Retrocore Classic Gaming Music (RCVGM) was a retro video game music podcast that ran from 2009 to being officially canceled in 2014. This podcast started off as a spin-off podcast for music requests that people liked to hear play in the background of its predecessor, Retrocore. Later the show became its own thing and was an hour block of mainly retro video game music. Late into its release is when I started listening to this podcast and it basically became the theme music to my college career.
After many years off the air, I actually connected with Chris “The High Priest DJ Sexy Lips” Carboni, former host, and between me, and other fans on Twitter’s convincing, Carboni was going to relaunch the show. In preparation for the relaunch, I volunteered to help DJ SexyLips with a new logo for the rebooted show.
I decided to try to pitch a more modern, updated version of the original to Carboni to see his thoughts. While he liked it, he wanted to take the project in a different direction. The host suggested that I pursue something inspired by Space Invaders, so I decided to take the UFO and make it abduct the name of the podcast. I made both a colored version then turned it black and white in homage to my love of black and white films, especially those with alien invaders. (I figured that this would be a good alternative design for future merchandise endeavors as well).
Showing Carboni the new logo, again, wasn’t what he was looking for and suggested I try something in the vein of Galaga instead. I still wanted to go with the “abduction” aspect and decided to have one of the alien ships abduct one of the letters instead of them all. Below is the result.
Carboni loved this new logo and even implemented it for the new show (see below). The show ended up not launching as Anchor has very strict rules when it comes to copyright, as well as not allowing music podcasts on their platform. In the end, Carboni felt that time has passed and copyright laws changed too much in 15 years to allow the show to flourish once again.
The show can still be enjoyed if you can find episodes online, but they are getting harder to come by nowadays.