Game:

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (1989)

Duration: 1:44

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36

Comparing the different versions of Castlevania 3 stage 1 theme using the wonderful visualizer NSFPresenter, by nununoisy.

The original Japanese version Akumajō Densetsu utilizes an expansion chip VRC6 included in the cartridge. This chip adds 2 additional pulse channels and a sawtooth channel, in addition to the default audio capabilities of the Famicom's 2A03 chip. Original composition by Hidenori Maezawa (who helped design the VRC6 chip), Jun Funahashi, and Yukie Morimoto.

Western NES consoles could not support expansion audio chips inside cartridges, so Konami needed to convert this music to utilize the basic audio channels included in the console's default 2A03 chip, which includes 2 pulse channels, a Triangle channel, a Noise channel, and a DPCM channel for sample playback. This conversion was handled by Yoshinori Sasaki, giving us the version familiar to players of the North American Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.

Colors in this visualizer are determined by the duty cycle used in the pulse channels. I ran both versions through the visualizer at default color settings, yet the output colors and waveform shapes in the 2 versions are different. That's what excites me about this video comparison: it proves so clearly that the different arrangements of Castlevania 3 are indeed fully completely different arrangements-- it's not like they just subtracted VRC6 to make the Western version. It is substantially different work in terms of how it's arranged on 2A03.

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