nesdev.org

Bregalad wrote:I'm just posting to say I was amazed to hear how the squares in Adventure of Bayou Billy souds exactly like a guiter.

When I looked at the Square 2 waveform, it appears to do clever volume effects on the notes and banjoish-string effects (I don't know what they're called XD). The banjoish-string effects also seems to do constant duty-cycle arpeggios. Really nice instruments from Konami.

The first section in Final Fantasy 3 also does some nice sounding arpeggios - but these are more closer to arpeggios done with real-life instruments rather than super-fast chiptune arpeggios. It sounds really awesome.

I think the NES seems to be best at making piano instruments...considering I know more than a few games that have pretty good piano instruments.

It doesn't really sound like a guitar.

NotTheCommonDose wrote:It doesn't really sound like a guitar.

You don't think so? I shudder to know what guitar players you've jammed with.

If anything, the rhythm is guitar-like in itself. Personally, I think that track sounds like a guitar, but if it doesn't to someone else, the strumming in itself is right on par.

whatever.

NotTheCommonDose wrote:whatever.

haha! Okay.

Anyway, I'm checking out the .nsf right now, and never noticed before that they use both square channels to achieve that sound. It has a nice bouncing movement to it with the way they lay it out. I've always loved that main song, but never paid attention to the way they did it. I appreciate it even more right now : )

I've always loved the US SMB2's music. The nice, dreamy, piano-like instrument used in a few of the tracks (notably the title theme, and most of the main overworld theme) was a marked improvement over the very boring square waves of Doki Doki Panic. It was just one of many nice touches that transformed what could have been another ordinary FDS port into something special. Definitely one of Nintendo's finest accomplishments in my book.

Asterix has great music in it. I just love those drum sounds, not something you hear too often in NES games. And it doesn't use DPCM. Asterix was one big inspiration (I even disassembled it...) when making the drum sounds for the High Hopes demo soundtrack.

Tim Follin tunes are also great soundwise, eg. Solstice and Silver Surfer.

You're all wrong! ;P Hero Quest.

I see "The Adventures Of Bayou Billy" has been mentioned here. Really cool guitar pluck effect. I guess Kyouhei Sada came up with that idea, since this method was also used in "S.C.A.T.", where Kyouhei Sada used both channels to generate a saxophone-like sound. So great.

I think Sword Master is pretty interesting. Not in terms of instruments (altough Koichi used the vibrato effect very well) but in terms of volume mixing. The soundtracks sound very smooth.

Jeroen Tel is a cool one. He mostly used vibrato/duty-changing leads, creating totally "synthy" melodies with it. Alien 3 and Overlord are incredible.

KID's sound engine (Nobuyuki Shioda's work?) is pretty cool. Triangle channel was often used for lead chords, while pulse channels replaced it for the bass. Their compositions were also damn good like the soundtracks for G.I. Joe, Recca, Kickmaster, Doki Doki Yuuenchi, etc.

Not to mention Konami's/Sunsoft's/Natsume's sound designers creating incredible tunes.

The snare and bass drums in Silver Surfer are the best non-sample drums I've heard on the NES.

I haven't really listened that much to NES music though, so it would make me very happy if someone could point out even better drums.