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In Nier: Automata there is a hacking mini-game which you do in the middle of character action combat. When you enter the mini-game, full orchestral track is rep

• jancsika 8y ago
  Ha, that must be pretty neat to hear the chiptune version. I've heard plenty of examples like what you mention with Devil May Cry. In fact, back in the day Strider for Sega Genesis had a grand reunion of themes in the final level that foreshadowed the sequence of fighting each boss from the previous levels. Just seems like the voice-stealing technique[1] could be really a really effective way to add emphasis to a big, climactic moment in a game with an orchestral soundtrack. I suppose the risk is that if it's not done artfully the player will just interpret it as jank and call the game devs ugly names. :( [1] Now that I think about it, maybe "voice stealing" isn't the correct term for this. With voice-stealing one starts with a static number of voices. Then when the synth player tries to add an additional voice the system typically drops the oldest sustained note (or even the oldest one that isn't the bass or percussion track to get fancy about it). Thus the system "steals" from a voice that had a note which already got its attack/decay time. But in those old NES games an entire melody or accompaniment voice gets dropped to accommodate the extra sprites. So voice stealing retains the same static number of voices to "imply" a greater number of voices. What I remember from those NES games was a reduction in the total number of voices to keep the game from freezing. Edit: clarification