Every decade is a huge decade for music, with the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s all bringing major changes to what people listened to and how they heard it. The ’80s, though, was a particularly strong time period, and the sweet spot for a number of genres before grunge blew the doors off the ’90s and things started to feel more homogenized into the 2000s and onward. It’s a rich decade with a huge number of hits, classics and obscure but not forgotten tunes to cover every situation, and Synth Riders has started excavating its offerings with a five-song collection in its 80s Mixtape - Side A DLC release.
Running down the notes with an ’80s flair
Before getting too far into the details, it’s worth taking a moment to acknowledge that a decade as rich as the ’80s is far too much for a five-song collection to even scratch the surface of, and the new collection is all top-40 songs of the type MTV would have rotated into oversaturation forty years ago:
a-ha - Take On Me
DEVO- Whip It
INXS- New Sensation
Phil Collins- Susudio
Starship- We Built This City
Synth Riders Adds Quest Mixed Reality Update
In addition to the new songs, which come in at $1.99 apiece or $7.99 for all five, the base Synth Riders game is getting updated with a new Endless Cafe stage free to all users. The game itself, if you haven’t seen it before, is a VR standout notable for its diverse soundtrack and excellent note tracks. The gameplay is similar to Beat Saber, in that the notes stream towards the player and you need to knock them away with the appropriately-colored hand- blue on the left, red on the right, the green notes are freestyling so long as you clear them all with the same hand you started with, and gold notes take both hands. Doge the purple barriers and that’s the whole thing, except as anyone who’s ever played a music game can attest, it’s nowhere near as simple as it sounds. Synth Riders is top-notch VR gaming and the 80s Mixtape songs perfectly fit into its lineup.
I do have an opinion on what an 80s collection should look like, so it’s only fair that I put in a wishlist for Mixtape Side B for people to make fun of, created with no knowledge of the licensing costs or the practicality of rights acquisition:
Talking Heads- Anything off Stop Making Sense, although preferably Life During Wartime
The Proclaimers- I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)
Slade- Run Runaway
Thomas Dolby- Hyperactive
The Bangles- Walk Like an Egyptian (or A Hazy Shade of Winter, either would be good but chart-toppers get the downloads)
Bonus track update!- Wall of Voodoo- Mexican Radio
Even that only scratches the surface, with the ’80s containing albums as diverse as The Cure’s Disintegration, Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual, Duran Duran’s Rio, Sinead O’Connor’s The Lion and the Cobra, Peter Gabriel’s So, The Traveling Wilburys Volume 1, the first two Jane’s Addiction albums, and The Clash’s London Calling being close enough to count seeing as an album’s release date isn’t the same as the period of its impact. Not to mention major acts like Madonna, Michael Jackson, U2, etc. The point is it’s asking a lot to boil down a decade to five songs, so with any luck the 80s mixtape has a few more sides on the way.
