Supper
Lazuli
updated
For more details and a translation of the text, please see tcrf.net/Tengai_Makyou:_Ziria#Edo_Easter_Eggs
To trigger these, you must not free the White Deer in Kashima Shrine (and thus never obtain the Wakakusa jutsu). After reaching Edo, go to the Show Tent (見せ物小屋) and follow the sequence shown at the start of the video. Do not deviate from it or you'll be permanently locked out of activating the events.
The translation is by TheMajinZenki, the testing was by cccmar, and as always I'm to blame for the hacking. Special thanks and apologies to dot_lvl twitch.tv/dot_lvl, who somewhat unintentionally caused this project to happen and definitely didn't envision things turning out this way. I wish it had gone differently, but here we are.
Long, long ago, amidst the seas of the farthest reaches of the Far East, there was once a mystical land called Jipang: a beautiful and terrible place where gods and demons, wonders and horrors, men and beasts alike all coexisted in a strange and fantastic harmony. But that harmony is threatened when a foreign religion called the Cult of Daimon arrives on the country's shores and begins spreading across the land, its leaders aiming to steal human souls in order to revive the sealed demon Masakado and transform Jipang into their own utopia. Will Ziria, the fated hero descended from the Fire Clan which once sealed Masakado, stop the wicked Daimonists – or will Jipang's oriental beauty burn in demonic hellfire?
Tengai Makyou: Ziria is the debut entry of the Tengai Makyou series. Published by Hudson Soft for the PC-Engine CD-ROM² system in 1989, it was the first RPG ever released on CD and served as a showcase for the new medium, with elaborate visuals and voice acting far beyond what any competing title could offer. Its success led it to become the first in a popular series, very little of which was ever released outside Japan.
Oh, and don't pay too much attention to that first paragraph. The game may wear the trappings of a serious plot, but the real theme is "what foreigners mistakenly think Japan is like."
The Machinate Empire has invaded Earth! Scrambling to stop its hordes of robotic soldiers is Savior of Light and happy-go-lucky galactic idol Yuna Kagurazaka. Facing more foes than ever before, Yuna's power alone won't be enough. She must gather her many (many) friends, battle her way to the shadowy Machinate Emperor in the far reaches of space, and put a stop to her plans of conquest before Earth – and the galaxy itself – is destroyed. Along the way, she must also uncover the connection between this mysterious empire, a legendary battle from ages past, and her beloved friend Ayako...
Ginga Ojousama Densetsu Yuna: Final Edition (Galaxy Fraulein Yuna: Final Edition) is a 1998 strategy RPG/adventure game for the PlayStation, developed by Red Company and Will and published by Hudson Soft. It is a mildly enhanced port of the 1997 Sega Saturn game Ginga Ojousama Densetsu Yuna 3: Lightning Angel. A major departure from the adventure games which had comprised the series to date, this entry, drawing inspiration from Red Company's own flourishing Sakura Wars franchise, sees it transformed into an isometric tactical RPG with missions linked together by visual novel segments: a "tactical adventure", as the game proclaims itself. True to its name, it's also the final entry in the Yuna series.
(Why is the footage from halfway through the game? So it won't take ten minutes to get to the actual gameplay. Don't worry, it doesn't really spoil anything.)
Up-and-coming teen actress May Star thought the filming for her latest TV special would be a chance to enjoy some time with her friend Ayaka and new prototype AI partner Navi. Instead, it unexpectedly erupts into mystery and tragedy, leaving May the only one who can solve a baffling crime. Good thing she's a detective's daughter! But this proves to be only the beginning of a tangled saga, as May finds herself inexorably drawn into a web of incidents involving lies, corruption, and her own father's mysterious suicide five years ago. Can May and her friends catch the culprits – or will this be their last shoot?
Private Eye Dol (also known as "Private Eyedol", with many variations in capitalization) is a 1995 detective adventure game developed by HuneX and published by NEC Home Electronics for the PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² system. Released late in the PC-Engine's lifespan, it showcases a highly polished presentation that often makes it feel more like a next-generation game, with large and detailed graphics, full voice acting, and features such as text scaling that are rarely seen on the console. Perhaps its biggest distinguishing element is its RPG-like overworld, which provides a higher degree of freedom compared to traditional menu-driven Japanese detective games.
In a town somewhere in Japan, there once lived a very average high school girl named Yumimi. Together with her best friend Sakurako and friend-cum-crush Shinichi, she enjoyed happy if very average days…until one fateful morning when, on the way to school, she witnesses a procession of ghosts(?) crossing the street before her very eyes! And then in the hallway, a girl suddenly latches on to her, tells her she has to "go stitch the holes", and – declares her love for her!? Suddenly, Yumimi's life isn't so average anymore, though she may soon be wishing it was…
Yumimi Mix Remix is a 1995 adventure game for the Sega Saturn. A direct port of the 1993 Mega-CD game Yumimi Mix, it was created in a collaboration between developer Game Arts (of Lunar and Grandia fame) and well-known shoujo manga artist Izumi Takemoto, who wrote and storyboarded the entire game. A happy marriage of Game Arts' technical skill with Takemoto's cute, whimsical artistry and inimitably eccentric sensibilities, the game is comprised entirely of fully-animated, fully-voiced, full-screen cutscenes coupled with periodic multiple-choice prompts, creating an experience almost exactly like watching an anime while still making full use of the interactivity afforded by the game medium.
