7 ms·

“Just the Beginning of What We Can Do on Super Nintendo”

310 points by detcader 12y ago

matznerd 12y ago
When are they touring SF?
drawkbox 12y ago
There is a really good Synthwave / occasional SNES artist Mitch Murder from Sweden. Here some samples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hugowO0sSrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hugowO0sSrM (interceptor) or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WJT0YJwx-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WJT0YJwx-k (terminator theme) or soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/daataa https://soundcloud.com/daataa His Interceptor, Snow Crash (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uaJapdiR8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uaJapdiR8M), Nocturne (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giPm5SwlW0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giPm5SwlW0c), Remember When (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo4C9KpyCCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo4C9KpyCCo), Palmer's Arcade (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWWRged4EM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWWRged4EM0) and Ravaged Skies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lc5NFDKPqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lc5NFDKPqQ) tracks are some of my favorites. Great focused coding music.
- SolarUpNote 12y ago
  I'll love Mitch Murder forever for recreating the totally rad music from the classic Mr. T self-help video "Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWRbf-mUsyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWRbf-mUsyU
- mzs 12y ago
  MM is good, I'm a fan of Lazerhawk too myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpDn4-Na5co https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpDn4-Na5co Drove straight from NY to IL one day with that on repeat.
- noir_lord 12y ago
  If you like this stuff then checkout http://reddit.com/r/futuresynth http://reddit.com/r/futuresynth and http://redditplaylister.phoenixforgotten.com/ http://redditplaylister.phoenixforgotten.com/ to auto generate a playlist form an arbitrary number of subreddits. EDIT: by co-incidence Mitch Murder is right at the top at the moment :).
detcader 12y ago
Henry Homesweet had the first elix track ("Nu") in his 2014 Essential Chip Mix, which is indeed essential: https://soundcloud.com/henryhomesweet/essential-chip-mix-2014 https://soundcloud.com/henryhomesweet/essential-chip-mix-201...
- sowhatquestion 12y ago
  Good stuff, thanks for sharing!
- radiodario 12y ago
  Tom is the bomb
frou_dh 12y ago
Impressive audio. Back at the time, it struck me that the MegaDrive/Genesis had a real "harshness" to both its colour pallette and audio when compared to the SNES. Both had lots of great games of course.
- code_duck 12y ago
  The SNES was definitely more sophisticated than the Genesis in terms of video - total color palette is 32678 colors vs 512. Makes sense as it was released 2 years later.
  - m-photonic 12y ago
    It was released two years later, but all the upgrades were to more peripheral features like the palette and various special effects. They're both chewing through the same amount of memory each raster to draw the screen, which is the core of what each hardware system is designed around. It's an interesting contrast with NEC's Supergrafx system, an obscure upgrade to their better-known Turbografx-16, which was released some months prior to the SNES and was a much greater advance in terms of raw power. It uses two separate graphics chips which simultaneously read graphics data from separate banks of RAM, which allows a lot more to be displayed. It has twice the sprites, twice the graphics RAM, and can use up to twice the resolution as the SNES. However, it's not as "well-rounded" a system as the SNES and is simpler in various ways. Unfortunately the 5 or so games that were released for it didn't push the hardware much, so you won't be able to see much evidence of its prodigious capabilities, but they're there.
- zinkem 12y ago
  I'd actually love to see this done on a Genesis. The Genesis had an FM Synthesizer in it's sound chip, made by Yamaha. The Super Nintendo has a distinctive and pleasant sound that I like, but only outputs a 32khz signal. I really like projects like these using old sound chips as instruments.
  - bane 12y ago
    There's actually a great VSTi based on the Genesis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdlj8Vjof6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdlj8Vjof6c If you're into FM synthesis in general, the Android/iPhone app Caustic has a fantastic FM synth (there's free Windows and OS X versions of it as well).
jamesmiller5 12y ago
I first heard of cTrix from the gamewave podcast, episode 51. http://www.gamewavepodcast.com/episodes.html http://www.gamewavepodcast.com/episodes.html His live performance of "Come along" is quite impressive. The "Viva Amiga" film that is sampled hasn't been released yet.
ddingus 12y ago
Nice!! I was unaware of this. Great effort, and fun chip tunes.
wodenokoto 12y ago
What do we know today that we didn't know back then that makes these optimizations possible?
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  We don't. Well, people have had time to find or reverse engineer the specs for some of these weird chips. But also we have cheap, widely available electronics development hardware. An eeprom programmer can be had for under $100, or built with cheap parts. Programmers used to cost thousands of dollars, and might only support a few platforms.
- Lerc 12y ago
  Far less than you might expect. Most aspects of these things were known by someone. The aspect that makes things special is not the pieces of knowledge individually but when several critical pieces arrive together in the right mind. Much of what can be achieved now on vintage systems is due to the internet enabling the knowledge to distribute.
  - yupferris 12y ago
    so true!! :)
- byuu 12y ago
  We already know how to stream raw 16-bit uncompressed samples at 32KHz [1]; so we have just shy of CD-quality audio already. There's really no way to make things sound better than we have now. The remaining enhancements are to optimize things: produce better sound while using less ROM space, use less CPU power, and be able to still run as many simultaneous sound effects as possible. It took a long time to perfect because it's nuanced, but it's not a very complex chip: it's around 20KB of C code to emulate its 32-stage state machine. The only part of the SNES DSP that we don't fully emulate right now is the slight decay rate (in the nanosecond range) involved when the MUTE flag is enabled on a channel. And that's mostly because it's an analog component and we don't have the right people to analyze that sort of thing properly. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_60V8UdYEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_60V8UdYEY
