【PCE】Final Soldier - Caravan Stars (5 minute Caravan) - Game Boy Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-06-30 | Check out my Bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!And another one from Final Soldier! Can you tell I LOVE this game and its soundtrack? Well, it would be more accurate to say I love this series, it has such tight gameplay, such good design, eye-popping graphics and eargasm-inducing music!This song plays when you play the 5 minute caravan mode, which I explained how it works in the description of my last video, which was a cover of the 2 minute Caravan theme that you can listen to here: youtu.be/aSWva9wEz18Anyway, since that video already shows the first half of this stage, I decided to start this one from there and show off the rest of the stage while the song plays. Speaking of which, see those blue fence-like structures in the background? I feel like not making them parallax by animating the tiles was a bit of a missed opportunity, it would look have looked great with them animating and the star sprites behind the BG visible through them serving as 3 overlapping parallax layers! Oh well...The song itself was relatively easy to cover, there's just some triplets here and there but otherwise nothing special, it's just really well-composed, and it was actually pretty-easy to figure out what I'd leave out to fit within the GB's 4 channels as the most important stuff in the song was already in the first 4 channels of the PCE anyway, though I did prioritise channel 6 for the 2nd half of the song because I felt the song would feel more complete with those long choir-esque notes...Enjoy!
NEW GAME BOY COLOR GAME - Akumanor Gaiden DX - Release Trailer Michirin 2024-12-28 | Get the game: michirin.itch.io/akumanor-gaiden-dxGet the soundtrack: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/akumanor-gaiden-dxIt's finally out! The colourised and vastly improved GBC version of Akumanor Gaiden! Full of new features including:- No More Lag- Improved Controls- Difficulty Setting- A Redesigned Final Boss- Rank System- Unlockable ExtrasI hope you all enjoy it!#homebrew #gbstudio #retrogaming #gameboycolor #gameboy #indiegame #release
【GBC】 Kira Kira Magical Stars - Spectral Manor 【Furnace Tracker】 Michirin 2024-11-26 | Buy the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/33...Buy the soundtrack: https://michirin9801.bandcamp.com/alb...Or buy the game on Itch: https://michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-ma...For the Haunted Castle stage, I needed to take the game's originally happy-go-lucky and cheerful leitmotif, and make it sound SpOoOoOoOoOkYyYyYy~So basically, slow it down a whole bunch, and play it in a minor key with the right kinds of instruments :POh and add a few extra lil' sound effects to emphasise the spooky theme ofc.Hope you like it!#indiegame #chiptune #chiptunemusic #furnacetracker #steamgame
【GBC】Kira Kira Magical Stars - Airy Gardens【Furnace Tracker】 Michirin 2024-11-17 | Buy the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/33...Buy the soundtrack: https://michirin9801.bandcamp.com/alb...Or buy the game on Itch: https://michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-ma...For a stage that takes place in the sky, I wanted the BGM to sound sparkly and cheery, with a hint of a more energetic vibe to it, quite fitting for the girl you save in this stage, if I say so myself!#indiegame #chiptune #chiptunemusic #furnacetracker #steamgame
Kira Kira Magical Stars Out NOW On Steam! Michirin 2024-11-12 | Buy the game: store.steampowered.com/app/3303290/Kira_Kira_Magical_StarsBuy the soundtrack: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/kira-kira-magical-starsOr buy the game on Itch: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-stars#indiegame #steamgame #release #retrostyle #pixelart #chiptune
【GBC】Kira Kira Magical Stars - Redrock Mine【Furnace Tracker】 Michirin 2024-11-08 | Wishlist the game on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3303290/Kira_Kira_Magical_StarsOr buy it now: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-starsBuy the soundtrack: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/kira-kira-magical-stars*Not an actual GBC game, it's a Windows game made to look, sound and feel like a GBC game.Here's a fun fact about this song: It's in D Major :3cWho said you couldn't make a song for a mine infested with bats, spiders and rock monsters in a major key? ;3But yeah like, what I was getting at with this soundtrack was taking the same leitmotifs and rearranging them in many different keys, tempos, time-signatures, and modulating the melody and harmony in all sorts of ways in order to make the same musical ideas fit into all sorts of moods and situations, and as such, hopefully giving the game its own musical identity!I sure hope it came across...#indiegame #chiptune #chiptunemusic #furnacetracker
Kira Kira Magical Stars - Steam Trailer Michirin 2024-10-29 | Wishlist the game today: store.steampowered.com/app/3303290/?snr=1_5_9__205Get the soundtrack: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/kira-kira-magical-starsOr get the game now at: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-stars#indiegame #steamgame
New Game Boy Game - Akumanor Gaiden【GBJAM 12】 Michirin 2024-09-24 | Get the game: michirin.itch.io/akumanor-gaidenBuy my previous game for PC: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-starsSupport my music: michirin9801.bandcamp.comYes, this is a REAL Game Boy game! I made it in GB Studio 4.1.3 as my submission for the GB Jam 12! (If you participated in the Jam, please rate it!)This project was, more than anything, an exercise in flexing my artistic muscle, both on the visual AND audio side of things, I really went above and beyond with this project given I had only 10 days to make the entire thing, and the frankly rather limited GB hardware, and as a result I am Utterly Exhausted! Pardon me but I need a good break after this...Anyway, I hope you enjoy the game, and please, download the ROM and play that on an emulator, the browser version is bugged and I can't fix it 'til after the Jam rating period...Oh and, if you're wondering, yes, I know it lags, GB Studio's platformer engine is a bit much for the original GB hardware, and also yes, I Would quite like to make a colour version of this, and the GBC's double clock speed WILL help eliminate the lag, but again, I Am Exhausted, so it won't come out for a wee bit, I appreciate your patience.#GBJAM #homebrew #GBstudio #gameboy #indiegame #gamejam
【GBC】Kira Kira Magical Stars - Springlight Woods【Furnace Tracker】 Michirin 2024-09-08 | Get the game: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-starsGet the album: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/kira-kira-magical-stars*Not an actual GBC game, it's a Windows game made to look, sound and feel like a GBC game.This is the stage featured in the game's demo.As mentioned in the video featuring the town stage theme, the idea for this soundtrack was to have leitmotifs, which is to say, every stage shares the same musical ideas, but plays around with them in their own unique ways.For this stage, I played the leitmotif in a different key, slower, and in a 3/4 time signature, with a few necessary adjustments, thus making it sound more mellow, and I also added a couple extra lil' bits in there to break up the repetition, how is it? You tell me!Also, play the game!
