Kodiak Slam's Remixes

The Rocky game on the Sega Master System looks amazing, doesn’t it? Like usual, it was too difficult for me when I tried it out. And while the game’s soundtrack is quite good, the lack of Gonna Fly Now was rather disappointing. That was when I got a grand idea: I made a cover with the Sega PSG on its own, and also made two remixes with the FM expansion unit… Why not combine the two into the ultimate Master System setup (that was previously only used by Sega for the Master System’s Japanese boot screen) and cover Gonna Fly Now on it! It’s gonna be epic!

This was the idea that got me through making what turned out to be the hardest cover I’ve made so far! It took me way too long! But I should’ve expected that… It’s my longest (not counting loops) and most complex remix to date. So much so that I quickly got lost in the sauce, as they say (do they still say that, though?).

Initially, to avoid getting overwhelmed, I tried rather foolishly to transcribe the song bar-by-bar instead of channel-by-channel. That was a horrible idea and I took way too long to change my approach… Even after the change, however, I dealt with a ton of self-doubt because I’m not entirely satisfied with the quality of my work on this channel… and that unfortunately extends to this remix as well, especially when I look at how good the rest of the chiptune scene is on YouTube. I learned a lot doing this remix and I’m hoping that I improve further in the future.

This is a mashup of two songs from the PC Engine version of Xevious: Fardraut Saga, which are themselves remixes of the classic (?), little four-bar jingle that drones on in the background of the original Xevious. That game also has a port on the Atari 7800, which is where the gameplay footage in the video comes from, by the way.

Multi-chip configurations, especially official ones, have always intrigued me. The POKEY + TIA configuration used in only two Atari 7800 games interested me in particular, mainly because both Ballblazer and Commando don’t use both chips at the same time for the music. Having made this remix, I’ve got to say I’m quite impressed with what both chips can do together, especially in the final section. I did have to use the TIunA software pitch driver to keep the TIA in tune for that section, though.

Oh yeah! Since I’m using two separate chips, I can only provide a WAV file and a binary file. I’m not sure if you can play the song on original hardware, since the setup process would probably be a pain, but feel free to try with the .bin file.

It’s FM Funk! but for real this time!

Okay, so right off the bat, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve based this cover off of the Master System version, which is in a higher key. I thought of just doing it in the key of the arcade version at first, but I realized that doing it in the key of the Master System version would give it a unique flavour, rather than just making a worse version of the arcade original. Speaking of which, I was surprised that the arcade version only uses four channels just like the Master System, despite being on the 8-channel YM2151 (I’m guessing the other four channels were for sound effects?). In fact, the Master System version has additional reverb in some later sections which wasn’t present in the original. So I based the whole cover on the Master System version… Everything except the drums that is, because the arcade version has toms which the PSG couldn’t quite replicate on the noise channel, so they were replaced with more kicks and snares on the console port.

Now, I struggled with this cover and had to abandon it TWICE in favour of other songs. As a matter of fact, I had the idea of covering this song way back when I first started the channel. I put it off for so long because of the very last part of the intro before the song hits at full force. The flurry of bass notes in this part were at exactly four ticks per note, while the drums were still going on beat at six ticks per hit, I believe this is called a polyrhythm in music theory terms, but don’t quote me on that. Anyway, I pondered over this for an embarrassingly long time until it dawned on me that I should write the song in the Speed of 2 ticks per row, since it’s the highest common factor of 4 and 6.

I covered Thexder's main theme on the Atari POKEY chip!

I’m just glad I managed to make something with the POKEY, it is a hard chip to get a hold of, and it has a ton of insanely talented musicians already working on it, having built an impressive library of technical masterpieces. I am nowhere near that level, but I hope you find my work worthwhile as an artifact of an odd alternate history. And as dictated by that one vote; I’m calling it a POKEY remix. Although in truth, this remix is a part of a sort of trilogy where I did a cover on the Atari 2600 (TIA), and now a cover for a Atari 5200 (POKEY), and soon a cover on the Atari 7800* (POKEY + TIA).

I thought I'd bring at least a piece of the last game in the Crush trilogy back to its original platform! Some notes about the process: I sampled the drums directly from the Super Famicom version. I know it's not the best approach but I felt it was the way to go since one of the most notable aspects of Devil's Crush's OST is its sampled drums, and going back to PSG/noise drums felt like a downgrade. I'm not too familiar with how to find the exact sources of the drum sounds used by musicians back then, so if anyone can point to some good resources that contain info about 80s/90s drum machines and other miscellaneous samples, I would be grateful!

I took a few liberties with the composition at key points, the most immediately noticeable change is probably that the first phrase of the lead trumpet is in a lower octave. I did this because I found that the lead was a bit grating on the ears in a higher octave on the HuC6280, and also because it harmonises with the backing melody way better. I also made the final section (the creepy one) more varied.

Sidenote: Getting the rhythm of the big solo towards the latter half right was a pain! Apologies if it doesn't sound one-to-one!

Original composed by Masanobu Tsukamoto for the Super Famicom. Covered by me for the PC Engine/TurboGrax-16 using Furnace Tracker.

Doing a whole 8-bit vocal theme (in two languages no less!) was kinda tiring ngl. Also this song has a reggaeton rhythm in the middle section. I don't think it's that obvious though. That was a cool find nonetheless!

