Original cover of mine from 2017: https://soundcloud.com/sixtyforce/rocket-knight-adventures-2-sparkster-pyramid-chiptune-remix

Technically, I've already done a VRC6 cover of this track before, all the way back in 2017. It was my first attempt at doing anything with Famitracker back then, my first real attempt at proper chiptune. I did pretty much nothing but MIDI stuff afterwards for the rest of the year, but I picked up Deflemask in 2018 and I've been making stuff with it to this day, practicing and honing my skills.

The idea to re-do this has been in the back of my mind for a long while now and I felt like now was the perfect time to do it, having proved myself to be adept at the VRC6 with my previous cover of Arrow Flash's intro theme. And man, it's already hard enough for me to go back to the original and listen to it again and after making this, it's made it so much more apparent just how much I've improved over the years.

The fact that I can even think back on that original and say to myself "Man, what was I *doing* back then?" means I'm doing something right. Especially with regards to instrumentation, mixing and drums in particular. The Follin-style drums make a return from the previous cover and making the extra instruments needed to get the volume curves and note timings correct with those pesky 3rd and 6th notes was sure a pain, but man it was so fucking worth it. I ended up with 30 whole-ass instruments when all was said and done, but again, so worth it.

Hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I did making it! ^^

[2A03\VRC6] - Sparkster (MD): Stage 2 ~ Pyramid (V2 Cover)

I finished Sonic Adventure about a week or two ago now and one of the things I really liked about my time with it was, of course, the music. It's probably my favourite OST in the series, the amount of genres it houses is varied and every song in it is catchy and memorable as all get-out.

After listening to this song over and over again for a while, I got the urge to make a Genesis cover of it. Problem is that, because it's just a WAV on a Disc, I can't channel split it. Plus, every MIDI I could find had very obvious and annoying inaccuracies in them, so I didn't want to use them for that reason. So I just took a FLAC of the original song, put it into FL Studio and used some EQ settings to try and separate the instruments best I could. In doing so, I actually managed to brute-force the notes by ear way easier than I thought I would.

This means that this is my first successful attempt at covering a song that I couldn't channel split, and considering what I had to work with, I'm surprised it came out sounding as good and as accurate as it did.

I'm not a Sonic fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I played this game quite a lot when I was young, and I played it again recently out of curiosity. While it wasn't amazing, I appreciate it for what it is, it's fun enough, but not something I'd recommend to people unless they're nostalgic for the game, or interested in exploring a piece of gaming history.

Either way, the OST slaps, lmao

[YM2612 \ SN76489] Sonic Adventure - Skydeck A Go! Go! ...for Sky Deck

Hey whoa, I haven't done one of these in a while, haven't I?

I don't have much to say about this one this time round lol, but I will say that I had a lot of fun working with this one, everything came together really well really quickly, which hasn't happened in a long time.

I'm real chuffed with the results I got here, maybe I should do this more often? I mean, it *has* been yonks since I made much of anything with the SC-88Pro, and making this has kinda made me wonder why I left it alone for so long.

Hope y'all enjoy! ^^

Made in FL Studio 20 with the Roland SC-VA VST in 88Pro mode

[SC-88Pro] - G-LOC Air Battle (Mega Drive): "Stage 3B" MIDI Cover

Whoo lad, it's been a while since I've posted one of these eh? 7 long months since I last felt motivated to make one of these. I hope I can get back into the groove of making these, since most of my creative energy was spent on the video I posted last October, which you can find here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVhAKctnoJo

But yeah, I decided to start off with something simple to ease myself back into it. It's been a solid year and a half since I posted a Mega Drive cover, which like, HOW?????????? This is the first cover I've published that I made in Furnace, instead of Deflemask. Needless to say, Furnace has more than leapfrogged Deflemask in features, and I absolutely love it, I feel stupid for paying the $10USD ($13ish AUD) for the paid versions.

Being able to mix and match different chips in Furnace is an absolute game changer, and I can't wait to do publish more stuff with all kinds of weird chip combos. But for this one, I decided to go with ol reliable, make a Mega Drive cover to get myself back into that headspace.

