I must admit that Little Nicky's soundtrack is impressive, it sounds like something you would except from an early GBA title rather than GBC game. Too bad, it's not very good. Anyway, when can we expect PSP and DS soundtracks to hit PMH? 2014/2015?
To be honest, that's a lot quicker than I excepted considering how much time it took to release every available set from games released in 1999 and 2000.
Game Boy Advance has rip to release ratio comparable with Neo Geo Pocket or Game Gear, so yeah, will go quite fast when compared to previous Game Boys.
Besides, both PSP and NDS were released quite soon into GBA's life.
Just don't ask me when I expect hitting 3DS/Vita, please. :)
And I hope I wont bother you by this, but I've found a few errors in the Google Doc setlist (and PMH as a result)
Alien Syndrome - Should only say Takashi Horiguchi, as he went by Fumi and not Kumatani. Not sure where the Nakabayashi credit comes from. Perhaps his music was arranged for a few tracks?
Sonic Advance - Should only say Tatsuyuki Maeda and Yutaka Minobe. It's not on PMH at the time of typing this but since it's GSF, it will be a hell of a lot easier to fix the set itself (and any other GBA set)
That's all I found for now, but I'll go through it more later and see if any more pop up.
@Knurek pretty sure they only did programming. Notice how Maeda and Minobe are under "Sound Creator" and the others are not. I've never even heard of them haha.
If you mean in_gsf the old CaitSith2/Zoopd version, then yeah, viogsf is based on VBA-M codebase which, among other things added blargg's band-limited sound sythesis.
Well I suppose it's possible, but I still highly doubt anybody other than Maeda or Minobe did any compositional work. If he did do anything, it wouldn't have been more than 1-3 jingles.
Source I might have missed a game or two (I only looked for Iku's name), so I'll rescan the site again soon, as well as go through the setlist for upcoming games.
There are two upcoming games that I can tag, so I'll do them as soon as they are released on PMH. There are also a few soundtracks with names on YouTube, but I'll get to those another day.
Ok, that should be it. Tintin in Tibet's tags came from the Game Gear port, so credit bucky for that one. Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun's tags should cover two sets on the site, the GB one and the SGB one. There might be a few more on YouTube, but I'll do those another day.
BTW, I can't believe I ignored Gonzalez's works until a month ago or so. He has since became my all time favorite non-Japanese composer. :P
1. PMH says that some GBA sets will have files in MOD format, but I haven't found any information about this. Is it a case of the games natively using MOD files (I'm guessing something like those Webfoot DBZ games), or is it some weird conversion, like using SPC2IT to replicate a song that swaps samples in and out?
2. Is there a way to extract the samples from a GSFlib like you can with a PSFlib? (where you can use psf2exe and then PSound)
3. Did I hallucinate it or did someone here say something about viogsf (?) allowing for settings that gave the same effect of uncompressed samples as you might hear by ripping a game via gbamusriper?
1. I have managed two GBA games so far that use standard modules for music, BackTrack (2001-10-04)(JV)(Telegames) and Soccer Kid (2002-09-30)(Krisalis)(Telegames).
First one should get a release sometime soon.
3. I think that one was regarding in_ncsf, so NDS, not GBA.
Knu: I think the dude meant band-limited synthesis. Pity that only affects the final software-rendered mix, not the individual MIDI channels after a GBAMusRiper rip, sadly.
@MarkGrass: Thanks, I don't need it right now but it's always useful to be aware of the possible utility of stuff like that.
@Knurkek: Interesting. Did you know beforehand that these games used a different method for music or were you scanning the games with a file extraction utility?
@JFD62780: To be honest, I'm not really sure what I meant (as usual). I'm specifically talking about how some games (like Castlevania: Circle of the Moon or perhaps Bomberman Jetters) used notably higher-quality/cleaner instrument samples, which makes listening to the MIDIs (with soundfont) ripped by GBAMusRiper a different experience than with GSF files, emulation or actual hardware.