This patch fully translates the game into English, subtitling all dialogue, songs, and important background text in the manner of a typical subtitled anime. It also adds new in-game options to show or hide Japanese honorifics, to partially or completely disable the subtitles, and to allow unimportant scenes to be skipped during gameplay.
With the forces of darkness once again at bay, life seems to have returned to normal – or as close to normal as it gets for high school idol and galactic savior Yuna Kagurazaka. But trouble is brewing! After an unfortunate encounter with her self-proclaimed rival Erika Kousaka, Yuna accidentally summons a planet-destroying warship, the "Eternal Princess," to Earth. Now Yuna, partnering with mysterious android girl Yuri Cube, has scant days to try to take out the beacons guiding the ship before it arrives and annihilates the Earth, all while battling the deadly assassins of the "Erika 7." Is there any hope for the planet!?
Ginga Ojousama Densetsu Yuna 2: Eien no Princess (Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 2: The Eternal Princess) is a 1995 adventure game/visual novel for the PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² system, developed by Red Company and Will and published by Hudson Soft. The sequel to the original Galaxy Fraulein Yuna, it mostly follows in its predecessor's footsteps on a larger budget, with bigger and better visuals, full voice acting, and much more polish all around. Compared to the first game, it drops most pretenses of interactivity in favor of basically being a low-res OVA that requires periodic button presses to watch, with the occasional battle or minigame to break things up. And there's sometimes dungeon crawling, for some reason?
This patch fully translates the game into English.
Or you can get it from ROMhacking.net, but apparently they've suddenly decided you have to have an account to download anything, so that might be more difficult: romhacking.net/translations/6301
Something's been snacking on Woolly Village's adorable Meymeys, and the townspeople aren't happy about it! While the villagers blame it on the mysterious rabbitlike Poms that appeared when the moon vanished five years ago, young Lulu knows better. With the magic staff gifted to her by the Poms in hand, she sets off on a quest to find the Poms, build a community where they can live in peace, and discover the truth behind all the incidents. And raid every dresser in the continent for trading cards along the way.
Community Pom is a 1997 action RPG/simulation game for the PlayStation, developed and published by Fill in Cafe (best known for the Asuka 120% and Kendo Rage/Makeruna! Makendou series). With gameplay reminiscent of classic 2D Zelda titles and perhaps most particularly influenced by Magic Knight Rayearth on the Sega Saturn, the game puts its own spin on things by throwing a simple but fun pet raising simulation into the mix, with the player rearing Poms to increase their combat stats and unlock new features and abilities. Imagine Zelda with a Chao Garden, and that the Chao Garden was actually useful.
In addition to fully translating the game, this release also includes a partial translation of the game's official guidebook: http://stargood.org/trans/pom_guidebook/guidebook.php It contains not just basic information, but detailed explanations of game mechanics, concept art, and even an interview with the developers. Massive thanks to Xanathis for purchasing and scanning the entire 127-page book just for this project.
This translation was the work of LIPEMCO! Translations: TheMajinZenki (translation), Supper (hacking), cccmar (editing and testing), and Xanathis (guidebook scans, testing, and PR coach). The group hopes you'll enjoy this title which, though little known, is highly regarded by its fans.
Yuna Kagurazaka was just your ordinary high school girl in the year 2299 – a bit carefree and more than a little absent-minded, but nothing special…until she won the Galaxy Fraulein Contest and rocketed to idol stardom! But when her fellow contestants begin disappearing one by one only to turn up wearing power armor and trying to kill her, she discovers her true destiny: she is the Savior of Light, protector of the galaxy, and must fight to keep the forces of darkness from conquering the universe! Can Yuna take down the evil Thirteen Frauleins of Darkness, or will hinging the fate of the cosmos on the whims of a flighty teenage girl prove a colossal mistake?…Possibly both.
Ginga Ojousama Densetsu Yuna, officially translated as Galaxy Fraulein Yuna, is a 1992 adventure game (visual novel/digicomic) developed by Red Company and Will and published by Hudson for the PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² system. The first entry in what would become a popular series amidst the Japanese "galge boom," the game is essentially an early-'90s sci-fi comedy OVA in adventure game form, lavishly chronicling the galaxy-spanning adventures of Yuna, her friends, and a suspiciously large number of girls in skimpy power armor via a book's worth of text, upwards of a thousand illustrations, over an hour of animated cutscenes, and several vocal songs.
This patch fully translates the game into English. In addition to translating the text, it also subtitles all Japanese audio – the first time in PC-Engine history this has been done on such a large scale, as limitations of the hardware make adding subtitles very difficult. Even the vocal songs have been given full karaoke subtitles, all without compromising the visuals in any way.