I decided to make a cover of a song from Heavy Nova, one of the worst games on the system with a few okay tracks. I liked this one the most but hated the instrumentation and mixing, so I fixed? it lol. Something short and sweet, again, mainly to ease myself back into it.

Hope to make more of these sooner than later, cy'all on the other side! :3

[YM2612 \ SN76489] Heavy Nova: "Opening Theme ~ Idar (ME-F991)" MD Remaster

This is an XM cover of Gradius II Famicom (the best version of the OST, fite mee), that I finished a while ago, but wasn't happy with at first. Upon listening to it again, it's actually better than I first thought, I think it's kinda cute, so here I am posting it for your earholes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I made this one with some FL drums, 3xOsc for the leads and background melodies, and I believe the SC-88Pro for the slap bass. Even though it's not amazing, it's a good attempt at a tracker tune, I think. I'd love to try and get more used to working with samples, I think it'd be a fun creative restriction to work within, but I'm finding it hard to get accustomed to working with samples. With FM synth, I can change a sound in real time as I please, whereas with a sample-based tracker, it's a bit more of a search to find the perfect sound, though I hope I can get good at it, it'd be a good skill to hone.

But yeah, that's about all I have to say for this one, hope you enjoy! :3

[XM\FastTracker II] - Gradius II (Famicom): "Stage 6 (Over Heat)"

Woo boy, this one's a doozy.

This is the second attempt at an MSX/SCC+ cover, that I started last night and finished minutes before uploading this lol. It's rare that a cover I finish so quickly is one I'm so proud of, but it believe it, cuz it happened.

The first attempt was around September of 2021, where I was making a pretty promising attempt with TriloTracker, a program that runs on the MSX computer itself (I had to emulate with openMSX), and is honestly really cool. It's quite powerful, and it's shockingly usable, though not at all intuitive or straightforward, you have to read the manual quite a lot to know how to use it.

Apart from the fact it only lets you navigate the UI with the keyboard, it also has no options, at least as far as I could tell, for automatically modulating a wavetable synth. If I wanted the bass to have a bit of clang, I would have to, by hand, draw up dozens of individual waveforms to switch between later, manually, with nothing but the goddamn arrow keys. Suffice to say, it really wasn't the best solution, so I put it down, and didn't return to the idea for ages.

In the years since, I've discovered Furnace, and watched it get so good that it's now my primary chiptune tracker, and one of its biggest draws for me was the allure of being able to make MSX/SCC music with a bloody mouse as well as a keyboard lol. Which made drawing up waveforms much easier, and Furnace's own feature like the "Synthesister" were really cool to play around with.

Idk why it's called that, cuz it's not actually a synthesister, and is actually more of an effects/LFO tool that you apply to waveforms and instruments that you've already made or imported. Using it is how I got a slight clang to the bass without having to draw shitloads of waveforms (that is, apart from the bass solo towards the end, that was done with two layered and detuned sounds).

It's also how I got the chords to have a slight modulation to them, which is meant to mimic the slight FM operator detune that the original version has, as well as give them a bit more life.

I had a lot of fun screwing around with the MSX/SCC, it's certainly a combo I'll be returning to in the future, especially since Furnace makes it easier than its ever been to squeeze out its full potential. The ease of which it lets you design complex sounds on an otherwise simple chip is insane, I actually can't believe I made it sound like this haha

Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it! ^^

[MSX\SCC+] - Bosconian (X68K): "Blast Power !"

This is one of my personal favourite covers I've ever done. I made it all the way back in 2020, and is part of the "Batusgun OST DX" project, something I worked on for a bit way back when before I got demotivated and dropped it, due to various real-life circumstances. It was meant to replace the Saturn version's arranged OST, cuz the one that was made for the game is dreadful, and I was motivated to do a better one. One that I could just drop into a folder and replace the BIN files of the official arrangements with these actually halfway-faithful ones.

Some time in 2021, my old hard drive that had most of my video and audio projects and assets cacked itself, so I lost most everything, including this project... Or so I thought. Fastforward to literally a few minutes ago when I poked through an old Discord server to find I'd uploaded a ZIP with the WAVs and the fucking project files sitting right there this whole time. Needless to say I was over the moon when I found these, haha

This upload is actually a WAV I've had sitting in Google Drive this whole time, one I knew was there, and I'd come back to listen to it every now and again to remind myself of a project that once was. But since I found the project files again, I might pick it back up at some point, and either way, I thought this was cause for celebration, so here is the first truly public upload of this cover!

