It's pretty wild how far ahead of their time Sunsoft was back then. I always wondered how they are capable of creating such memorable tracks.

@jameson3500

Жыл бұрын

sunsoft was also a hardware manufacturer of chips. So they might've had knowledge that other's didn't.

@imkerrusin

Жыл бұрын

@@jameson3500 This is true. They did design audio chipsets for certain hardware. It might be due to Sunsoft working with PC Engines at the time. It's entirely possible the team was able to find ways around the restrictions of the Famicom. They always had a memorable soundtrack. What I was happy about was when they reused their trademark sound effects for Blaster Master Zero. :)

Oooh, so that's how Sunsoft managed to make their games sound so much more advanced than most other NES games!

I recently learned of another example that would've been good to use in this video. Bee 52, composed by Gavin Raeburn, uses a sample from a Casio CZ 101 for bass parts.

I wonder why the nes dpcm was never programmed to be flexible to allow you to pitch samples up and down. Without changing the speed and vice versa, that would,ve give game dev’s more flexibility and saved them tons of memory space.

@vinesthemonkey

2 жыл бұрын

pitching down is just playing the sample slower. the chip cannot play samples faster

@luigikoopa8771

10 ай бұрын

@@vinesthemonkey It actually can. This only applies if the sample's original rate is lower than 33144 hz.

These NES audio examples are pretty cool. Thanks for uploading these!

This video is excellently done. I've always marveled at how NES developers could squeeze out amazing audio from the NES and now I have an even better appreciation because I watched this!! :)

I love these so much, keep on keepin' on.

True audio wizardry required but the results are so damn sweet (see also: Silius OST). Did NOT know NES could do that until I heard that game's soundtrack on youtube.

Such superb research! For you to be even doing this is a magnanimous gesture. Thank you!

These videos are AWESOME!

Great discussion, with lots of interesting examples. Thanks for putting this together!

these videos are really awesome, thank you!

Even with all those limitations, it still sounds a million times better than using triangle for bass.

2:59 dang, the DPCM needs a raise for playing that much

Funny enough, I made a whole song to test the DPCM chip with. I used about 24 slap bass samples in order to do it, rather than lower the pitch of a few samples like Sunsoft did. It's called 'Delta Bass'. Sadly, I only posted it on Newgrounds, but that's it. I'm just putting that info out right now.

@vidjenko8349

8 жыл бұрын

+Jusu-Tengu its epic.

@vuurniacsquarewave5091

8 жыл бұрын

+Jusu-Tengu Generally NES games can only use up to a little less than 16kB DPCM regardless of the cartridge size unless a mapper is used which can bankswitch the part of the PRG-ROM window accessible to the DPCM unit. (CPU address $C000-$FFFF) The MMC5 for example could do this, allowing you to use as much ROM for samples as you want.

@mattb8075

6 жыл бұрын

Jusu-Tengu That tune is damn good. Would it be possible on an actual NES without having to use any special mappers?

@bootmii98

5 жыл бұрын

@@mattb8075 "Special" meaning not MMC3 and not discrete? Because MMC3 was outrageously common and so were discrete setups (AxROM, GxROM, UxROM, etc)

@johneygd

4 жыл бұрын

If the nes dpcm channel can only down pitch a sample could it not do up pitch the lowest pitched sample? Also how does supermariobros 3 speed up the music?? I ask this because that game uses lots of drums and tamburain for it’s music,,THX.

Funnily enough, I used nothing but melodic PCM in one soundtrack for the NES I did ALL the way back in 2012. And I used it for the main melody at times. It covered 4 octaves and it was loaded as needed, but it was still under the 16k limit.

DPCM also lowers the volume of the noise and triangle channels in an unpredictable manner, that you need to prepare for in advance when arranging and mixing a track.

@fungo6631

2 жыл бұрын

Contra Force uses the Triangle channel to give the DPCM orchestra hits some extra bass and make them sound better.

@vinesthemonkey

15 күн бұрын

yeah and you can also reset it to make a little popping sound.

Super C and Super Spy Hunter are 2 of my favourite games of all time and their music is one of the biggest reasons. Absolute masterpieces.

Enjoyed the video immensely, twice.