Or at least, that's what I understand - I'm curious if there are any other methods which can reproduce the effect. In particular, I'd love to know if it can be done with Sword of Mana, which sounds quite different than other S-E games on the GBA. I can't usefully speculate as to why it is that way (maybe Ito was trying for some kind of nostalgic effect), but if the samples can be heard more cleanly, I'd love that. I admit I'd probably just end up disappointed like I did with Airforce Delta, but I want to satisfy this curiosity.
If that all has something to do with band-limited synthesis, which is a phrase that causes my brain to recoil immediately, well...I guess I'm open to whatever anybody is willing to try to teach me about these things.
@Dais: No, found them by accident while looking for composer ROM credits - Protracker modules have a signature that's ingrained in my mind from years of Amiga usage.
And I'm pretty sure band-limithed synthesis benefits only the chip side of things for GBA, the DAC should be unaffected by it.
Tell Kode54 that. His port of VBA has said band-limited synthesis. It even works on the two Direct Sound channels, not just the legacy DMG audio channels.
So, you might have noticed the reduced amount of sets being released daily. Yes, that's something I've had in mind ever since I started doing GBA games.
You see, while the average set duration for GB games was something in the vicinity of 15 minutes, GBA games have way more music, I'd say averaging at about 40 minutes (with some sets, like the recently released Golden Sun or upcoming Fire Emblem clocking at more than 3 hours).
There's just no way for me to be able to process 4 of those daily, and it's not going to get better - I'd guesstimate PSP/NDS average set duration to be around 2.5 hours. So for now you get two games per day, and we will see if there will be a need for further reduction down the line.
I know I'll be in minority here, but I appreciate the slower pace, mostly because I decided listen to every set available on PMH (I'm at letter M right now).
Hi, about Golden Sun: romanization should be "Hikareshi Fuuin". At the very least, ja.wiki gives out ひらかれしふういん as furigana, so unless Camelot said anything about it...
by strugglepoo at 8:26 PM EDT on September 8, 2013
Toshiyuki Takine is the composer for: http://snesmusic.org/pmh/view.php?id=932 http://snesmusic.org/pmh/view.php?id=891 http://snesmusic.org/pmh/view.php?id=892
@Specter: You should really stick to chronological order while listening if you want to listen to the complete collection, this gives you nice progression through VGM evolution.
edited 10:04 AM EDT September 9, 2013
by strugglepoo at 6:57 PM EDT on September 9, 2013
Yeah man, I've been going through these chronologically. Well, not every single set, but ones that might look interesting, whether it be the composer, company, game title, or even the screenshot. It's a treat and is nice to see the history and evolution.
I appreciate your suggestions, they sound pretty reasonable, but I'm pretty determined about listening to all sets, especially since I'm halfway done with it (that is about 1000+ sets). To be honest as for evolution of portable VGM music I noticed a rather unique trend
1989-1991: Most of the soundtracks are pretty simplistic. 1992-1995: Composers know how to efficiently use Game Boy's sound capabilities making some of the best soundtracks on the system. 1996+: It all goes downhill really fast. Maybe it's because most of the "old" composers have moved onto bigger projects and young blood isn't experienced with the hardware, maybe they just don't care. I dunno. Don't get me started on Cooksey's 40+ minute snoozefests.
That applies to Game Boy line, the Game Gear is generally pretty bad and WonderSwan is mixed bag.
Game Gear sound hardware was pretty terrible, you needed to have a lot of talent to make it sound half-good. Try sets by Yuzo Koshiro, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Motoaki Takenouchi, Matt Furniss or the Sonic games to sample the best the system had to offer.
While I agree that Game Boy generally had its best years after 1995, there were still some worthwhile games released after that (case in point, Pokemon games or just about anything by Alberto Jose Gonzalez).
And of course, Game Boy Color was home to some great music as well, especially since some demoscene composers started showing up by then (Manfred Linzner, Jake Kaufman, Aleksi Eeben, etc).
I'm really, really loving all the Square demakes on WonderSwan.
Pity Nintendo had to use software mixing on GBA, many games on the system have amazing composition, but sound like ass due to mixing in 11kHz or worse. I still have year and a half of content to go through before I start hitting NDS and PSP games which don't really have that problem. Looking forward to it.
Thanks for the writeup, it's really nice being able to see what other people get out of the site.