As for the OST DX project itself, like I said, I might pick it back up one of these days, but that's a bit up in the air atm, especially since with recent happenings, I might not be able to commit the time and energy to it lol, but we'll see!

EDIT: I'd fucking love to if Roland Cloud Manager actually decided to work, what a piece of shit, it's been a thorn in my side for as long as I've used the SCVA to make these, and now it's even worse, good lord

Thanks so much for listening! :3

[SC-88Pro] - Batsugun (Arcade): "Stage 1 - Heart Beat" MIDI Cover {from 2020}

Hey whoag, I haven't done one of these in a while?

I got the random inspiration to do something like this because I've had nothing to do lately. I've been more active on my YouTube channel where I talk about gaming nostalgia and history https://www.youtube.com/c/SixtyRGB

I've been having a lot of fun over there for the last couple years, and I intend to focus my efforts on that for the foreseeable future, especially given recent events that should further facilitate production of said videos. But for the moment, I'm proud to show off another Mega Drive cover of mine.

Massive shoutout and thankyous to my boyfriend for letting me remote into his PC using AnyDesk so I could record my own splits to make this cover possible. I found an NSF, but the sample data in the NSF was bugged, so I couldn't really use it, and the software I was going to use on macOS ended up being totally useless for the task (I very much miss Linux aaaaaaa). So he really came in clutch to help get this cover started.

Check his stuff out here on the CloudSound:

Bf's musics:
https://soundcloud.com/petrolpeople

Bf's Shitposts:
https://soundcloud.com/synthlas

Thanks so much again baby! <3

And thank *you* for listening, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did making it! :3

[YM2612 \ SN76489] ~ Gun-Nac: "Stage 2" SEGA Mega Drive Cover

This is the first MIDI cover I've made in fucking aaaaaaaages that uses Microsoft's GS Wavetable Synth built into windows. The last time I made a MIDI in this manner was like... 6 years ago?

I wanted to see if I could use it to match certain sounds used in the original song with those from the MSGS synth. Well I say that, but I'm actually not using anything Microsoft-y in this cover, I'm instead using a soundfont based on MSGS run through a MIDI engine, in this case, Qsynth, a Qt frontend for FluidSynth that runs on Linux.

But I've stayed true to the limits of MSGS the whole way through, not using any Chorus or Reverb effects, everything you heard is as accurate to MSGS as can be. If I wanted to do an echo, I had to duplicate a channel, and copy/paste notes around, detune and change the volume of said notes, just as you would with the real thing. It also adds a bit of a chiptune-y charm to the creative process, and the sound itself. It was a bit of a pain trying to get everything where it needed to be, especially cuz I had to do a bunch of channel changes using MIDI CCs to get everything to fit. I very nearly ended up using all 16 channels, and even considered breaking the limit and using 32 instead, but I kept it to 15, and used MIDI CCs where necessary, as I said.

This also means that, considering I wanted to match the ADSR envelope on each of these sounds, and the sounds themselves have their own ADSR that can't be changed with CCs, I had to actually automate the volume knobs on each one myself, semi-manually. FL Studio makes it really really easy to work with MIDI automation events, and copy/pasting stuff is painless, I'll spare you the details right now, but I'll just say there's a good reason I use FL for MIDI stuff, it's got all the joys of an old-school MIDI sequencer with none of the frustration.

But yeah, that's about all I have to say about this one. Hope you enjoy listening as much as I did making it!

[Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth] ~ Hexion: "The Hexagon I've Dreamed Of [Form Select Mode]" MIDI Cover

Whoa Jesus, whoa nelly oh Saint Mary, this cover is givin me a case of the vapours?????????