Cool and informative video. I use DPCM in my NES games (For speech samples only though), but I plan to do something like that someday, and this video does a great explanation on that channel. Thanks

Really loving all of that info. It's great to learn more about the type of music I love!

your research is appreciated

2:58 Gives me Amiga vibes for some reason.

This is a great video....... Kind of a mini documentary!

@rushnerd I had someone ask about why MC Kids sounds C64-like, so I have a post on the tumblr that looks closely at an arpeggio effect from the game. Although not specifically about MC Kids, the videos on the triangle kick drum and duty cycle modulation cover some more of the things it does. Nothing on Werewolf: The Last Warrior yet, but I really like that soundtrack. :)

I simply adore these videos.... please keep it up! They kick ass!!!

Gimmick has more than 16KB DMC samples (Super C)

Thank you dude!!!

I interviewed the creator of this video for my doctoral dissertation titled "Chiptune music: An exploration of compositional techniques as found in Sunsoft games for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom from 1988-1992" now available through ProQuest at search.proquest.com/docview/1707933479

Hearing the first example in this video was what caused me to try out Journey to Silius.

I can't believe how obscure this is and how somebody could reproduce this and make a video like this.

I love that you started this with journey to silius. one of my fav NES osts

Say, have you done one on Werewolf: The Last Warrior or MC Kids yet? both of those have very distinctive tunes that used the NES's music chip to it's limit

No wonder many company’s avoided the dpcm channel because,,,,, 1, it took extra space on the cartride. 2, it had it’s strict limitations, you could only lower down a pitch and it will also slows down the speed of it, and each pitch differs per clock cycle to be accessible, and it wasn’t at a fully chromatical scale either too. 3, it has to share it’s volume with the square wave and there was no volume control of it. 4, the dpcm channel could interupt the control input,since the cpu reads control input at the same adresss as the dpcm input, or kind off, wich could interrupt gameplay !!??. 5 if games do use HDMA for both sprites and 7bit pcm channel, it can be problematic as there is not enough ram space left to handle both sprites & 7bit pcm sound, so this can cause futher distortion in audio quality,or it can lead to video blanks, there can be an alternative way but it, but it can lead to desynch issues. The bothem line is,,, nintendo just didn’t bother with the dpcm channel to be as friendly to programm for like it’s fm soundchannels because they didn’t expected much use of it because of expensive memory back then.

I'm surprised you didn't bring up that weird funny DCPM sound that Sunsoft used at the end of their Game Over BGMs (Fester's Quest, Journey to Silius, and Blaster Master were several of those titles)

@tduyduc

5 жыл бұрын

That sound uses only the triangle channel, not DPCM.

sick

Sunsoft has the best bass

I think I even found the original sunsoft bass patch sample in Turrican 2, or at least the same waveform with somewhat different adsr mumbo jumbo. It could be that Sunsoft did some equalization to optimize it better for the DPCM sample. Perhaps it's time to learn how to compose or edit tracker music. Zombie nation also uses the bass from Donkey Kong Country.

Thanks for info. Very interesting too, but more of what I was getting at was the process of development. What kind of computer would they use to capture the audio, and how would they transfer that to the final game?

The samples of the game Recca sound very similar to the samples used in Zombie Nation.

Gremlins 2 has a lot of sound samples for basslines

I wonder if you could do an NES audio compilation of the bass and melodic samples of all the Rare, Ltd. games (music by David Wise)?

WOW, isolated the Zombie Nation sample channel sounds so dirty

@bobcatpixels2292

3 жыл бұрын

It sounds like justice

What I could never figure out it just HOW the NES can fit game code, map data, graphics, sound FX & even samples into it's measly 2kb of ram. I mean yeah sure the was a lot of essential byte saving techniques back then. But just HOW when it loads a level, HOW does all that fit all of that into 2KB?

@circuit10

6 жыл бұрын

ROM

@vuurniacsquarewave5091

5 жыл бұрын

Exactly, Super Mario 3 has an extra 8k RAM chip to decompress breakable levels into.

