying a nice quiet Wednesday or Thursday or whatever today is when this twit was tweeted on Twitter:
So, I’m a busy guy. I don’t have a lot of time on my hands well with the stock market, Benghazi, and the current sport that is going on during this current sport season (Go Scorpions!) but I decided to click the hyperlink kindly sent from Rano Records anyways. Holy shit, am I ever glad I did.
Before I dive in here, allow me to lay some groundwork. The Tabs Out crew loves video game music. Devotees to the show may recall that Episode #22 opened up with some music from 1988 scrolling beat’em up Target: Renegade. Dave snagged the sounds off of YouTube, noting it was the music that was played on the game when you died and that he would die on purpose just to hear it. In the game, not in real life. In the same episode we played the audio-data from a ZX Spectrum video game cassette. A format we learned about a few weeks earlier on Episode #21 and began an obsession for us. Alright. With that said let me tell you about what I saw after I clicked on the above link.
A label from Bloomington, Indiana by the name of Auris Apothecary has done something that rivals with man walking on the moon, sliced bread, and slicing bread on the moon. They have released soundtracks from NES games on pro-dubbed cassette tapes! And not bands or noisers recreating retro video game sounds sort of like that band The Advantage. No, I’m talking about the game’s original soundtrack transferred from the .nsf files to tape. The cassettes are imprinted with the title of the game in an 8-bit font with the game’s logo on the cover of the Jcard. I’m getting out of breath just thinking about it, and I’m not even on the running pad. Here are some of the titles that are getting me extra giddy.
My advise to you? Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A yourself and use all 30 of your lives to grip these jams up. They are $8.00 each / 3 for $21. Click here to grip, and let us know what other game’s soundtrack you’d like to see! – MH
UPDATE: It turns out that this is the SECOND batch of NES soundtrack cassettes from Auris. The first group came out almost two years ago and included gems such as Zelda, Mega Man, R.C. Pro-AM, and Tetris! My mind just went from jello to jello with fruit in it.
