GMC #19 - Salamander/Starquake - Lizard Star by Omega

Moonsound enthusiast know Omega from his techno songs for the Moonsound. He hasn't created a lot of music in the past few years, but the Game Cover Challenge triggered him to (get back and) dust off his Moonsound and join the challenge.

The game he chose at first is Konami's shoot-em-up Salamander, in particular the music from the Eioneus/Lavinia stages. Starting off as a close cover of the original SCC version, it quickly turns around in a techno-like version with some typical Omega elements in it. But at the end of the day there were still some patterns and tracks left in MBWave, so he decided to add another game soundtrack: Bubble Bus' Starquake.

Omega's track was created on real MSX hardware: a Philips NMS-8250 with 7mhz, 256kB RAM and a Sunrise IDE+CF adapter. And of course a Moonsound, so enjoy some 100% pure MSX music power! Omega even made the Moonblaster files available for you; grab them from the downloads database.

Relevant link: Salamander/Starquake - Lizard Star by Omega

Comments (9)

By Sander

Founder (1871)

01-03-2014, 12:05

This song, or should I say songs? Sounds like a fun experiment what to do with the standard "let's do those covers again" stuff. I like the first break, actually thought my headphone was toast. In overall it's Salamander on acid indeed!

By snout

Ascended (15187)

01-03-2014, 16:27

Whoa, a second pure-MSX entry. Neat, and quite a display of Moonsound power!

By jurjen

Supporter (16)

01-03-2014, 23:35

like!

By Omega

Master (233)

03-03-2014, 12:16

Actually I'm wondering if it runs OK on emulators, since I used an OPL4 hardware glitch for the 1st break effects

By Manuel

Ascended (19469)

03-03-2014, 15:17

What OPL4 hardware glitch? Any details?

By Omega

Master (233)

03-03-2014, 21:03

Details.. sure

When playing samples there's two modes from a software perspective: a single sample with an end or a looped sample. However in hardware there's only one: a single sample is padded with a few zero bytes and those bytes are used in a loop. In both ways, with a relatively short loop or a sample with a zero'd loop, playing high frequencies (like C7) the OPL4 can skip past the end of a loop address and continue playing whatever is in the address space after that position.

In this case, that results in some nasty noise (I like it when a plan comes together)