New GBC Game Prototype - Kira Kira Magical Adventure Michirin 2024-08-03 | Recorded with BGB emulatorDetails in the descriptionSo, with this video I pretty much reveal the whole idea for this project, and it's a fairly simple, if perhaps a bit ambitious idea: Why not just embrace GB Studio's 'jack of all trades' nature, and make the best use I can out of EVERYTHING it has to offer?In other words, platforming stages AND shmup stages, all linked together by top-down exploration with towns and everything!And yes, it works on the OG Game Boy too! I don't recommend it, but if you have one and you wanna play it there, or on a Super GB, you can! (Imma have to look up how to properly support SGB)This recording was the first time I ever actually tested it in B&W mode, wow, I didn't think it'd lag this bad, I'll try to optimise it a bit more, but I sure ain't sacrificing my parallax scrolling for anything...Also, yes, I've already fixed Kirari's hair changing colour in B&W mode.Speaking of, I don't reckon I'm gonna be able to do parallax by dynamically animating tiles as the camera moves (get on that GB Studio folks!) but I can split the BG layer twice (wish I could split it WAY more) and also render sprites behind the BG layer as background sprites! I plan on using both of those techniques A LOT!I'd like to shout-out @shintendo for his Shmup Reloaded plugin, which yes, works with GBS4 already! I was quite disappointed when I tried the default shmup engine and saw there was no 8-direction movement, only 2 directions, like, what? C'mon! I dun wanna make a Space Invaders clone! I wanna make something more akin to Magical Chase or Cotton! But his plugin allows for 8-direction movement so I can make something at least somewhat closer to that! Albeit a lot more segmented because GBS BG size limits are umm... Not very large, and I can't loop them...Oh yeah! I got sound effects working! I still need to make A LOT more sfx, but a whole bunch of the basics are here! As for music, I'm hoping to make a whole new original soundtrack just for this game, which will be A TON of work, which I'm planning on saving for pretty much near the end, so like, yeah, sorry, no new music for the foreseeable future... Like, I need to know what each situation of the game REALLY feels like before I can come up with something good y'know? And I can only know when the game is already mostly done...If you wanna support the development, then by all means, support my previous work!Itch.io: michirin.itch.ioBandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.com
New GBC game prototype Michirin 2024-07-30 | Recorded from mGBADetails in the descriptionSo in a recent community post I said I was going to be more open about my next project's development, this video is a direct result of that. In that same post I also mentioned that I'm probably not going to make my next game using GB Studio, but y'know, I'm starting to second-guess myself...When GB Studio first came out a few years ago, I really didn't give it the time of day, I thought it was, at best, a neat-ish novelty, but FAR from a serious gamedev tool, and then version 2.0 came out and it was a surprising leap from 1.0, enough that I actually bothered to give it a shot! The results of which can be seen in my video "Prototypes and Proofs of Concepts" posted in late 2020, still just a neat novelty, but I wasn't quite sold on it yet, then version 3.0 came out and it was an even bigger leap from 2.0! It was getting pretty close! Close enough that I was actually considering making a game with it, well, 3.2, as my possible next project after MagiKana! But it was still lacking a few too many features... And then version 4.0 came out and umm... Yeah, like, it's still not Quiiiiite there, but y'know what? It might just be good enough! Especially with plugins!But then there's that elephant in the room right... MagiKana... I actually tried like, prototyping it with GBS4, I was at it most of the month, cuz like, though it will still be a Windows game first and foremost, I thought it's be even neater for it to also have a GBC version to go along with it! But then again right, for one, my enthusiasm for that project just isn't really there anymore, and for two, GB Studio doesn't exactly make melee combat easy to make...Nope, GB Studio only really makes projectile-based combat easy to handle, and y'know what character I've already designed that jumps and shoots magical stars? Yup, it's Kirari, so like, why not just make a 2nd game starring her? A REAL GBC game this time? That's how this idea came about!Btw, it'll probably be called Kira Kira Magical Adventure.Now, this is still Very, VERY Early in development, I've only been at it for about a week, I'm still learning the program, and magic and lives haven't been implemented yet, but it has JUUUUST enough features that I'm comfortable enough showing it off! So, waccha think? And I'm only using one plugin so far! That's pautomas' Advanced Dialogue to display the HUD (which I very much plan on re-working later to display health and magic bars instead of numbers, I just haven't quite figured out a good way of doing it yet)And yeah, I'm reusing assets I already had, and I'm honestly okay with that, they still look good if I say so myself! Of course new assets will come in due time as well.I'll post more development updates as I see fit, but I'm actually rather happy with how it's looking so far! If you wanna support the development, then by all means, support my previous work!Itch.io: michirin.itch.ioBandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.com
【GBC】Kira Kira Magical Stars - Stage Boss【Furnace Tracker】 Michirin 2024-04-21 | Get the game: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-starsGet the album: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/kira-kira-magical-stars*Not an actual GBC game, it's a Windows game made to look, sound and feel like a GBC game.As I've said in the previous video's description, the main thing I wanted to go for in this soundtrack was having leitmotifs, in other words, melodic ideas which are remixed and rearranged throughout the soundtrack, you've definitely heard other soundtracks that do this!For this soundtrack, I've come up with 3 different leitmotifs, one for the stages themselves, one for boss fights, and one for everything else (Title screen, Map screen and so on) this is the boss one, which for obvious reasons, doesn't get rearranged as much as the stage themes, cuz well, the same version is used for every boss prior to the final stage, as you'd expect for a boss theme, however, different variations of this theme do exist, and you've heard them already if you've played far enough into the game! (Or well, bought the soundtrack) but if not, well, they'll be up here on YouTube soon enough, so stay tuned!
【GBC】Kira Kira Magical Stars - Town【Furnace Tracker】 Michirin 2024-04-20 | Get the game: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-starsGet the album: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/kira-kira-magical-stars*Not an actual GBC game, it's a Windows game made to look, sound and feel like a GBC game.So, the main idea I had for this soundtrack was to have leitmotifs, that is to say, to repeat the same few melodic ideas throughout the soundtrack, but have various different takes on them that sound different from one-another, but familiar, this is done A LOT in the Mario series, and I'm a big fan of those soundtracks!This town theme was the first stage theme I came up with, and it was here that I established the leitmotifs that you'll hear in every stage theme, you'll hear what I mean if you stay tuned, or well, play the full game!
【GBC】Kira Kira Magical Stars - Title Screen【Furnace Tracker】 Michirin 2024-04-19 | Get the game: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-starsGet the album: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/kira-kira-magical-stars*Not an actual GBC game, it's a Windows game made to look, sound and feel like a GBC game.I feel like I've already done most of what I could with the PCE and GB soundchips as it stands... Like, all that's left for me to do is compose an original soundtrack for each... Welp, I've done it for the GB! And guess what? There's a whole game to go with it! Why not give it a go? ;3
Kira Kira Magical Stars Trailer Michirin 2024-04-13 | Get the game: michirin.itch.io/kira-kira-magical-starsGet the OST: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/album/kira-kira-magical-stars*Not an actual GBC game, it's a Windows game made to look, sound and feel like a GBC game.
I missed this semi-circle (SIF2) Michirin 2023-04-15 | Didn't do that great on this one, still getting used to it coming from the previous game...Now they just need to make Master chars for ALL songs! I'm not going back down to Expert...Also, game's running on minimum settings because my phone has gone full potato after a couple years of owning it... Y'know, my 3DS still performs the same after 9 years, why do PCs and phones get slower with time? Smh...
