Pizza Tower ~ Pizza Deluxe (YM2151 + PCM Arrangement)
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A arcade-styled cover of Pizza Deluxe, the menu theme of Pizza Tower.
A few notes about the arrangement:
I was first made aware of Pizza Tower through John Tay's cover of "It's Pizza Time!" a few years ago. I listened to pieces from the rest of the soundtrack, was moderately impressed, and made a mental note to check it out whenever it released. Fast forward nearly three years last month when the full game released, and I am having a blast! It has a distinctively, unapologetically messy and exaggerated art style that is so much fun, fast-paced and satisfying gameplay challenges, and (most importantly) plenty of great music. If you enjoy FM music from a childhood of Sonic titles, do yourself a favor and give Pizza Tower a try.
The funky menu music is a fun tune that seemed ideal for the YM2151, what with the extended organ chords and huge amount of samples (I loaded 37 in total!). It was satisfying to tease chords apart by ear and find perfect matching samples. Due to the arcade's lack of the SN76489 chip, I had to record some parts in a YM2612 module and include them as samples in the YM2151 module! You can see these popping up occasionally in the SP 4 channel.
Another fun sample is the cuíca, a Brazilian friction drum I had vaguely heard before in games like Baldi's Basics that use the MS wavetable synth pack bundled with Windows machines. It definitely helps to mentally shift Pizza Tower closer to the early 2000's where its inspirations were released. This one pops up in channels SP 4 and 5.
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!
.wav: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tOVM2fDA5nQcfldj-CzwRTH6sercnhff/view?usp=share_link
.vgm: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10avs4ckrlN_WKcIoMJtkKy1ESKdDeoqH/view?usp=share_link
.dmf: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xGTD5jQuXtz-6d0UiMyntv-bLuJrO1eP/view?usp=share_link
Vocal SFX used: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vbivN8PkwFWQ8blBmdeE_UjUq0s93dfK?usp=share_link