Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
I recently watched a video of a trio of musicians performing the Miror B battle theme together live, including the legendary original composer himself, Tsukasa Tawada. I'll always find it wonderful how video game music can bring people together to play a tune that they all enjoy.
Watching this is what gave me motivation to do a quick cover of the Cipher Peon Battle from Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. I'd already covered the song from the first Pokémon Colosseum game along with the "normal battle" track so it only felt right to visit this one too.
I must say that timpani really is a match made for FamiTracker as it always tends to blend so well with the other instruments. It's almost like with all over those square, triangle and sawtooth waves, the punchy tuned drum hits merge beautifully. The quality of the samples definitely helped but still, I do love the timpani.
The VRC6 chip also allows for some more fine-tuned instrument sounds with the more precise pulse widths that I do make the most of - they're great for piano blips, sweeping strings and brass too.
Let me know what you think in the comments below as always!
All the best.
#pokemon #famitracker #chiptune
MY LINKS
- - - - -
Bandcamp:
jonpon.bandcamp.com
Website:
https://music.jonherbst.dev
Twitter:
https://x.com/jonponsvids10
I recently watched a video of a trio of musicians performing the Miror B battle theme together live, including the legendary original composer himself, Tsukasa Tawada. I'll always find it wonderful how video game music can bring people together to play a tune that they all enjoy.
Watching this is what gave me motivation to do a quick cover of the Cipher Peon Battle from Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. I'd already covered the song from the first Pokémon Colosseum game along with the "normal battle" track so it only felt right to visit this one too.
I must say that timpani really is a match made for FamiTracker as it always tends to blend so well with the other instruments. It's almost like with all over those square, triangle and sawtooth waves, the punchy tuned drum hits merge beautifully. The quality of the samples definitely helped but still, I do love the timpani.
The VRC6 chip also allows for some more fine-tuned instrument sounds with the more precise pulse widths that I do make the most of - they're great for piano blips, sweeping strings and brass too.
Let me know what you think in the comments below as always!
All the best.
#pokemon #famitracker #chiptune
MY LINKS
- - - - -
Bandcamp:
jonpon.bandcamp.com
Website:
https://music.jonherbst.dev
Twitter:
https://x.com/jonponsvids10
![Akumajou Densetsu [Castlevania III, JP] - Beginning (FamiTracker FDS)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pIjf7II8mKE/mqdefault.jpg "Akumajou Densetsu [Castlevania III, JP] - Beginning (FamiTracker FDS)
Ive finally had the chance to work on something from the Akumajou Densetsu series, also known as Castlevania III outside of Japan and immediately made a beeline for the headline track in the entire OST, that fittingly being Beginning.
In the same way that Simons Theme is a cornerstone of another game in the series, I feel that this encapsulates the feelings that I get when watching gameplay videos from the game. Theres something about the first track from 2D platformers that just seems to hit different, the other one springing to mind being Strike the Earth from Shovel Knight.
Getting back to this, I wanted to use a different expansion chip as an exercise to see whether I could integrate the sounds from the other NES versions to replicate something similar with the FDS expansion, ultimately attempting to get something more akin to what you would find on the GameBoy. I went with some square bass so I could utilise a modified sine wave as the main portion of the lead sections.
Im glad that this one turned out how it did and tried to maximise each channel where I could. I tend to stray away from using the DPCM channel for samples these days as they tend to skew the output for me quite a lot and dull the other sections so its fun trying to get around that limitation.
Hope you enjoy this one. Let me know what you think in the comments below!
All the best.
#famitracker #8bit #chiptune
MY LINKS
- - - - -
Email:
admin@jonherbst.dev
Website:
https://music.jonherbst.dev
Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/jonponsvids
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/jonponsvids10")