Despite being a cover I spent only some several hours on, this is probably my favourite cover I've made with the SC-88Pro. I've had this idea sitting in the back of my head for some year or two now, but only carried it out tonight, and I'm so very glad I did now that it's finished. I wanted to give this track a Star Fox 64 3D-style do-over, but reel it in a bit more, instead of going all-out and basically re-instrumenting entire tracks. For this one, I took an approach closer to the one I normally do, enhance the original, and add some flourishes to make it sound a bit more impactful, without going too overboard.

Doing this is a fine balance, but it's one I like more often than not. Like making up your own puzzle, and being satisfied and content with the final result, it's so cool. Working with the SC-88Pro is always so fun too, every time I'm like "Hmmm, I wonder if I can do this with it", I can!!!!! And so I do!!!!!!!! And celebrations and woo'ing ensues thusly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So yeah, I don't have much more to write on this one, it's the usual thing, but this time it's the goodest usual thing!!!!!!!!

(REUPLOAD because I did a rendering oopsie)

[SC-88Pro] - Star Fox 2: "Surprise Attack" MIDI Cover

From-scratch redo of this stupid thing from 2018:
https://soundcloud.com/sixtyforce/microsoft-gs-wavetable-synth-batsugun-complimentary-ticket-midi-cover

Here we have another redo????????? "Haha look at this asshole, he's running out of ideas now so he's just doing old stuff now haha lmao idiot lmao touch grass"

But ahhh you see, beyond the lack of inspiration (guilty as charged), there also lays a genuine desire to make better what was originally just meh! Therefore it's actually the bees knees!!!!!!!!111111

Jokes aside, I've been wanting to re-do this one for a while, what with my current knowledge of mixing and experience with making things and stuff and such. I'm actually really happy with the results on this one, I spent a lot of time mixing the right sounds together to make everything sound a little beefier, a little punchier. I also took some time to do same fake chorus, and even repeated the volume envelope automation from the Hexion cover, but this time on steroids lol.

I've never gotten results like this from any of the more advanced MIDI boxes before. Despite MSGS being so basic, and seemingly lacking in sounds and capabilities, it's shockingly versatile and capable of creating some amazing-sounding production with the right techniques and right amount of patience. The fact I was able to get the lead in particular sounding so close to that of the original is surprising even to me, and I'm the one that made it!

So yehs thanks once again for reading if you did (you didn't lol), and hope you enjoye! :3

[Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth] - Batsugun (Arcade): "Stage 4 - Complimentary Ticket" V2 MIDI Cover

Hey ho, here it is! My first foray into the legendary MT-32! More like legend-arily bullshit amirite hehehh. Discovering this part of Roland's History has been pretty cool, seeing its stock sounds, and a light dabbling in patch editing was quite fun, and a pretty interesting break from what I'm used to with the Sound Canvas boxes, particularly the 88Pro.

Its drums are delightfully 80s, and its sounds, while perhaps not as natural as a Sound Canvas, have their own synthetic charm, it's kinda halfway between a ROMpler and a more traditional synth, which makes sense, given the way the MT-32 works. But, as fun as it can be, this cover felt more like a chore than something fun and explorative like the ones I make with the Sound Canvas, or even MSGS. Mainly patch editing, despite being one of its primary features, trying to get the thing to register the SysEx you've sent, at least in my experience, was a nightmare.

Good lord, between having to fuck about with multiple programs to even get FL to talk to MUNT (MT-32 emulator), and then getting the patch editing tools to talk to MUNT, and then getting that to work only to learn that changing parameters doesn't change the sound immediately so you have to go and click a button to send the changes and even then MUNT doesn't register them immediately so you have to pause and play the music again, then there's a chance you'll hear your changes if neither MUNT or your MIDI-routing software crashed aaaaaaAAAAAAAA

Tbh, idk what in the chain is causing this, whether it's FL Studio, MUNT, my MIDI-routing software (Falcosoft MIDI Player 5), or the patch-editing program (MT32Edit), though I suspect it's one of the latter two. MP5 won't let FL talk to MUNT unless I play a MIDI from it first, then MT32Edit introduces stuttering when it's just connected to MUNT, not even sending data to it. So I have pretty little faith in either of them, but perhaps the MT-32 is just like this, idk.

I was looking for another routing solution, but my old standby, loopMIDI, uses a kernel driver that doesn't work in WINE, and any of the other ones either costed money, or couldn't open their config menus. So in terms of alternatives, I'm shit outta luck atm.