@johneygd

4 жыл бұрын

VuurniacSquarewave wow hence why the graphics in mario are sooo much better then mario1, i suppose that also mario 2 has 8K video RAM since it also contains a mmc3 chip,the mmc3 chip with it’s 8K video ram ,hence it’s popularity by game devs ,to have better graphics in their games.

So the note height gaps are similar to Atari VCS' sound chip limitations?

@explod2A03 Yes, that classic NES arp sound is undeniable. You don't hear that stuff a lot anymore

@ 3:44 Hey hey heeey!! Don't cut the video off yet, let that shit play! ;)

Back in the day, how were these sounds captured (what computer hardware/software) and how were they transferred to the program? Stored on the graphics RAM/ROM? There would have to be some way of transferring that data, not writing it again by hand.

@circuit10

6 жыл бұрын

Microphone :)

Terrible shame they went bankrupt. Their games for the SNES were so fun.

Probably the most underused, but biggest advantage the NES has over other 8-bit consoles.

@dava_arvarabi

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah NES is very powerful in terms of music, just like Atari 2600, except that Atari 2600 advantage wasn't on music, but graphics. Atari 2600 could display 128 colours on-screen, more than you usually see on NES, Master System or even the Genesis! Unfortunately due to low amount of ram on the system, and the low resolution hampered that advantage. Yes, few game actually uses this advantage, just take a look at Battlezone, Double Dragon, and most of Activision games.

Sunsoft NES music Fester's Quest, Journey to Silius, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Ufouria: The Saga, Batman: Return of the Joker, Super Spy Hunter, Mr. Gimmick, Sunman, Pescatore.

Isn't another drawback of melodic PCM that the DPCM channel is the only one that doesn't get lowered in pitch on a PAL NES, meaning you have to repitch the music for the PAL conversion? I've seen that Ufouria on Virtual Console is just the PAL version played with NTSC emulation, and it sounds awful.

Could you give an example about the popping noise? Just curious.

What was za909's comment about the audio clipping / popping? I listened to the Jackal music a bit and I hear it, though I was wondering what the explanation was.

what the heII ls GOlNG on here

Super C doesnt have the most space used by samples. Iirc gimmick used at least 22kb

Same with Super Spy Hunter

2:25 what name of song/game? I felt nostalgia, because I remember it.

Like Bass sounds this chiptune

Most of the music from Tetrastar are literally sampled orchestra music

What notes do other notes make?

Heh, I always knew Zombie Nation was actually quite an advanced game. Shame it's probably one of maybe 5 games developed by KAZe. Why is it that the most advanced programmers, like Sunsoft, tend to disappear over time? Because they focused too much R&D in a particular system and it's limitations?

Well if composers wanted to just only use 1sample and repitch them as needed WITHOUT changing the speed, then they could,ve use a special chip wich allowed this and then stream that audio to the nes dpcm chip,but again that chip would ad extra costs.

@vuurniacsquarewave5091

9 жыл бұрын

johneygd The US and PAL cartridge connector lacked the necessary pin, so a cart with audio hardware on board, has no way of getting the audio inside the system and mix with the internal 5 channels, and get it to the RCA audio out. Sadly nothing in the cart can touch the internal channels.

@circuit10

6 жыл бұрын

My idea- mapper (look it up if you don't know what it is) that prepares and mixes data in real time. It could be done.

@circuit10

6 жыл бұрын

Not if you use the DPCM feature

@johneygd

3 жыл бұрын

@@vuurniacsquarewave5091 that’s true but what if you repitch and stream audio trough the dpcm channel instead?

@vuurniacsquarewave5091

3 жыл бұрын

@@johneygd Yes that is possible with a bit of CPU overhead to prepare the stream with something in the cart (an arduino maybe) and trigger interrupts to let the NES grab the prepared bytes and write them to the $4011 register. The bit-depth would be limited by the 7-bit output.

Where can you download the bass samples?

I readed that you can only can lower down the pitch,HOWEVER,i was wondering if it is possible to higher the lowest pitch to a higher pitch?? Also what are those uneven gaps between those pitches,are there different rules for each pitch to level up or down or something?

@raafmaat

7 жыл бұрын

there is no tuning up, you can only tune down

@johneygd

7 жыл бұрын

+raafmaat so even if i use the lowest pitch in that pcm channel, i cannot pitch that up to pitch 2 or at max pitch 16??

