"Slammin' Sam Miller" is restoring the soundtrack for Donkey Kong Country 1-3.

Due to hardware limitations of the time, the SNES console's audio output was heavily compressed. His restoration efforts seek to recreate the songs without compression, and "This was made possible by locating the sounds from workstation keyboards and drum machines such as the Korg Wavestation, Roland S770, and Roland R8, and plugging them into the music instruction data ripped from the game, plus a little mixing magic to create might have sounded like with the veil of 16bit compression lifted."

Check out the playlist of completed tracks here. He hasn't restored them all yet, but rest assured Aquatic Ambiance, Fear Factory, and Stickerbrush Symphony are ready. He also offers FLAC and MP3 downloads.

This is a huge one-two punch of goodness to me. It satisfies a nostalgia craving I never knew I had, and it also resonates with my continued (if slow!) foray into learning to play the keyboard. On that latter note, I've set up my MIDI controller and digital audio workstation to be able to play the original (compressed) instruments from these games (and other SNES classics) - but knowing more about the original hardware is really intriguing!!

Also, in the half hour since the above post, I've fallen down a rabbit hole in YouTube..may need one of you to check on me in a bit to ensure I make it out okay!

Cameron wrote:

Cameron wrote: Vert1 wrote: I had to Google this to make sure it wasn't a joke or something. I have no idea why this is in a Flintstones game but this is delightful! I just looked up the rest of the soundtrack and it's like if Aphex Twin made an SNES game. This is still a jam.

Please see attached 2020 annual renewal.

Stumbled upon Andrew Thompson, a musician/composer who, among writing/producing a pretty slammin' Latin album, has created some excellent orchestral covers of video game classics.





This cover of Mario Paint's Gnat Attack minigame is especially cool!

Fell down a rabbit hole, and found this interesting list of audio samples used by Earthbound.

This one especially, wow! Instant goosebumps, then laughter.

Cameron wrote:

Preng wrote: Fell down a rabbit hole, and found this interesting list of audio samples used by Earthbound. This one especially, wow! Instant goosebumps, then laughter. Wow, this is a cool list! Thanks for finding this. I always thought that sounded like the Little Rascals! Also impressive that they could take a two-second Beatles sample, loop it and make it sound incredibly creepy in-context (with "The Cliff That Time Forgot"). I'd also argue that the NES version of that song makes the Chuck Berry influence even more apparent.

Agreed, I had been previously aware of some of these, especially the Chuck Berry one, but this list had a few surprises (I'm still chuckling about the Beach Boys being morphed into the final dungeon music, also reappearing in Undertale's "Amalgam" track).

"Laughin' in the Dark" is also such a banger, probably my favorite random, tangible takeaway from the whole Moonside experience.

While not audio-related, here's another intriguing rabbit hole for ya - I'm not typically deeply interested in translation nuances, but considering Shigesato Itoi's significant presence for all written elements, it's a worthy exception.

A wicked retooling of Mega Man X's soundtrack using the Sega Genesis sound chip.