By: Devonne Tourre

    True gamers don’t just play video games for fun, they do it to fuel a passion. To feed this burning desire, many gamers will seek to expand their knowledge by dabbling in the music, art, and literature involved in the creation of specific games. However, podcasts that are targeted towards gamers are pretty rare. If you’re looking for these types of podcasts, The Heart Piece Podcast and This Week in Chiptune might pique your interest.

    The Heart Piece Podcast (HHP), created by the married couple commonly referred to on the internet as MasterJoe and MasterWife, is a weekly podcast by gamers talking about what they do best: playing video games. The Heart Piece Podcast features many interesting segments that make the podcast more unique, such as a silly ‘advertisement’ in the beginning of some episodes, Major Heart Piece of the Week, where they share a moment in the week that was good to them, and Boost or Break, where they share opinions about a certain topic. They ‘boost’ if they like it and ‘break’ if they don’t. The Heart Piece Podcast is a very welcoming podcast for people who just want to hear others talk about what they like to do for fun. Occasionally the hosts stray off of the beaten path and talk about different topics such as different passions, dealing with stress, and sometimes they even interview different creators of video games and streamers who use Twitch, a web-streaming service.Every episode of this podcast can be found on their own website– www.heartpiecepodcast.com — and is available on iTunes and SoundCloud.

    Some recent episodes of the HPP were ‘With Love from Japan’, where MasterJoe talked with another married couple about their life in Japan. The Scroll sent in a question saying if the community of people in Japan are nice to one another. Jess and Matt– known as Tronbonneart and MegaMat77 on the internet– answered this question wholeheartedly. “In certain areas, they will be a certain way”, with them going on that if you’re in a small area, people tend to be more kind. However, on a train, where people are commuting back and forth, they tend to be more cold. Another episode is “Modern Day Disney Villains”, where MasterJoe converses with AJ from BattleBuddiesGaming (a duo Twitch streaming channel) about if you like a certain video game or console, there will be thousands of others telling you (either on social media or other places) why it is bad.

    Like old, retro video games? Love their style of music? Wouldn’t you love it even more if the music was remixed into something new? Well, look no further! This Week in Chiptune (TWIC) is a weekly podcast and livestream where new and noteworthy chiptune from around the world is mixed and played for at least an hour every week. Chiptune is synthesized electronic music that can be found in old video games or consoles. It can also be heard in some of today’s modern games, such as Sonic Rush, Super Meat Boy, and Shovel Knight among others. Dj CUTMAN, who remixes video game sounds on his record label GameChops, hosts this party live on Twitch as well. This Week in Chiptune can be easily found on thisweekinchiptune.com.

    The most notable episode of This Week in Chiptune was the listening party for the new Chozo Legacy album, which was produced by GameChops member bLiNd. Chozo Legacy contains progressive house remixes of tracks from the Nintendo game Super Metroid. One of its songs, titled Kindred, features vocals from award-winning vocalist Jillian Aversa, who has done work for Halo, Soul Calibur, and other video game soundtracks.