Palette-Swap Ninja is proud to announce the availability of our latest song, “Arcade Gaming Shrine,” a loving parody of “1985” by Bowling For Soup. You can download it here — just right-click the link and select Save File As or Save Target As or whatever your browser tells you to do.

For details on this track, click the link below.

Good heavens. I just updated the Songs page and saw that it has been almost a year since our last release. I’m so sorry. Right after that song was released, I switched jobs, then switched jobs again. It took Jude and his wife less time to have a baby than it took me to finish up my half of this song.

If I recall correctly, this track was one that Jude came up with, and it only makes sense since he is essentially the title character in the song. In his spare time, Jude collects and restores old arcade machines and has since long before I met him. He helped me bring a Ms. Pac-Man back to life and has helped me out on several other coin-op adventures. People often ask me “what’s your favorite game system of all time” and I honestly, truly believe the answer is the arcade machine. What could possibly beat a 400-pound box dedicated to playing ONE GAME PERFECTLY and decorated to match? I cut my gaming teeth in arcades and the coin-op games of yore will always have a special place in my heart as a result. I still have two arcade machines in my garage; Jude may have ten times that by now. His basement is apparently very cool but I have not had the chance to see it yet.

Jude did the drums and cymbals and helped isolate some of the sound effects from the games; I did guitars, bass, and vocals. This is the first song we’ve done without any keyboard parts at all, so I really worked hard on the guitars. All told this was 21 tracks, most of which were guitars and vocal layers. I lost my voice in March and had to put off the recording of the vocals for three long weeks, but believe me — I did some tests a week prior to the final recording session and it just wasn’t there.

Jude and I want to seriously thank all the great people behind the great games that are name-checked in this song. If you are in the Bay Area this July, we both urge you to go to California Extreme, which is our favorite arcade show. We’ll both be there this year and it’s well worth the money. This show is put on out of pure love for the games that built an industry and we proudly support it.

— Dan