To prove we didn't pick the name just for show, the newly-christened LIPEMCO! Translations presents a full translation of Madou Monogatari I: Honoo no Sotsuenji for the PC-Engine CD! Not to be confused with the Mega Drive port we translated earlier this year, this is a very different version of the game that hews more closely to the original MSX2 version, though with many enhancements and additions. See ROMhacking.net for the download: romhacking.net/translations/5805
Background information:
Sorcery Kindergarten has very strict requirements for graduation. Indeed, this year, only one person even qualified to take the final exam at all: six-year-old Arle Nadja, who now faces the daunting task of climbing the monster-infested Magic Tower and retrieving the three Magic Orbs hidden within in order to graduate. What trials await Arle inside the Tower? Can she pass the test, or will she be doomed to another year of kindergarten?
Madou Monogatari I: Honoo no Sotsuenji (Sorcery Saga I: The Fiery Kindergarten Graduation) is a 1996 dungeon crawler for the PC-Engine Super CD-ROM² system. It's a remake of the first game in the Madou Monogatari series, originally developed by Compile for the MSX2 computer and subsequently ported to several other platforms. The various ports differ wildly from each other, sometimes to the point of being almost completely different games; though the PC-Engine version is based on the original home computer editions, it adds high-quality cutscenes, CD audio, near-full voice acting, and many extra events, monsters, and items.
Released in limited quantities at the very, very end of the PC-Engine's lifespan, the game is somewhat notorious for its rarity, often fetching the equivalent of $400+ in Japanese auctions on the rare occasion it's sold at all.
This patch fully translates the game into English. In addition to translating the text, subtitles have been added to cutscenes which were originally voice-only.
The advertising blurb:
In 1999, twelve-year-old Mamoru Oza, heir to the largest fortune in the world, received two gifts from his father. The first: A simple handheld remote controller...which operated the fifty-meter-tall combat robot "Vordan". The second: Ownership of the newly-established Torino Defense Force Co., Ltd, a company formed to combat the "Enigmabots" – mysterious giant robots rampaging through the world's major cities. Remote in hand, Mamoru now finds himself the sole hope of survival for the people of Torino City.
Can a boy, his robot, and a single remote solve the riddle of the Enigmabots and save the world...without going bankrupt first?
Remote Control Dandy is a 1999 mecha action game by Human Entertainment for the Sony PlayStation. In a major departure from most mecha games, it hearkens back to giant robot shows of the '50s and '60s such as Tetsujin 28-gou, in which the robots, rather than containing a human pilot, are controlled from afar via remote. The game adopts this as its core mechanic: not only does the player have to contend with remotely navigating their robot in the manner of an RC car, but also personally run after it to keep it in sight, all while not getting stepped on by enemy robots.
Though the game was nominally developed and published by Human Entertainment (known for the Clock Tower and Fire Pro Wrestling series), Human went bankrupt a few months after its release, with almost all of the game's key staff members subsequently founding the game studio Sandlot and going on to develop the successful Earth Defense Force series. Thus, Remote Control Dandy is essentially the first Sandlot game; it bears all the hallmarks of their unique brand of outsize destruction, and it's received the occasional nod or oblique reference in their later games. Particularly, the 2002 game Robot Alchemic Drive is essentially a spiritual sequel to this one – and Sandlot would even go on to make an actual Tetsujin 28-gou game!
This patch fully translates the game into English. Aside from the text, subtitles have been added to scenes which were originally voice-only, and all in-level textures such as billboards are also translated (the ones that were legible, anyway). The only thing not translated is the downloadable PocketStation app, but since it's just a small rock-paper-scissors minigame with no connection to the real game, we hope this omission is forgivable.
This is a project I've been working on for some months, and I'm happy to announce has finally been released: a full translation of Madou Monogatari I for the Mega Drive! Go download it if you like dungeon crawling, or the Mega Drive, or Puyos, because it's got all three.
TheMajinZenki did the translation, cccmar edited the script, filler made the kanji conversion table, and Xanathis and Oddoai-sama did the testing. And I guess I did the hacking or something. Check out the patch readme for more details.
If you're not familiar with the game and read this far for some reason, well...
It's the day of the graduation exam at Magic Kindergarten, but only one person has qualified to take it: the promising mage but uninspiring student Arle Nadja, who fluked into passing the preliminary by choosing random answers. Now, Arle finds herself unexpectedly facing the school's terrifying final exam: to escape from the massive, monster-infested Magic Tower in the playground. Will Arle make it out? And more importantly, can she earn enough points to pass her exam and graduate from kindergarten?
Sorcery Saga I (Madou Monogatari I) for the Mega Drive is a 1996 dungeon crawler by Compile. It's nominally a remake of the first episode of the Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 trilogy, originally released for the MSX2 home computer in 1990, but aside from the basic story premise and a few gameplay concepts, it's essentially a completely new game. Turn-based combat has been scrapped in favor of a fighting game-inspired action battle system, the dungeon layouts are completely different, and a new system for catching and battling with monsters plays a prominent role. It also holds the distinction of being the very last game officially released for the Mega Drive in Japan.
