A classic retrospective of NGI

How things have changed! I just dug up this retrospective that I wrote back in 2004, while broadcasting Nitro Game Injection #49. It’s been sitting on my hard drive for 5 years, I thought I’d share it for those interested in hearing about the show’s history and how it was started. The information is very outdated and mostly no longer applies to the show at all (except the part about me being a moron ), but it does give some cool insight on NGI and myself. Hit the jump and take a read!

Hard to believe that, over two years ago, a little idea about having my own radio show popped into my head. At that time, I was really into listening to local radio stations, and had heard about internet radio streaming. I decided to investigate, and came across the then free Live365 broadcasting service. I decided I would learn how it works, and start broadcasting my own show. The unfortunate thing was, at the time, I was stuck with a 56k connection, and the Live365 software was so buggy and incapable of my needs that eventually, the project for my own video game music internet radio show was abandoned.

The idea of my own show stirred in the back of my head for about a year, then I heard Super Radio X, another VG music show, on January 10th, 2003. This was it: My ambition to try and create my own video game music show came rushing back, and finally, at about sometime in early March 2003, Species8472 directed me to SHOUTcast, a plugin and server for Winamp that allows one to broadcast their own radio show onto the internet, using Winamps versatility. Species helped with the setup, and on March 15, 2003, Nitro Game Injection (then called “Yellow Dart Radio” ) went live for the very first time. The name came to me randomly: Nitro Game Injection is just a conglomeration of some cool words that happen to make sense. The first song to be played on the show, as the intro theme, was called “Moon Over the Castle,” from the Japanese version of the Playstation game Gran Turismo, and the live phone guest, a local friend of mine, called in to chat on the air a bit. It was simplistic, lacking background music, featuring a rather dull and drab host who was just learning what to do and how to act on the air, and some rather plain music. Still, the show marched on for four hours, (A traditional length held to this day, with a few exceptions ) and I did my best at what I was doing: Bringing music to people all around the world.

Today, the show hasn’t changed too much: In the technical aspects, the sound quality is slightly higher, I’m is a bit more clearer thanks to a new microphone, the show finally includes some background music, and a new plugin allows me to simply queue songs in a list, rather than trying to remember everything that is requested. I’ve also had a few long distance guests on the air, and even a few long distance AND in-studio co-hosts. When the show first began, it borrowed the chat room on the Super Radio X forum: Today, Nitro Game Injection not only has it’s own chat room, but it’s own forum as well, and the nifty website you’re currently looking at. In the actual entertainment aspects, the show is basically the same: It still features me, acting like a big dumb moron, (In other words, acting like myself =P ) and bringing the listeners over 2.5 hours of game music per show. The music selection has grown tremendously. At last count, there are nearly 5000 songs in the Nitro Game Injection collection: The show began with about 750. The sources for music are wide: Uncountable FTPs, dozens of web sites, and a ton of people have made the collection multiply itself five and a half times, and I can’t thank these sources enough. You know who you are ๐Ÿ˜›

As I write this, I am currently broadcasting NGI #49. I’ve done this over 50 times, including the specials and test runs that I’ve had. It’s been great fun, and probably the biggest, longest running project I’ve ever had the pleasure of maintaining. As long the listeners demand it, I’ll be back here every week with the video game music. I look forward to another year, and another 50 shows! Thank you all!

Kyle “JCrb” Crouse, March 8th, 2004

2 Comments

  1. Oh yeah. That was due to Akumu’s voice being easily drowned out by it, no matter how low I tried to make the BGM. Kinda sucked, but it was the only way to make it work.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.