Revision as of 14:04, 23 December 2011

The History of Chiptunes

To be turned into a radioshow, obviously, because of it's inherent audiophile concept.

I will not try to digg into the complete history of chiptunes and 8bit sound but rather just tell the story how I have lived it through the years.

So corect title is:

The biased Chiptunes history of Gunstick

• First computers: sound? None, just a beep. BBC micro, IBM PC ...
• the revelation, C64. At that time did not notice how far above awesome it's sound capacity was
• first *own* computer. Atari ST. Lousy sound chip. But it got awaken to be overwhelming by great programming
• the other computer: Commodore Amiga. Birth of the term "chiptune" to differnetiate from mod files
• digital stuff from here on. Revival of good old chips to do the real thing instead of just doing as if.

Songs: exclusively real chip tunes, as played by the original hardware. Nothing emulated. That would mainly be C64 and Atari ST. Add some Amiga chips in there too. Always state how many Bytes such a tune has and how long it lasts before playing.

Which ones to use? The classic ones everybody knows or the forgotten gems?

C64: everyone knows Great Giana Sisters (we have it on the C64 at the space), but do you know Commando? Sanxxion? W.A.R.? and 20000 other tunes.

Atari: play short piece of really awful tune, then ramp up with XenonII, AKscreen (5000 tunes to choose from)

Amiga: play a classic mod file then bring up the real chiptunes

Today: what sounds come out of C64, Atari and Amiga today? What chiptunes get produced elseware (videogames, PC trackers...)