Two days of actual composing, four days of repeatedly tweaking things no one will ever notice.
Lyrics: (which don't actually match the melody because I liked the sound better this way -- if you care, look up the project file on the LMMS Sharing Platform and unmute the relevant channels)
[verse 1]
i saw you coming toward me
i turned and walked away
but as i went i heard a voice behind me
i heard you sing
[bridge 1]
a song about a time when you weren't sad
a song about a life that you could've had
a song that made me turn and look you straight in the eye
cause i can't keep it in control
hey buddy, there's something you should know
[chorus 1]
i hate the music
i hate the words
i hate everything you say and do
i hope that makes you hate me too
cause i don't wanna deal with you
so don't ask me for my sympathy
just play your game of make-believe
and wallow in your misery
if you're talking to yourself an echo's all you're gonna hear
if you're turning round in circles then you'll go nowhere
and if you wanna live a life that's more than fantasy
you're never gonna find it if you're looking in a dream
look at me (what do you see)
take another
step outside your empty mind
don't ask me (what you should be)
cause you've gotta think for yourself cause you've almost run out of time
[verse 2]
i watched you watch the sun set
your body slunk down low
no matter how you think about it
you still don't know
[bridge 2]
why you sing about who you used to be
why you're still stuck in a melody
you stare at the sky with your back to the floor
and nothing changes from before
i can't take it anymore
[chorus 2]
i hate the music
i hate the words
i hate everything you mean to me
i hate the endless melody
i hate i hate i hate to leave
but you've got nothing more to add
just make the sound that drives me mad
and dream about the life you had
if you're talking to yourself an echo's all you're gonna hear
if you're turning round in circles then you'll go nowhere
and if you wanna live a life that's more than fantasy
you're never gonna find it if you're looking in a dream
look at me (what do you see)
you're another
step inside my empty mind
don't ask me (who you should be)
you're on the run from yourself and you've got nowhere left to hide
IPS patch: http://stargood.org/hacking/files/Mega%20Man%20II%20(GB)%20Music%20Improvement.zip
Soundtrack in GBS format: http://stargood.org/hacking/files/Mega%20Man%20II%20(GB)%20Music%20Improvement%20GBS.zip
Turns out that, aside from the obvious issue of the leads being super high-pitched for no reason, the game's note-to-frequency conversion table is incorrect, causing over one-fourth of the notes to be off-key. The hack lowers the leads by an octave and fixes the frequency table, producing what I consider a much more listenable result.
For more information, see http://stargood.org/hacking/rockworld2_music.php
P.S. I'm very bad at fighting Clash Man.
http://stargood.org/trans/csmmg.php
romhacking.net/translations/5025
The original idea was to make a TV-length opening theme for a magical girl show. Then things got out of hand.
I wrote some lyrics for this, though they're just a curiosity since I'm sure not going to be singing them. They're also... uh, not very magical girl-like. I'm pretty sure you can't say "fuck" on a magical girl show.
lyrics (m### = measure number in the LMMS project file)
[intro - m2]
breathing
feeling
moving through forever
[verse 1 - m21]
another day i'll never remember
another night in a halogen-lit mind
watching the world go by
outside
falling away into another blacklight daydream
a fluorescing hue in the moon's new gloom
pale blue
[bridge 1 - m37]
heart racing
time wasting
mind changing
still waiting
light passing
rays casting
all alone
in a glow
and feeding my lingering memories of home
[chorus 1 - m57]
unwind my mind and find me
interpolate my missing dreams
and tell me why they're empty
if i believe
will you answer me
as i make
one more
heartworn
silent plea
so if you're somewhere
out there
tell me why i'm breathing
feeling
moving through forever
[verse 2 - m95]
another night under fractal skies
another dot in my liquid crystal lie
my mandelbrot bands
zooming extruding
to right back where i began
falling away into another backlight night dream
the colors violet blue
vibrant untrue
[bridge 2 - m113]
heart racing
time wasting
mind changing
still waiting
light passing
rays casting
shining the light of the sunrise over me
pulling me out of my reverie
i can almost feel a memory
til the lights go down and i'm back out again
[chorus 2 - m133]
unwind my mind and find me
interpolate my missing dreams
and tell me why they're empty
if i believe
will you answer me
as i make
one more
ignored
desperate plea
so if you're somewhere
out there
tell me why i'm breathing
feeling
moving through forever
[solo - m155]
[post-solo bridge - m259]
out of the dawn comes the wind of the morning sun
calling me back when i think of leaving
bringing me out of a dream without a meaning
into the rhythm
the monochrome
dissonant tone
is just a rhyme
against the time
to pry open
my bloodshot eyes
i don't know why
i can't decide
if i believe
my fucking lies
i don't know why
i don't know why
i don't know why
i'm still afraid of "goodbye"
[chorus 3 - m280]
unwind my mind and find me
interpolate my missing dreams
and tell me why they're empty
the summer breeze
doesn't answer me
as i go
forward
on toward
the door
not like
before
i am
something
more
and now i'm somewhere
out here
with my heart still beating
feeling
so i guess it's now or
never
in a world that's dreaming
fleeting
moving through forever
I hadn't finished a song in like a year, so I decided to finish this one. What the hell is this genre? I never write music like this.
