First Battle [8-bit GameBoy] | Pokémon Burning Colosseum

Channel:

TriteHexagon

Subscribers:

1,350

Published on September 30, 2023 12:00:00 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TifyepwSrQk

Duration: 2:44

763 views

49

SUBSCRIBE for more 8-bit remixes and other content every week!

As the name implies (although this song is also known as Friendly Battle), this is the first of the many battle themes in Colosseum, so I find it fitting that it's the first one I'm releasing. It also showcases a certain philosophy/challenge I imposed on myself with the battle themes: try to use the wave channel for the melody. This in theory shouldn't be that outrageous, since most of the original instruments don't have fade out and there are a lot of them in each song. However, like in any other situation with the wave channel as the lead instrument, it forces me to work around its limitations and also spend a significant amount of time coming up with instruments themselves.

This song specifically wasn't extremely hard to arrange, with all the parts falling more of less neatly into each channel. But before I decided on the wave channel as the melody, I tried all the combinations of the channels playing different parts, just to see how they played out, which took a significant amount of time. In the end, none of those experiments worked out particularly well, mainly due to the bass being a bunch of quick notes, which the wave channel doesn't like to do.

The real issue this song posed was the instrument for the distortion guitar, which subbornly refused to sound good if I sampled it directly from the original game's instruments. In the end I resorted to "artifically" making a wave that is a combination of a triangle and 3 pulses of different widths, which I think add a lot of interesting frequencies and sharpness to the sound, which the triangle kinda muffles a bit. That instrument is also shared with another battle theme, and making it work for both was the toughest part.

In the way, I really like how this sounds, although it is slightly "spicy". But that's also the point of the challenge.

Thanks to everyone involved in the pokecrystal disassembly project for making this possible.
Links:
* Twitter:   / tritehexagon