Rez & Kenet - Unreal Superhero 3 (Pseudo Game Boy mix) Delay 2022-04-10 | Covering the track that really got me into this entire thing. It marked my first exposure to a tracker and it looked sort of interesting, so I gave it a try.Initially, I wanted to copy as many notes as I could from the original, but I decided against that to give myself a bit more freedom. Nonetheless, I stayed as faithful as I could.The fact the Game Boy has a wave channel really helped here. While it mostly plays the bassline, it also came in handy as a makeshift third square whenever needed!
Doki Doki Literature Club! - Ohayou Sayori! (Game Boy cover) Delay 2024-07-13 | A happy, playful little song for an innocent ball of sunshine. One fateful Tuesday morning she asks you to join the school's Literature Club...I experimentally made this cover over the course of two livestreams, taking about 6 hours in total (I like to take my time). Still unsure if I want to do that again; on one hand it's fun to share your process in real time, on the other hand I'm afraid it's boring to watch.I pretty much had the entire cover already planned out in my head a few days before I started to work on it and I'm glad my imagination actually cooperated for once. A few things like pitch slides took some time to work out and porting it pokecrystal threw another small spanner in the works, but thankfully that's resolved without compromise. This is pretty much exactly what I had in mind with the track and I think I nailed it!________________________________Game: Doki Doki Literature Club!Composer: Dan Salvato
Doki Doki Literature Club! - Main Theme (Game Boy cover) Delay 2024-05-11 | So much stuff in just four channels. And surprisingly I'm really happy with it!Just like pretty much all other DDLC fan content, this really should only be watched after playing the game.Until the end of January, DDLC was a game that I was only vaguely aware of. All I knew about it was that it was a horror game that somehow broke the fourth wall, but I didn't know when or why. Arguably, even then I knew too much already. But since I only recently found an interest in psychological horror stories, I decided to make DDLC - DDLC Plus, really - my first ever actual horror game!I was not disappointed. Doki Doki Literature Club! is by far one of the best gaming experiences I've had in the last few years. It's so much more complex and nuanced than the genre, artstyle or the first 30 minutes of gameplay suggest. Just how effective the game is at steering how you think about the characters from act to act, and how even the most obvious turns of events still come as a shocking surprise is amazing to me. It's like you know for certain what's going to happen next, yet you don't quite want to believe it.I decided to made some exceptions after playing this game. Usually I don't go for 100% completion, but for DDLC Plus I simply had to. I wanted to see everything it had to offer - heck, at this point I'm sure I've seen every single unique line of dialog in the game.More importantly, I decided to break an implicit, long-standing rule of my channel: to never cover anything that could still be subject to hype. My heuristic for that is waiting at least 10 years, but I love this game too much to let a simple rule override my rash decision-making! Seven years will have to do. Not even seven, actually.It's been a while since I made a cover for the Game Boy, so coupled with the fact I found the old handheld to be the most suitable candidate for such a soundtrack, I just went for it. With previous, unacceptably harsh accusations (that's a joke) of faking my covers in mind, I also decided to go a bit overkill to solve that issue."pokecrystal" is the unofficially official... officially unofficial? ...whatever, it's a disassembly project for Pokémon Crystal that does a really good job documenting any and all aspects of the game. Important to me were the sound driver and unassembled music format that are actually really simple to understand. You can edit any track in the game, build the ROM and then listen to your own creations in what is technically your own little ROM hack! So that's what I did.I still prototyped the song in MilkyTracker since it's easier, but once I felt confident I rewrote the data for every channel in pokecrystal's format. By hand. I mean, where's the fun in using automated tools? Then I played it back in BGB, using its wav writer to record the audio. After that it was pretty much the same process as with every other video on the channel - generate the oscilloscope, record relevant game parts (so, the menu), put it all together in... well, still Blender, and finally render the whole thing.Things were made a bit more complicated by wanting to use the actual menu layout to structure the video, which led to me half-assedly covering up the menu options without hiding the little stars that fly out of the logo and then not bothering to do the same with the actual oscilloscope on top of it. Still, I put more effort into the visuals this time, with masking stuff and whatnot. Honestly it was still really fun and I want to try and do this more often in the future.Same with the thumbnail. At least I actually made one. I want to make something that's simple and long-term recognizable, yet also somewhat curious. I don't think this is it yet, but it's a start. As someone who's not an artist, I shouldn't expect perfection.I'm seriously ranting now, aren't I? Well, actually it's your fault for reading until here! If you haven't played DDLC yet, go play it! It's free! Mind the content warnings and you'll be fine.Thanks to Team Salvato for making DDLC, several reddit threads for collecting the game's fonts, and my brain's ability to put the most work into the least important things.________________________________Game: Doki Doki Literature Club!Composer: Dan Salvato