If anyone out there still bothers to download things instead of just streaming them, you might notice that the MP3 sounds slightly different from the video. That's because the video is a direct audio capture, while the MP3 was exported using LMMS's buggy renderer. I'm using an outdated version, so maybe someone's fixed it by now, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Basically, I modified Desert Bus so that the bus goes at (what the game considers to be) 1071.582 miles per hour. You can thus drive from Tucson to Las Vegas in about 22 minutes instead of eight hours... if you can keep the bus under control.
Anyone who scores 99 points in this hack will receive a trip to Las Vegas, assuming you're the one paying for it.
(Why do I keep spontaneously deciding on April 1st that I'm going to do an April Fools' hack?)
I have no idea how this ended up being 8 minutes long. Also, it sure would be nice if ffmpeg was capable of re-encoding files created with recordmydesktop without throwing away a bunch of random frames and desyncing the video.
Video desynced. Who's watching anyways?
Video desynced. For the billionth fucking time. Why is all screen capture software shit?
Meant to upload this earlier, but didn't get around to recording the video until now.
Reuploaded to fix a bizarre bug that caused LMMS to cut off part of one of the crash samples.
The US version of Magic Knight Rayearth, being published by Working Designs and all, had a few little changes that went unmentioned in the manual. "A few little changes" here meaning "almost every enemy in the game is sped up, does 2x-5x more damage, or (most likely) both". This video is nowhere near comprehensive in covering the changes -- it would be easier to count the bare handful of enemies that weren't boosted in some way.
If you'd like to play the US version without the absurd difficulty, I've made a series of patches to revert the difficulty changes in Working Designs' releases. See this page for more info: http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,23436.0.html
Please excuse the audio stutters and my atrocious gameplay -- playing and recording two games at once is more than me or my CPU was designed for.
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/ainp6rqa6u1chz9/Layla+-+The+Iris+Missions+OST.zip (includes NSFe, MP3 renders, and the original .it files used to prototype the songs)
0:00 freeBase (Mission 9)
1:33 GHOST (Boss)
2:01 PHANTOM (Final Boss)
2:49 Aristotelian (Ending)
4:03 Iris (B mix) (Credits)
6:58 Koise (Unused)
Comments from the NSFe:
12. freeBase -- Mission 9 theme. This is a remix of the original fortress music from Layla, hence the name. I threw this together very quickly at the end of development ("very quickly" by my standards -- 4-5 hours to write and 6-7 to program for the driver), but I think it turned out nicely for it. The polyrhythmic parts were fun.
13. GHOST -- Boss theme. This sounded better before I had to cut everything out of it, but it's far better than having no boss music at all (which was the plan before I discovered a tiny bit of code in the interrupt handler that isn't used during normal gameplay).
14. PHANTOM -- Final boss theme. I wrote this little riff and thought about expanding it into a full song, but when it turned out there wasn't room for it anyways, I just left it at this. The loop point on this track is mathematically correct for the out-of-sync pulse width changes. Also features the only appearance of the "auto-noise" mode the sound driver provides, whose mechanica I still don't understand.
15. Aristotelian -- Ending theme. I figured I should do at least one song with a proper bassline just to prove I can, since almost everything else is in octaves and fifths to allow efficient pattern recycling.
16. Iris (B mix) -- Credits theme. One day I was watching TV and something came on about some baseball player whose name had "Axel" in it, and I suddenly realized I couldn't remember the hook to Axel F. While I was trying to come up with it, the intro to this popped into my head. I still can't remember how Axel F goes, so I hope it doesn't sound anything like this. Also, I think this may be better than the "regular" version of the song, so it's too bad pretty much no one's going to hear it...
17. Koise [unused] -- Original Mission 1 theme. This was the first song I programmed for the driver, and it certainly shows. This was where I first ran into all the caveats of writing NES music: My original prototype version of the song was done at a tempo that isn't possible on the NES, so I had to slow it down drastically and ended up killing the song's energy. The original called for a lot of complicated and non-recyclable note patterns, so I had to cut out delay effects and backing parts to make it fit in the space I had. The less-than-stellar results, combined with the fact that the song's mood was too bright and poppy compared to the other music I had written, eventually led me to replace it with Minddrug. Still, I think the original version isn't that bad...
No one's gonna read this far, right? Well, if you did, thanks for listening, or at least reading. But really, I liked Touhou more when I didn't understand it. I liked everything more before I understood it. Concretions and literal thought, the bane of everything I love.
