Mostly Bits Newsletter - Issue #37
This newsletter issue might look a bit different. We’ve (hastily) changed newsletter providers this week. Revue, our previous provider, is the latest victim in Elon Musk’s continued immolation of Twitter.
Tony’s Pick
My personal fediverse feed is getting more interesting as I’ve started following more people. Here’s one of my first finds: screenshots of 90s era Nintendo internal game dev tools.
Kyle’s Pick
Continuing my accidental series on “sound chips for retro systems,” I enjoyed this video from Retro Crisis showing off the custom sound chips in some NES games. Apparently the base NES chipset was limited to 5 sound channels, so companies added new chips to their games to expand the soundscape.
As someone who is casually interested in making chiptunes, I also enjoyed seeing how NES songs were constructed layer-by-layer.
If you only watch one part, check out this comparison between the Japanese and American versions of Castlevania 3 at 5:04. It’s amazing how much depth you can get from adding 2 pulse waves and a sawtooth wave.
