u/KingK3nnyDaGreat

So, this is kind of a crazy idea I had. Pretty much a 6 channel chip with fractional pulse waves, Tri/Saw Envelopes, Wavetable, LSFR Noise and PCM. Plus Pulse/Envelope/Noise mixing, stereo and mirroring functions. This is a crappy ass schematic, but hopefully you can understand what is intended (forgot to add mirroring to it).

I'm not actually working on it, it's just another useless idea of mine. I only have a rudimentary high school level with learning ICs and digital electronic stuff. If anyone that knows more about the technical side of sound chips, I'd appreciate some input, though. Just to know if it could idealy function as a real chip.

You can tell it's an amalgamation of a few chips, though I couldn't find anything on Furnace that does all this. Which is why I'm made the "schematic". I was also considering FM in this too, but I'm not sure how that would work. Frankly, idk what I'm doing, I just have ambitious thoughts, I guess.

It's a damn shame how underutilized this sound chip was in DOS games. It was probably released way too late, especially for PCs. It may have been better for handhelds imo, as they were still using PSGs. Apparently, "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?" is the only game to actually used the extra features in the AY8930, however, I couldn't encounter any audio or gameplay with the game using the sound card. In fact, I wish there were more examples of VGM or OST or in-game music, but this is what I have so far (sources here & here)
Prince of Persia (Intro)

Ultima VI (Intro)

Ultima VI Theme

Or Credit Maximizing if you're older than Gen Z (i.e anyone younger than 30 rn). Anyway, I was on and off putting in credits for Bionic Commando on MAME4Droid, and it took me a total of maybe 1h 15m to reach this point. Totally a waste of time, but wanted to see if this game maxed out on 9999 credits and it did not, unfortunately for me.

I might need an auto clicker or button presser. Or someone could just look into the code to find the credit threshold lol.

One of the more improvised and amateur tracks I've made on Furnace, since I still haven't fully mastered utilizing these sound chips yet, unfortunately. But the track does still sound fun, so I guess that's something. Also I'm just showing a few snippets, that's it.

I don't want to ruin the mood here, but I'm just being honest as a chiptuner. My full discussion is here, if you're curious. It's just 8 paragraphs of nonsense.

Summary:

Not sure I plan to continue chiptuning long term, despite me wanting learn 7 years ago as teen using Beepbox, and learning to use trackers in 2022. I've peaked years ago and fell off, despite believing I'm a better composer now. I wanted to be like the folks that influenced me. I wanted to stand out doing multi-chip music on Furnace. I was ambitious to even imagine I could be the best around. In reality, I'm just some dude that's just good enough to pass as not mediocre/average, yet, not that special to consider myself great.

I want more eyes on my works, but I probably just don't deserve that. I'm an inconsistent mess, why would I expect a consistent amount of folks to care for what I produce🤷🏾‍♂️? I probably disappointed some of them. I might've tried too hard to be different from the posts that are popular in the algorithm, and that honestly got me nowhere. I still have some stuff in the vault, and maybe I'll change my mind after posting them, idk. I'm still passionate about this, it just get frustrating sometimes, especially when I have less time to make them, due to work and stuff.

If I do, in fact, stop doing this, I doubt anything of value would change, and I suppose that's fine. I mean, it is what it is. There are so many others that do it better and are more consistent, and aren't complaining 50 times about this same topic. Give them a shout out.

So, this is about some lost and obscure prototype games developed by Tengen (the console division of Atari Games). Particularly, most of these were revealed by a person who also happens to be obscure, Jun Amanai. He was a former employee at Tengen. His channel reveals 4 PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 prototypes plus a Famicom version of one of those titles.

Of these titles, only the ROMS for "Off the Wall" (PCE) and "Popils" (FC) have been dumped. The "Popils" dump is natively silent, however, there is a patch hosted here & here, that adds audio. There are two dumps of "Off the Wall", one with the Jun Amanai label, and the other seemingly at a different state of developement. Btw when I link a TCRF page, be sure to also check the Hidden Palace page.

Anyway, what disappoints me the most is that all we got were teasers without updates. Pretty much, what you see is what you get, unless you pay thousands to get a physical copy. So, yes, unfortunately, Jun was more interested in profiting off of these prototypes, rather than preserving them. 3 of the 4 PC Engine games he showcased were sold here. "Popils", prior to Aug. 2017; "Peter Pack Rat" seemingly in early 2022 (or late 2021); "Off The Wall" some time betwixt Apr. 2025 and now. The very latter isn't too big-a-deal since it's already dumped.

That's all according to the archived pages. So, as long as whoever purchased these prototypes doesn't dump them, I think it's safe to say these ROMs are gone. "Marble Madness" is still remaining up for grabs and hopefully the right people cop it, and release it to the public. I, initially was just interested in "Peter Pack Rat" & "Marble Madness", however, I think no matter the game, preservation is important. It would've be very cool, if these were not only dumped/restored, but maybe even completed.

I believe someone skilled enough with programming assembly could make it work. It's not like these are absolutely complete, though "Popils" is supposedly nearly finished. I'd say one good thing is, that in the "savejapan" site, there are full quality screenshots, which is much preferred over the LQ videos on YT (not like YT vids are w/o compression). I believe the palette is in composite VCE mode. Evident with the grayish "black" and none of the 512 possible colors being in 9-bit/8-level RGB. On one hand, we won't have all the sprite data, just from the provided screenshots. On the other hand, it seems like the graphics were just ripped from arcade versions, well, besides "Popils" (though, as an early PCE game, the graphics are rather simple anyway).

As for sound, I, for one, can't tell you which exact waveforms are being used, though, they shouldn't be much different from contemporary games for the system. The OST & SFX at least don't sound too unique. That said, another thing is the sampling of the arcade games, which I assume would be fairly easy to implement. Then you have the assembly and gameplay. Luckily, despite the different architecture between the arcade games and PCE games, they still both utilize a 6502 related chip. So hopefully, a conversion shouldn't be too difficult. As for "Popils", we can reference the FC prototype and full GG version.

Speaking of the Game Gear, there is also a prototype of "Off the Wall" on the Game Gear, and the ROM was dumped. Although, I've not seen Jun's name mentioned with this port, he does acknowledge it in his "Off The Wall" page on "savejapan". I know this was a long ass tangent, but I didn't see many typing or talking about it, and I thought it should be discussed. It really sucks some of these prototypes may not see the light of day, but hopefully, we could receive some accurate remakes in the future.

Edit: As some bonus DLC to this post, since this is developed by Atari Games. There's also a laserdisc prototype for Road Runner on the arcade. Idk if this'll ever get dumped, but I'm just throwing this out there, because I might as well.

I posted about this a year back I think, but still couldn't find it. Anyway, I made a crudely drawn version of what I mean, just to help visualize it better. I had this back in freshman year in 2019, but lost it right before graduating in 2023. It was one of my fav sweaters, due to its velvet fabric texture.

As you can tell, it had a sort of burgundy colored torso, and a navy blue hood, pouch, and sleeves (which had stripes on top). I think I also remember it having striped jawstring straps. If anyone else has this and knows the brand or ID lmk. Thanks.