enneff 12y ago
cTrix is one of the most accomplished Chiptune musicians. His recordings are great, but his live shows are where he really shines. This live set from Blip Festival a couple of years ago is exemplary of his best performances: https://m.soundcloud.com/ctrix/ctrix-live-blip-festival-nyc https://m.soundcloud.com/ctrix/ctrix-live-blip-festival-nyc
leeoniya 12y ago
some of the stuff made on the z80 [1] sound chip is killer http://freemusicarchive.org/music/download/f7b05ff1cb6ed7425258dfb7d6bd05d42832cc37 http://freemusicarchive.org/music/download/f7b05ff1cb6ed7425... http://freemusicarchive.org/music/download/6b16b446d8b0b871730d918a7c8cfe270a4d51fa http://freemusicarchive.org/music/download/6b16b446d8b0b8717... much more: http://www.8bitpeoples.com/ http://www.8bitpeoples.com/ [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80
- kayamon 12y ago
  Z80 is just a CPU, it doesn't have a sound chip.
  - leeoniya 12y ago
    ah sry, i remember the z80 being mentioned in that context. maybe it was ZX Spectrum's Yamaha AY-3-8912. http://www.worldofspectrum.org/projectay/gdmusic.htm http://www.worldofspectrum.org/projectay/gdmusic.htm
pthreads 12y ago
Damn you Simpsons! The only thing I could think of when I read this was "Hi Super Nintendo Chalmers!"
dividuum 12y ago
It's amazing what's possible on old hardware. My favorite example is probably the remake of the wonderful second reality demo. The original was released in 1993 for the PC (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA). And then there's the C64 version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gbnlho7w3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gbnlho7w3U) which was released 1997.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  That C64 version blows my mind. They managed to reproduce every one of the effects, granted at lower resolution and framerate, but on a machine that's probably less than one-fiftieth as powerful as the ones used for the original demo. Amazing.
- walkingolof 12y ago
  Then you will like Edge of Disgrace, probably the best C64 demo out there... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kJz_XfbxX0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kJz_XfbxX0
jader201 12y ago
As cool as the technology behind this is, I'm going to be that guy that is very glad the soundtracks from classic SNES games sound the way they do vs. how this demo sounded. I guess the point of this is more about how to push the SNES hardware to its limits in ways never done -- and again, that's super cool. But give me the likes of Chrono Trigger, FFIV/VI, and Super Castlevania IV over this any day.
- rian 12y ago
  it's art, there's no single metric for quality. you can like them both in different ways. it's not a competition. try something new.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  And I'm unimpressed by the technology but dig the music! It takes all kinds. I like dubstep when people put some thought into it and aren't just lazily fiddling with an LFO, but to be fair, getting into breakcore as a teenager might have permanently ruined my taste.
tomphoolery 12y ago
It's pretty cool that cTrix has captured and uploaded these demos for the world to see. Here's his channel where some other elix demos can be seen. "Smash It" is pretty sweet! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgG3Nvp86j1WaHaLwjoVJZg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgG3Nvp86j1WaHaLwjoVJZg
gpcz 12y ago
In the early 90s during the era of game copiers, people made crack intros for Super Nintendo games and wrote SNES demos. I've been a fan of their music for years since zophar.net used to have an SPC collection (I can't find it on the zophar.net music page anymore, but you can find it from the archive.org version at https://web.archive.org/web/20070306011147/http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070306011147/http://www.zophar... -- it's called "Public Domain SPC music"). An easier-to-access example is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMOaN9SrR0M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMOaN9SrR0M . As a lot of the work was done by pseudonymous people and it involved underground scenes, it's hard to find reliable history about these groups. However, there's enough homebrew SNES music from that era that I wonder if someone wrote a tracker.
slaction 12y ago
This shit looks worse than normal SNES games. Great work.
skrebbel 12y ago
> elix is a two person combo comprised of cTrix, a chiptuner who hails from the land down under, and ferris, a Norwegian who creates EDM that spans multiple genres, including chiptunes. Minor nitpick, but Ferris is an American who lives in Norway.
- yupferris 12y ago
  yep, this is true :) I tweeted at the author about that at least
everyone 12y ago
I think after spending many many hours as a youth listening to music played on a synth with a particular character and range of timbres (while playing games) you become inured to it. Music made using that synth just sounds particularly pleasing. I didnt have a nintendo (so these demos dont really have that effect on me) but I did have a C64, so any music made with the sid chip seems to sound better to me than it ought perhaps.
- edeion 12y ago
  Tangent: I was recently wondering the same about pipe organ music. Its music has a huge effect on me, wonderful sensations that sometimes cover all my body. Never found anything to read about these sensations nor about the impact of exposure to a given kind of music at a young age on how deeply you get to like it.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
personlurking 12y ago
Reading this led me to want to know if there are still people working on new games for the SNES (by hacking the system). Here's a 2014 article on this, in case anyone else is interested. http://animalnewyork.com/2014/meet-people-making-new-games-atari-super-nintendo-virtual-boy/ http://animalnewyork.com/2014/meet-people-making-new-games-a...
yupferris 12y ago
yo, ferris here; never thought I'd see this stuff on hacker news! Thanks for all of the kind words! (and some of the less kind ones too, hehe :D) P.S. ALL YOUR SNES ARE BELONG TO US =D
yupferris 12y ago
also to anyone who wants to hear more about this stuff, I'll be giving a talk about it at NVScene/GTC next month :D http://nv.scene.org/2015/speakers/#ferris http://nv.scene.org/2015/speakers/#ferris for more info ^^

