u/Ok-Listen-3146

I remade the first-stage theme of Bloody Wolf, originally from the PC Engine, on the Sega Genesis, using the FM sounds used by Hitoshi Sakimoto for Midnight Resistance. I really wanted to know how it would sound. I think it came out okay, but hindsight might be a bitch.

This track and Flood of Power from Midnight Resistance have some pretty interesting parallels: both are songs featured in the first stages of military action games starring two buff dudes in tank tops, all made by Japan’s premium jank masters, Data East. The most important commonality, of course, is that the music from the console ports just crushes their arcade originals.

It’s really convenient when the original soundtrack you’re covering was written in MIDI, lol! I’m not entirely satisfied with how muted the drums and bass are, and the mix might be a little messy, but I think the guitar leads came out rather nicely, if I do say so myself...

The Rocky game on the Sega Master System looks amazing, doesn’t it? Like usual, it was too difficult for me when I tried it out. And while the game’s soundtrack is quite good, the lack of Gonna Fly Now was rather disappointing. That was when I got a grand idea: I made a cover with the Sega PSG on its own, and also made two remixes with the FM expansion unit… Why not combine the two into the ultimate Master System setup (that was previously only used by Sega for the Master System’s Japanese boot screen) and cover Gonna Fly Now on it! It’s gonna be epic!

This was the idea that got me through making what turned out to be the hardest cover I’ve made so far! It took me way too long! But I should’ve expected that… It’s my longest (not counting loops) and most complex remix to date. So much so that I quickly got lost in the sauce, as they say (do they still say that, though?).

Initially, to avoid getting overwhelmed, I tried rather foolishly to transcribe the song bar-by-bar instead of channel-by-channel. That was a horrible idea and I took way too long to change my approach… Even after the change, however, I dealt with a ton of self-doubt because I’m not entirely satisfied with the quality of my work on this channel… and that unfortunately extends to this remix as well, especially when I look at how good the rest of the chiptune scene is on YouTube. I learned a lot doing this remix and I’m hoping that I improve further in the future.

The original Rocky movie had an outsized impact on me when I first saw it as an impressionable pre-teen. So this version of the film’s main theme is my weird little love letter to the movie that never fails to pick me up when I’m down.