So it's for all these reasons that I probably won't make another MT-32 cover any time soon. Its been a fun nut to crack, but when it came to actually sitting down to make the cover, I couldn't just sit down and get lost in the creation of sounds. In fact, once I'd so much as made minor tweaks to the Slap Bass and E. Piano sounds, I couldn't be bothered with patch editing anymore, and just stuck to stock sounds for everything else.

The thing also has some annoying limitations, reverb parameters are quite limited, it only has one drum kit, you only have 32 voices, which sounds good until you consider that just one patch can use up to 4, leaving potentially only 8 notes to play with, it often stretches one low-quality sample beyond its range, it has no easily-accessible cutoff/resonance knob, and did I mention it just ignores SysEx and crashes half the time? I don't think I did!!!! :)))))))) Plus, on a personal note, there's no convincing electric guitars and the acoustic piano sounds are not acoustic in the slightest.

I might return later on, just as a challenge, see how far I can push the thing and make it do a little more. I know I've done that time and time again with Sound Canvas boxes, and now consider them serious pieces of electronic music production kit. Plus, it's the MT-32, for all its faults, its got such a lovely, charming sound, and it brought about a seismic paradigm shift in how people make music on their computers within the walls of their own houses. To have something like this in 1987 would've been nothing short of incredible. It's also kinda funny to think that the games with the highest-production-quality music at the time weren't namco or SEGA scaler games with their fancy PCM chips, but rather Sierra Point-and-Click adventure games lol

[MT-32] - Thunder Blade (Arcade): "Burning Point" MIDI Cover

I threw this together in FL Studio in a few hours. With refinements and the final master being done the next day in less than 20 minutes.

Ristar - Beyond Space [MIDI Remix]

Dec. 4 2021: I have made a NEW version of this cover! I re-did this cover from scratch some time ago that I probably should've edited into this description way earlier, here's the link: https://soundcloud.com/sixtyforce/vrc62a03-sparkster-md-stage-2-pyramid-v2-cover

Original description:
I knocked this out in about a day or 2. I love this game and the soundtrack, especially the Pyramid theme. The OST alone makes this my favourite game in the series. This is the first track I've ever made in Famitracker. Whether it's good or not for a first attempt is completely up to you.

[OLD] Rocket Knight Adventures 2: Sparkster - Pyramid (Chiptune remix) [VRC6]

I know it really dies down after the Intro, but it does that in the original song too. Arcade and Genesis. Don't bark at me for only putting in a melody, bassline and some drums, that's all there is in the original song after the intro, lmao.

ALSO: The ending before the first loop was impossible to recreate. MIDI can only pitch bend by 2 octaves and I was experiencing strange bugs with the channel knobs when I was using FL Studio's "Master pitch" slider, so I had to make my own outro. I know it's nowhere near as epic, but it's all I could do.

Made in FL Studio 12 with the Yamaha SYXG50

{S-YXG50} ~ Hellfire - "Ready To Go ~ Captain Lancer": MIDI Cover

I did a Genesis thing a few months ago and now you can finally listen to it with your ear holes?!?!??!

Pictionary (NES) - "Title Theme": SEGA Genesis Cover

I did another midee thingg?!?!?!!??!??!??

Made with the SC-VA VST Plugin in FL Studio 20, using only the SC-55 sound set.

{Roland SC-55} ~ Gradius III - "Crystal Labyrinth": MIDI COVER

I love doing these. I wish I could use the SC-VA for longer, but I only have it for another 2 days before I have to cough up a hefty $125USD for it from Roland directly. I'll buy it one day for sure, just not any time soon. Cuz I love the way the SC-88Pro sounds and I wanna make more MIDI covers, maybe even some originals, with its sound. And at least the SC-VA costs less than just one of the MIDI boxes that it has the sound set of, so it all of a sudden becomes a bargain.

Made with the Roland SC-VA VST Plugin in FL Studio 20 using only the SC-88Pro patches.