310 points by detcader 12y ago

When are they touring SF?

There is a really good Synthwave / occasional SNES artist Mitch Murder from Sweden. Here some samples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hugowO0sSrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hugowO0sSrM (interceptor) or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WJT0YJwx-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WJT0YJwx-k (terminator theme) or soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/daataa https://soundcloud.com/daataa His Interceptor, Snow Crash (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uaJapdiR8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uaJapdiR8M), Nocturne (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giPm5SwlW0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giPm5SwlW0c), Remember When (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo4C9KpyCCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo4C9KpyCCo), Palmer's Arcade (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWWRged4EM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWWRged4EM0) and Ravaged Skies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lc5NFDKPqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lc5NFDKPqQ) tracks are some of my favorites. Great focused coding music.

SolarUpNote 12y ago
I'll love Mitch Murder forever for recreating the totally rad music from the classic Mr. T self-help video "Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWRbf-mUsyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWRbf-mUsyU
mzs 12y ago
MM is good, I'm a fan of Lazerhawk too myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpDn4-Na5co https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpDn4-Na5co Drove straight from NY to IL one day with that on repeat.
noir_lord 12y ago
If you like this stuff then checkout http://reddit.com/r/futuresynth http://reddit.com/r/futuresynth and http://redditplaylister.phoenixforgotten.com/ http://redditplaylister.phoenixforgotten.com/ to auto generate a playlist form an arbitrary number of subreddits. EDIT: by co-incidence Mitch Murder is right at the top at the moment :).

detcader 12y ago

Henry Homesweet had the first elix track ("Nu") in his 2014 Essential Chip Mix, which is indeed essential: https://soundcloud.com/henryhomesweet/essential-chip-mix-2014 https://soundcloud.com/henryhomesweet/essential-chip-mix-201...

sowhatquestion 12y ago
Good stuff, thanks for sharing!
radiodario 12y ago
Tom is the bomb

frou_dh 12y ago

Impressive audio. Back at the time, it struck me that the MegaDrive/Genesis had a real "harshness" to both its colour pallette and audio when compared to the SNES. Both had lots of great games of course.