@raafmaat

7 жыл бұрын

johneygd hmmm im confused now, im mixing up the normal sounds and samples, so please ignore my comment ;)

@johneygd

7 жыл бұрын

+raafmaat well theres no need to get mixed about it,those normal fm soundchannels are pitchinble up & down whatever you want,but some of them has no volume control ,it's either on or off,that DPCM channel is a sample channel but has only 16 pitches and you only can go down but also the speed lowers down everytime you lower down the pitch. But i was wondering if you could pitch up pitch 1 to 16, but i don't know.

Was that Tengurila from Zombie Nation/Abarenbou Tengu that you used for the sample isolation example? Because if so you do realize I love you so much right now. Anywho, it's really kind of amazing how high quality some of the soundtracks to NES games sound, even today. Soundtracks like Zombie Nation, Moryou Senki Madara, Lagrange Point, Megami Tensei 2. The NES is literally a smorgasbord of amazing compositions and composition styles.

God damn, I gotta give it up to the composers of NES music who had to work with this system.

@snakkbarz5361

5 жыл бұрын

peanuts compared to programming game music on a C64 SID! :D

Where do I download it?

A lot of NES games which had C64-style-sounding music actually had composers who had a lot of experience computer games. Codemasters games are one of the prime examples but Tim Follin is another one.

Oops, guess it's not. Nevermind then....

Damn, Super C is so badass

Do a video on Konami! Their games had the best drums! Go listen to Ninja Turtles!

What’s the song at 0:34? Addams family?

@zitherq5761

2 жыл бұрын

Youre right. Festers Quest for the NES. Title screen

@Cosmalano

2 жыл бұрын

@@zitherq5761 thank you!

at 2:07 what is the name of that song game?

@justinwonder7799

9 жыл бұрын

It's from "Super Spy Hunter" aka "Battle Formula" (1991). Stage 3/5 (part 1)

@george198892

9 жыл бұрын

thx verry verry much my brother...

does the nes use a midi format to handle sound i could be wrong or midi wasn't till 16 bit sound chips and processors

@SamuraiTacos1

8 жыл бұрын

ah okay i just was curious on how the nes handled sound and how the sound chip worked

@SamuraiTacos1

8 жыл бұрын

ah cool

@KuraIthys

7 жыл бұрын

Even the 16 bit systems generally didn't use midi. Both the snes and mega drive consoles had dedicated audio processors, and you'd write custom software to control how the audio hardware behaved. Having said that, there's a standard code library used by a bunch of mega drive games that essentially implemented midi playback on the system. By the 3d generation Midi playback seemed a standard feature (the n64 comes with a midi playback routine as a standard part of the devkit tools), but it's by no means compulsory to use it. That generation still seems to allow directly controlling the audio hardware.

@SamuraiTacos1

7 жыл бұрын

ah i see i still like this video showing how the sound chip worked ik there are four waves one square and the other a wave lines

What's the name of the song at 0:42?

@mmmonster6891

6 жыл бұрын

from "batman return of joker"

So the sample channel made it possible for us to get, "DAAUWWN, Hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut"

whats the song at the beggining?

@Sakamoto196

3 жыл бұрын

Journey to Silius - Stage 3

You mean the one that sounds almost like a frog croak?

@tduyduc

5 жыл бұрын

The frog croak in some Sunsoft's game over themes uses the triangle channel.

Where is the first song from?

@onetouchtwo

9 жыл бұрын

It seems to be Stage 3 from Journey to Silius.

@kikef.e.6177

9 жыл бұрын

Mark Canlas Joruney to Silius!

Okay, what moron came up with that sample repitching system? Lol

@ConnorR.mp3

6 жыл бұрын

It works by dividing sample rate by some arbitrary number. It's pretty horrible, but it would have been hard to do better with the limitations.

@vuurniacsquarewave5091

5 жыл бұрын

Instead of a lookup table with 16 entries to divide the APU rate, it could've been a direct value... which would be terrible unless you had a whole octave's worth of samples but then you'd get all those notes across 5 octaves immediately (divide by 1, 2, 4, 8, 16).