{Roland SC-88Pro} ~ Hyper Duel - "Night Sweeper": MIDI COVER

Super R-Type (SNES) - "As wet as a fish": SEGA Genesis cover

Another Genesis cover, a long one. This time a 15-track Impulse Tracker module squeezed down into 10 Genesis tracks of FM Synth and PSG. And I'm really proud of this one.

Jazz Jackrabbit 3 - Castle City: SEGA Genesis cover

This took less than a day's worth of time, added up. Started one night, then finished it the next afternoon. As soon as I heard the song, I felt like I had to make a cover of it and I love how it turned out. Got a bit more experimental with synths this time and added my own personal touches here and there. I also fucked around with Stereo as well, with awesome results imo. I think this might be my favourite cover I've done so far with regards to synth design. Hope y'all enjoy it! :3

X (Gameboy) - Tunnel Scene: SEGA Genesis Cover

This was made some time last year, initially. It was made using pretty shitty synths and custom FM drum patches that sounded terrible, in its initial incarnation. Then I souped it up some time this year with my improved custom drum patches and better instrumentation all round. Maybe I'll re-release the original mix of this some time, since I still have it laying around, but for now, enjoy this, in all of it's not shit glory.

Super Aleste (Space Megaforce) - Amazonas: SEGA Genesis Cover

A cover of a SNES song that I felt needed that good ol' FM treatment, this time to our pal Twinbee! Specifically from Pop 'n' Twinbee on the SNES. This one was done in the span of a day, started it one morning and finished it the next afternoon. And lemme tell ya', I think this might be my favourite cover I've done yet. I'm so proud of this one, I can't begin to tell you. Hope you all enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it! ^^

[YM2612 / SN76489] Pop'n Twinbee (SNES) - "Village Sky": (SEGA Genesis Cover)

I made this one in a few days. I got the entire song done in one day, then spent the next 2/3 days polishing and refining the mix as well as the instrumentation. Unlike my previous SC-88Pro MIDI, which was an SC-55 MIDI converted to work with it, this was made ground up for the device. And lemme tell ya, this thing is better than any other Roland Sound Canvas module, heck, probably the entire Yamaha XG series, too, yeah, I said it. Roland forever, come at me, lol..

Made in FL Studio 20 with the Roland SC-VA Sound Canvas emulator.

{SC-88Pro} ~ Thunder Force IV - "Sand Hell": MIDI Cover

The most rootin', tootin', sploogin' cover I've done so far, imo. This tops even the Arrow Flash Stage 5-3 cover, in terms of how full I made it sound. God bless that "Hall 1" reverb preset, lmao. Oh, and that fucking bass, too, aaaaaa, so gritty and full, I luvvitt.

Made in FL Studio 20 with the Roland SC-VA VST.

{SC-88Pro} ~ Gauntlet IV - "Fire Starter": MIDI Cover

Made in FL Studio 20 with the Roland SC-VA VST.

{SC-88Pro} ~ U.N. Squadron / Area 88 (Arcade) - "Maritime": MIDI Cover

A cover that I finished a long time ago, but never actually released. Well, here it is. In as polished of a state as it can be, a fresh from the bloody factory, patented to hell, often imitating, never properly duplicating cover of mine. Another SC-88Pro one, welcome back, it's been too long. xd

Seriously though, I loved working on this one. I tried to go for a more natural, organic sound with the device. Using pretty much only patches of real instruments, with few exception, to give the feeling of listening to a smooth groove at a concert or something.

Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it!  ^^

Made in FL Studio 20 with the Roland SC-VA VST.

{SC-88Pro} ~ Puggsy (SEGA Genesis) - "The Red Forest": MIDI Cover

Hey whoasers, it's a Genesis cover to spice it all up a bit, someone call the cops, cuz this cover is criminally mediocre. In all seriousness though, I did this one entirely by ear. No MIDIs or VGMs were used. This was because I can't find any VGMs for Gradius III that exist, so, I could turn to a MIDI, but those don't tend to be the most accurate out there. And lots of them can be pretty horrible, so for those reasons, I just didn't wanna trust a MIDI. And besides, Gradius III's music is instrumented and mixed to such a level of perfection that you kinda don't need channel splits for the most part, anywayz. It's truly a phenomenal soundtrack. The game itself is kind of a trainwreck imo, Gradius didn't really get good until Gradius V on PS2, and saying that is probably gonna see my head gone by tomorrow, but whatever, no biggie. :)

