Shenzhen Nanjiing Technology game music

[Awesome Panda]

Cheetahmen

Mar 29 2011, 02:31:12 PM

track 4 in Hu Lu Jin Gang is a remix of the town theme from Willow[/quote]That one's actually Shy Guy Beach from Mario Kart: Super Circuit. And yeah, I do feel like correcting myself.

[Awesome Panda]

Apologies for reviving an old topic, but I just noticed that the theme from Sui Tang Ying Xiong is a really bad rendition of the level 1 theme from Gun.Smoke.

[SpaceNinja]

And in fact it is. We really should make this into one txt file or something

[Awesome Panda]

I would, but I'm a lazy arsehole. :X

[SpaceNinja]

Like me. XD

[adrian09_01]

Okay, I'm new, I'm digging this topic, but:
1. The San Guo Zhi - Cao Cao Zhuan's fourth track (I'm using the Nestopia NSF player) - Super Drunk theme from Bubble Bobble.
2. The Kou Dai Bao Shi - Yin (Pokemon Silver) tracks (WTF, they are using the same song twice in NSF?) (also, the half of the tracks use these Concerts, Kapaokes, Kareokas, Musics stock songs):
    1/10 - Oh Suzanna
    2/10 - It's Chinese, hell, it's just 5th track in the Subor 3.0 music program
    3/10 - Hell, I know it's Chinese but I can't find it in any music program from Famiclones, maybe original?
    4/10 - 1th Subor 3.0 track
    5/10 - Red River Valley (Typing School rendition here)
    6/10 - A rendition of some familiar song made for this game
    7/10 - A rendition of some song made for this game
    8/10 - A rendition of some song made for this game
    9/10 - Possibly original?
  10/10 - ANOTHER Red River Valley (Without the noise channel and the second Square has been added, but the main melody is the same as 5)

BTW, the Saint Seiya rendition of Zelda sounds like it can be put in the original TLoZ game without an quality impact.
BTW2, has SNT got a some form of MIDI to NSF converter? The Candyfloss song from Yu-Gi-Oh after conversion to MIDI by NSF2MIDI with the original TH song's instruments sounds exactly like the Theme Hospital one.

[codeman38]

adrian09_01

Apr 15 2015, 01:39:46 PM

BTW2, has SNT got a some form of MIDI to NSF converter? The Candyfloss song from Yu-Gi-Oh after conversion to MIDI by NSF2MIDI with the original TH song's instruments sounds exactly like the Theme Hospital one.[/quote]Uh, wow. Turns out that you're basically correct about that. (Edited to add: Though see the added note below the line-- this definitely explains part of the story, but not the entirety of it, as there's still one major mystery remaining...)

I happened to stumble across this while looking up some unrelated stuff regarding VRTech's Famiclone chipsets:

http://www.vrt.com.tw/old_site/admin/upload/download/Sound%20Generator%20users%20manual_ENG_.pdf

The program archives referenced in the above document can be found at:
http://www.vrt.com.tw/old_site/admin/upload/download/midi2vt.rar
http://www.vrt.com.tw/old_site/admin/upload/download/FMDemo.rar

The best part, though, is the MIDI file which was included with that development kit, which I *am* totally attaching to this thread for posterity. That's right: both Nanjing and the developers of the OneBus all-in-one cartridge literally just threw the demo song from the dev kit into their games.  :lol:

So yeah, without a doubt, that clearly indicates where the Konami-esque sound driver from SNT's early games came from. But now that's only got me more curious about where the completely different-sounding one from their later games originated.Hm, that still leaves some questions unanswered, though-- Yu-Gi-Oh was one of the later games, and those have a distinctly different sound from the earlier ones, with heavy vibrato and chunky noise-channel percussion. Maybe there was a later version of the MIDI converter? Or one provided by a different chip manufacturer?