Transport Tycoon - Fell Apart On Me (MegaDrive cover) Delay 2024-01-27 | Waiting to be finished for over half a year. And it went through some iterations!I initially thought it would be fun to include some of Sonic 3's voice samples thrown in between the beats. Never failed to make me smile, but eventually I figured it doesn't really fit. Maybe I'll make an alternate version some day, just for the heck of it.Honestly, really happy with this one. I combined elements of the original MIDI with the track's 2014 remaster and I think I got the instruments down very well! While there's not much original stuff from me in there - well, I _did_ move and syncopate a few notes here and there - I can at least say that PSG 3's hi-hat patterns are almost entirely improvised. I tried to make sure they're not distracting while still forming an essential part of the rhythm. Think I nailed that.(Yes, I know I recorded a little loop of OpenTTD, not Transport Tycoon. Close enough!)______________________________Game: Transport TycoonComposer: John Broomhall
Sonic 1 - The Complete Soundtrack in 8-Bit! Delay 2023-02-26 | All of my Sonic 1 chiptune/8-Bit remixes in one video. This is the first part of the OST, what I call the "main" soundtrack. That's all zones as well as the title, boss and ending tracks.I decided to redo Green Hill, Spring Yard and Starlight Zone. I made their first versions before I had the idea of making this "album" and my style and approach to covering changed a lot since then. The inspirations I took might be more or less obvious depending on the track.I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the soundtrack! Personally I'm really happy with it, although once again I think Final Zone's a bit iffy. Maybe I could've done more with it, but I believe it's still good.Tracklist:0:00 Title0:10 Green Hill Zone2:59 Marble Zone5:51 Spring Yard Zone7:57 Boss9:06 Labyrinth Zone11:12 Starlight Zone13:30 Scrap Brain Zone17:31 Final Zone18:50 Ending19:10 CreditsMade in MilkyTracker v1.03 with linear resampling and volume ramping. I like the smoother sound that creates. The oscilloscope was made using SidWizPlus.______________________________Game: Sonic The HedgehogComposer: Masato Nakamura
GoldenEye 007 - Watch Theme (MegaDrive cover) Delay 2023-02-05 | GoldenEye was rereleased in January!I thought it would be fitting to create a cover of one of its tracks. To celebrate, if you will.Now, the watch theme isn't the most complicated piece of music I've ever covered, I took 2 hours to make this. I didn't intend to actually upload this, but because I haven't posted anything in a while I thought it would be good to show some sign of life.
Dominator (C64) - Hidden Theme (MegaDrive cover) Delay 2022-12-25 | I guess this could be seen as Part 2 of a suggestion from last year? It's also my first time trying out (the legacy version of) DefleMask instead of MilkyTracker. It's much better for covers on specific hardware like the MegaDrive, GameBoy or C64. So I figured "Why not try to cover something different, too?"Making this also reminded me of just how good Matt Gray's works are. And also how few covers there are of most of his tracks. Maybe it's time to change that, one by one...Oh, and Happy Holidays, and have a fantastic new year! Let's all work towards a better 2023.______________________________Game: Dominator (C64)Composer: Matt Gray
Sonic CD - Stardust Speedway - Past (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-11-27 | I'm beginning to realize I like to repeat section A in my covers. Anyways...Stardust Speedway is a bit more difficult to time travel in than previous zones, mostly because the devs decided to place future signs right in your path. But once you have traveled back, you're greeted by one of the most visually beautiful levels this game has to offer, and a soundtrack to match. ______________________________Game: Sonic The Hedgehog CDComposers: Naofumi Hataya, Masafumi Ogata
Sonic 1 - Boss (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-07-24 | Getting closer to completing the soundtrack. Here's the boss theme of the first game.Depending on what I consider to be part of the OST, there might only be two to go - the special stage and the credits!However, I've realized that only uploading Sonic 1 might become monotonous and boring over time. I'll try to cover something else next.______________________________Game: Sonic The HedgehogComposer: Masato Nakamura
Sonic 3 - Sky Sanctuary Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-07-17 | Final Zone left a bit to be desired, and I felt the need to compensate or apologize for that. So I promised a cover from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sky Sanctuary was what I had in mind.I had spent some time thinking about how I wanted to approach this, so creating the track was done quickly. For the typical conclusion I make to these, I decided to use a small section of the track only found in a 1994 album released by Sega*. The video aspect was a bit more difficult. As visually amazing as the stage is, its layout is rather linear and without much complexity. I wasn't playing very well in the recording, but even then I completed the stage in 3 minutes or less, ignoring the bosses. As such, I ran into similar problems to Scrap Brain Zone - I had to carefully consider what I could cut, otherwise I'd run out of footage.Fortunately, I had recorded enough to skip all bosses (they play the boss theme, anyways). I then had to leave everything else almost unedited, but coincidentally, the track ended just before the final boss! Everything just happened to line up perfectly!You may also realize that I spent way too much effort on a tiny detail in my font: Unlike Sonic 1, 2 and CD, there are some conflicts between the colors used in the stage by some objects and the font colors, so the font shadows may not always be perfectly black.I matched that.No one would've noticed if I didn't mention it here. No one would've missed if I hadn't done it to begin with.But I felt that it would be a nice, albeit unnecessary, example of attention to detail.*Source: Mastered Realm, youtube.com/watch?v=Lqm5a_io_Bs
