{"id":109,"date":"2026-07-23T22:08:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T22:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/?p=109"},"modified":"2026-07-23T22:36:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T22:36:30","slug":"death-ray-manta-and-ost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/death-ray-manta-and-ost\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Ray Manta and \u2026 OST?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0874-1024x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-110\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0874-1024x1024.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0874-300x300.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0874-150x150.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0874-768x768.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0874-1536x1536.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0874.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Death Ray Manta: A Fish Like No Other<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps surprisingly, I have few regrets from my time in videogames over the years. Sure there\u2019s the odd bit of me behaving like a nob here and there that were I to do over, I would try not to be such a nob and there\u2019s a few choices every now and then but nothing spectacular or noteworthy. <br><br>With the exception of precisely one thing! The soundtrack to DRM 2 having to lie abandoned for the most part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a long story of how and why but in a nutshell, it\u2019s \u201cthis was the part my life started going into free fall\u201d and so Death Ray Manta 2 has never happened. I\u2019m not so sad about not getting the game done and out there, I think after a while in games you kind of get used to not being able to finish some things. No, instead, it\u2019s that had I managed to get the game out, even if the game turned out tremendously awful, it would have had one of the best soundtracks in videogames by a long chalk. <br><br>It really is an absolutely tremendous piece of work! There\u2019s a small sample on the trailer for the Switch release of DRM:SE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Death Ray Manta SE - Nintendo Switch Launch Trailer\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nhUsGHV-jQU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, maybe one day my life will be comfortable enough again to consider revisiting the game (that time seems a fair way off at the moment, admittedly) or maybe one day Andy at Thalamus can convince someone who isn\u2019t me to make their own DRM2 (I would love to see what someone else could come up with!) but in the meantime I\u2019m so glad that Thalamus Digital have <a href=\"https:\/\/thalamusdigital.itch.io\/death-ray-manta-ost\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/thalamusdigital.itch.io\/death-ray-manta-ost\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">rescued the OST from the darkest depths of internet obscurity and rereleased it on Itch<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I may have failed to write the arena shooter you can sing along to in the end, but you can still play any arena shooter you fancy and sing along to Oh Stevie\u2019s incredible tunes and give Mike and Jenny some money for their songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0875-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-111\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0875-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0875-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0875-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0875-1536x864.png 1536w, https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_0875.png 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Death Ray Manta: The Original Version<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With huge thanks to Thalamus Digital, the original &#8211; not SE &#8211; version of <a href=\"https:\/\/thalamusdigital.itch.io\/death-ray-manta\">Death Ray Manta<\/a> is available again on Itch. <br><br>It\u2019s kind of a halfway point between SYNSO 2 and DRM:SE, it\u2019s a little bit different looking and plays a little differently to the SE version also. To be honest, it\u2019s been so long now I couldn\u2019t possibly give you an authoritative list of differences (I\u2019ve slept since then), I\u2019m just glad to see it\u2019s back out there somehow. <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the caveat that it is a game from 2013 so you may run into compatibility problems. It definitely works on Window 10 tho. I think most of the real trouble would come from trying to get anything pre-Windows 8 of mine running these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This was also the version that my good chum Jeff used to make an iPod (kids, ask your grandad) version from! You know, back when you could sell videogames without people showing you graphs every ten minutes on social media. And it were all fields too.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Death Ray Manta: A Fish Like No Other Perhaps surprisingly, I have few regrets from my time in videogames over the years. Sure there\u2019s the odd bit of me behaving like a nob here and there that were I to do over, I would try not to be such a nob and there\u2019s a few [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Wait. Hang on. A rare release announcement? Can it be?\n\nThalamus Digital have been vault rummaging and found some gold. Extra! Extra! Read all about it.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,26],"tags":[34,40,35,36,39,37,25,38],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-videogames","tag-death-ray-manta","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-oh-stevie","tag-ost","tag-pc-gaming","tag-thalamus-digital","tag-theme-song","tag-windows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}