7/02/2018

Episode 12 - remastered version




In Broken Chair Scores episode 12 we dive into contemporary classical music with Michael Nymans Score to the film "A Zed and Two Noughts" by Peter Greenaway which reminds me of my favourite guy from this genre (Philip Glass) and thus already makes this a very special episode for me. Then we do something even more cool in that we compare two versions of the same soundtrack. We dissect "Akumajou Densetsu" for the Famicom and "Castlevania 3" for the NES respectively (composed by Hidenori Maezawa, Jun Funahashi, Yukie Morimoto and Yoshinori Sasaki) with the Famicom version using the outstanding VRC6 chip (embedded into the cartridge as an addon to the systems' internal sound hardware!) instead of the NES' rather standard MMC5 chip. We listen to the (not so) subtle differences in the arrangements and have a lot of fun while doing so. And I hope you will have fun listening to it as well!

New in 2018: This episode got the remastering treatment which means that some very light editing has happened for the dialogue but some heavy editing has happened for the Castlevania tracks. The original version had the "room sound" that we produced on the fly. The remastered version was edited so that the tracks have higher quality. Unfortunately this goes only for the Castlevania tracks. The "Zed and Two Noughts" tracks couldn't be retrieved and thus still have their classic sound. (Not too bad though). This remastering really shines a light on the difference between the NES and the Famicom version which makes it a must listen episode for all followers even if you already listened to the original episode edit.
Fun fact: somewhere in the episode I mention that this is an unedited, almost life experience. Well this is no longer the case obviously but I think the new edit brings home the difference between the two versions nicely and thus I did it.

Also: I mention the "bad dudes" several times. This is also wrong. The composers of the Castlevania soundtrack are NOT the people who created the soundtrack to the game Bad Dudes which themselves were referred to as the "bad dudes" by Brent Weinbach and Rob F. Switch on their legendary vgm podcast The Legacy Music Hour. I have so much to learn.






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