【DS】Etrian Odyssey III - The First Campaign - GBA Cover【Furnace Tracker】 Michirin 2022-11-09 | So this is Furnace Tracker huh? I've been told so much about it...What I hadn't been told is that I could literally add generic PCM channels of any bit depth and sample rate I wanted! Pair a few of those with the GB soundchip and guess what? Accurate GBA audio! This is like, a dream come true right here, I've LITERALLY Been Asking For This For YEARS!!So what I'm doing here is simulating a VERY Simple software mixing method where the two GBA direct audio channels are acting as a single stereo output, and I'm halving their volume twice so that I can fit in 4 stereo channels at 6 bit depth and 32 khz, which is the GBA's default sample rate (although some games use a lower sample rate to save up on CPU resources, but some other games go above and beyond and use a higher one!) Now, I'm aware there ARE ways to squeeze in more quality out of the GBA's Direct Audio, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing that, and I didn't wanna overcomplicate things here... I don't think it's really that necessary in this case...Pair that with the GB's 4 sound channels and I get 7 voices and a Noise channel, which is pretty good! And if I crunch it down even further to 5 bit depth, I get 8 sample channels, which adds up to 11 voices and a noise channel, which is fantastic even with the sacrifice in quality! I didn't think that was necessary here though, so I stuck with 4 sample channels at a higher quality...Now we just need a homebrew sound driver that takes advantage of this, cuz like, from what I can tell, EVERY sound driver currently available for use in GBA homebrew games uses ONLY the Direct Audio, or the GB soundchip, not both, but you see, the true magic of the GBA's sound hardware IS Precisely That It Can Use Both At Once! It's why I wanted to make something for it so much in the first place!! I frickin' LOVE how the crunchy samples and the GB sounds just go SO Well Together!Oh and, yes, I made this light mode with pink accents colour scheme for the tracker, the default colour scheme literally hurt my eyes, I was having some crazy difficulty reading anything, but after I took the time to make my own colour scheme it was just SOOOOOOOO Much Better!As for the song itself, I've ripped all the samples I used from the actual game, though I'm only using a single sample per instrument for the sake of simplicity, I mean, it sounds plenty good enough if you ask me... I'm playing the kicks, snares and toms on sample channel 1, the hi-hats and cymbals on the GB noise channel, the bass on the GB DAC (Wavetable) channel, the harmonic support on the two pulse channels, and any other melodic stuff is playing on the 3 remaining sample channels. The percussion is not a 1:1 recreation of the original, it kinda couldn't be anyway, and that'd have been just too frustrating to transcribe, so I settled for an approximation I deemed good enough, and I also left out a few things I deemed unnecessary, mostly just really quiet guitars playing the same notes as the bass, they're hardly even audible in the actual game so...Anyway, I guess I should also address the hiatus... Sigh... Lemme just say... This isn't what I wanna be doing with my life... I don't wanna be "the girl who makes the PCE and GB covers" forever... I wanna make something entirely my own... I'm just struggling with it so much for a myriad of reasons, ranging from both physical and mental health issues, to working on other people's games for the past 3 years, on top of the multiple projects of my own that are concurrently in the works...Point is... Don't expect these... But I can still post one like this on occasion, in fact, I already got another one done, it doesn't sound as good as this though, but I should post when I manage to get a proper video editor working on this PC, I used frickin' Blender for this one, it Suuuuuuucked, but everything else I try is either crashing on startup or at random, or it sucks even worse than Blender at video editing... Sigh... I miss Windows 7...Welp... Das' it... Go homebrew your 3DSes, Nintendo doesn't want your money.
【Aikatsu Stars】One Step - GB Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2021-10-09 | Yuzu is the best thing to ever happen to Aikatsu.The game footage is an off-screen recording from my 3DS.(I can't capture it any other way)
SIFdoriDJ Michirin 2021-05-15 | The most difficult thing about this was getting the notes to sync up with the audio... I swear it's not this bad when I'm not recording...As for whatever this is, basically, there's this simulator for a bunch of mobile rhythm games called "Sonolus" that's, honestly, pretty finicky, but the cool thing about it is that I can do stupid stuff like this, you know, take the notes, background and sound effects from Love Live SIF, the gameplay from Bandori and a song from D4DJ and just mash them together...Oh yeah, I'm playing this with my thumbs, just in case anyone asks...Btw, if you see any ads on the video, It's probably cuz some big Japanese corporation put them in there, just skip it or use an adblocker...
Prototypes and proofs of concepts Michirin 2020-10-24 | These are some of the things I've worked on on my own since releasing Akumanor Escape DX, most of which were made using Construct 2, some were just testing out mechanics and concepts, others were meant to become full games but were put on-hold or dropped for reasons which will be explained below, in order of appearance they are:0:00 - Amiga style puzzle platformerThis was the first thing I tried making after releasing AEDX, I'd been interested on mimicking the Amiga's specs for a while, but they're incredibly complex and require A TON of planning if I wanna make the most out of it. I planned on sticking with 1 directional and 1 button gameplay, and the button would be used to jump, so I'd design the entire game around just moving around and jumping, one of the planned actions was pushing blocks, but I didn't manage to implement it so I put this project on-hold to try and make something easier (which ended up never getting done).1:18 - Fake Mode 7 mapThis was merely a test of an idea I had a long time ago for a way to implement a Zelda ALTTP-like map on a game system with no Mode 7 support, basically the idea was to already draw the map laid out in a trapezoid shape and then use H-blank interrupts to skew the map when it moves horizontally, and stretch it vertically when it moves vertically. This is possible on PCE, Mega Drive, GB/C, NES, SMS, among others.2:19 - Mode 7 PluginI've been dabbling with this C2 plugin for a really long time, but it's incredibly difficult to work with, everything is trial and error, this is the first time I've managed to get some collision detection working, which is what I'm testing out in this clip, but it's far from perfect, and I gave up when I realised I had no idea how to put other objects on the Mode 7 tracks, like hazards or other racers. This was made entirely using place-holder assets, the racer is Pastel from Konami Krazy Racers, and the track is the GBA version of Mario Circuit 1 from Super Mario Kart.4:08 - GBC 1st person Dungeon CrawlerBefore I started working on the original version of Akumanor Escape for GBJAM7 last year, a friend of mine and I tried making a 1st person dungeon crawler RPG mimicking GB specs. We realised that was biting way more than we could chew for a 1 week game jam, so I decided to take the remaining 4 days to make a platformer, but I never gave up on the idea of the dungeon crawler, so I decided to try and get it done on my own this year, only for GBC this time around. It was an incredibly gruelling task to get this much done, and when I realised that I'd still have to make an entire RPG on top of it, which I DEFINITELY didn't have what it took to accomplish, I decided to put the project on-hold indefinitely.5:04 PCE CD Rhythm Game (with HuVideo playback)Rhythm games are my favourite genre right now, I can't get enough of them! So I wanted to make one for one of my favourite systems from a time before they were really a thing as we know them. The PCE could totally handle a rhythm game, it really shouldn't be too hard, the real challenge would be whether or not we can get video playback alongside it, and after extensive talks with a friend of mine who's a PCE programmer we've established that it's very much possible, and with a simple trick we can even get it to fill most of the screen! Furthermore, it doesn't even require the Arcade Card, it can be done with the regular Super CD! (It's at 10 fps though) Sadly this will probably never be a thing because, firstly, I don't have what it takes to compose, let alone license a worthy soundtrack, nevermind making music videos for it, secondly, even if I did, who's gonna play this? I wouldn't be surprised if I was the only person who's interested in a PCE CD rhythm game...Anyway, the music video is taken from Bang Dream Season 2 Episode 13, it was used as a place-holder to test out the game's mechanics.5:53 - PCE platformerBasically I just wanted to see how many moves I could cram on a D-pad and 2 buttons. I used place-holder sprites cuz I have no idea what to make with this, only the moveset, and it's not even complete... The project is on hold, it will probably become a full game at one point, I just have to figure out what to do with it...6:38 - GB studio 2 testsI was really excited for GB studio 2 not only because would it support the GBC, but also cuz it'd become possible to make games in more genres! Sadly I may have expected too much from the program, as it's really not built to do the kinds of things I'd want to do with the GBC... Even just trying to move multiple sprites together wielded extremely flawed results... I think I'll just stick with Construct 2 for now...The BGM you hear is a PCE cover of the Dress Design Room theme from the PriPara games on 3DS. I made it cuz I needed something easy and cute for this video...
