Software or programs used to make game music ?

JackB

New member
I really enjoy listening to video game music from the 1990's.

Whether it's the Sonic CD Soundtrack, Super Nintendo, Arcade Music, N64, Amiga, Sega Saturn Music.

I want to know, what programs or software was used to make the music ?

If anyone knows the software or program names, that's used to create the in game artwork and or cover art for above mentioned consoles. Plus if it can be run on a Windows 7 64 bit Computer, it would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for your help.
 
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I really enjoy listening to video game music from the 1990's.
Whether it's the Sonic CD Soundtrack, Super Nintendo, Arcade Music, N64, Amiga, Sega Saturn Music.

I want to know, what programs or software was used to make the music ?

Sonic CD was produced on redbook audio. It's standard studio work with pro gear.

Super Nintendo, you can rip the samples from the SPC and load them up and sequence them in the sequencer or tracker of your choice - ModPlug Tracker, SchismTracker, Psycle, or Renoise, to name a few trackers.

FamiTracker is a sequencer that creates native NSFs used on the original Nintendo. Other than that, I'm not aware of any builds that create native file formats. Most of the sequenced music for the systems you mentioned were done with proprietary authoring tools.

There is an end-user sequencer for Sega Saturn:

http://www.segagagadomain.com/saturn6/technomotor.htm

But this wasn't used in development to create any Saturn game music.

Most 90's era Arcade games were based on a Yamaha FM Synthesis chip as well as a DAC for effects and sometimes music sampling. You could achieve sounds of this nature by using a softsynth VSTi in the DAW of your choosing (Renoise and Psycle support these natively as well). Native Instruments FM7 is a good synth for this.

Amiga is the easiest one. Those are all tracker-based MOD files. Some trackers still output to this format. Namely, ModPlug Tracker - http://openmpt.org/

Side-note regarding your reference to N64 - if any great music was produced on this format, it was by creative means and not by benefit of the hardware. N64 was actually kind of a step down in the audio department from the Super Nintendo. SNES had a custom sound chip made by Sony which did all the wavetable synthesis processing (good thing since the SNES CPU runs at 4 mhz!). N64 has no sound chip/sound card. Everything is processed off of the CPU which means sound design competed for resource with graphics/game engine processing and which do think usually wins there?
 
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