-- Supper, 22 Dec. 2016
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/ainp6rqa6u1chz9/Layla+-+The+Iris+Missions+OST.zip (includes NSFe, MP3 renders, and the original .it files used to prototype the songs)
0:00 Iris (Title)
2:01 Hoise (Intermission)
2:10 Minddrug (Mission 1)
4:06 Lifehack (Mission 2)
5:58 Make You Believe (Mission 3)
7:24 Labyrinthine (Mission 4)
8:45 Ideologue (Mission 5)
10:09 Effuse (Mission 6)
11:28 Technophobe (Mission 7)
12:45 Rising Tide, part 1 (Mission 8)
13:14 Rising Tide, part 2 (Mission 8)
Comments from the NSFe:
All music by Supper; sound driver by dB-Soft (with minor enhancements by Supper).
This is the soundtrack to Layla: The Iris Missions, a hack of Layla I put together in fits and starts throughout 2016. Doing the music was half my motivation for making the hack in the first place, so it's quite satisfying to have everything done and packaged together like this. Sometimes I can almost imagine I knew what I was doing. At any rate, this has been a long time coming -- some of these tracks were done back in April! -- so here's a bit of commentary to close things out.
This was my first time doing NES music (and a soundtrack of any kind), which made it difficult but -- well, I'll call it "fun". I didn't really have anything in mind for the game except "cool space mission songs", and ultimately the sound direction was determined mostly by the limits of the sound driver. Specifically, since the bass and percussion parts had to be on one channel, I used fifths and octaves frequently to allow those sections to be recycled, which led directly to the sort of techno-ish style on display here.
The result isn't the best NES music you'll ever hear, but I hope it at least isn't the worst. Things certainly could have turned out a lot worse than they did (see the unused track).
01. Iris -- Title theme. I have no idea if this represents Iris at all, since none of the game's characters (all three of them) have much in the way of character development. I think it sounds kinda cool, though, and people who blow stuff up in space need to be pretty cool, so maybe it works. I'm not sure what's going on with the chord progressions in the chorus, but I like it.
02. Hoise -- Level intermission theme. Most of the tracks had placeholder names ending in "-oise" during development (it started with "poise" and sort of took off from there). I couldn't think of anything better for this one, so I kept it.
03. Minddrug -- Mission 1 theme. The heavy fifths on the offbeats really make the song. Is it cool enough for a level 1?
04. Lifehack -- Mission 2 theme. Programming the temor effects gave me some trouble (and FCEUX's inaccurate emulation didn't help when it came time to put the NSF together), but I think it worked out okay in the end.
05. Make You Believe -- Mission 3 theme. Kind of pop-ish. I'm still not happy with the harmonization on the second "verse", but it'll have to do.
06. Labyrinthine -- Mission 4 theme. I learned to spell this word during the course of development, and I'm very proud of my accomplishment. This was actually the first track I wrote, back when I thought I'd just do in-place music replacements instead of expanding the sound data, so it's a lot more primitive-sounding (and suitable for a puzzle level like this one, fortunately).
07. Ideologue -- Mission 5 theme. I kind of liked this when I wrote it, but I don't really like how it works with the level -- it's a bit too repetitive and the level's a bit too long -- but I don't have the will to do anything more with it. The name was derived by the following logic: inverted level - Shining Needle Castle - Reverse Ideology - ideologue. I liked Touhou more when I didn't understand it.
08. Effuse -- Mission 6 theme. Probably the best song in the game? This is as pop as it gets, except that last bridge.
09. Technophobe -- Mission 7 theme. Probably the best track in the game? This is as techno as it gets, including that last bridge.
10. Rising Tide (intro) -- Mission 8 theme, part 1. The loop on the triangle channel is (semi-)intentionally broken, so technically this goes on a lot longer. I haven't done the math on it, but if I don't want to sit around listening to it longer than this, no one else is either.
11. Rising Tide -- Mission 8 theme, part 2. Okay, it's probably a little too extreme for level music, but I couldn't help myself. My brother said it sounds like an anime opening. Dunno what that's supposed to mean.
A massive hack of the Japan-only NES game Layla. Chinelkov Manitokha once again threatens the galaxy with his army of mutant Chimairan, and this time it's up to Iris to stop him! (Layla can come along too, I guess).
Features new levels, graphics, and a new (and massively expanded) original soundtrack.
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So if you've ever heard of Layla, it's probably from the Game Center CX episode it featured in. It's a lot like Super Mario Bros., but frankly not as well executed. I really liked the core gameplay, though, so around a year ago I started looking into modernizing the experience a bit.
Somehow, that turned into "writing level, music, and graphic editors from scratch, then completely overhauling the game". Since it was completely undocumented, this wound up being a rather large task. Getting it made was a long and bumpy road, but I'm fairly pleased with the results.
Anyway, if you try this out, please send any comments and complaints you have my way. I'm planning to polish it up some more, and I'd like to address as many bugs and issues as I can. (Though I can't say I'm expecting this game to draw much of an audience...)
I'll also probably put together an NSFe with the OST in the coming days, so stay tuned if that's your kind of thing.
Also, yesterday was the 30th anniversary of this game's release, so ... happy anniversary, I guess? Somehow I managed to hit my self-imposed deadline for finishing development, if not publication. How did that happen?
