The Hotdog Laserhouse

Rusty Ruin Zone (original MIDI by King Meteor)
Jun Senoue

Had this one sitting around for a while, just never felt like taking the time to render it. I’ve always had an attachment to this version of the song, so here we are.

I probably did the most “tweaking” to this song than I have in quite a while. The tempo’s a bit slower (110bpm down to 105), I changed a couple of drum fills, etc.

Casino Night Zone 2P (Original MIDI version)
Masato Nakamura

For those who are curious, this is what yesterday’s MP3 sounded like in its original MIDI form before I overlaid effects and better instruments. At least, this is what it sounds like on my hardware, anyway - I know King Meteor composes for Yamaha XG Synths specifically, so it probably sounds a little better to him.

I always feel kind of lame for just rendering out somebody else’s MIDIs to MP3, because it never feels like I do a ton to the songs to make them sound nicer, but I think the comparison here speaks for itself.

Casino Night Zone (2P)
Masato Nakamura

Decided I needed to take a break from game creation today. I just finished Orbit Revolved yesterday, and I need some “me time” before diving in to the final game. This is what came out of that.

Original MIDI by King Meteor.

Triceratops Trot
Jonathan Dunn

Since I was handed that 8gb microSD I’ve been re-exporting my music library to it. In its original 3gb capacity, I had to pick a very small selection of songs and rendered them out as 80kbps OGG files. I’ve spent the last 24 hours re-sifting through my music library and rendering them out at 112kbps OGG files. Even though 8gb is “a lot of space” compared to what I used to have, it’s not enough to hold my entire library, so I have to be choosy and still compress my music a little (that being said, I’ve been told 80kbps OGG is roughly equivalent to 128kbps MP3, so 112kbps OGG is probably in the 160kbps-180kbps MP3 range).

What this has lead is me falling in love with certain songs all over again, such as this one from Jurassic Park for the SNES. You may notice I also filter my music a little bit - I use a professional-grade EQ to “enhance” the song just a tad. I don’t like to spread around these versions because EQing these songs is strictly a just-for-me kind of thing and I don’t want to contaminate the pool so to speak (for reference, this is what the original song sounds like - chances are only audiophiles will be able to detect any major differences).

But yes this is longwinded way for me to say, “man, Jurassic Park for the SNES had some kickin’ tunes.”

Planet Wisp (Arrangement)
Original MIDI by Aivi Tran and Dave Harris

So as if my productivity wasn’t already shot today, I was given some hand-me-down electronics and spent most of the day fooling around with them - filling up an 8gb MicroSD card with higher quality versions of my music library, and playing with a tablet of questionable quality (it can barely even play MP4s I grab off Youtube).

The side effect of revisiting my music library is going back to old songs I’ve rendered in FL Studio. Such as this one. One day I will learn how to do drums and not embarrass myself - but at least the drums are a little better than my original attempt.

And now, off to bed while these files convert.

Ocean Base: Act 1
Original MIDI: King Meteor

I told myself yesterday that today was going to be a “no internet, all work” day but then I ended up sleeping in super late and now I’m in one of those “I can’t focus on anything” kind of moods. Despite this, I managed to focus long enough to churn this out on a whim.

Still have no idea how to do guitar.

Now to try and do real work, I guess.

Forest Frenzy
Dave Wise

Wait, is Tumblr seriously going to let me post two MP3s in one day?

Here’s something I just rendered out of FL Studio - another Donkey Kong Country song, this time for Forest Frenzy. I think it’s got a ways to go before I’ll be satisfied with it, but it’s a strong start.

Techno Hill Zone - Act 2
AJ Freda (MP3 by Ryan Bloom)

Cinossu threw down the gauntlet earlier on Twitter - I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but it used to be that we would basically bounce MP3s off of one another back in an IRC chat we hung out in. Eventually that stopped as the IRC channel slowly died out and we more or less went our separate ways.

Of course, it also happened that he got way better at this kind of stuff and my growth process was considerably slower. Which is why when he throws down the gauntlet these days, I feel a bit dwarfed by his presence. But in a way, it’s a good challenge - it sets a bar for me to strive towards.

So here’s mine. It’s Techno HIll Zone from Sonic Robo-Blast 2. His MP3 is over here. He didn’t use the original MIDI as a base, so his sounds a lot more complex and frankly pretty awesome because he basically remixed it. I, on the other hand, still used the base MIDI, which I decided on using Act 2’s because it has a bit more meat to it than Act 1. The original idea was to try and blend Act 1 and 2 together but that would require me rendering both songs to sound the same way and given I haven’t touched FL Studio since July, how I handle EQ and reverb means Act 1 and 2 sounded different enough that they couldn’t meld together properly.

All things considered, however, I think I did a pretty good job.

Jungle Japes
David Wise (Original MIDI by King Meteor)

Idly thumbing through MP3s I’ve done while putting off installing Windows on that new HDD. This one’s a good six months old, but I find myself going back and listening to it a lot because I spent a really long time tweaking it. It started out as one of those MP3s I never though I would ever get to sound right but over time pieces of it started falling in to place as I got better instruments to play with and very, very slowly learned how to use FL Studio better.

I think it’s the first time I’ve really pulled off jazzy brass to a satisfactory level, the drums sound awesome (and they usually don’t, for me), it’s just a great version of the song. I love the crap out of it and I think I actually prefer my version of Jungle Japes here to the one they used in Donkey Kong Country Returns - though I am obviously a little bias.

It’s up on my Tindeck, just click here and it’ll take you to a page where you can download it for yourself.