Episode 10: The VRC6 (Famicom Sound Expansion) by Retro Game Audio published on 2016-04-18T12:52:36Z In our tenth episode, we discuss the VRC6 chip's expansion audio. It added three extra channels of sound, and was used in the original version of Castlevania III (Akumajou Densetsu), as well as Mouryo Senki Madara and Esper Dream 2. Genre Podcast Comment by hotdogbomb the nes version was one of my top favorite tracks as a kid 2019-09-21T23:26:22Z Comment by FLEXZiG Wild design!! 2017-08-07T00:42:26Z Comment by Dave Voyles - Indie Dev Podcast So glad you guys covered VRC6! 2016-08-04T01:26:23Z Comment by pingosimon Have you guys heard Kirby Pufocia's "CVIII no Densetsu or whatever"? It's a really good mashup of the 2a03 and VR6 soundtracks of CV3. https://kirbypufocia.bandcamp.com/album/cviii-no-densetsu-or-whatever 2016-05-11T03:51:18Z Comment by Eric Dude @1amowery: That's what I said! :p 2016-04-22T03:26:39Z Comment by Eric Dude So I was a week behind on podcast, and was kind of bummed because I knew the "name that game" track from the Maniac Mansion episode... but now I see that nobody has guessed it! Woo hoo, here I go: Shadowrun for Genesis! I remember playing this game with my friend several years ago, and that weird dance tune with the german word in it really stuck with me. 2016-04-21T03:24:50Z Comment by Crimson Ghost I spit out my Mountain Dew when I heard you guys mention me..lol As far as I know there is no difference in price between the two revisions. There is even some debate on how to identify them. I suspect they follow Nintendo's normal naming conventions as RevA or 00 is the first release and 01 is the second. I will have to dig out my copy and see which one I have. I heard that an easy way to test which build it is would be to try putting the Hamster in the microwave. That and the "Dead Dave" or "Ghost Dave" glitch. 2016-04-20T13:58:54Z Comment by Pegmode The SID 6581/8580 for the C64 can have up to 3 sawtooth waves. I know you guys are thinking more exclusively about video game consoles but the c64 is a good example of the use of a sawtooth wave on a sound chip. 2016-04-20T10:31:29Z Comment by Crimson Ghost Love that you mentioned the PowerPak. Love mine. Wanting to do the expansion audio mod to get that cv3 goodness. 2016-04-19T17:50:18Z Comment by iyatemu @veralovely: Funny enough, even though it's only given a passing glance in this episode, the CX5M (and 5M-II) is actually an MSX computer. Steve and I had quite an interesting conversation last night about this and what connection it *may have had* to the trend of external audio that I hope gets brought up, but it's mostly total speculation on my part. 2016-04-19T13:25:33Z Comment by iyatemu Oi, I'm not that bad am I? 2016-04-19T13:07:12Z Comment by Retro Game Audio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management_controller 2016-04-19T06:23:39Z Comment by lizchibi yes 2016-04-19T02:35:15Z Comment by viridianforge And subscribed just for that. 2016-04-18T16:12:43Z Comment by HUNRetroGeek Oh that's right, I HATE the dumbed down samples in the US version... This change is totally unjustified because they kept the laugh in the Epitaph track for both versions. And that laugh takes about 2kB, while all the drums together took about 700 something bytes. 2016-04-18T14:53:51Z Comment by Retro Game Audio @hunretrogeek: Ah, that's right! I did notice the laugh was the same in both, but failed to recognize how that being so much larger dwarfs the space saved by trimming the drum samples down. They could've just shortened the laugh instead. 2016-04-18T14:52:54Z Comment by HUNRetroGeek It's actually interesting, the saw wave is made with an accumulator again. The wave is made of 7 steps and every time your volume of choice is added to the saw accumulator (which is reset to 0 after the 7 steps to start the next wave cycle). The accumulator is 8-bit so one would assuem that the fidelity should be great. But actually no, because only the high 5 bits of the accumulator are sent to the audio mix. so if the accumulator was say hex: 8A, that is 1000 1010 in binary. You throw away the low 3 bits and 10001 remains. An interesting quirk is that if the volume is too much, the accumulator can overflow and the steps will go out of bounds and start from the bottom again to shape a wave like this: http://kepfeltoltes.hu/160418/saw_overflow_www.kepfeltoltes.hu_.png 2016-04-18T14:12:26Z Comment by HUNRetroGeek These non-music related tasks were enabling the use of more PRG (program) ROM than the standard 32kB and more CHR (character) ROM than the standard 8kB (which amounts to 512 tiles). That's what the two chips inside every cart have, one is all the game, and the rest is all the graphic tiles. The mappers allowed the console to see different parts of the ROM chip that was larger than the standard sizes. For example the simplest mapper to build would be to allow 64kB of PRG ROM. This setup is called "BNROM" and it's made by using a single 1-bit memory latch. This could toggle whether the first or second 32kB of the ROM chip is available to the system. Different parts of the game are stored in these separate chunks caled banks, so one might have all the music and the music engine, another one might have all the sprite stuctures and code that places the sprites at the right positions, another one could have all the collision detection and enemy AI, etc. 2016-04-18T13:31:43Z