What Ive been working on all year Michirin 2020-09-29 | Check the game out on Kickstarter: kickstarter.com/projects/darkkboold/jessie-jaeger-in-cleopatras-curseThis is the Turbo CD version btw.
Super Mario 64 but I can only enter each stage once Michirin 2020-09-22 | I feel like my creative fire is dead, so enjoy a rather slow speedrun!This is a challenge I came up with to spice up a 16 star run, basically you can't reenter a stage if you get kicked out of it for any reason, be it dying or getting a star, however if you die during a Bowser fight you are kicked out of the fight, but not of the stage, so you can retry that fight as many times as necessary. Also, you need to save and quit to get out of the Bowser 2 / Dire Dire Docks room cuz the 30 star door is still locked.Yes, I know that you're pretty much doing this challenge already if you're doing 0 star or 1 star runs (provided you don't die in the Bowser stages) but I can't do those, they're extremely difficult. This is meant for people who can do 16 star runs.This is FAR from my best run, but it's what I was able to do while recording after countless tries, I just get really nervous when I'm recording...This was played on Project 64 1.6 using an old (and mildly damaged) PS1 dualshock (cuz that's the only controller I have that I can plug on my PC right now) this is the only way I'm able to record footage at the moment.
【GB】Bomberman 94 - Battle - Game Boy Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2020-07-13 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I'm busy and tired...I don't know whether or not this song was ever on GB or GBC, but I felt like covering it, so I did it anyway.My favourite version of this song is easily the SNES one, but let's be real here, the GB can't approximate that, so I based this cover off the PCE version, which is the closest one to the GB in terms of sound hardware.Bomberman is fun. Enjoy!
I did a Game Jam again Michirin 2020-07-12 | michirin.itch.io/unwieldy-wandThis is my submission for the GMTK Game Jam 2020I'm not "back", I was never gone, I just wanna focus more on game development from now on.
Akumanor Escape DX Trailer Michirin 2019-11-29 | Play the game: michirin.itch.io/akumanor-escape-dxEnjoy!
モザイクロール Mozaik Role - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-10-03 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!Original song by DECO*27: nicovideo.jp/watch/sm11398357Cover by meArt by me: pixiv.net/en/artworks/77097358I had this cover done and ready to go for a VERY long time, it was already finished not too long after I made my cover of Coward Mont Blanc which you can check out here: youtu.be/h93NGaYMa8MIn the description of that video I mentioned how I wanted to reanimate the music video in pixel art, how I couldn't because I didn't have the time to do so, and how I wanted to do it next time. That's precisely the reason why I took so long to upload this, I was trying to make an animation, but as you can see from, well, watching the video, that didn't pan out. The animation never got too far off the ground, I've only made a few assets not too long after being done with the song, but then I just kept putting it off, and ended up never working on any more assets, the animation never progressed past that point, but I really wanted to upload the song regardless, it's been sitting on my computer for what feels like an eternity! So I decided to just do the same thing I did last time, just make a drawing to capture the spirit of the song and use that as a visual component of the video...My animation efforts didn't go entirely to waste though, I've used one of the assets in the thumbnail! That's gotta count for something...Anyway, I've been waiting to upload this before I'd cover more GUMI songs, and now that this is out of the way, even if it didn't go the way I envisioned it, I can now do that...Maybe someday I'll actually come back, not only to this song, but also to my Coward Mont Blanc cover, and actually take the time to reanimate their music videos... We'll see...
【GBA】Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance - Successor of Fate - PC engine cover【DefleMask】 Michirin 2019-09-23 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I've gone on record time and time again about not being a fan of the Igavania games, or the Metroidvania genre in general, and about preferring the classic-style Castlevania games, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating a good soundtrack when I hear one!Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance may have the most underrated soundtrack in the entire series, and that's saying a lot considering just how great these soundtracks tend to be! Back when I was playing the GBA games for the first time I much preferred Aria of Sorrow's soundtrack, I thought Harmony sounded weird, low-quality and, well, dissonant, for lack of a better term, but as the years went by I not only grew a certain fondness for this unconventional soundtrack, but it ended up becoming one of my favourites! I like it even better than Aria's now! I can much better appreciate it now that I can tell just how layered and complex the compositions are, and just how much more interesting the sound is in general, using the GBA's direct audio to play simple waveforms, not dissimilar to what you'd hear coming out of a PC engine, in fact, I could have made it sound pretty much identical to the original, but I chose to make it sound a little more distinct, and more "PC-engine-esque" if you know what I mean...When I started out this cover I was doing it by ear, but I got lazy and ended up using this old famitracker cover as a reference: youtube.com/watch?v=vK9KtiJDRRgCheck it out, it's pretty good!Honestly, I don't even think I had it in me to actually do this by ear, it's too complex, I'm glad I could get it done at all thanks to that other cover...Anyway, I hope you enjoy it ^^
エレクトリック・ラブ Electric Love - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-08-31 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!Happy Birthday once again Miku!I started covering this song in 2017, not long after I made my Po Pi Po cover, but it just sat there half-finished on my computer for a VERY long time, I wanted to get it done for Miku's 11th birthday last year, but I ended up covering Butterfly Graffiti last minute (which you can check out here: youtu.be/gazZhr36Svk )But it's finally done! I had it in my mind that I was gonna finish this cover this month, I was absolutely gonna have it ready for Miku's birthday, but I ended up putting it off until the bitter end of the month, and I've only JUST managed to finish it in time!This song was composed by the same person who composed Butterfly Graffiti, HachiojiP (八王子P), and if you like what you hear you should really check out his stuff, all of his songs are incredible! He's probably become my favourite Vocaloid composer... (Sorry kz, I still love you though!)For those who don't know, the game footage is from Hatsune Miku Project Mirai DX on Nintendo 3DS, and I LOVE this game with a passion! I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is not only one of my favourite games on the system (if not THE favourite) but one of my favourites of all time, and definitely my favourite in the series!It may not be quite as challenging as I'd like, but it's no doubt the best-designed, and possibly even the best-looking game in the series (as of now, and that's including the PS4 games). It single-handedly reignited my love for rhythm games and for Vocaloid! I played it pretty much non-stop for over a year when I got it and I still come back to it rather frequently even after having S-ranked every song in the game on the hardest difficulty! This game literally changed my life for the better, I can't even imagine myself going without it...Now that there's a Miku game coming to the Switch I finally have a reason to pick up one... Of course I already wanted it, but now I just gotta have it! Especially considering they've finally made the Mini-Switch I've been waiting for! Still though, I'm a little disappointed it's a new Project Diva game as opposed to a new Project Mirai game, like, don't get me wrong, I'm still very glad we're getting it, but Project Mirai has GUMI in it! Project Diva doesn't! Also Project Mirai has much more intuitive gameplay, and super-cute nendoroid characters...Oh well, there's nothing stopping me from just continuing to bring my 3DS with me on-the-go and playing it whenever I want...Yeah, half the reason why I covered this was because I wanted to gush about Project Mirai DX, but I also felt the PCE could do this song pretty well for the most part! I hope you enjoy it ^^
I did another Game Jam! 【GBJAM7】 Michirin 2019-08-26 | Play the game here: michirin9801.itch.io/akumanor-escapeI made this all on my own for the GBJAM7It's a little more ambitious and complete than the last one because I had a lot more time to work on it, it's 2 stages long, and the stages have more going on, the screen scrolls on all directions, not just horizontally! I hope you enjoy it!Make sure to rate it if you can!