Sonic 1 - Final Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-07-03 | I produced this on short notice, so it may not be as good as the other Sonic 1 covers so far.I also thought that a video in the background would be kinda pointless. It's mostly the same screen for 2 minutes, so I've gone back to a black screen.______________________________Game: Sonic The HedgehogComposer: Masato Nakamura
Sonic 1 - Marble Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-06-26 | After the fast-paced and enjoyable Green Hill Zone, you're dropped in... pretty much the exact opposite. Marble Zone provides a stark contrast by requiring a lot of precise jumps and waiting. While the entirety of Green Hill Zone can be completed easily in around 3 minutes or less, that's about how long just one act of Marble Zone takes. At least you're given a variety of unique hazards and features to make your stay less tedious. ______________________________Game: Sonic The HedgehogComposer: Masato Nakamura
Sonic 1 - Scrap Brain Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-06-12 | This zone is hard! As it should be of course, it is the last in the game after all. In fact, I would argue that out of the classic games, Scrap Brain is the most difficult final zone.For this track, I decided to do things slightly differently. A rather common method to extend a song's runtime is to raise it by one or two semitones near the end. I thought it would be appropriate to do something like this here, maybe to "raise the stakes" a bit more. I wanted to sync that with the beginning of Act 3 of my playthrough, but as it turns out I had not spent enough time in that act to make it through the loop. I didn't want to re-record things for the sake of consistency, but after a bit of struggling, I think I found a good compromise.______________________________Game: Sonic The HedgehogComposer: Masato Nakamura
Labyrinth Zone Bonus: Drowning Delay 2022-06-08 | Depending on how you play, you might hear this theme a lot.But that doesn't make it any less terrifying.______________________________Game: Sonic The HedgehogComposer: Masato Nakamura
Sonic 1 - Labyrinth Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-06-05 | The first of only two levels with water in the first Sonic game.This is one of my favorite zones in Sonic 1, no doubt. I like the constant threat the water presents, there are a few tricky, but fair spots in all three acts, and in general the stage looks gorgeous and plays beautifully, with a soundtrack to match.Of course, water would later become a more ubiquitous element of the series as a whole. But the first game showed restraint, making Labyrinth Zone a very unique place.You'll notice that the visuals in this video are very different from what I used to make. After gaining a bit of confidence over the last two years, I think it's appropriate to step up my game a little and put more effort into the video portion of my work.This, I hope, will become a new standard for videos on the channel across the board, although it might take a while until the design is completely finalized. I plan to use a (slightly) different font for every game, meaning that every game will have a unique look!______________________________Game: Sonic The HedgehogComposer: Masato Nakamura(I'll have to add this to every single other video, too. If only I gave credit from the very beginning...)
Sonic CD (2011) - You Can Do Anything (FM / Mega Drive* cover) Delay 2022-05-22 | Note: This is a cover of the 2011 instrumental.How have I not covered this before?Without a doubt, this has been my most thorough cover so far. I meticulously listened to the original several times over to make sure I got everything absolutely right. Surprisingly, everything fit into nine channels from the start, I barely had to use any tricks. If anything, I mostly had channels to spare.The song also required me to use the most unexpected program - Notepad++. I had to write some code to add two PCM samples together!At least that was the plan. You can't simply add the sample values together and call it a day. I didn't bother learning how sound works, so the addition was instead carried out in Audacity. My C program still had a use however, as a quick pcm2dpcm converter. The only reason I went through that effort, by the way, was to make sure I could create correctly-formatted, Mega Drive-friendly files at the end. In theory, I could replace some samples in the Sonic 3 ROM with mine and they would work perfectly! I cared that much about authenticity.I began with this song around a month ago, on April 23. Turns out that giving myself that much time was not a good idea. The cover was completed in just two days, but I fell into a cycle of finding minor mistakes, correcting them, re-rendering everything, rinse and repeat. For the next two-odd weeks!It's been rather exhausting, but I'm finally done with it. I can't find anything to correct anymore (for one reason or another), and I'm incredibly happy with the result.Additionally, I might experiment with the visual presentation, yet again. Coloring the oscilloscopes didn't last very long.Since I have these games and the ability to record them, I figured I could use some videos I captured. That ought be more interesting than a solid black background, but as long as I'm using a tracker, the oscilloscopes won't go anywhere. I also don't have all games I've ever made a cover of.I might also start worrying about making custom thumbnails and stuff. Take this whole thing a bit more seriously, you know? I was never really happy with the auto-generated thumbnails to begin with.Sometimes, they're just plain stupid. For this video, one of them showed Sonic covering his eyes with his hand. As funny as it would be, I can't possibly use that facepalm as a thumbnail!