Note: This is used as an Easter egg in the DOS version -- it plays randomly if you wait on the main menu with disc 3 inserted. It's likely accessible in the Sega CD version somehow, so if you've ever seen it there, let me know!
http://www.mediafire.com/download/wl95f0f5stpk46g/satanicdevice.mp3
Cover of the stage 6A music from Rockin' Pretty, a.k.a. Happy☆Star☆Band, a.k.a. Diva Girls: Making the Music, a pretty bad budget DS rhythm game targeted at preteen girls starring the moeblobs above on their journey to win Eurovision or something. Apparently I've lost my fucking mind. This game is so obscure that no one seems to have bothered uploading the original version of the song, so you'll just have to take my word for it that this is from the game! If I lose some more of my mind in the near future, I might upload it myself.
"Cover" is probably too strong a word for this. The hook and some bits of the verse and chorus are there, but most of it is completely made up. Turns out it's pretty hard to do cover songs when you can't keep the original in your head long enough to even write the melody down.
Special thanks to the random number generator at Random.org for suggesting I play this terrible game!
(Amazingly, this game actually has several endings, I think based on how well you do on the final stage. The image in the video is the "meh" ending).
This game has some unused code for having two "helpers" that fire extra shots instead of just one. This gives you a ton of firepower, but eats through ammo and causes a load of graphics glitches, which is probably why it got scrapped.
Note that Iris #2 can be a bit hard to see here because of all the sprite flicker. Why exactly does YouTube still cap videos at 30fps? Also, most of the other graphics issues are from the game, not the video capture.
From Touhou 10, if you somehow got here without knowing. I'm really bad at Touhou, but I'm slowly making my way through the series. Up to UFO now.
I decided to go back to my "old style": SID plugin in LMMS, octave basslines, everything swathed in delay to try to hide the lack of backing instruments. I only spent a day and a half on this, which is a pretty good turnaround time for me. Sounds better than anything else I've done in the last year, so that's something.
I didn't use any external samples for once, so here's the LMMS project file if anyone actually wants it: http://www.mediafire.com/download/acxtx1du1k1tana/dsof-remix.mmpz
Songs are "Hell Bent for Leather" (duh) and "Ready to Go ~ Captain Lancer" from the Megadrive version of Hellfire.
I had to remove the stereo separation from my original mix to get around YouTube's copyrighted content detection. You can download that version here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/ceaopaidn7a1w0c/hell+bent+for+hellfire.mp3
Something I made back in November 2012. I had vague dreams of using it for a game, but as that seems no more likely to happen now than it did then, I thought I might as well upload it. I feel like it turned out decent for the time that I made it.
I'm probably not going to write any more music for the foreseeable future. I've gotten dissatisfied with my level of skill, but I don't have the inclination or the time to put in the effort I'd need to get better. Maybe I'll revisit it sometime after I've dealt with the real-world problems I've been trying to put off for too long now.
MP3: http://www.mediafire.com/?ssv9s89h6bgsvz9
(downloads are the complete soundtrack, with each song looped twice due to no YouTube restrictions)
Part 1: youtube.com/watch?v=xIwSOnVte6U
An obscure educational game designed by Raymond Benson of Dark Seed II fame, with some music by Kevin Manthei of Invader Zim (and Nancy Drew?) fame. It made quite an impression on me as a kid, so I decided to upload it. This part covers the Iroquois music by Joanne Shenandoah, plus a few unused tracks.
0:00 - Flute 1 (a shorter version of this is used for the opening logos)
0:34 - Iroquois Song 1
1:06 - Iroquois Song 2
1:37 - Iroquois Song 3
1:58 - Iroquois Song 4
2:17 - Flute 2
2:45 - Flute 3
3:21 - Flute 4
3:55 - Rhythm 1
4:20 - Rhythm 2
4:34 - Iroquois Song 5
4:58 - Iroquois Song 6
5:22 - Iroquois Song 7
5:59 - Iroquois Song 8 (Eel Dance)
6:17 - Flute 5
6:49 - Flute 6
7:35 - Flute 7 [unused]
8:14 - Iroquois Song 9 [unused]
8:55 - Pick Up Figure [unused alternate mix]
9:31 - Pleasant Music Interlude [unused]
10:10 - Credits (Version 2, used in the ending after completing the wampum belt)
If the unused stuff catches your interest, I wrote a pointlessly detailed article for TCRF about it and the bajillion unused graphics and dialogue files: http://tcrf.net/The_Indian_in_the_Cupboard
MP3: http://www.mediafire.com/?ssv9s89h6bgsvz9
(downloads are the complete soundtrack, with each song looped twice due to no YouTube restrictions)
Part 2: youtube.com/watch?v=42hsWz8I7AY
An obscure educational game designed by Raymond Benson of Dark Seed II fame, with some music by Kevin Manthei of Invader Zim (and Nancy Drew?) fame. It made quite an impression on me as a kid, so I decided to upload it. This part covers the Kevin Manthei tracks, while part 2 covers the Iroquois music by Joanne Shenandoah.
