Experiments in Videogame Audio, Series I: Wild Guns (SNES) 1/6

I've always had the urge to see classic videogames played to different tunes for some reason. I just learned that you can disable individual audio channels in ZSNES (keys F5 ~ F12), so I *had* to try this out!

I had been under the impression that all sound effects in SNES videogames were restricted to Channel 8, with music notes playing in Channels 1 through 7, but this exercise has proven me wrong. Some sound effects were missing with Channels 1 through 7 disabled, so it seems that if more than one sound effect is happening, the second/third/etc. effects are shooped into other channels. I'm beginning to wonder if the game engine assigns the sound effects to channels dynamically somehow, and whether this is a common practice across SNES games.

Music tracks...
#1. Jovette Rivera, "The Countdown" (Doom II Delta Q Delta Overclocked Remix album)
#2. Vurez, "New Mexican Thunderbird" (Overclocked Remix of T.Hawk's stage from Super Street Fighter II)
#3. Yasunori Mitsuda, "Battle" (Xenosaga OST)

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Wild
• Guns
• music
• technical
• classic
• gaming
• ZSNES
• channels

[pkwinner02]

when i record using zsnes's record feature, when i save or replay it it works as if i never disabled any sound channels. how do i record with sound channels disable ?

[FaustWolf]

IIRC, you'll need to press some of the "F" function keys at the top of your keyboard before starting the section you want to record. I think it's F5 through F12, with each one switching a single channel on or off.

[pkwinner02]

yes, i know how to disable them, but when i am recording ( not with a screen recorder, with the zsnes recorder ) when i play it back the music is normal. so is there a way to save the sound channel disableings to the video ?

[FaustWolf]

Oh, I just realized I'm not sure whether you're dumping AVI files or just watching a saved .zmv file in ZSNES. Be sure to turn off desired sound channels B4 dumping AVI files.

If you're watching a .zmv file in ZSNES, I think you're literally watching the game play itself in realtime again, according to the series of button presses you made while recording the .zmv. So the .zmv is going to use your current sound settings and not the sound settings you had on while recording the .zmv.

[pkwinner02]

so i turn off the desired sound channels whilst playing the dump the vid strait away ? basically what i want to do is be able to put the dumped video with the disable sound channles on youtube.

[FaustWolf]

Yeah, I've managed to do exactly that. I didn't have enough room to explain it above, but be sure to have your sound channels turned off both when recording and when dumping to AVI (be sure to have the "dump audio" checkbox selected when dumping video).

It might only matter that the sound channels are turned off while dumping though. In other words, it might be possible to record the .zmv with all sound on, and then disable the channels before dumping. I've never tried it that way though.

[ShinerCCC]

Cool idea. I bet pretty much everybody playing Diablo II and Starcraft have already done this too

[AeonRequiem]

Cool