What if Mega Man (1987) was an ARCADE GAME? ~ YM2203 Cover

Hello again, everybody! It's been a couple months since my last upload, but rest assured that today's video is something special! Not only is this my second work using Furnace, but it's also my first one using FM synthesis, a retro sound you're probably familiar with if you've listened to some Sega Genesis soundtracks. I wanted to propose an idea: what if, instead of making the original Mega Man for the NES, Capcom initially developed it as an arcade game? The company was no stranger to the arcade scene in the 80s, so I thought it'd only make sense to utilize a chip commonly found in their releases from that time: the Yamaha YM2203.

The idea came to me quite a while back, but only recently had I been shown a tweet with some incredible sprite art (https://fxtwitter.com/jho7835/status/...) and was thus inspired to make it a reality. The preset I used in Furnace to make this is called "Capcom Arcade", and it's made up of two YM2203 chips, with six FM and PSG channels each; the music doesn't use any of the PSG channels, but the sound effects, which I included as an extra touch, use them exclusively. I aimed to arrange these tracks as if Manami Matsumae herself made them, carefully transcribed from the originals, and not based on the Wily Wars or Powered Up renditions. The instruments were ripped from Capcom's own Legendary Wings (1986)— shout out to fellow chiptune musician and friend Andrew Ambrose for helping me figure that out! And also thank you to CapJagged/@Jho7835, artist from the tweet above, for inspiring me to make this upload!

~Timestamps~

0:00 Stage Select
0:12 Stage Start
0:19 Cut Man Stage
1:49 Boss
2:18 Stage Clear

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