Sonic 3 - Flying Battery Zone (Past mix?) Delay 2022-05-15 | In his music theory video on Flying Battery, Alex Yard pointed out how both acts make use of a minor chord with an ascending fifth, giving the music a James Bond-esque feel. In hindsight, I'm kind of amazed I never made that connection myself before, and I've become a bit obsessed with it.So, here I present my rendition of a Flying Battery past theme, even though there are no particularly unique sections in this. Compared to the past mixes you're given in Sonic CD, at least - I'm thinking of Tidal Tempest especially.Still, this might be my first compositional effort that could truly be classified as a remix!The main goal I had was to create a stronger connection to the James Bond theme than the original. As a past stage, I'm thinking of the airship still being under construction as Sonic gets to work to foil Robotnik's plans. I found a lot of inspiration - both for this scene and the soundtrack - in Golden Eye 64's prologue. If you know which track of the game I'm talking about, then the parallels are very easy to make out. Pretty much everything, like the key of F minor or the slightly different tuning (A4 ~ 432 Hz), is inspired in some way by the N64 classic.
Sonic 3 - Balloon Park (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-05-01 | What an upbeat, happy tune for a two-player stage!Translating this track to work with 8-bit instruments turned out to be rather straightforward. Transcribing it was a bit more difficult because the notes are very densely packed, but using carpathia's deconstruction I managed to create something I'm happy with.
Sonic 2 - Chemical Plant Zone (FM cover) Delay 2022-04-24 | Something a bit simpler.The biggest difference between this version and the original (aside from the instruments) is the bassline. Assuming that F# is the tonic (and the best I could describe the key of the track with is "F# minor with a major sixth"), then I'm alternating between the 1 and the 6 (D#) every other bar. It seemed fitting to try something like this and it doesn't sound too bad!Everything else is played mostly as it already was.
Sonic 2 - Casino Night (2 Player) (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-04-03 | The theme for this and the next few is experimentation. I want to try some things. In this case, I added some chords as the original barely uses any.
Sonic 3 - Hydrocity Zone - Act 2 (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-02-27 | I've had this lying on my hard drive for almost a year now, completely unfinished. So I decided to spend a day completing it. It's a little rushed in comparison to other recent tracks, but I think it's still okay.I won't make videos for a bit now, but I'll try to make a stockpile that I can then upload from every other week or so.Right now I'm unsure of what to cover next. I have no idea, to be honest! I could go through some more Sonic 3 tracks again, but I want to leave my comfort zone a bit.
Transport Tycoon - Main Theme (8-Bit cover) Delay 2022-02-05 | Something completely different indeed!Transport Tycoon is a game I'm not that good at, but I like its soundtrack a lot. It has plenty of swung pieces and jazz (?) in it that I enjoy.Being an old PC game from 1994/1995, it shouldn't be surprising that it used the MIDI format to play music. Depending on your sound card, every track would sound different, and there are plenty of uploads with all kinds of sound cards. This cover is mostly based on the default Windows sounds. That's also how I've always heard it.Making this cover was unexpectly straight-forward, but I did run into issues with transcribing the last third. Nonetheless, I'm happy with it. The fact the original is a MIDI greatly helped as it had similar limitations to mine.What I like particularly is the drum loop. I honestly think it's one of the best I've made so far.
Sonic CD - Metallic Madness (JP) - Present (Chiptune cover) Delay 2022-01-22 | More Sonic CD. But I promise I'll cover something completely different next!Surprisingly, this took about one week to make. I didn't spend a lot of time in the tracker over the last month, so I was a bit out of practice! I ran into a few issues while transcribing, but I hope it's not too bad.
Sonic CD - Stardust Speedway (JP) - Bad Future (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-12-18 | This is one of my favorite tracks in the game. In fact, most of my favorite pieces are from bad futures, which is a bit ironic.So, half a year ago I included Stardust Speedway in my (still terrible) 30th anniversary medley. Since I already made that segment, I copied it and built the rest of the loop from there. Turns out that I saved a lot of work with that. I know I messed up the intro a bit, but aside from that I'm happy with what I made. You might notice that I've taken some liberties with the pattern order as well!