It's not just the music-- the sound effects which are included in some of the NSF rips are also noticeably different. The ones in Tai Kong Huan Xiang match those in the above-linked development kit exactly (i.e., obviously reverse-engineered from some Konami game), and indeed, that's one of the "older" games. The ones in the Yu-Gi-Oh NSF, on the other hand, seem to be from somewhere else entirely. So that definitely suggests a different dev kit was at play.

Attachments:

• midi02.mid (1.32 KB)

[taizou]

oh wow o: That also explains why the demo song appears in a JungleTac multi for the OneStation..

Nanjing's later sound engine sounds a lot like the one used in various DDR clones and keyboard famiclones from around 2000 or so - there's also another connection in that most Nanjing games contain the same 8x8 font found in most keyboard clones (mostly from Family Basic, with an entirely non-matching set of lowercase letters tacked on).

..and then there are the (post-Nanjing, I assume) Pokemon games released by Hengge and Jncota, which seem to use the VRT/Konami sound engine again (but they also still have the keyboard-clone font).

[RVVD4029]

Also i know it is unrelated. But through waixing consoles and qi sheng long hacks of nice code games. You can also hear the same music on those games as well.

[adrian09_01]

So, can we say that to make the Chocobo song in Yu-Gi-Oh they plopped in the midi from vgmusic.com and into the game?Also, help me convert my own Karaoke-MIDI songs to this. I already stripped them to 5 channels because I converted them for Megaman 2. Maybe I can hack your favorite SNT game with your favorite song? Just tell me the offsets of the songs.Ah, it's from the earlier games. So, is there a deconverter for it? I want to hear the original midi's.

[Awesome Panda]

adrian09_01

Apr 26 2015, 10:10:31 AM

Ah, it's from the earlier games. So, is there a deconverter for it? I want to hear the original midi's.[/quote]I'm pretty sure there's an NSF to MIDI converter, but from what I recall it won't restore the song to its original version.

[kazblox]

taizou

Apr 21 2015, 07:56:10 PM

Nanjing's later sound engine sounds a lot like the one used in various DDR clones and keyboard famiclones from around 2000 or so[/quote]Funny thing you should say... Nanjing's own sound engine IS the sound engine used in those DDR/keyboard famiclones.

I did a code comparison in Mesen myself, and found that most of the code between Lei Dian Huang Bi Ka Qiu Chuan Shuo and Hot Dance 2000 are the same. I initially thought that this driver came from a licensed game, but it doesn't look to be, after trying to do a code/data lookup in the GoodNES set and finding no matches with any official Famicom/NES release. Looks to be more of a custom driver.

The only game Nanjing has ever made that uses the TOSE sound engine is, you guessed it, Kou Dai Bao Shi-Yin. Which provides a funny connection, speaking that the musician who worked for the Nanjing games probably landed their first jobs at... Subor. Yep.

Specifically, the team who was contracted by Subor to make Subor V5.0. This multicart appears to predate when lots of keyboard famiclone companies tried to copy Windows, but most importantly, the development team for it probably were a precursor to Shenzen Nanjing themselves.

Coincidentally, this multicart of sorts looks like it uses the same engine as I was talking about earlier, due to how it shares some sound effects seen in the Yu-Gi-Oh NSF. If only I had a ROM dump to verify!!!

More so, a bunch music from there, even the default music in the "Music Appreciation" menu appears to have made it's way onto educational famiclone multicarts. I can already spot the latter in the russian Education Computer 26-in-1 menu.

Luckily, the multicart itself neatly has a staff roll, which divingkatae from TCRF translated almost every part of (except acknowledgements):
http://pastebin.com/Eawvfv5W

Which gives us a possible leeway to Nanjing's musician: Mao Shaolin, Gong Hongbin, or Su Zhaoqiang. Do we know any of these people?

Spoiler: click to toggle

Ripping the staff roll was a bitch, to be honest! The video shows that the cart itself nastily switches CHR banks every time it loads a new section when it scrolls, making things look glitchy. Here it is, included with some feng shui in case anyone wants to finish translating all of it. http://i.imgur.com/YAuafs0.png

Spoiler: click to toggle

Oh yeah, also, NECROBUMP

[codeman38]

One thing that is somewhat curious is that, although the Nanjing/DDR sound driver seems to be an original implementation, the games that use it still share a 368-byte chunk in common with a whole bunch of games developed by Tose (and, thus, with Kou Dai Bao Shi). Looks very instrument-data-like.