This one I had finished a while ago, but wasn't entirely happy with the sound of. There was just something I was missing that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Re-visiting it again for the first time in months gave me the inspiration to polish and refine. So I'm happy to finally release it to you all! Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it! ^^

{YM2612 / SN76489} ~ Gradius III (Arcade) - "Departure from Space": Genesis Cover

This is another one I finished ages ago, whoa, these recent ones have a recurring theme, can you guess what it is? So I just added some finishing polishes, refined the mix, flaired up some of the PSG instrumentation in particular, and now I consider it all but complete.

I don't have much to say about this one, other than I'd much rather listen to this over either of the original versions on the Genesis or X68K. Wolfteam's games had a bit of a habit of mixing their X68K tracks in a gritty, thin manner with almost no bass. Whereas the Genesis renditions of the same songs often sound lifeless and hollow by comparison, so pick your poison. So I decided to cover this song, based on the X68K original, for the Genesis and see if I could do it better. Don't mean to suck my own dick here, but still, I love how it turned out! ^^

I've done this with another track of theirs before, that of "Windy Avenue" from Granada, (also based on the X68K original) which you can find on my profile by scrolling down some. And I'd love to do this with more Wolfteam tracks in the future. Maybe I'll get around to playing El Viento one of these days, who knows, lol. I'm also open to other suggestions that aren't Wolfteam games, for sure.

Thanks again for listening!

{YM2612 / SN76489} ~ Sol-Feace - "Cosmic Illusion": SEGA Genesis Remaster

This is another one I finished quite a while ago. I don't see myself making another one of these for quite a while, tbh. Haven't been terribly inspired to make another cover for god knows how long now. That, combined with Ubuntu 20.04 completely breaking FL Studio and a lack of any good MIDI sequencers for Linux (trust me, I've pretty much tried them all at this point and they're all pretty horrid).

But yeah, I really like this one. Probably my magnum opus in terms of mixing and instrumentation for the device. Given that this game came out in 1996, the same year as the 88Pro's release, this, to me, is what it'd probably sound like if the Saturn/PS1 release of this game had an enhanced soundtrack.

Hope you enjoy! ^^

Made in FL Studio 20 with the Roland SC-VA VST.

{SC-88Pro} ~ Salamander 2 - "Sensation": MIDI Cover

Hey whoasers, I said I thought I wouldn't do another one of these again, turns out I was lying, unbeknownst to myself :OOOOOO

But yeah, I'm very proud of this one. It's one of those covers that just sounds right to me in every way. And I love the way it sounds.

One reason why I decided to cover this was because I noticed how many covers of this song got the pitchbends halfway through it incorrect. They came close, but were never entirely accurate. I think I got them as accurate as could possibly be, I strive to get the little details like that as close as possible to the original.

And I've got at least two more in the pipeline. One of which being a cover of a Tim Follin song, and another being a cover of a chiptune song that's original to SoundCloud. o_O

But yeas, as always, I hope you enjoy this!

Made with the Roland SC-VA VST in FL Studio 20.

{SC-88Pro} ~ Thunder Force IV - "Space Walk": MIDI Cover

This is a track I finished several months ago, when I was going through some pretty tough times in my life. I was way more active with my covers back then than I am now, because I didn't really have anything else productive that I had the time and inclination to do.

So as much as I love this cover from a technical standpoint, and think it's among my finest covers, I like to look back on the point in my life I was at when I made this. It makes me feel more secure in everything I'm doing now, and like things can only get better. The song itself is kinda an unintentionally perfect choice in that regard, because listening to the song back then made me feel how I wished I felt about my surroundings and goings-on. And listening to it now, especially this cover, helps me further appreciate where I am now, and how I got here from where I was.