I did a Game Jam Michirin 2019-08-05 | Check the game out here: michirin9801.itch.io/chuck-ball-idolI made this all on my own for Mark Brown's GMTK Game Jam 2019.The game is pretty short and simple, only one stage long, but I put a lot of effort into making the graphics and sound!I hope you enjoy what you see, hear and play!Also please rate it if you can!
【SNES】Final Fight 3 - Explosive Situation - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-07-12 | Check out my Bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!Here's another cover from my favourite beat'em up and my favourite soundtrack from Capcom~♥This song plays in the intro cutscene, the first part of the second-to-last stage, and throughout the last stage, (except in the obligatory Beat'em up elevator)I decided to show footage of the last stage but after the elevator sequence, that's the longest the song plays uninterrupted, and I ended up with FAR more footage than enough, I mean, I did just beat it while recording after all...Covering the song was a bit more time-consuming than usual, I took a couple of days to finish it whereas I usually finish most of my songs in a single day (with a few notable exceptions) The song abuses triplets like there's no tomorrow in almost every instrument, and I ended up leaving out the guitars altogether... I could have fit them in, but they're barely audible in the original to begin with, would have been cut off to play sound effects if this cover ended up in a proper PCE port of the game, and the loss of reverb would have been MUCH more noticeable than the loss of these guitars anyway, so I decided to eschew them in favour of keeping in the reverb, I hope you don't miss them, I certainly didn't considering I've been listening to this song for years and I didn't even know it had guitars in it until I started listening to each sound channel on its own in the process of covering it!Also, I think the song is slightly slower in here than the original, and I couldn't make it any faster without messing it up, so I hope you don't mind that...
【PCE】Final Soldier - Dead or Alive (2 minute Caravan) - Game Boy Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-06-29 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I got rid of the noise distortion! Yaaay! And all I needed to do was use a different screen recording software, as in, the same one I was using before...Anyway, here's another Final Soldier song on the Game Boy, this time it's the one that plays in the 2 minute caravan mode! That's basically a score attack mode, the game gives you a stage and 2 minutes to score as many points as you possibly can with the default weapon, that's the mode, sounds archaic doesn't it? But it's actually surprisingly fun to see just how high you can score in it, and it's especially more fun when you get to listen to such amazing music while you're at it!There's also a 5 minute mode where you play through the same stage with the same goal but you get to see more of it and a different song plays, I'll cover that one on the Game Boy sooner than later, until then I hope you enjoy what you hear ^^[Edit]Here's the cover of the 5 minute Caravan mode song I promised: youtu.be/pIe_2q8Cf1IEnjoy!
【PCE】Soldier Blade - Operation 2 - Game Boy Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-06-20 | Check out my Bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!Unfortunately I still can't figure out how to fix those metallic-sounding artefacts from the white noise channel, it's not supposed to sound like that, but it comes out that way in the recording, even after I fiddle with the recording configurations, I'm thinking maybe I should use Deflemask's .wav export feature for the sound for my future Game Boy music because it doesn't have that issue...Anyway, Soldier Blade is AMAZING! One of the best spaceship shooters I've ever played, if not the very best, and it has one of my favourite soundtracks in gaming! I mean, I should only expect as much from the series it hails from... When I first played this game it blew my mind so hard I couldn't even believe what I was playing! I had played Blazing Lazers and Super Star Soldier before it, and both are truly great shooters, but Soldier Blade is an audiovisual spectacle a whole new level beyond what those games could offer! This game is SO good that I'm kinda afraid to recommend it to people before Super Star Soldier or Final Soldier because it makes them look rather quaint in comparison, but they're still great, so I don't want to potentially spoil people's enjoyment of them because they played this first and they didn't live up to it... (But to be fair, I played Final Soldier after this and I still love it a whole lot)Alright, enough gushing, so, the song, the GB soundchip obviously can't fit everything, so I had to decide on cutting out either the secondary melody through most of the song, or cutting all the chords down to single notes, and in the end I decided to do the latter...I felt the song was still plenty recognisable that way, and that keeping both the main and backup melodies in contributed to that quite a bit, even if it sounds a bit more shallow in comparison to the original...I'm still rather proud of the results though, and I hope you enjoy what you hear ^^
【PCE】Final Soldier - Sole Warrior - Game Boy Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-06-18 | Check out my Bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I've been asked many times by people who are just getting into the PC engine: "What games should I play?" and while the list of recommendations to a newcomer can be a bit overwhelming, the library is pretty spectacular after all, I always make sure to recommend Hudson's Soldier series! Super Star Soldier, Final Soldier, Soldier Blade and Star Parodier are all must-play titles on the PC engine, and I'd also recommend playing them in that order, because I feel that way you can get the most out of each title, but that shouldn't matter that much because I didn't play them in order and I still love them all~♥Lately though I've been quite addicted to Final Soldier's soundtrack, it's SO GOOD! I think these songs are pretty creatively composed and they sound pretty different from the rest of the series due to its more unique instrumentation, but still has that 'Star Soldier flair' with some familiar-sounding progressions...Obviously for this one I went back to the Game Boy soundchip, I mean, it's kinda redundant to cover a PCE song on the PCE innit?I had to drop some harmonic support and all of the reverb in the process, and the bass is a little higher pitched than I'd like it, but otherwise I'm rather proud of how it turned out! What I'm not too proud of though is how the noise came out sounding quite a bit more more metallic in the recording than it should actually sound, I have no idea how to fix that, but that's only really noticeable in the cymbals, and even then I think it's still listenable, I hope that doesn't bother you too much... Enjoy!