Thanks for catching my error, Knurek, I just now remembered!
The M3/GG can be said to be inferior to the FC (mostly because no one cares about base FC, which is about the same "quality"), but it cannot be said to be bad. Weird example: the PSG data for Kujaku Ou is WAY better than the FM data.
Glad, you liked my write-up, Knurek. One thing I forgot to mention is that, there aren't that many of truly bad soundtracks. I excepted there to be a lot more.
by dissident93 at 7:41 PM EDT on September 11, 2013
@knurek ok cool. was this standard before? I don't recall any of the sets having this, and I'm sure some of them can be updated now like that.
Yes, I've been using it for those games I had per-track composer credits, although I didn't pursue this line extensively. Feel free to submit any you find.
Hm, anyone here use foobar2000 and foo_gep? Seems it really doesn't like Yu-Gi-Oh DM3 (no sound) and DM4 (everything's slowed down). So far, it just seems to be those two.
by dissident93 at 11:26 AM EDT on September 12, 2013
@Knurek, alright cool. I'll try to remember for any game like that.
in the meantime, update F-1 Race with Ryoji Yoshitomi and Kazumi Totaka. (Wiki says just Ryoji alone did the music, which would make sense seeing as this game was 2 years from Totaka's first confirmed game as a composer)
Composers by Doommaster1994 at 4:41 AM EDT on September 28, 2013
Domenic Morabito is listed for the SNES/Genesis True Lies but he only made the guitar samples for the SNES version. I think Brian Post did the Game Gear sound programming but I can't be certain.
Little Nicky was composed by Robert Baffy.
Caesars Palace (GBA) uses music from the PlayStation version which was composed by Matt Sugden.
Super Off Road (GG) - Jason Page Super Battletank (GG) - Mark Van Hecke Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six (GG) - David Whittaker Krusty's Fun House - Nu Romantic Productions (Composer), David Whittaker (Programmer) Paperboy II (GG) - Robert Ridihalgh Marble Madness (GG) - Matt Furniss Last Action Hero (GG) - Shahid Ahmad Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (GG) - Mark Tait Incredible Crash Dummies (GG) - Matt Furniss (Arranger) Chakan (GG) - Paul Hutchinson Bram Stoker's Dracula (GG) - Jeroen Tel Arch Rivals (GG) - Mark Cooksey or Andi McGinty Fire Fighter (GB) - Marshall Parker (credited as Beam Software) Dropzone (GB) - Neil Baldwin Best of the Best Championship Karate (GB) - Michel Winogradoff, Vincent Baillet Dr. Franken (GB) - Mark Cooksey Wordtris (GB) - Ed Bogas (Composer), David Warhol (Programmer) Super Off Road (GB) - Mark Cooksey Star Wars (GB) - Mark Cooksey Tom & Jerry (GB) - Marshall Parker (Composer), Brian Post (Programmer) Toxic Crusaders (GB) - David Hayes (Composer), David Warhol (Programmer) George Foreman's KO Boxing (GB) - Marshall Parker (Composer), Brian Post (Programmer)
Hey, Knurek. I get the information from many sources. Most of them are staff rolls but I am also friends with most of these composers. For the Mark Cooksey games, he has an official gameography which lists the games he's worked on. The credits screens for many of the games I listed can be found here: http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Game_Credits For Super Off Road (GG), I got verification from Jason Page before he shut down his Facebook account, but I'll let you know if he gets it back up.
Also, for Hurricanes (GG), the composer is Andi McGinty (Andi) and Chris Coupe (Chibsy) only did the sound effects. I can't verify it 100% but I believe Andi also composed Terminator 2 (GG) based on a musical comparison. The only other composer there Mark Cooksey said it doesn't sound like his own work. Andi repeats parts in his songs. I think Addams Family is Mark Cooksey, but I'm not sure. I know he did the GameBoy version though.
For the games that list Akinori Sawa, I believe they originally credit Eiji Miyabi. Akinori told me that's not him, though I believe what happened is that the programmers gave him that name without his knowledge.
edited 6:36 PM EDT September 28, 2013
by dissident93 at 11:56 PM EDT on September 28, 2013
@Knurek: GMCL isn't always 100% though, but that seems most logical at this point.
