89.0 Generation X

Overview

89.0 Generation X is the alternative rock station in Saints Row 2. It plays a mix of emo, pop punk, post-hardcore and indie rock, with most of the playlist sitting in the 2005 to 2007 commercial alt-rock window.

DJs

The station has two DJs across the game. Veteran Child runs the station from the start until the player completes the Veteran Child loyalty mission for Shaundi. After that mission, Ultor purchases the station and renames it 89.0 Ultor FM, with an automated Ultor Announcer taking over hosting duties. The tracklist stays the same but the patter changes completely.

Veteran Child is openly hostile on air, frequently sniping at Shaundi and dismissing listener requests. He introduces a Plain White T's track with "Shaundi, this one's for you" before snapping back into something resembling an apology to the General afterwards. When Shaundi calls in to request Misery Business he refuses politely before begrudgingly playing it.

The Ultor Announcer is a corporate-flat synthesised voice that introduces tracks as if they were corporate-approved. Dane Vogel calls in personally to request Face Down by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus for an Ultor women's line marketing pitch, which the announcer happily plays.

Ultor FM

Following the Veteran Child mission, the station is bought out by Ultor and renamed 89.0 Ultor FM. In the game files this is treated as a separate station entity, so a vehicle saved with its radio set to Generation X stays on Generation X after the buyout, while the rest of the world's vehicles move over to Ultor FM. Once the radio is changed manually, the original Generation X variant is no longer accessible from that car.

The DJ shift includes a number of new commercials and DJ lines tied to Dane Vogel and the Ultor brand. Listener phone-ins after the rebrand are uniformly hostile, mocking the new format with lines like "is this a fucking recording?" and "this station is so creepy now".

Audio quality

The audio in this archive is taken from the Xbox 360 version of the game, which plays at 32 kHz with full stereo songs. The reason for going with the 360 source rather than the PC original is that CD Projekt's Saints Row 2 PC port is genuinely one of the worst PC ports I've come across, and the audio is the most obvious casualty: every radio station ships at 22050 Hz mono. That's especially appalling given the 360 audio was already perfect; the PC port simply downgraded it for no good reason. The DJ banter is 22 kHz mono on both the 360 and the PC release, though, so the talk segments don't benefit from the upgrade the music does.