Headphones On: The Mixtape Edition
Good morning, good evening, good afternoon and g’day!
It’s CJ and mabbees, also known as Studio Terranova.
It’s been a while since we last gave a status update, so what’s new? Well…
- we founded an LLC in Japan to start a cooperative
- we started making Tomodachi 8in1
- we got budget for the next round of Japanese translation on Terranova
- …while getting help from incredible translators on TWO NEW LANGUAGES for Terranova - Russian and Brazilian Portuguese. (спасибо and obrigado to Daniela Albu and Yukimaru Raphael Del Valle)
There is a LOT to share about the cooperative and translation, but we need a bit more time.
In this newsletter, we thought we’d touch on a topic that we discuss often amongst ourselves and influences both Terranova and Tomodachi 8in1 a lot—mixtapes.
Why mixtapes?
In the time when all computers came with a built-in CD drive, we used to swap mixes with my friends as a way of seeing if our musical interests matched. It was a great way to broaden our horizons.
And perhaps we’ll broaden yours a little today, too.
Play Terranova with your favorite 00’s mixes
Some fans have asked us why Terranova doesn’t have a soundtrack.
We initially planned to have a music player. We developed some designs on-stream. But as we worked more on it, we realized the amount of development time it would take to realize it to our satisfaction was beyond our capacity and release deadline. So, we cut our losses and shipped the game without.
We did get comments on the game about the lack of soundtrack but then noticed that players started adding their own music to enjoy the game.
And we thought, “you know what, let’s keep it.” Far be it from us to dictate our players’ nostalgic setlists—because everyone has that one song that takes them back in time.
For those of you who want to know what we listened to while making Terranova*—*here’s some mixes CJ listened to on repeat. It contains a mix of modern music and 90’s~00’s music that came from some of their actual mix CDs they made in high school.
Yeah, it’s a little 中二病 chuunibyou. We don’t care. Embrace your cringe.
Tomodachi 8in1 and Retro Rewind
Even though we wanted to keep Terranova as-is, we still couldn’t shake off the feeling we still wanted to create a music player.
So in our current game, Tomodachi 8in1, mabbees crafted eight tracks that can be played in full on an in-game cassette player. If you listen to it, you’ll get a good idea of what kinds of mixtapes we had as teens.
Some of songs are going for a VERY specific sound. The first track on Retro Rewind #2 (RR2), Exosuit Guardians OP is the opening theme song for a mecha anime.
Mabbees took a lot of cues from the opening songs to Gundam Wing (Two Mix - Just Communication) and Gundam Seed (TM Revolution - Invoke). The third track, Pretty Lies, is channeling Evanescence and Linkin Park as chiptunes.
Some songs didn't have anything AS specific in mind, but are still going for a recognizable vibe. The second track on Retro Rewind #1 (RR1), Before You Go is a 2000s pop-punk song -- along the lines of Green Day, Weezer, Jimmy Eat World, or even My Chemical Romance -- but not any one band in particular.
On the other hand, Isekai, the 3rd track on RR1, is aiming for an unspecific sound. It started out as an adventure RPG theme, but I couldn't shake the feeling that my first draft sounded too close to the Legend of Zelda.
While sounding like Zelda music is by no means a bad thing, sounding like you plagiarized Zelda music is, so mabbees brought in some other musical influences to make it more distinct. The result is maybe somewhere between "Legend of Zelda" and "Never Ending Story", but hopefully sounds like it has its own identity.
You can check out the albums on mabbees’ Bandcamp here.
Or, if you want to have an in-game cassette player, Tomodachi 8in1 is only 440 yen.
Bonus: #cohostsummermixtape
In the summer of 2023, CJ made a tag called #cohostsummermixtape. As of this year, cohost will be shutting down, but they have preserved all of the song recommendations on Mixtape Garden for your listening pleasure.
Thank you for reading!
We hope you enjoyed this special music edition of our newsletter. We’re planning on putting out one per month, every last Monday of the month. Our next newsletter will be going into some of the game development of our new dressup game, Style O’ Ween, releasing on itch.io very soon.
Look forward to the next newsletter in November!