That's right. I remember showing Tsukasa Masuko what games they listed for him there and he said some of the games listed on his page he didn't work on. Only GameBoy games I can think of that he worked on was Wacky Races (Programmer) and Cosmo Tank.
The only set that has some unknown titles is OG1, because that game doesn't have a sound test for some reason. However, I do know from this site that one of the three unknown songs is called "Blitzkrieg" and was on an old version of Salamander Factory's website, but it no longer exists there and I couldn't find anything on the internet to identify the song. The site also mentions one other untitled song but not a second so one of them may also have a name and I'm just completely missing it for some reason.
I'll have a few more set tags in a few days now that I'm done with these messes...
Okay, let's have some actual music discussion here. I'll try and post a monthly recap, highlighting the games I think everyone should at least give a listen to, we'll see how it goes. Let me know what you think of this idea (and whether you'd want writeups like this for earlier months/years).
October 2001:
Trouballs - I have a soft spot for demoscene composers, Konrad "KeyG" Gmurek being one of them, this gets a free recommendation. Be sure to check out his PC work as well, most of it should be available here
Gyakuten Saiban - original GBA version of Phoenix Wright. While this set is all but made redundant by the 2SF rip, it still stands strong on the song quality, making you almost forget the crappy Game Boy Advance sound quality.
Alchemist Marie & Elie: Futari no Atelier - I always confuse Toshiharu Yamanishi and Toshiya Yamanaka for some reason, so I wanted to recommend this game as not being as good as Star Cruiser was, but still worthy of attention. Let's say (correctly) instead that it's not as good as Thunder Force IV, but still worthy of attention. :)
Doki Doki Sasete!! - now this is certainly something I wouldn't expect from Manabu Namiki. Arpeggios aren't widely used on Game Boy hardware, making this sound more like a C64 game than anything else. Still, great stuff. Pity that IIRC all of Namiki's GBA work is unripped at the moment.
Kelly Club: Clubhouse Fun - Manfred "Pink" Lizner is another demoscene composer, and while I know that this may sound like me beating a dead horse, you really should just download every set of his and listen to them ASAP, both Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance ones - Shin'en did the seemingly impossible feat of making Game Boy Advance mix sound at rates higher than 11kHz. His demoscene work is available here and here
Stuff I'd really love to see ripped in the future
Lady Sia - game gives off that Eurojank platformer vibe, and those games usually have splendid music - case in point: Mr. Nutz or Plok
Monsters, Inc. - seriously, who wouldn't enjoy more Iku Mizutani? Racists, that's who.
Doom - Allister Morten Brimble taking on iconic PC compositions? Count me in.
Anyone noticed the amazing batch of titles pmh put out this week?
I mean, we're talking Fire Emblem, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, Mega Man Zero 2 and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow all released within days of themselves.
I am seriously jealous of anyone who stumbles upon the site and samples the stuff from last week.
I have noticed the nice number of really quality soundtracks that have been coming out, and it looks like we've still got more in a short time with Donkey Kong Country, Mother 1+2 and Metal Max 2 Kai! :D
Actually, looking at the schedule there are a few other big clumps down the road that will be pretty hype, like the Gyakuten Saiban 3/Pokemon FRLG/Judgement Silversword/Metroid Zero Mission block.
I am extremely unspeakably angry that the JCE document with the original Summon Night song names was removed >:|
(actually, I should have just put them in the text file proper... anyway, RIP Flight Plan)
some other stuff coming up in the next few weeks I like: -Boktai (although it took a lot longer to grow on me compared to 2/3) -Iridion II -Shining Soul II (hit or miss, but interesting work, like the game itself) -Onimusha Tactics (I unreservedly love this soundtrack, and woke up with the music in my head this morning) -TMNT (catchy Konami tunes that probably would have gotten more attention if they were FM-based)
I had no idea that the WSC and GBA versions of MMBN Battle Chip Challenge came out on the same day. I always figured it debuted earlier on the former and was upgraded for the latter...
Too bad there's no rip for Legacy of Goku II.