0:00 - Opening
1:05 - Cupboard
1:41 - Pick Up Figure
2:16 - Little Bear Chosen
3:02 - Figure Chosen
3:43 - End of Adventure
4:18 - Put Down Figure
4:54 - Boone Chosen
5:38 - Start of Boone's Game
6:23 - Boone's Game: Little Bear 1
6:48 - Boone's Game: Little Bear 2
6:13 - Boone's Game: Little Bear 3
7:39 - Boone's Game: Little Bear 4
8:00 - Boone's Game: Little Bear 5
8:23 - Boone's Game: Little Bear 6
8:50 - Boone's Game: Goal (Little Bear)
8:58 - Boone's Game: Return to Cupboard (Little Bear)
9:42 - Boone's Game: Danger
9:54 - Boone's Game: Out of Time
10:02 - Boone's Game: Boone 1
10:25 - Boone's Game: Boone 2
10:48 - Boone's Game: Boone 3
11:11 - Boone's Game: Boone 4
11:33 - Boone's Game: Boone 5
11:55 - Boone's Game: Boone 6
12:16 - Boone's Game: Goal (Boone)
12:24 - Boone's Game: Return to Cupboard (Boone)
13:04 - Boone's Game: Victory
13:21 - Boone's Game: End of Adventure
13:55 - Credits (Version 1, used when exiting the game normally)
Looking at the track list, you can't help but get the feeling that they put most of the effort into Boone's adventure instead of the actual educational parts of the game...
MP3: http://www.mediafire.com/download/vu3bfh9nlwo4n6m/Blaster_Pals_Soundtracks_(MP3).zip
0:00 - Blaster Pals Theme
1:09 - We Got Nine Planets
2:23 - Where Did It Come From?
3:59 - We Can Save the Earth
All songs by Tom Zehnder. See youtube.com/watch?v=9jAlEQ-VZaw for the rest of the games.
Thanks to a tip from thevisualboy37, I found out about this obscure rerelease of Science Blaster Jr. from 1997 designed to take advantage of MMX-compatible processors. It's mostly the same as the original: a couple of scenes were added to the intro, some of the animations were redrawn (like the dancing Blaster Pals), and best of all the sound quality was increased -- most of the audio is at 22050 Hz instead of 11025 Hz, and the music was even remixed in stereo!
The only song that differs substantially from the original is "We Can Save the Earth", which in this version is sung by Lucy Hagan (one of the game's voice actors) instead of Tom Zehnder.
Thanks again to thevisualboy37 for letting me know about this. I'd have sent you a message, but my account can't do that and won't be able to anytime soon.
MP3: http://www.mediafire.com/download/vu3bfh9nlwo4n6m/Blaster_Pals_Soundtracks_(MP3).zip
(downloads now include alternate/higher-quality Science Blaster tracks from the MMX version thanks to a tip from thevisualboy37)
0:00 - Blaster Pals Theme
Math Blaster Jr./Ages 4-6:
1:01 - The Counting Song
2:23 - Morphelia
3:46 - Stomp Clap Snap Snap
5:27 - Are We There Yet?
Reading Blaster Jr./Ages 4-6:
7:02 - Alphabet Jam
7:56 - The Preposition Song
9:05 - You've Got a Rhyme
Science Blaster Jr.:
10:32 - We Got Nine Planets
11:41 - Where Did It Come From?
13:18 - We Can Save the Earth
See youtube.com/watch?v=MY6SBcPbXXM for the songs from the MMX version of Science Blaster Jr.
(The instrumental Blaster Pals theme is in the downloads but not the video due to length restrictions. Sorry Google, you're not getting my phone number.)
All songs by Tom Zehnder.
Judging from the views on the Blaster Pals theme song I uploaded a few years back, there's actually some demand for this, so here it is. Useless trivia: The Reading Blaster Jr. intro is the only one that makes any effort to sync the Pals up with the song.
Pretty much youtube.com/watch?v=XuSlUlAB_KQ except instead of crappy Spanish Touhou, it's some kind of crappy new wave prog whatever Touhou. I've been putting this together sporadically since February, so it's a mess internally and probably externally.
MIDI effects test
If anyone knows what keys and/or time signatures this is in, please tell me. (although I probably won't respond in the comments as a result of my long-running and entirely pointless one-man protest against Google+ integration)
(alternating E and D does make sense, thank you. I was thinking it was A and B flat. Sadly, it's not the first time this sort of thing has happened)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/d4rjh2dgfm300zd/sandocen.it
http://www.mediafire.com/download/gvft0hv4q5xfttz/mutecity.it
Sample/instrument pack: http://www.mediafire.com/download/29ykir969an8sdd/fz_instr.it
If you're wondering what happened on Mute City: apparently my version was close enough to the original to get a content match. I muted the melody in the video to get around it, but the source IT is unaltered. I'll take it as a compliment.
Regarding everything else: I tried, I really did. This is hard and I'm not very good at it. Fortunately, for a game this popular I except someone's already done this much better than I ever could.
Styled after the music from U.N. Squadron... nope, it's just the same pop song I've been writing over and over for the last 5 years. Also, sounds like my hard drive is dying, great.