【SNES】Super Mario Bros. 3 - Overworld - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-06-07 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!Here's a bit of trivia: Did you know Hudson Soft had originally pitched the PC engine to Nintendo as the successor to the Famicom? Nintendo obviously rejected it, preferring instead to make their own 16 bit console when they felt the time was right, and let's be honest here, they made the right choice, as their Super Famicom went on to become the most capable and successful console of that generation!But in an alternate reality where they might have accepted Hudson's offer and the PC engine was the Super Nintendo, their absolute masterpiece Super Mario Bros. 3 could have sounded more or less like this! (Maybe)As for how it could have looked like, well, the way it already looks on the SNES remake isn't far off from what it could have looked like on the PC engine, minus all the parallax scrolling of course, I don't really see Nintendo going out of their way to add parallax to a game on a system with only 1 BG layer, they barely did it on the NES or the GB/GBC so they most likely wouldn't have done it here either...I've been wanting to cover Mario music for an eternity, and I've done a couple from his Game Boy games, but now I FINALLY got around to one of the main-line games! Here's hoping Nintendo doesn't drop the ban-hammer on this one xDEnjoy!
【SNES】Final Fight 3 - Pints and Punks - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-06-02 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I've been planning on covering this song for as long as I've been making music, and I actually made an attempt shortly after I uploaded my Smeared Graffiti PCE cover (which you can listen to here: youtu.be/PySdwTcOUpw )But I gave up at the time because I deemed it too difficult, and I hope you can understand why just by listening...But then I got the urge to cover it again recently and here it is! Took a couple of days' work but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out!The original song uses all 8 of the SNES' sound channels, but the song is arranged in a way where there are only ever 6 channels playing anything meaningful at a time, so I didn't need to cut out pretty much anything from this cover, but it doesn't stop there, there were 2 channels playing the percussion through most of the song, so I crammed all of that into a single channel without much of a loss and voila! I got most of the song to play with only 5 channels, and the only times channel 5 was used for anything it was just for reverb, so if I cut it out to play sound effects it wouldn't even be that noticeable!This is one of my favourite songs from this soundtrack, and I hope you enjoy my cover! ^^
【GBA】Densetsu no Stafy - Sea of Sky - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-05-12 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!It's another Stafy song, the one from Stage 8, I was gonna do the one from Stage 7, Undersea Temple, and I even made significant progress in it, but then I needed to play the note A#0 in the baseline, which I know for a fact the PC engine can output, but Deflemask doesn't allow me to use any note lower than C-0, and even that you have to use a work-around in order to play, so I gave up on that one for the time being...In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one, It's one of my favourites from the game!
【GBA】Densetsu no Stafy - S.S. Logwater - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-04-16 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!And here's another one from Densetsu no Stafy! I'm not sure I'd describe this one as "atmospheric-sounding" but I can't come up with any better words to describe it...While I needed samples in my last cover to do the percussion justice, this one I could do just fine without any, as the only percussion instrument it has is a relatively quiet snare drum, and I'm already pretty used to handling those on the PCE...The only real challenge here was sequencing those snares and the barely-audible bass, you'd think it would be easy considering the bass only plays one note throughout the entire song, and that I don't have to worry about any other percussion instruments, but it's surprisingly easy to lose track of where you were when there are no other percussion instruments or bass notes to gauge what part of the song you're in, especially when those instruments are quiet...Other than that, it was mostly a pretty easy cover, I took a while to figure out what waveform I'd use for the strings, in the end I ended up editing the horn wave from Bonk's Adventure and played it with a slightly slower attack and some tremolo and it sounded good enough I think...Enjoy!
【GBA】Densetsu no Stafy - Deep Sea - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-04-15 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!It's been a while since I covered something from this game, not because I didn't want to, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up covering the entire soundtrack at one point, I just hadn't gotten around to covering more from it until now...On this cover I've used something I hadn't used in a very long time: Samples! It's just two Tabla samples, unfortunately I didn't manage to figure out how I'd go about synthesising my own Tabla using wavetables and/or noise, it just didn't sound right, so I figured I might as well just use samples, two of them to be precise, they're almost identical but one of them has a bit more 'oomph' than the other, just to differentiate them a bit...But well, I'm kinda wishing I had used a couple more samples for the rest of the percussion, I ended up using raw noise quite a bit on this one, it's not great, but I didn't want to rip more samples from the game so I guess that will have to do it for now...Enjoy!
【C64】Turrican 3 - Stage 1-2 BGM - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-03-14 | Check out my Bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I got this song stuck in my head so I had to do something about it...I figured it would benefit from losing the arps too, so that was further incentive for me to actually cover it, so I did it!As I was replacing the arps with proper chords, at first I had them all as just dyads, but a good pal of mine convinced me to do triads instead, so I just crammed the 3rd notes of each chord on the same channel as the cowbells, and I think it worked pretty well!Sadly though I had to drop the 3rd notes whenever the main leads play, but it's not that big a loss considering the bass and leads often makes up for the missing note in those sections by being the note I needed, just one or two octaves lower in bass' case...I mean, it's not like I didn't have a channel to spare, channel 5 is only playing reverb throughout the song, but you know, I didn't want to lose the reverb, so I just dropped the note and arranged the other two in a way where a 3rd one wouldn't be necessary...So about this game, it's not really Turrican 3, it's a fanmade sequel to Turrican 2 on the C64, and it sure as hell feels like it... Don't get me wrong, it's well-made and all, certainly faithful to the first couple of games, but I kinda wish it was an 8 bit version of the Actual Turrican 3 from the Amiga/Mega Drive... See, the first two Turrican games are fairly decent, but not quite something I'd go out of my way to play, the mechanics are rather flawed, you don't get invincibility frames when you get hit in these games, in fact, you don't even "get hit" in them, you just keep on losing health for as long as you're "colliding" with an enemy, so you have to put extra effort into not being in contact with enemies, and that ain't great let me tell ya, you'll miss knock-back from enemy collisions when you play this...That said though, the series gets A LOT better once it starts being handled by Factor 5! (Such good devs, I miss them...) They made the Actual Turrican 3 for both the Amiga and the Mega Drive (the latter version is known as Mega Turrican) The SNES version of Super Turrican, as well as Super Turrican 2 which is a mind-blowing game! (They might have made some other Turrican games, but I haven't really played any other games in the series as of this video's upload date)Super Turrican is of special note here because it's pretty much a 'Fixed' remake of Turrican 1 and 2 in a single game, the levels are lifted from those two games, but now it's got luscious backgrounds as opposed to an empty blueness (or blackness when you're in caves), hit-detection works properly and the controls are much MUCH better because you now have a proper Jump button, whereas in the Amiga and C64 versions you had to press Up to jump, oh and, of course, shooting the weapons and the beam are now on different buttons, and now you have a bomb button so that you can control when you use bombs as opposed to activating them immediately when you get them!The best part though is that it has (almost) the same soundtrack as Turrican 3 and it sounds AMAZING on the SNES! I've covered a song from that game before, but I wanna redo that cover since it's pretty old, not to mention cover more Super Turrican music...Oh yeah, I got a C64 emulator just for this video, for better or for worse, I don't really have much interest on the C64... Of the European 8 bit micros, I'm more interested on the Sinclair Spectrum, and I suppose I could say the MSX as well, but that was a Japanese computer that just so happened to get released in Europe as well, and even has a sizeable western following!Yeah, I know the C64 is more capable gaming-wise than the ZX Spectrum, and it's got more colours, higher colour-depth, hardware sprites, scrolling and no colour clashing, but as a computer that just wasn't meant for gaming, I'm honestly rather impressed by what some folks pulled off on the Speccy, as well as by its surprisingly active Homebrew scene! I'm especially impressed by newer homebrews made in Spain and Russia, yeah I know the C64 also has a pretty active homebrew scene, and it's pretty much responsible for the existence of demo scenes as we know them, and I gotta admit, C64 demos are a treat! But I can't lie here, I'm rather put off by the drab palette, the fugly fat pixels and the over-reliance on arps by SID chiptuners... Yeah, I suppose the SID is better than the AY-3-8910, or the fart noises that the Spectrum 48k outputs, and AY chiptuners also rely on arps quite a bit, but I'm just not as interested on the C64 as I am on the speccy, sorry! The "superior" system isn't always the more interesting one... At least the Amstrad had better colours, and more of them to boot...
