I Converted the Entire Pilotwings 64 Soundtrack to MIDI
24You can request the MIDI to any song (or the entire soundtrack) by sending me a DM on Discord (username: superjet_spade)
If you've seen one of my recent posts on Bluesky or if you've been on my Discord server in the recent days, you'll have known that me and my family had to move to another place due to an eviction notice we had in the middle of January. Because of that, I wasn't able to work on any music. Before we moved, I decided to embark on a side project. On my second channel, a pastime I have been doing since the end of 2022 is converting songs from video game formats (such as 2SF, GSF, and USF) to MIDI and then editing them with Domino. I decided to convert the entire soundtrack of Pilotwings 64 to MIDI. I usually share these on my second channel, but I decided to post this one here.
After converting the songs to MIDI, I decided to have a creative license with the instrumentations; rather than going whatever synth instruments were used in the original songs, I decided to use something like a saxophone and electric guitars in their place. With the exception of the replay tune, I opted for a grand piano (and honky-tonk piano for the cannonball tunes) in place of the electric piano. Some of the channels were also panned. I also removed some percussive instruments from two of the game's jingles, and added an additional channel for the main theme of cannonball. An additional clap and tambourine were added to the main theme of jumble hopper.
All songs composed by Dan Hess. Pilotwings 64 is © 1996 Paradigm, Nintendo.
Soundfont used: Apollo GMGS by Caed.
The background image is that of the official render of the game's playable characters, whom are (from left to right): Goose, Hawk, Kiwi, Lark, Robin, and Ibis.
While I placed the songs in the same order as the game's USF rip, I did leave out a few tunes. Namely, the USF rip and the game's sound test does have both the title theme & demo separately as whenever you go from the main menu to the title screen, the title demo tune plays. As this is covered by the title theme, I didn't include it in my conversion. The USF rip and sound test also has the crash themes of the rocket belt and sky dive separately, which (to my ears) sound exactly the same, so my conversion has both covered in one MIDI.
This may sound cliché, but, Pilotwings 64 was one of those N64 games I had as a kid that provided me with some sort of escapism. I remember imagining myself flying either a hang glider or rocket belt around Holiday Island (the game's first world for the hang glider, rocket belt, and gyrocopter missions) in the game as a kid. Such memories...
Time stamps:
00:00 - Title Screen & Demo
00:57 - Main Menu
03:25 - Mission Menu
04:57 - Hang Glider
10:09 - Hang Glider Success
10:17 - Hang Glider No Target Landing
10:25 - Hang Glider Crash
10:35 - Rocket Belt
14:24 - Rocket Belt Success
14:30 - Rocket Belt No Target Landing
14:37 - Rocket Belt & Skydive Crash
14:45 - Gyrocopter
18:21 - Gyrocopter Success
18:30 - Gyrocopter No Runway Landing
18:38 - Gyrocopter Crash
18:45 - Cannonball
20:31 - Cannonball Hit Target
20:36 - Cannonball Miss Target
20:44 - Sky Dive
22:23 - Sky Dive Success
22:28 - Sky Dive No Target Landing
22:34 - Jumble Hopper
25:42 - Jumble Hopper Success
25:48 - Birdman
32:44 - Birdman Success (Unused)
32:57 - Birdman Crash
33:06 - Replay
37:41 - Earned a Badge
38:54 - Bravissimo!
Visit my links:
My website:https://tinyurl.com/mkujujpjj
My second channel:http://tinyurl.com/y7hb67n88
Bandcamp:https://superjet-spade.bandcamp.com//
Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/superjetspade.bsky.social.
SoundCloud:https://soundcloud.com/superjet-spade