In contrast to all those nice-sounding games, I'd just like to comment that I listened to Darius R for the first time a few days ago, and wow. That's something special right there.
theoretical-question-while-I-remember-it-time: if I'm able to pull together the details (date/composer/etc) on Wonder Witch games that didn't get commercial releases, like Rave Master, could those go up on PMH, or would they be on hold until Homebrew Music History?
Friendly reminder: pmh is closing in on Nintendo DS/PSP release dates. Once we hit that, I'll purge both 2sf.joshw.info and psp.joshw.info sites and keep reuploading pmh sets in monthly installments.
Backup now if you don't want to wait a few years for the newer sets.
I would like to kindly request Medabots AX: Metabee/Rokusho Versions, AKA Medarot G Kabuto/Kuwagata Versions http://snesmusic.org/pmh/view.php?id=2966 , or would like to know how to rip the music myself. I've been wanting the music from these games for years.
Depends on game. Some use formats directly supported by media players or VGMStream (MP3, NPSF, ADX). Some use formats not supported by any player (HCA). There are separate decoders available for those.
Most games use AT3 files (either Atrac3 or Atrac3Plus), and they are a bit messy.
Some versions of VGMStream (foobar plugin and special Winamp build kode54 did IIRC) support Atrac3Plus (but not Atrac3), but always loop all files, even 2 second jingles and are based on a unclean, unlicensed code. There's a DirectShow plugin for decoding Atrac3 (but not Atrac3Plus), which doesn't support looping information at all. There's HiMDRenderer, which can decode some Atrac3Plus files (44100kHz Stereo), but needs to have installed a long unsupported Sony program. There's also Sony's Sound Forge, which can decode both types but is a commercial program with license costing $300+
Both Atrac3 and Atrac3Plus have been supported by open source FFMPEG tool, it's just that nobody has yet added this to VGMStream plugin. Maybe with the amount of PSP sets pmh will have, someone will. Time will tell. :)
I myself am disappoint with the track names for the GBA version of Aladdin, considering that I have essentially ripped the Midis myself. There's several tracks that are "Unknown #" despite them having the same names as the SNES version
by Vague Rant at 11:08 PM EST on December 29, 2014
I just wanted to credit a couple of KCE Nagoya's GBC games' composers; hope posting here works.
Junko Karashima: It's a World Rally/International Rally/Cross Country Racing The Mummy
I was looking at the upcoming schedule and saw UNKNOWNFILE's Donkey Kong Country 3 GBA rip should be coming up soon. I figured it was worth mentioning a couple of things about it.
The game itself has a sound test, where titles can be sourced since the current set doesn't come tagged. The tracks in the sound test are in the same order as UF's set.
Problems: a) Track 11 has different names across regions; the US version calls the track "Banana Queen" for no clear reason (it's not heard when encountering the Banana Queen, so ...) while the European release calls it "Jungle Ambience" which seems more reasonable. b) More severely, track 13, "Enchanted River", is broken in the US version sound test (and UNKNOWNFILE's rip). In-game, the track is dynamic and changes based on whether the player is in or out of the water, but in the sound test both try to play and fight for channels due to limited polyphony in the Rare sound engine and everything goes to absolute hell. The European version "fixes" this issue by just playing the underwater version in the sound test, so the land version is simply not available in the sound test at all. Ideally, a GSF rip should probably include both versions independently, though this would presumably require manually adjusting the file/s or ripping them again.
The European release was published earlier but seems to have ended development after the US version since it fixes a few bugs and such, including the above, so I would suggest that that should lead to its naming being preferred.
This info all comes from the TCRF article on the game. Personally, I'd just say play the SNES version and get on with life, but the current extant set is even less satisfying than it would be in its complete state.
I have a question about the Nintendogs DS rip. IN general. The tune generally referred to as "Walking the Dog" (which is called "BGM #23" on the 2sf.joshw.info rip), only ever plays the "intro" part. Is the full tune actually rippable? The full version is available on the "Touch! Generations Soundtrack", but I wanted to hear the original DS sound version. Also, interestingly, there are drums that are constantly being played, which are never heard in said soundtrack, as heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2hxhtoLyhM