【SNES】ActRaiser - Fillmore :: Act 1 - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-02-10 | Check out my Bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I've been wanting to cover this song for an eternity and a half, but I've only just gotten around to it...I've heard this song being described as "The best Castlevania song that was never in a Castlevania game", and honestly, I couldn't agree enough, it would fit in perfectly with that series! I even contemplated setting this cover to footage of some Castlevania game, perhaps Castlevania Rebirth? But I decided against it in the end because that would take away the spotlight from this amazing and unique game.ActRaiser is nothing short of a cult classic, and one of the most unique games ever conceived, who'd have thought of mixing an Action Platformer with a god-simulator a-la Populous?I'm unsure if this genre mashup was ever tried again after this, but knowing the state of the indie games market at this point, it probably has, and it probably drowned in the flood of roguelikes and metroidvanias, and thus it went under everyone's radar... I don't know, and I'm not exactly in a hurry to find out, but anyway, if you haven't yet played ActRaiser, I'd encourage you to do so! The platforming controls aren't the greatest but they're not bad at all, the game can be a bit on the challenging side later on, but it's likely one of the most interesting gaming experiences you'll have!As for the song itself, it wasn't exactly difficult to cover, but I had to drop the orch hits, fortunately not much (if any) composition detail was lost in the translation from SNES to PCE, as the orch hits were mostly just repeating whatever the lead organ was playing...For this one I used mostly instruments from Magical Chase (which I often do) as well as a couple of custom wavetables in the background, there's nothing fancy going on in here, it's a pretty straight-forward song actually, it's just *really* well composed! I'd only expect as much from Yuzo Koshiro, honestly, this is probably my favourite soundtracks from him, either this or Etrian Odyssey 3, it depends on my mood...Enjoy!
【SNES】Kirby Superstar - Peanut Plains - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-02-09 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I wanted to cover something from Kirby Triple Deluxe, but it was too difficult, so I settled with something from Kirby Superstar instead...It was much easier because it only used 5 channels... Maybe someday I'll actually cover something from Triple Deluxe...Enjoy!
【SNES】Dragon Ball Z Super Butouden 2 - Vegetas Theme - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2019-01-18 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!So I finally worked up the willpower to make another song, this is one that I had already covered before, one of my earliest covers actually, but that version was riddled with inaccuracies, wrong notes, it was just bad in general...I've been wanting to remake it for a REALLY long time, but I've only just gotten around to it and, guess what? It was one of the easiest and quickest covers I've made in a while... The song is pretty straight-forward, there isn't much going on, but I still think it's a pretty catchy and kick-arse song, and it was fun to cover it!I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it! ^^
【NEW ALBUM】Michirins VGM covers 2018 Michirin 2018-12-31 | Get the album at: michirin9801.bandcamp.com/releasesAs some of you may have noticed, I'm dropping the "Best of Michirin" name. I feel that at this point in time it would be disingenuous of me to continue using that name...Back when I made my 2nd album "Best of Michirin - Vol. 1" I had 2 years worth of a musical cover backlog to pick and choose from, and I had remade several of my older songs for that album, so it made sense to call it my "Best of" album, but that is no longer the case, as I'm not including just my "best" songs, I'm including ALL of my Video Game Music covers that I made this year, but I'm also NOT including the songs that aren't originally from Video Games that I've covered this year, and unfortunately that includes some of my proudest works, that's because I'm still unsure about selling covers not based on VGM, for a few reasons that I won't get into right now... (Yes, I realise there are two non-VGM songs in the aforementioned album, but still)Either way, I hope you enjoy my new album! You already know the drill by now, it's only $1 or more, it includes a couple of extra goodies such as ROMs and a couple of secret songs...See you in 2009 ^^
僕たちはひとつの光 Bokutachi wa hitotsu no hikari - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2018-12-24 | Check out my Bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I LOVE Love Live School Idol Project! It's one of my new favourite anime~♥I already went into the show knowing I was gonna enjoy it, I've been listening to its music for a good while before I got around to watching it, and I already loved the music from the show a whole lot, and of course, I already liked the character designs, they're beautiful and adorable, and the art-style in the show is rather pretty in my opinion! Were I not actively pursuing a 90s moe anime style for my artwork I'd totally go for something similar to it!But I still had relatively low expectations, I thought it was gonna be just an okay show about cute girls doing music, and I was okay with that, but it far surpassed my expectations! Now don't get me wrong, this is a flawed show, I've got my fair share of gripes with it, but I won't go into them now because of spoilers... Looking past those flaws though, there's a pretty good show in here! It doesn't really have much in the way of plot, but it more than makes up for that with strong characterisation! These girls are great! Barring two exceptions that I won't name, but even those two get better later on in the series! They've all got so much chemistry with one-another, and their bonds only grow tighter as the series goes on, which leads to some pretty eye-watering dramatic moments!Do I recommend the show? Well, let's just say that if you take a look at the show's art, and listen to its music, and you like what you see and hear, the show is worth your time, you might not end up loving it as much as I do, but you most likely won't regret sitting through it.As for the song, this is easily my most ambitious PC engine music project! I've had a few attempts at covering music from anime on the PC engine before, but this is the first successful one, and it took an embarrassingly long time to finish! The song has 105 patterns, the overwhelming majority of which are unique on every channel!As I was making it, there was enough room to fit mostly everything so that the song could sound 'complete', heck I even went out of my way to find unique waveforms for the many different voices which you can prominently hear near the beginning of the song, and different waveforms for the higher and lower piano notes, I even distributed the piano notes around separate channels so that new notes wouldn't cut out the previous ones so that it would sound a bit 'richer' and 'fuller' whenever there was enough room to do so!This is one of my favourite songs from the show, not only is it very well-composed, it's beautiful, and its lyrics and its context within the series is so bittersweet that it never fails to tug at my heart-strings~♥I wanna make more chiptune covers of anime music in the future, I don't know how long it will take, probably very long as this wasn't easy, because with these types of songs I have to transcribe everything by ear, and I'm unable to listen to each channel/instrument on its own like I can with video game music...For this song though, I had a bit of extra help, as I could find an instrumental version, a vocal-only version and a chorus-without-lead-vocals version that I could listen to and better understand how the song is constructed, that way transcribing it was much easier than it would have been otherwise!No, I don't do requests, I already know what I want to cover.You can see the art I've made for this video in its full glory here: pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=72267929I hope you enjoy what you hear ^^Happy Holidays!