A lot of this may mean nothing to you, but it's genuinely how I feel, hell, I bet barely any of you actually read these descriptions. But I continue to write them because it's kinda like a journal. This whole soundcloud page is like a journal of progress I've made in how I develop my sound on whatever device I happen to be working on at that particular time. And it's also a good record of how I felt creatively whenever I posted something. Idk, I like writing them, at least, and I find it cathartic in a weird way to write everything I like about making these, and what I like about video game music in general, and what it means to me. Even if it's something as simple and dumb as "Man, this track sounds sick, I wanted to cover it", or "This track was composed really well, but could've been instrumented better", etc.

Anyways, yeah. I covered this track because I'd, at the time, dove into the Pheonix Wright games for a second time. I bought the original trilogy on the 3DS eShop some time ago, but only recently did I get around to playing them again. And just like the last time I tried to play Ace Attorney 1, I got up to the second case, landed myself in hot water and failed to defend myself, getting a game over and having to start the case all over again.

It's fair to say I suck at these games, I'm much more adept at action games, but I appreciate the Phoenix Wright series for its quirky cast of characters, its art style, its music, its unique gameplay, and really, that's all I need to really like a game. Even if I've barely played it, I appreciate everything it set out to do, and I think it did it all really well. Especially the music, and hearing the famous "Cornered" song in the context of the game for the first time, is an electrifying feeling. I was not expecting it to have as much impact as it did after god knows how many memes and references to the song were made in various YouTube videos I watched before playing the game, but it really does hit hard, and it's enthralling whenever it does, can't get enough of this track, hence I covered it.

As always, hope you enjoy!

{YM2612 / SN76489} ~ Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney (DS) - "Cornered": SEGA Genesis Cover

Man, I love covering big, tracker songs like this that have a lotta channels to them. Squeezing the 16 channels that this track was made up of and squeezing them into the Genesis' 10 channels is so creatively rewarding. Finding ways to fit all the little details in there is so much fun. Doing this was similarly rewarding to my cover of Castle City from Jazz Jackrabbit 3.

This track really highlights why I love making stuff for the Genesis. Because yes, it has its limitations, but said limitations really don't get much in the way of your desired sound. It requires you to know how to design good synths, and tells you to make the best sound you can with FM Synth and a limited amount of channels. I know 10 channels is a lot compared to something like the NES, C64, Amiga, etc, but for creating halfway complex pieces of music with lots of sections to them, I'd imagine it could be really limiting for some. Especially if you're used to MIDI synths.

And again, even though you might have to make changes to make something sound better, or add a certain detail or two you think you're mising, then you might only have to tweak a thing here and there, or swap some channels around. And even then, the changes you make don't sacrifice the original intent of your sound. It meets you halfway and makes you think about what you're doing more than most other consoles I've made stuff for. It's so much fun to do!

{YM2612 / SN76489} ~ "Rushjob": SEGA Genesis Cover

This one is a pretty simple concept. I took the track "Lucky Zone" from the SNES version of Gradius III and re-created it using instrument patches and samples ripped from the Arcade game. The PCM chip this track is using is the SEGA PCM chip implementation in Deflemask, so it's not emulating the same PCM chip Gradius III used, but I never used more than 2 channels at once for this track. Staying true to the limits of Konami's custom chip that was used for the game.

Finding the bloody tools necessary to rip the FM patches from a VGM I recorded was an absolute nightmare. I spent literal hours looking for something that would work on the web, but I couldn't find anything. Out of sheer desperation, I searched The Fourth Modulator Discord server and found vgm2tfi v1.1, which allowed me to rip the instrument patches. And lemme tell ya, spending all that time was so worth it to get the sound I did. I'm real proud of this one.

At least the samples were a much easier matter. Just a matter of finding the right file from a zip of the ROM and importing the right one as raw data into Audacity, then get the sample rate right. Which, surprisingly enough, all the PCM samples for Gradius III are in 22Khz, which is astonishing PCM quality for an Arcade machine of the time.

Gradius III (SNES) - Lucky Zone Arcade Remix

Hey ho there, I make the chippy and non-chippy bois!!/??1/

Avi: @KayllaCat on Twitter

Chippy Toolz:
Furnace
FamiTracker 0.4.6
FastTracker II (FT2 Clone)
Milkytracker
OctaMED Sound Studio 1.03c (OctaMED V7)
OctaMED V4

Non-chippy toolz:
FL Studio 21
Renoise

Sixtyforce

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