PMD: E - Treasure Town (bad FM cover) Delay 2021-12-09 | One of those that I've made any I'll never look at again. At least I got some instruments out of it...Right, where do I begin? I suppose with the original soundtrack. This game's music, the entire series' even, is absolutely exceptional, through and through. In fact, it comprises some of the very few pieces of music that consistently bring me close to tears, which says a LOT about it. It's pretty much the highest compliment I can give.With this in mind, I knew full well that I could never do the game, its soundtrack, or the people who like it, justice in any way, shape or form, no matter which track I picked (doesn't mean I didn't try!). But while not mutilating the track too much was of course *a* goal, it wasn't really *the* goal, not for this one, at least.PMD lies way outside my area of... uhh... "expertise". I mostly cover Sonic titles from the MegaDrive era, which have a completely different sound to them. And if you somehow found this video and didn't simply go back to the search page after hearing the first chord, and then somehow also took the time to read this far, you might also notice that those covers are a lot better, and I'm deliberately using the comparative there.Behind the scenes, however, I frankly struggle a lot with fear of failure. I'm in the extremely advantageous position to rarely reach the triple digits in views - but make no mistake, I appreciate every single one - so it's a rather manageable situation without much pressure driving it. I'm "just" very worried about how my content comes across to others and, by extension, what people think of me as the one who made it. And because realizing that failure isn't a bad thing is very different from actually acting according to this realization, I reckoned that exposing myself to a situation where failure is the only option might help a bit in dealing with these thoughts.I mean, what are the possible outcomes? Let's be honest for a moment.In the worst case, I made the most disliked video on my channel, or the video simply dies.In the best case, I may get some much-needed criticism that could really help me improve and perhaps even diversify my content a little bit.But I'm not going for PMD. Not for a long, very long time. Something with far fewer expectations!
Sonic CD - Palmtree Panic (JP) - Bad Future (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-11-26 | Sonic CD's soundtrack is incredible, and Palmtree Panic is no exception. The Bad Future in particular amazed me the first time I heard it. It perfectly captures the horrific state of the place, and your failure to achieve the good future.Now, I haven't been able to quite capture that, but I think I've done a good job given that voice samples are used a lot in the original.
Sonic 3 - Angel Island Zone - Act 2 (FM cover) Delay 2021-11-20 | This is an reinstrumented and updated version of the Angel Island cover I made pretty much exactly nine months ago, with a few sections completely reworked. Even back in February I wasn't very happy with what I had put together, but this time I think I've made something decent (even with unhumanly fast piano tremolos)!I think I've improved a bit in that time, although the instruments might distort a direct comparison.
Super Mario World - Athletic Theme (Pseudo Game Boy mix) Delay 2021-10-29 | I said that Nintendo would be a bit risky given their history with remixes... and then the next one I do is possibly one of the most iconic tracks in Nintendo's history.Once again, I tried to keep things in the limits of the Game Boy's hardware. That means this track could be played back on one with only minimal differences.Transcribing this one was difficult, a lot of the time I had to slow down the track to 50 or 75%. Overall, this 35 second loop took me roughly 4-5 hours to do.
Sonic 2 - Hill Top Zone (Bad Future mix??) Delay 2021-10-25 | Hill Top Zone is a peaceful place in the clouds. But what if Robotnik managed to utterly corrupt it? That's what I went for here.I aimed for a vibe similar to Palmtree Panic's Bad Future (basically a destroyed paradise), although I might have overdone it a bit. The track is much faster than the present and I completely filled the drum loop. The bassline is fairly obviously inspired by Ruby Delusions from Sonic Mania, of all places. I also added this square channel... thing(?), whose main purpose was to make the track more "active", if that makes sense.Overall, I'm not sure if I want to like it or hate it. I think I've made clear that the place is pretty messed up, but the execution is a bit dubious.Like I said, very tentative. I spent, like, 4 hours on it, most of that in one session. Typically I spend a few days adjusting things until I'm confident enough to upload it.
Sonic 2 - Hill Top Zone (Past mix?) Delay 2021-10-23 | Turns out the first three weeks of uni were quite survivable. So I got a bit inspired and tried making some themes in the vein of the Sonic 2 CD Remix. Noticing that HTZ uses the... rather unpleasant beta version for the past, I wondered how I would write the past remix if I were in charge.I didn't really change a lot, slowing down and reinstrumenting the "present" instead. However, I did remove the track's intro, which allowed for a rather nice transition back to the start. The main reason for this is that I think jumping into the main loop directly after a time travel sounds nicer than starting with the intro.The end result was that I turned the calmest track in the game even calmer, which really was exactly what I wanted to do.
Sonic 1 - Spring Yard Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-09-27 | The zone that began the long series of casino-themed levels in Sonic games. There's not really a lot to say, I just copied what I heard. I did, however, use the prototype's slightly different bassline and I moved a few notes around a bit.
