About time I finished the level themes for most of Noob Attack 2’s soundtrack. Each one of these level themes are inspired (sometimes heavily) by some of my favorite tracks from early 80s and 90s video game music tracks, such as the Mega Man and StarTropics franchise OSTs, just to name a couple. Each track is also shared by a different character that plays on each level. Opinions? Questions? Comments? I welcome all criticism, good or bad, like always.
[Potential Spoiler warning]
If you wanna wait to hear the music and see the characters in the game, maybe it’s better to skip this topic.
[Potential Volume warning]
Some instruments are a bit harsh to the ear. I’d advise turning the volume down if it ever hurts. These issues will be fixed soon.
Although I’m pretty happy with how these turned out, expect them to be different in the final product. Like the game, they’re currently in closed alpha, but this is a my vision towards these songs, and the future tracks.
Timestamps (Potential spoilers are blurred out):
0:00 - Stage 1 Crazy Robloxian’s Stage - Exploding City
2:00 - Stage 2 Jerry’s Stage - Crushing Convoy
4:00 - Stage 3 Marc’s Stage - High Ranges
5:59 - Stage 4 Vect’s Stage - Blazing Depths
8:00 - Stage 5 Century/Noob Bandit’s Stage - Resistance Fortress
10:00 - Stage 6 Lance’s Stage - Deep Sea Chamber
12:00 - Stage 7 Adventurer’s Stage - Heated Jungle
14:00 - Stage 8 Diamond’s Stage - Crystalized Tropics
16:00 - Stage 9 Dummy’s Stage - Corrupt Planet/Storm Lake
18:00 - Stage 10 Genevieve’s Stage - Galaxy Tower
For those who want to know how I made these tracks/to geek out (Paragraphs incoming):
It wasn’t exactly the easiest, and unfortunately, I’m not quite done yet. I used FamiTracker to make the main meat of the music, Audacity to edit some of the music and samples, and Protracker to find the best octave for each sample.
FamiTracker is an interesting program; you can, obviously, use it to make your own chiptunes, 8-bit style music, Sega Genesis-sort style music, and so-forth. It has 2 pulse wave channels, 1 triangle wave channel, 1 noise channel, and 1 sample channel. The real build of FamiTracker can only allow you to use one extension, but the modded version that I used, 0CC-FamiTracker, gave users the ability to use every extension, had a new SunSoft extention, and also lets users import MIDI files, although it’s pretty weak.
Extensions are simply emulations of chips from original Famicom products (Games, Famicom Disc System), which are Japan-exclusive NES sorts of things. Unfortunately, the NES doesn’t have the capability to use these chips without a bit of system modding, so back then, what the US got was quite weaker. Extensions/chips were made to extend game battery life, RAM storage, FPS, and even sound quality to-an-extent, which was by adding new channels. Each chip (2A03, VRC6, MMC5, N163, FDS, VRC7, and S5B) allowed the Famicom to do certain things, such as play extra sound effects, custom instruments, or render games in bigger and better ways.
Anyways, because Roblox is way more advanced than the Famicom, I decided to go a step further and lower my limitations. I used multiple extensions for extra instruments, which gave me better-sounding music, rather than what the default 2A03 chip (channels) would give me. I also adapted a slap bass as multiple samples into the DPCM (basically, samples shortened) channel, albeit it lost its slap-bass quality. The percussion was the hardest to get right, since the bass punch was taken over by the samples. For kicks, I ended up with rock kick-sounds, clap-like snares and hi-hats, and occasionally square pulse toms. Unfortunately, the noise channel sometimes clashed with the sample channel, and so the percussion sometimes had a violent rattling sound along with it, which is clearly audible in the first song. I couldn’t exactly fix this situation, but hey, limitations are a part of nostalgia, right?
Thank you guys for your support!