Here's the hex string, for any curious people who want to run bgrep on their NSF collections and/or look at where it might get called:

Spoiler: click to toggle

f0 e0 d0 c0 b0 a0 90 80 80 90 a0 b0 c0 d0 e0 f0 80 90 a0 b0 c0 d0 e0 f0 f0 e0 d0 c0 b0 a0 90 80 f0 d0 b0 90 70 50 30 10 e0 c0 a0 80 60 40 20 00 f0 e0 d0 c0 c0 d0 e0 d0 c0 a0 80 60 40 20 10 00 f0 d0 b0 90 a0 b0 90 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 10 00 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 60 60 70 80 a0 c0 f0 b0 80 f0 f0 a0 80 f0 f0 a0 80 70 70 60 60 50 50 40 20 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 30 30 30 30 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 31 32 32 32 32 30 30 30 31 31 31 31 31 32 32 32 32 32 33 33 33 30 30 31 31 31 31 32 32 32 32 33 33 33 33 34 34 30 30 31 31 31 32 32 32 33 33 33 34 34 34 35 35 30 30 31 31 32 32 32 33 33 34 34 34 35 35 36 36 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 38 30 31 31 32 32 33 34 34 35 35 36 37 37 38 38 39 30 31 31 32 33 33 34 35 35 36 37 37 38 39 39 3a 30 31 31 32 33 34 34 35 36 37 37 38 39 3a 3a 3b 30 31 32 32 33 34 35 36 36 37 38 39 3a 3a 3b 3c 30 31 32 33 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 3a 3a 3b 3c 3d 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 37 38 39 3a 3b 3c 3d 3e 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 3a 3b 3c 3d 3e 3f

[kazblox]

More curiosities:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFGBQh1JtYY

As you can see, it's another one of those DDR famiclones using the same Nanjing/DDR sound engine. Looks to be the same musicians as well. But especially, if you tune in at 30:20, the footage of the Hit Marmot whack a mole game, you can hear... Subor V5 title music?!?!

And if you look in the staff roll for SB-Win98 at 3:46 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuvWbpSb53U ...

SB-Win98

 

[/quote]
Su Zhaoqiang is the only one left in the Music role, compared to Subor V5's staff role which had Mao Shaolin and Gong Hongbin working alongside. Which means that the latter two, or one of the other, probably left Subor to compose for the unknown company that did DDR multicarts, considering how they were the only ones at the time who had access to this engine.

That same company appears to have survived at least up until 2006, evidenced by those crap VT03-based Strawberry Shortcake and Disney DDR plug and play thingamajigs. At this point, I'm taking guesses that Su Zhaoqiang did the music for Nanjing titles by the time Subor stopped making Famiclone computers. It makes an obvious point since Nanjing appeared to have started manufacturing of their games around 2003 or so, and Subor appears to have halted production of their computer Famiclones around 2001 and 2002.

But, my hypothetical prediction remains uncertain. Croaky Karaoke, Console TV Challenge, and the unique Gamezone titles seem to use the same sound engine, but it remains even more unknown about who composed for them. Also, Croaky Karaoke uses a different composition of Take On Me compared to Dance Master 3, so there could be other musicians that had access to the sound engine as well.

[kazblox]

So, remember when I said that the sound driver was custom? Well it is, sort of....

Turns out that in the said Subor carts and the Shenzhen Nanjing games using the same sound engine, lies code from Double Dragon III. That explains the extremely familiar sound effects I'm used to. Looking at the code in the NSF rips, a big majority it is... Technos stuff. I think a separate set of unique routines do something with the music, looking at the code, but that's really it.

So really, one of the programmers at Subor just stole code from a Technos game, like any other bootlegger, but tacked additional crap on it a la Hummer Team.