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thanks so much!!! i really wanted to try subverting expectations with this one.

in theming, we're all used to haunted media tropes. my original draft was that Teleco would be in a cursed tape about to kill you, but then the Channeler would turn their console on at the last second and trap her in the cart. then they'd feel bad about it and then offer to help her escape. i still think it would be funnier to put the player in a situation like that, but i was pressed  for time, so the VHS TV models were relegated to the TV tower, which is another very anime trope. (i've seen it in more, but off the top of my head Nier Automata and Persona 4 use the idea) in the west we have TV walls, anime have garbage TV towers. 

i'm also just always looking for a chance to make things more aesthetically interesting, so splitting mono/stereo and using lots of CRT filters was definitely in the plan. i actually had a segment early on where i hooked up sidechain compression to the TV static on the game cart, so that the TV static white noise would naturally morph into the game percussion and the static would "duck" under it as the audio cleared until the game was running as normal. i had it working, but figured i didn't want to add more unplayable runtime to such a short game.