code_duck 12y ago
The SNES was definitely more sophisticated than the Genesis in terms of video - total color palette is 32678 colors vs 512. Makes sense as it was released 2 years later.
- m-photonic 12y ago
  It was released two years later, but all the upgrades were to more peripheral features like the palette and various special effects. They're both chewing through the same amount of memory each raster to draw the screen, which is the core of what each hardware system is designed around. It's an interesting contrast with NEC's Supergrafx system, an obscure upgrade to their better-known Turbografx-16, which was released some months prior to the SNES and was a much greater advance in terms of raw power. It uses two separate graphics chips which simultaneously read graphics data from separate banks of RAM, which allows a lot more to be displayed. It has twice the sprites, twice the graphics RAM, and can use up to twice the resolution as the SNES. However, it's not as "well-rounded" a system as the SNES and is simpler in various ways. Unfortunately the 5 or so games that were released for it didn't push the hardware much, so you won't be able to see much evidence of its prodigious capabilities, but they're there.
zinkem 12y ago
I'd actually love to see this done on a Genesis. The Genesis had an FM Synthesizer in it's sound chip, made by Yamaha. The Super Nintendo has a distinctive and pleasant sound that I like, but only outputs a 32khz signal. I really like projects like these using old sound chips as instruments.
- bane 12y ago
  There's actually a great VSTi based on the Genesis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdlj8Vjof6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdlj8Vjof6c If you're into FM synthesis in general, the Android/iPhone app Caustic has a fantastic FM synth (there's free Windows and OS X versions of it as well).

jamesmiller5 12y ago

I first heard of cTrix from the gamewave podcast, episode 51. http://www.gamewavepodcast.com/episodes.html http://www.gamewavepodcast.com/episodes.html His live performance of "Come along" is quite impressive. The "Viva Amiga" film that is sampled hasn't been released yet.

ddingus 12y ago

Nice!! I was unaware of this. Great effort, and fun chip tunes.

wodenokoto 12y ago

What do we know today that we didn't know back then that makes these optimizations possible?

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
We don't. Well, people have had time to find or reverse engineer the specs for some of these weird chips. But also we have cheap, widely available electronics development hardware. An eeprom programmer can be had for under $100, or built with cheap parts. Programmers used to cost thousands of dollars, and might only support a few platforms.
Lerc 12y ago
Far less than you might expect. Most aspects of these things were known by someone. The aspect that makes things special is not the pieces of knowledge individually but when several critical pieces arrive together in the right mind. Much of what can be achieved now on vintage systems is due to the internet enabling the knowledge to distribute.
- yupferris 12y ago
  so true!! :)
byuu 12y ago
We already know how to stream raw 16-bit uncompressed samples at 32KHz [1]; so we have just shy of CD-quality audio already. There's really no way to make things sound better than we have now. The remaining enhancements are to optimize things: produce better sound while using less ROM space, use less CPU power, and be able to still run as many simultaneous sound effects as possible. It took a long time to perfect because it's nuanced, but it's not a very complex chip: it's around 20KB of C code to emulate its 32-stage state machine. The only part of the SNES DSP that we don't fully emulate right now is the slight decay rate (in the nanosecond range) involved when the MUTE flag is enabled on a channel. And that's mostly because it's an analog component and we don't have the right people to analyze that sort of thing properly. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_60V8UdYEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_60V8UdYEY

enneff 12y ago

cTrix is one of the most accomplished Chiptune musicians. His recordings are great, but his live shows are where he really shines. This live set from Blip Festival a couple of years ago is exemplary of his best performances: https://m.soundcloud.com/ctrix/ctrix-live-blip-festival-nyc https://m.soundcloud.com/ctrix/ctrix-live-blip-festival-nyc

leeoniya 12y ago

some of the stuff made on the z80 [1] sound chip is killer http://freemusicarchive.org/music/download/f7b05ff1cb6ed7425258dfb7d6bd05d42832cc37 http://freemusicarchive.org/music/download/f7b05ff1cb6ed7425... http://freemusicarchive.org/music/download/6b16b446d8b0b871730d918a7c8cfe270a4d51fa http://freemusicarchive.org/music/download/6b16b446d8b0b8717... much more: http://www.8bitpeoples.com/ http://www.8bitpeoples.com/ [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80

kayamon 12y ago
Z80 is just a CPU, it doesn't have a sound chip.
- leeoniya 12y ago
  ah sry, i remember the z80 being mentioned in that context. maybe it was ZX Spectrum's Yamaha AY-3-8912. http://www.worldofspectrum.org/projectay/gdmusic.htm http://www.worldofspectrum.org/projectay/gdmusic.htm

pthreads 12y ago

Damn you Simpsons! The only thing I could think of when I read this was "Hi Super Nintendo Chalmers!"

dividuum 12y ago

It's amazing what's possible on old hardware. My favorite example is probably the remake of the wonderful second reality demo. The original was released in 1993 for the PC (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA). And then there's the C64 version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gbnlho7w3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gbnlho7w3U) which was released 1997.