Sonic 1 - Star Light Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-09-05 | This track is a strange one, for a track in a Sonic game, that is. To me, it sounds fairly happy (not that my perception means much), which is weird for a stage that late in the game!I could have uploaded this last week, the main part of the track was done. What postponed it by a week was the lack of any cadence. I'm trying to avoid fadeouts, going for a proper ending instead. So far, that worked kinda well, but SLZ made me struggle a lot. As a result, the way I concluded it is a bit odd, but it's the best I was able to produce.
Dominator (C64) - Loader (FM cover) Delay 2021-08-16 | This is the first time I've tried taking a suggestion. I had not heard of this game before, but Matt Gray's amazing soundtrack immediately convinced me to give it a try....And then I didn't really touch it for about a month. A few days ago this lack of inspiration finally lifted.Initially, I was rather confused - none of the tones sounded right. That's because the track is not in concert pitch (here, A4 ~ 446.8 Hz). Those few hertz matter a lot!After that, it was smooth sailing, at least as far as the notes go. As for my choice of instruments, I tried being more careful than usual. It's easy to become lost in all the options.All in all, I'm very happy with what I made of it.
Mixing Problems Delay 2021-07-27 | I... uhhh... "acquired" the drum samples from Sonic 2 and I wanted to test them. So I took my FM version of Flying Battery Act 1, which I used before to test various instruments, and I came across a small problem - the samples are barely audible. Now, normally I could just increase their volume, except that some samples, like the bass drum, already clip out of the box!If I can't increase the drums, the only thing I'm left with is decreasing the rest of the instruments, which I have done here.Now I think everything is too quiet, but that could just be me. So, if possible, I'd like to ask for some feedback. Is this okay? Can I turn everything down further (is my 'standard' too loud)?Small note: I know that the leftover noise from the chiptune version is really annoying now and it doesn't follow the rhythm at all, especially in the second half of the loop. I never removed it because I only use this as a test track that was never planned to be published.
Sonic CD - Wacky Workbench - Past (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-07-24 | I got stuck. I know something is off, I think I know what it is, but I can't figure it out exactly. Not exactly the best possible start for Sonic CD if you ask me. But I want to learn as well, and hiding work I'm unhappy with wouldn't help that cause. I want to share (perceived) mistakes as much as successes.
Portal - Still Alive (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-07-10 | Portal is one of my favorite games, I don't think I would have to explain why. As someone who loves solving puzzles, it is simply unavoidable.Still Alive, a song written by Jonathan Coulton for the game, plays over the credits. It is one of (surprisingly only) 13 tracks and the only vocal one. Even though I don't think much of myself or my work, I thought it might be nice if I covered it. The game really means a lot to me. And it turns 15 next year!Time flies...
Sonic 2 - Emerald Hill Zone (FM cover) Delay 2021-06-23 | I owe an apology after the disaster the other upload was... and proof that I'm not completely incompetent (self-doubt is fun!).FM synthesis is very complex and has essentially infinite possibilities. It's not something I could simply learn overnight, so I decided to revisit a track I'm already familiar with. That way I could focus just on the instruments instead of doing 20 novel things at once. In hindsight, that was the right choice.I did work in a bit of Masa's demo version, however. Thought that would be a fun idea. I (mostly) kept the speed and instruments of the game version while the melodies are more like the demo. That's a balance I think I can be happy with.
A VERY bad thing for Sonics 30th Anniversary Delay 2021-06-23 | One of those ideas that sounds good in your head, but the result is complete trash.To celebrate Sonic's 30th anniversary I wanted to make a medley similar to the credits of the original 16-bit games, but using one track of every main series game. And I will make no secret about it - what I ended up with is just terrible. I completely underestimated what I was getting myself into, but more on that later.I didn't want to stop and throw the project on the ever-increasing pile of bad and/or unfinished ideas. It wasn't easy to keep myself working, but I wanted to see a completed version of this and upload it, to see what would happen, basically. Maybe, just maybe, it isn't as bad as I perceive it?There will probably be a stark decline in viewer retention at around the 1-minute mark (at the latest). I don't expect much feedback on this, be it positive or negative. So I guess I'll need to give myself some.Beginning with the positive, I'm honestly quite glad I was able to transcribe everything I did at least somewhat correctly. There are plenty of mistakes, of course there are, trying to hide that would be ridiculous. But the melodies are still recognizable, and that's already a huge achievement for me.That's pretty much everyting positive. Onto the negative.While the notes might be more or less correct, the instrumentation certainly isn't. There's one instrument in particular, an electric guitar, that I simply couldn't get right. Unfortunately, it turns out this instrument seems to be one of the most important ones in the entire series! And without a proper electric guitar, pretty much everything that was okay until then falls apart as well.Including every game in the series was itself a bad idea, especially considering how I approached them. All Megadrive titles mainly used FM synthesis to produce sounds. The technique is quite easy to begin working with, so I decided to try and produce literally everything with it. What could possibly go wrong? It's not like FM is really difficult to actually understand!Regardless of instrumentation, from Sonic Adventure onward, everything