【PC-98】Night Slave - Bottom Sweep - PC engine cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2018-11-26 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I wanted this to be up on YouTube a week ago, but I was tired and the song was a bit intimidating to cover, so I waited for the next best opportunity before I attempted to cover it, and well, here it is!Nothing too special about this cover, no tricks, nothing especially difficult, the song was just a bit long, so covering it was somewhat time-consuming...This is the Stage 6 theme, I don't remember whether or not I've ever gotten to this stage before, but after taking 2 tries to get past stage 4 (mostly due to a beginner's trap I didn't remember, and thus didn't see coming) and 3 tries to get past stage 5, I expected this stage to be harder, but I got past it in my first attempt, which is the one shown in this video (although the video ends before the boss fight)With this cover done, I've covered what I wanted from Night Slave, and will be moving on to different games for now...But just because I'm done with Night Slave, don't think I'm quite done with FM funk!I hope you enjoy what you hear ^^
【PC-98】Night Slave - Initial Velocity - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2018-11-18 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!Deary me, this one was a bit of an ordeal to get done...Firstly, despite using only 5 channels, this song has a couple of instruments that actually manage to play more than a single note on the same channel at the same time, which while possible on 4 operator FM synthesizers such as the YM2203 (for which the original song was composed) it's not quite as doable on the PC engine, and to top it off, in the intro of the song such instruments play on 2 channels, which means they've got 4 notes going on at once within those two!Because of that, as you can see in the video, I had to spread those 4 notes across 4 channels, leaving me with no channels to spare (which of course means there would be sound-clipping if any sound effects needed to play during the intro if this song was actually used in a real game) but I was only able to do that because I actually took advantage of the PC engine's wavetable synth to combine 2 square wave notes within a single channel to play at the same time!Yeah, I know I just mentioned that wasn't quite as doable on the PC engine, and it most certainly wouldn't be for those FM instruments, but square waves are much simpler waveforms, they're way easier to deal with on the system, but I'm pretty limited on what two square wave notes I can play together on the same channel at the same time, for instance, playing the same note but one or more octaves apart is pretty easy, and the first two notes in the square channels did exactly that! But then come the next notes in the sequence, wherein the 2nd square channel is playing a note an octave and a fifth above the first one, I was planning on simply playing one of them and drop the other like I usually would, but then I thought to myself: "Why don't I try to mix those two notes within the same waveform? I mean, it's just a square wave, I could probably get pretty close couldn't I?" And I did! I figured it out! I managed to make a wavetable that sounds kinda like two different square waves playing two different notes on the same channel at the same time! It doesn't sound perfect but it's close enough, and I bet most of you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference considering how it's concealed within 5 other channels playing different notes at the same time~But then the next notes in the sequence were totally not playable within the same channel at the same time, so I just dropped the other one... My ears miss that note, but I wonder how may of yours will...That was only the beginning of the challenge though, while the most of the rest of the song, leads aside, is mercifully repetitive, the leads themselves were a bit of a pain to transcribe, it uses a lot of different instruments, the note progressions, while not quite hard to get a grasp of, had rather tricky timing, it's got so many triplets... Gosh, it's got Snare triplets! Wouldn't be such a big deal if Deflemask had a Noise Mode envelope, but it doesn't as of yet, so I had to break the pattern, raise the row speeds to the maximum in the next pattern so that I could better control the timing of the wave-to-noise toggles and vice versa, and then break that pattern into the next one with the more regular speed in order to continue the song like normal...I'm tired, but I've got one more song from this game that I want to cover before I'm done, not sure when I'll be able to upload it, but I'm aiming for sooner than later...I hope you enjoy what you hear, you can hear my previous song, which was the 2nd stage theme from this game here: youtu.be/pgAoiJC51EQOh yeah, I forgot to mention, this is the first stage theme, and I LOVE IT! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do ^^
【PC-98】Night Slave - Hard Rushing - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2018-11-17 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!I'm in a bit of a Night Slave mood right now, this is the 2nd of 4 songs from this game that I want to cover as soon as I can!The last one was uploaded yesterday, it was the Stage 3 theme and you can listen to it here: youtu.be/WrvRAo50fGIThis is the 2nd Stage theme, it was a bit harder than the last one, particularly the percussion bit just before it ends, where I had to change the row speeds to the maximum just so that I could have precise enough control of their timing...The square waves were also somewhat difficult to transcribe due to their less-than-predictable behaviour, but I just needed a bit of patience to get them all done...I hope you enjoy what you hear ^^Look forward to more from this game in the near future!
【PC-98】Night Slave - Stormy Edge (Stage 3A) - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2018-11-16 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!Long-time viewers of my channel should already be familiar with this game, but for those of you who aren't, Night Slave is perhaps the best side-scrolling game on the PC-98, it runs smoother and plays better than basically any other game of its kind on the platform, which isn't saying much considering how poorly these types of games tend to perform on the system, due to what I can only assume to be a lack of native support for horizontal scrolling, but the game is still remarkably good on the platform, maybe even good enough to still be worth playing!Just make sure you turn off the VN cutsenes if you ever get around to playing it, not only because of its R-18 imagery, but because said cutscenes long overstay their welcome, they just keep dragging on, and on, and on, seemingly never ready to end, and completely break the game's otherwise decent pacing...Unless you're really into dithered 16 colour porn, and are willing to not only wait, but also sit through a somewhat tough game to get it, then by all means, go for it, but don't tell me I didn't warn you when it turns out not to be worth your time...Anyway, this game has one hell of a soundtrack, FM-funk at its finest! (Outside of maybe Cosmic Psycho, which I really gotta get around to covering something from sooner than later)And to top it off, it's YM2203 only, which means it's only got 6 channels, and better yet, the in-game BGM only use up to 5 channels because the 6th one is used exclusively for sound effects!In other words, I had a whole channel to spare when I was done covering it! I'd usually use that channel to add in a delay/reverb effect, but such effect just wouldn't fit this song for better or for worse, it just wouldn't sound quite the same...I did make it stereo though! I'm pretty sure the YM2203 can only output monaural sound, but a PC engine song in Mono just wouldn't fly on my channel!I hope I've just proven to you that FM-funk can totally work on my favourite Wavetable synthesiser! ;3Enjoy ^^
【PC-98】Flame Zapper Kotsujin - Sky is well supplied with scene - PC engine Cover【Deflemask】 Michirin 2018-11-12 | Check out my bandcamp: michirin9801.bandcamp.comSupport my music!Took me long enough to get to this one eh?I've been wanting to cover this song pretty much since I started making PCE music, but it turned out to be quite a bit harder than the other songs from this soundtrack I had covered before...Even with this song covered though, I'm still not quite done with Kotsujin's soundtrack, there are a couple more songs that I have yet to cover before then...I hope you enjoy what you hear ^^
