Now this category was a bit more difficult for me and staff to work through, as we saw lots of updates to old software as well as new products that allowed the creation of amazing new works of chip art and music. Ultimately what TCTD considered was new features, current functionality, and importance to the scene’s growth and development.

Here are your nominations for Best Software of 2009:

LittleGpTracker – The little LSDJ clone/son/replacer that could just kept going, with ports to the PSP and Dingoo platform, new features like soundfont support and an overall great rapport between its developer and users of one of the best up and coming music applications for portable systems.

Famitracker -  The best all around Nintendo tracker got support for additional expansion sound chips, and with the ability of the Powerpak to emulate these chips, it became even more useful as a tracker that can realistically and reliably enable playback on real hardware. FT will have to watch its back, however, with the release of Neil Baldwins NTRQ upcoming in 2010.

XPMCK – MML is slightly arcane for most of the composers in the international chipscene, but XPMCK’s developer has added bug fixes and new features to this stable and encompassing platform for developing music on various chip platforms.

Chipsounds -I can hear the sphincters of dozens of chiptune purists clenching in anger. However, Plogue and his staff need to be commended for their academic, accurate yet respectfully designed suite of sound chip emulators. Still early in its life, and not yet perfect, Chipsounds is a significant step forward for the chip music community in that a company would place so much effort in a venture seeking to balance commercial viability and easy of use with accuracy and authenticity.

LSDJ – Perhaps responsible, more than any other current application, for the current wave of chip music popularity, Mr. Johan Kotlinksi’s LSDJ saw in 2009 many fixes and features added to what many thought was already a finished stable product. Still highly influential and incredibly usable, here’s hoping for even more growth as the program marches past the 4.0 milestone