sounds a bit... empty. Part of this is because of the lack of reverb, especially Adventure makes huge use of this effect. Since Heroes, however, reverb is pretty much gone. Most likely I missed a lot of instruments contributing small, but significant amounts, but I don't know the complete picture. If I did, there would be nothing for me to complain about.I'm absolutely sure there are a lot more problems, some I simply forgot to list, others I'm not even aware of. What all of these have in common, however, is that they're all due to my own stubbornness and, frankly, stupidity. Trying to blame anyone or anything else would be dishonest.In any case...Tracklist (with times in the original to compare, might also show up as chapters?):0:00 Sonic 1 - Credits (0:00)0:14 Sonic 2 - Chemical Plant Zone (0:14)0:28 Sonic CD - Stardust Speedway "B" mix (0:15)0:42 Sonic 3 - Angel Island Zone Act 2 (0:28)0:56 Sonic & Knuckles - Sandopolis Zone Act 1 (0:34)1:10 Sonic Adventure - Welcome to Station Square (0:46)1:33 Sonic Adventure 2 - Rumbling HWY (1:00)1:52 Sonic Heroes - Seaside Hill (0:52)2:16 Sonic '06 - Wave Ocean (The Water's Edge) (0:11)2:38 Sonic Unleashed - Cool Edge (Day) (0:51)2:49 Sonic Colors - Tropical Resort Act 1 (1:19)3:12 Sonic Generations - Rooftop Run (Classic) (0:12)3:37 Sonic Lost World - Honeycomb Highway (0:25)4:09 Sonic Mania - Studiopolis Zone Act 1 (2:48)4:27 Sonic 1 - Credits (1:42) / Theme of SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (0:09)
Sonic 3 - Mushroom Hill Zone - Act 2 (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-05-17 | I guess acts 1 and 2 are very similar to each other, but this is specifically supposed to be act 2 and not both like I did with Ice Cap. It's a personal preference - I just like it more than act 1.That's... pretty much it. I'm running out of things to say!
Doom - E1M1 (Pseudo Game Boy mix) Delay 2021-05-04 | Why not?This was quite fun to do, although it was fairly difficult for me. I know there are some (large) mistakes here and there, but I simply couldn't fix them. They don't affect the song too much, though, so I'd say it's fine.I tried staying true to the original Game Boy's sound chip as much as I could. That meant a very limited selection of sounds, barring the wave channel. I'm happy with how it the instruments turned out, the wave supports the squares well, without ever getting in the way.Overall I'm... okay with how everything ended up. My poor transcription irks me a lot, but I suppose it could have been a lot worse.
Sonic 2 - Track 0x10 (8-Bit cover) Delay 2021-04-05 | Just a quick one for this week. I don't want to stay silent for months.The song is never used in the game, it is only found in its sound test. Because of this, I simply refer to it by its ID of 10 (in hexadecimal). It's sometimes said that Hidden Palace Zone was supposed to play this track, but it's probably only played in that stage - or rather, what remained of it - because of some broken pointers. No beta version with HPZ uses it, so the song ID and the stage are most likely not related.
Sonic 3 - Hydrocity Zone - Act 1 (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-03-23 | Accidentally forgot uploading on Monday.Act 1 of Hydrocity Zone has a swung rhythm, which made things a bit more difficult. Despite this, I strangely think this is one of my best ones yet. That's not to say it's good, just that I think it's better-than-average for my standards.Other than that, I also tried using even more wah filters, this time for squares. This means that seven of the eight channels could be played with a Commodore 64!
wCurMap Delay 2021-03-18 | Just for fun. This isn't a serious video by any means.Clarifications and explanations:What is wCurMap actually used for?wCurMap is mainly used to determine in which ROM bank the current map's script is. The script's address itself is stored elsewhere, wCurMap just loads the right bank.Because of this, if wCurMap does not contain the correct value, it is possible to jump to other code which is in a wrong bank, but at the right place. This can lead to fairly chaotic results - especially if texts are interpreted as code.Why can't you leave a map you're wrong-warped to?The game separates maps into two main categories: 'Outdoors', which includes routes and towns, and 'indoors', which is basically everything else. Caves, shops, hideouts, etc.When loading a new map via a warp, the game checks if the map you're currently on is an outdoors map. If it is, it copies the value into a different address (D365, or wLastMap) before overwriting it with the new one. This is because indoor map warps - most of them at least - don't actually specify outdoor maps. They simply read the value at wLastMap and load that map, trusting it is an outdoors one. Indoor maps are never copied into wLastMap, so this system works well normally. However, if the ID stored somehow does belong to an indoors map, then upon trying to leave, the game loads that map, as expected. But that is the map you just came from, so you're stuck here.Writing an indoor map's value into wLastMap is possible because it isn't the map ID that's checked to determine which map type it is. Instead, the currently loaded tileset is used. And that value hasn't changed with the corruption of wCurMap, so as far as the game is concerned, you're still outdoors.Why did you use 8F instead of just corrupting memory?Don't know, honestly. I just liked the idea of breaking the game in a way that is actually achievable on real hardware.I did edit memory to get 8F to work, but making a legit setup shouldn't be too difficult. I tried making a similar script with as few extra glitches as possible, apart from getting 8F, at least. Leading execution to item data can be done with only two Pokemon (I'm thinking of a relative jumps like jr 7E using their species here). Item data is a bit more limited, but it should still be possible to write some code.And if that doesn't work, you can still write code with box data. There are plenty of options to make something like this work. In fact, I'd say "how do you want to break the game?" is more easily answered than "why do you want to break the game?".
