Andrew Ambrose - Ness Circuit (Namco System 86 C30 WSG+YM2151 Original Song)

I've outdone myself with this one! TooManyGames 2023 is coming in less than a week, so I thought I'd whip up a new song (and maybe a cover also) for the week before I go on Saturday. I was toying around with some FM stuff recently, trying desperately to rip FM instrument patches from VGMs using the Yamaha YM2151 (AKA the OPM), an 8-channel FM chip most notably used in the Sharp X68000 computer as well as plenty of arcade systems used by Namco from the mid '80s to the '90s. After finding some instrument patches from a few Namco games ripped previously by someone else on the VGMRips forums, I decided to do some toying around in tildearrow's Furnace tracker. That was when I decided to make a new song. You may remember that my pal Bryan Ness, AKA Tobikomi (   / @tobikomi5018   ), made a Konami Bubble System song back in December called Ambrose Circuit (   • [Original] Ambrose Circuit (2xAY-3-89...   ). Not only is it an awesome song, but it happened to have my surname in the title! I'm not 100% sure if this is explicitly a reference to me, I haven't heard Bryan say anything about the matter yet, but I felt it would be necessary to do him the courtesy of a song akin to Mario Kart with his surname. Plus, I've just been more eager to try doing a much faster song, and this was the perfect opportunity for me to do so. And thus, I call it Ness Circuit (it has nothing to do with Ness from Mother 2/Earthbound lol)! Since I was eager to do some FM stuff and am well familiar with the Namco C30 WSG, I chose the chipset of the Namco System 86, the arcade system that housed games such as Sky Kid Deluxe, Rolling Thunder, and Wonder Momo (the same chipset plus a Yamaha YM3012 would be used in the Namco System 1, which housed games such as Dragon Spirit, Galaga '88, Pac-Mania, and Splatterhouse). I chose the bass from Ys (of course) and came up with a sick bassline to start with. I utilized the kick and snare instruments from Hotdog Storm (yes, that's the game's actual name), slightly modifying the snare to give it more of a kick, and used the noise generation of the C30 WSG to handle hi-hats. I then decided to take the Downhill Theme from the NES game Slalom for some initial inspiration and ended up picking out two wavetables used in Gaplus. I also wanted to use one of the instruments from Space Harrier, and I was pleasantly surprised by how the instrument sounded when doubled, so I used that for the backing chords to great effect. About halfway through the process, I realized that one of the parts I came up with sounded similar to one of the parts from the theme to DK Summit from Mario Kart Wii, which meant I was doing good with the style (though I had to make sure I wasn't subconsciously ripping off other songs in the process lol). Overall, this took me much less time than I expected it to, and I managed to work through it at a pretty brisk pace. I was a bit uncertain that I would be able to utilize this chipset to its fullest, but doubling notes and adding echo made it a pretty easy task. And I must say, my results are unlike anything I've done before (at least to me). I can confidently say that this is my greatest original song to date, and I'm eager to hear what you all think of it. Please enjoy Ness Circuit. ^w^

Here are the downloads for this song: https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...

Composed by: Andrew Ambrose



Patreon Shout-outs:
Austin Kaiser
Holly
Andyana
Eric M Ambrose
BantBeOdd

Be sure to share this song if you enjoyed it, and consider supporting me on Patreon (100% optional):   / andrewambrose