The SNES SPC700: Mimicry Through Sound - NintendoComplete
377For a piece of hardware developed in 1989, the Super Nintendo was a remarkable bit of hardware to be packed into a games console.
For me, one of its most impressive achievements was the SPC700, a custom APU developed by Ken Kutaragi (the father of the PlayStation) at Sony. Instead of using PSG or FM like most machines at the time did, its playback was completely sample driven with the aid of an on-board dedicated DSP. It is essentially what would be called a sampler in music hardware, and it can do some amazing things. It's very limited compared to anything made in the past 25 years, but those limitations give rise to some fun creative exercises. Speaking of which...
The things in this video:
-The OriginFX intro from Origin's early 90s computer games
-The THX Deep Note sound by Lucasfilm
-The boot-up sounds from the Sega Master System, Sony PlayStation, and the PS2
-The victory fanfare from Paper Mario: The Origami King on Nintendo Switch. (This game has a seriously kick-ass soundtrack!)
I thought it would be fun to try to recreate, for SNES hardware, several things that were never intended to play on it. All of the audio on the video was recorded straight off of a launch-model US SNES console, and these tunes and effects have all been sequenced for native SPC700 playback. I didn't merely stream pre-recorded chunks of original sound clips.
While they don't stand up to any serious scrutiny, I do think that they manage to come closer than one might expect. I had a blast making this. Be sure to lemme know what you think!
If you liked it, also be sure to check out my playlist for all sorts of fun SPC700 arrangements that I've done! https://youtu.be/DQzWfj33VnU
By request, here are the original files that I recorded this video from. They're all packed into a neatly playable .RSN file, but you can un-RAR the file if you want the original individual .SPC files: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Al21vU7IipONlEod54rMFwpGlc6zp0to/view?usp=sharing
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