Sonic 1 - Green Hill Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-03-15 | A classic.Continuing my recent trend to properly end the songs, I've lazily gone for ending with a C major, which is also the song's key. Ending on the I chord is overdone to death, but it felt like a proper way to end such a happy track.Next week: Lots of drowning.
Sonic 3 - Ice Cap Zone (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-03-08 | Both acts' music is similar enough, so I've decided to remix both at the same time. In addition, I tried synching up the beginning of the song with what happens in the stage. Not entirely possible, but it was worth a shot.Since Ice Cap's track is based on a real song, I decided to take things a step further. The 'chorus' contains some very obvious references you can't miss. I admit I'm biased, but I actually like that just a slight bit more.(If you can't tell, I'm very happy with how this one turned out!)Next week: GHZ.
Sonic 3 - Flying Battery Zone - Act 2 (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-03-01 | A daring one for my standards!First off, I tried turning this one into a complete song. After having settled on the (overused) bass solo as a 40 second long intro - which is 40 seconds too long, the "actual" song starts halfway into the loop before looping to start properly. The rest of the song plays out fairly normally, except that I needed to end it somehow as well. Ironically, I like the ending most.You might have also noticed that this time, the oscilloscopes are colored. White lines on black background aren't particarly interesting, so I'm testing some colors chosen based on the stage's color. Flying Battery uses a few shades of pink, yellow and a bit of blue as well, so that's what you see here. If you want to, you can let me know what you think of this, I might want to continue this!Next week: Something a bit... colder.
Sonic 3 - Angel Island Zone - Act 2 (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-02-22 | I took some inspiration from Jahn Davis' remix in the midsection and even the Nov 3rd prototype, but tried to keep things roughly as improvised as Act 1. The bassline is a bit different from the original and I also discovered that the bass sample I use also doubles well as a glockenspiel!"Flaming Forest", Jahn Davis' remix of Act 2:youtube.com/watch?v=pPrHJLkTPcY
Sonic 3 - Flying Battery Zone - Act 1 (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-02-15 | I've had this sit on my drive for months at this point. Time I actually uploaded it!Flying Battery Zone has one of my favorite soundtracks in the entire game. The original songs were noticeably quiet, which fits the atmosphere of a "stealthy infiltration" quite well - you wouldn't want to attract too much attention.Well, I completely ditched all of this. Not entirely sure what kind of atmosphere this now creates - I'm still terrible at music theory - , but you definitely wouldn't play this if your goal was to stay unnoticed.In addition to this, I also threw in some small elements of Act 2's song, just for fun and to fill a bit of silence.
Sonic 3 - Angel Island Zone - Act 1 (Chiptune cover) Delay 2021-02-08 | I tried to base less on the original than with the entirety of my Sonic 2 mutilations, and this becomes (hopefully not) more apparent as the loop progresses. This is especially noticeable in the midsection, I hope it doesn't kill the song completely.For the bass I just took a small 64-sample noise, put it into Audacity and applied a wah-filter to it across several loops, then reimported it as an instrument. It sounds quite silly, however I actually think it fits the overall mood of the melody. After all, this is the most playful stage in the game, before things start to get serious in Act 2.
Standupmaths Theme (8-Bit cover) Delay 2021-01-19 | The original by Howard Carter: standupmaths.bandcamp.com/track/stand-up-maths-themeJust 'slightly' overboard with the arpeggios, I think.So... yeah. Not much of a story I could tell here. I figured I could just give it a go, so I did. Worked on it for two days and became frustrated when my ignorance regarding music theory was put on full display. Somehow I found a few chord progressions that sort of work. And I played around with pulse width modulation a bit. Sounds not bad.It's by far not the best, even when compared against my own standards. But I think I made it a non-zero amount of acceptable.
