Final Fantasy VII ~ Let the Battles Begin! / Those Who Fight (YM2612 + SN76489 Arrangement)
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A Genesis-styled cover of Let the Battles Begin! / Those Who Fight, the standard fight theme from Final Fantasy VII.
A few notes about the arrangement:
This is undoubtedly the most technically impressive piece I have ever made to date. I think it definitely shows how much I've grown since my first uploads a bit over a year ago. Very proud of this one.
Another content ID copyright claim! I would hope so, I put a lot of effort into making it faithful to the original ;)
A funny thing about when I make all my arrangements is that I am always itching to hear the finished work by the time I'm a third done. I think about it all the time, listen to whatever I have completed constantly, and-when working on it during an extended break like right now-I go to bed and wake up earlier (which is pretty amazing, knowing my summer sleep schedule of 2 AM - 12 PM). As a result, most of my arrangements go from start to finish in no more than three days. This one took all three, from the morning of the 15th until evening of 17th.
Let the Battles Begin! has been in various stages of production for a long time now. Even back when I arranged Fight On! nearly a year ago, I knew I eventually wanted to cover both of these battle themes. I started working on a version over my 2022 winter break, but wasn't happy with how it was shaping up. One of my biggest gripes was the terrible sounding timpani patch I was relying on at the time, so with the new patch from Albergarri788 I felt it was worth giving another shot. As soon as I had put a few hours into it, I knew I had something special. Were I to do it again, though, I would definitely double the number of rows per pattern from 48 to 96 to fit an entire phrase in a single pattern.
While Fight On! has a rock vibe to it, Let the Battles Begin! is definitely meant for orchestra. I've never worked on anything quite like it until now. It was definitely a challenge to fit as many voices into my limited number of channels (I think at one point I was attempting to fit 11 voices into 8 channels!). I did what I could to give each voice at least one FM channel, but with so many it was inevitable that some of the supporting parts would be split across FM and SN. However, I think the square waves ended up sounding quite good. One thing I managed to rein in was my temptation to have every channel playing something at all times; while it may sound a bit better with than without, there's not much space to swell and make things sound grand (very important for this piece) if everything's already used up.
I was definitely looking forward to using all my favorite brass patches for this arrangement, including my favorite horn from a game that rhymes with "the news". I can tell the difference between the sound of a trumpet and a tuba, but not so much the difference between trombones, french horns, and some other brass. As a result it is certainly possible (probable) I made a baritone patch play a trombone part, or something like that.
One thing I tried in this arrangement that I haven't done before is to use volume slides (0AXX) in place of OFFs to achieve a similar effect. To me, it sounded more natural for the volume to (quickly) shrink to nothing, rather than instantly stop. (The instrument patches do have a bit of release programmed directly in, so it's not TRULY instant, but it pretty close). I liked the way it sounded with slides over OFFs, so I used it throughout. Definitely something I should remember in the future when trying to make realistic sounding arrangements. Also used was a lot of panning effects (08XX) and channel switching.
A fun fact: the metal clanging sound is a sample used in Donkey Kong Country ("Coster_jump") with some post-processing.
I was hoping for a setting in Corrscope to allow me to mark left and right panning with different colors, like how Deflemask's built-in oscilloscope does it. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any support for a feature like that right now. Thinking it over a bit though, I realized that while it's handy to see the colors change while working on the arrangement, it's very distracting to look at on its own. Then I realized I could color the channels to match the limit and time meters of the HUD, and I was totally OK with not changing for panning.
If you are a fan of covers like this, feel free to check out my previous works! I like a variety of games, so there is a decent selection.
If you have any suggestions or tips about the composition please let me know, I'm looking to improve!
Gameplay footage by CreativeEly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m57Uz6gkrs
WAV download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LH7bBCYkLAyv08Bb9Olorbo8qqMQY64r/view?usp=sharing
.vgm: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cdAsq3kOzVQDVqw8oNgGgj-au0FiEA9F/view?usp=share_link
.dmf: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQ5c-X36rdbgNVa0KLADTXURcrq3RnBD/view?usp=share_link