I mentioned how happy I was to bring you some new old music with Mega Man 9, and I've got another opportunity to do so. Held yearly (I think) , the Famicompo Mini is an online music festival where people submit brand new music and/or covers composed only with the NES sound chip and, optionally, sound extensions like Konami's VRC-6 sound chip. Here is this year's compo page if you're interested. The songs are in .nsf format, so here is a list of plug-ins and stand-alone players. NotSoFatso is recommended if you use Winamp.

Today I'm posting two of my favorite covers, converted from the original .nsf files. The first is a nice little piece that bounces from one musical style to another. I have no idea if it's from a game or not, since "Mr. O. Travels in Time" gives you some pretty ambiguous results in Google. The second has a gibberish title when put through online translators, so I can't tell you a thing about it except that it uses almost every NES sound extension available.

To clarify, a typical NES song uses only the stock NES soundchip: the 2A03 with five channels, or instruments, for sound. This song uses the 2A03 (5 channels), Konami's VRC-7 (6 channels), the MMC5 (3 channels), Namco's N-106 (8 channels) and the FME-07 (3 channels) to create a song with 25 channels of sound. By comparison, the SNES offers only 8 channels of sound while the Sega Genesis offers up to 11. It's a nice little technical marvel, but the song isn't terribly interesting. All those extra channels, tones, and pulses are used mainly for some peppy piano rock, but it's a tune I wanted to share with you nevertheless. The effect at the very end is pretty neat, too.