Month: February 2009

  • GameSetWatch Interviews Classic Composer Hiroyuki Iwatsuki

    iwatsuki_composer

    GSW has an interesting interview with classic and current composer Hiroyuki Iwatsuki, who worked on games for The NES, the SNES, and more recently XBOX 360. The interview disucsses some of the difficulties composers had on the older hardware, and compares and contrasts it to today’s modern games. An excerpt:

    GSW: What are some of the important differences between composing for the XBox 360 compared with your work on the 16-bit Super Nintendo?

    Iwatsuki: The biggest difference between the Super Famicom and the Xbox 360 is the difference in memory. You could almost fit the contents of a Super Famicom cart within the memory space allotted to the music of a single Xbox 360 game. For Omega Five it adds up to a few megabytes because of the high quality of the recorded sounds. The Xbox 360 uses 48 kHz sound output, so naturally we were using those specifications. In retro mode, we consciously lowered the sound source to between 12 and 16 kHz, then rendered these files at 48 kHz to give it an antique quality. Even the retro tracks are large files, which is the sort of thing you could not get away with on the Super Famicom. Back then we were forced to be inventive and make sacrifices on sound quality so that the hardware could handle it.

    Read it.

  • Introducing the Flickr Pool

    flickr_logo_gammav5989914Out of a Lack of a better resource to link to, TCTD has created an official FLICKR POOL.You can view some images over on the right sidebar now.

    The goals of this are pretty simple. The pool intends to highlight:

    1. Documents of Performances like chip shows, gallery openings and other assorted confrontational mayhem.

    2. Artistic creations, such as pixel art, album covers, gallery works, etc.

    3. Cool Hardware mods that are unique and special, think arduino, c64 mods, atari chips in casio keyboards etc.

    What is it not for?

    1. Lame pshop jokes

    2. Your hair

    3. Your crayola’d gameboy mod

    4.  Your wack mspaint ep cover.

    Anyone may join, so sign up today and lets make it interesting!

  • A Very Special Valentine’s message from Trilobit

    NAB IT

    Thx b00daw

  • 8BC Tracks of the Week (2/1/09-2/7/09)

    logoI just realized that not one song I’m about to feature here made last week’s 8bitcollective Top 10 Liked Songs list. This was not intentional. However, the result is a nice new list of tracks that most of you apparently haven’t heard yet. Enjoy these:

    ogge – “hot water”

    Peter Swimm was astounded I had never heard of this guy before. That being said, you now know that I didn’t pick this track based on ogge’s solid reputation. The beat is as hot as the title says the water is. The leads are boiling. Don’t just dip your toe in, DIVE.

    exileFaker – “existential quantifier”

    “First chip track I’ve ever managed to finish.” This chipper took the SOS Band’s advice of “take your time, do it right.” N00bs everywhere: FOLLOW SUIT! Great programming, slick leads.

    Maskodling – “Studsbolls Trauma”

    This is the wackiest DS-10 track I’ve ever heard. And pretty elaborate to boot. This is such a feel-good track the only trauma caused is the blow to your ego once you realize your own DS-10 skillz pale in comparison.

    plasticSquirrel – “the haberdashery murders”

    This is some visceral shit right here. Reminds me of the time I chugged a few Mickey’s while at a Wolf Eyes show then rode home at 2AM listening to Disco Volante.

    486 – “White Lightning”

    Man, everybody really steps it up for their 48 hour challenges, don’t they? My brother-in-law usually has a stash of this particular brand of moonshine and I can’t wait to crank this fucker up and guzzle some of that “powerful stuff. ”

    Nods:

    Sparkyboy – “Blizzard”

    Nintendude – “Burst”

    kuryakin – “Rad”

    surasshu – “Truth (NES cover version)”

    chalices of the past – “Firstfrost”

    (edit: the track “Wargames” previously listed is by artist Partick Wolf and was uploaded to 8BC without his permission)

    And as always for those of you considering uploading a new track to 8bc, remember these wise words: QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY, SHOULD BE YOUR MAIN OBJECTIVE.

  • BOOM

    Say hello to our new little friend designed by Kef.