Anyway, I got inspired to do this weird cover after hearing the vocal intro to the Neo Geo Pocket game Faselei. That one only used the sample channels however, and I was wondering how it would sound if the PSG sound chip was involved. Then I remembered the existence of the Psycho Soldier theme (also from a game by SNK) and everything sorta fell into place. Kinda. It took a lot out of me and I'm still not all the way there in terms of my arrangements. I am however, taking steps to improve.

Thanks for listening!

Here's my belated new year's gift! Its the Tunnel Scene from X on the Virtual Boy! (and the other one's tacked on there too). It feels right to bring a piece of Argonaut Software's wildly ambitious 1992 Game Boy tank simulator 'X' to the Virtual Boy. Hell, if Argonaut Software made games for the Virtual Boy, maybe it would've been suc... Okay, it would probably at least have a more fondly remembered game library in retrospect. I was happy to see that this song went semi-viral a while ago. Firstly because that's how I stumbled upon it in the first place, and secondly because I had a ton of cool references to work off of.

Shoutouts go to ‪@SwissVinyl‬ for including a download for the project file of his wonderful N163 Famitracker cover. I learned how speeds work in tracker software because of it. Which is something I'd really wished I learned sooner for the benefit of some of my older covers. But hey, better late than never, I guess.

Hey! So I remixed Meadow's Edge from Apidya for the Wonderswan!

Here’s some context behind my latest remix: The track is called Air Commander, and it was featured in Koei’s 1991 World War II strategy game Operation Europe. I primarily focused on the SNES version (which I first heard in a SNESDrunk review!) and the Genesis version. I preferred the sound of the SNES version, but I was surprised to find that the Genesis version includes both an intro and an ending, whereas the SNES version cuts those sections to create a seamless loop.

I wanted to create the ultimate arrangement of the track; using the intro and ending from the Genesis version, but keeping the main body of the track looped once, like in the SNES version. I ended up choosing the Famicom Disk System for this endeavour, mostly because I wanted a very different sound from the other versions. In the end, I’m most proud of the bassline and drums; the wavetable and DPCM channels were great to work with! I still need to experiment more with speed and duty cycles, but I think the sound works a bit better this time around.

I made a remix of a song from Gulkave.... on the Watara Supervision!

The what?

The Supervision is an incredibly fascinating machine, mostly because its a bootleg console that dared to aim for the heights of legitimacy. And even if it ultimately fell short, I can respect the moxie. Apologies in advance for the drums, but I just had to, especially after I had to nix the third channel out of the start tune because the PCM channel refused to co-operate in any way!

I really wanted to remake Gulkave's first stage theme on the Atari 2600's TIA. The song only uses two channels, the same as the TIA, and I really wanted to hear what a chip described in Furnace Tracker as "barely having any musical capabilities", could do...

The SID chip is so advanced for its time! Finding actual ADSR values in the instrument editor was a shock when I first looked through it in Furnace Tracker. I knew I wanted to make something with it, but the fact that it has only three channels left me unsure about what I could cover. At first, I wanted to cover Meadow’s Edge from the weird Amiga insectoid shoot-'em-up Apidya. I even tried using the special software PCM channel available for the SID 6581, but I found the final results unsatisfactory.

I covered the in-game theme of the Game Boy port of Faceball 2000, mostly because I was surprised that it doesn't have an Atari Lynx port in the first place. Not only because of how the advanced hardware of the Lynx would've suited it well, but also because of the fact that the original MIDI Maze was made for the Atari ST.

Well, whatever the reason was, the lack of a Lynx port ultimately got me to remake David Whittaker's awesome tune on the Lynx's adorably-named MIKEY chip! Speaking of which, the MIKEY's bespoke duty system really threw me off when I was trying to make good instruments (thanks to SlidellMan on the AtariAge forums for providing a jumping-off point: https://forums.atariage.com/blogs/ent...). I was especially perplexed by how changing the duty cycles also affected the pitch. I spent a lot of time trying to adjust the pitch in the instrument editor, but in the end I settled for less accurate but in-tune sounds. I might try and do more advanced stuff with it in the future now that I know how the MIKEY works, or maybe not. Let's see what the future holds....

On a compositional note, the lead was the hardest part and there are a couple of notable differences from the Game Boy version, particularly that little ascending cadence that serves as the climax to the track. In exchange, however, I added a little panning effect to the echo at the end.

It felt pretty serendipitous that the revival of this game got announced while I was finishing up this remix. The way the original managed to squeeze in several elements of percussion and melody on a single channel because of the freeform wavetable synthesis of the HuC6280 was the hardest aspect of the song to replicate on the NES's 2A03 with its fixed pulse and triangle channels.

In the end, I had to nix some shaker sections to preserve the echo of the main melody. That along with the obvious lack of stereo panning were the biggest concessions I had to make when bringing this track over to the NES. As a result of all these factors, it might have a few awkward moments when compared to the original but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out otherwise.

Besides, the whole reason I did this cover in the first place was to hear how the song would sound with the classic Sunsoft DPCM bass samples (the ones I used were from Gremlins 2), and the bassline sounds great. I had to change like, three notes because they were too high or too low for the sample range but I'm really happy with how it turned out!

I got a new remix out. This time from the PC Engine to the Genesis. Finding ym2162.org's OPM Project was a blessing because it meant that a) I didn't have to make my own instruments and b) The ones I used were accurate to the game. I'm not sure if it tops the original but it fits my vision for Stage 2 where the arcade/Genesis version plays for the slow sections and the PCE version plays for the tricky speed sections.