PhasmaFelis 12y ago
That C64 version blows my mind. They managed to reproduce every one of the effects, granted at lower resolution and framerate, but on a machine that's probably less than one-fiftieth as powerful as the ones used for the original demo. Amazing.
walkingolof 12y ago
Then you will like Edge of Disgrace, probably the best C64 demo out there... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kJz_XfbxX0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kJz_XfbxX0

jader201 12y ago

As cool as the technology behind this is, I'm going to be that guy that is very glad the soundtracks from classic SNES games sound the way they do vs. how this demo sounded. I guess the point of this is more about how to push the SNES hardware to its limits in ways never done -- and again, that's super cool. But give me the likes of Chrono Trigger, FFIV/VI, and Super Castlevania IV over this any day.

rian 12y ago
it's art, there's no single metric for quality. you can like them both in different ways. it's not a competition. try something new.
ANTSANTS 12y ago
And I'm unimpressed by the technology but dig the music! It takes all kinds. I like dubstep when people put some thought into it and aren't just lazily fiddling with an LFO, but to be fair, getting into breakcore as a teenager might have permanently ruined my taste.

tomphoolery 12y ago

It's pretty cool that cTrix has captured and uploaded these demos for the world to see. Here's his channel where some other elix demos can be seen. "Smash It" is pretty sweet! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgG3Nvp86j1WaHaLwjoVJZg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgG3Nvp86j1WaHaLwjoVJZg

gpcz 12y ago

In the early 90s during the era of game copiers, people made crack intros for Super Nintendo games and wrote SNES demos. I've been a fan of their music for years since zophar.net used to have an SPC collection (I can't find it on the zophar.net music page anymore, but you can find it from the archive.org version at https://web.archive.org/web/20070306011147/http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070306011147/http://www.zophar... -- it's called "Public Domain SPC music"). An easier-to-access example is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMOaN9SrR0M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMOaN9SrR0M . As a lot of the work was done by pseudonymous people and it involved underground scenes, it's hard to find reliable history about these groups. However, there's enough homebrew SNES music from that era that I wonder if someone wrote a tracker.

slaction 12y ago

This shit looks worse than normal SNES games. Great work.

skrebbel 12y ago

> elix is a two person combo comprised of cTrix, a chiptuner who hails from the land down under, and ferris, a Norwegian who creates EDM that spans multiple genres, including chiptunes. Minor nitpick, but Ferris is an American who lives in Norway.

yupferris 12y ago
yep, this is true :) I tweeted at the author about that at least

everyone 12y ago

I think after spending many many hours as a youth listening to music played on a synth with a particular character and range of timbres (while playing games) you become inured to it. Music made using that synth just sounds particularly pleasing. I didnt have a nintendo (so these demos dont really have that effect on me) but I did have a C64, so any music made with the sid chip seems to sound better to me than it ought perhaps.

edeion 12y ago
Tangent: I was recently wondering the same about pipe organ music. Its music has a huge effect on me, wonderful sensations that sometimes cover all my body. Never found anything to read about these sensations nor about the impact of exposure to a given kind of music at a young age on how deeply you get to like it.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

personlurking 12y ago

Reading this led me to want to know if there are still people working on new games for the SNES (by hacking the system). Here's a 2014 article on this, in case anyone else is interested. http://animalnewyork.com/2014/meet-people-making-new-games-atari-super-nintendo-virtual-boy/ http://animalnewyork.com/2014/meet-people-making-new-games-a...

yupferris 12y ago

yo, ferris here; never thought I'd see this stuff on hacker news! Thanks for all of the kind words! (and some of the less kind ones too, hehe :D) P.S. ALL YOUR SNES ARE BELONG TO US =D

yupferris 12y ago

also to anyone who wants to hear more about this stuff, I'll be giving a talk about it at NVScene/GTC next month :D http://nv.scene.org/2015/speakers/#ferris http://nv.scene.org/2015/speakers/#ferris for more info ^^