CGQ Mixtape - Sega Genesis Hits of 1991
I’m trying something a little bit different with this video. For whatever reason I suddenly got fixated on the idea of buying a cassette deck to add to the basement stereo system. Cassettes are what I grew up with, and as a result I’m far more nostalgic for them than I am for vinyl. The portability and relative durability of tapes was great back in the day, but the real game-changer was the fact that you could record your own, rather than relying on whatever pre-recorded stuff you could buy. This meant making copies of your LPs and commercial tapes, but it also meant that you could get creative by creating your own tapes, and most people did this by making mixtapes, which were the Spotify playlists of the 80s.
With that in mind, when I picked up this refurbished Denon deck at my local record store, I was actually far more excited about buying some blank tapes than I was about collecting pre-recorded ones, because I wanted to make my own mixtapes. There’s something cool about having to limit yourself to a set amount of time per side, and ending up with your chosen selection of tracks on a piece of physical media that you can hold in your hands. And there’s something cool about the experimenting with and enjoying the wide variety of blank media that was made available through the years. Appreciating not only the different sound offered by different manufacturer’s various tape formulations, but the different appearance of the tapes themselves.
Ideally, I wanted to find a way to share this interest-of-the-month with the audience, but obviously that’s not possible with most commercial music. Thankfully, VGM is far less regulated, and of course better dovetails with the focus of my channels. A [console] in [year] mixtape fits in nicely with the general theme of the show, and I hope to make more of these if they’re well-received.
Show notes:
This is not meant to be a representation of the best games of 1991. It’s a collection of awesome tracks from that year. There were plenty of others that could have been included, but I was of course limited to the length of the cassette.
As mentioned in the video, I didn’t use any Dolby noise reduction. I also didn’t apply any filtering or EQ if any kind during editing. I only adjusted the levels slightly as some tracks were a little louder than others. Yes there is tape hiss. Yes there is some wow & flutter. No, a cassette tape is not the best way to listen to this music from the perspective of audio quality. If that’s your concern, this video is not for you.
Also as stated in the video, this is a Maxell UR cassette. Maxell as sold tapes by this name for many, many years. AFAIK, this latest iteration is the last blank cassette tape available at retail (though you can still buy blank tapes in bulk from other sources.) I got an 8-pack of these for $7 at CVS. For being basic ferric tape rather that chrome or metal, I think they sound very good. My intention going forward is going to be to mix it up with other brands and types of cassettes, just to keep things interesting.
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