The Music of

Akumajou Densetsu

aka Castlevania III

This is not a video games blog, so I’m not going to talk about a video game…but I am going to talk about some amazing video game music which has stood the test of time…and a version of it that unfortunately didn’t reach the ears of many people outside Japan.

The Castlevania series of video games is one of the longest-running video game franchises, and like a lot of those (Mario and Sonic come to mind), its music has become an iconic part of the experience. For many gamers, it doesn’t get any better than the third installment, released in late 1989 for the Famicom in Japan, and later in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America.

Those who were lucky enough to play the Famicom version got a much richer audio experience however, due to the addition of Konami’s VRC6 chip inside the game cartridge. The VRC6 adds another three sound channels to the console’s usual five, allowing for much fuller chords and effects. The NES, on the other hand, does not support additional sound channels, so the music had to be watered down considerably to sound passable when the game was localized for North America.

The original hardware of the NES, the 2A03 chip, has five sound channels: 2 Pulse waves (with variable pulse width), 1 Triangle wave, a pseudo-random Noise generator, and a Delta Pulse Code Modulation channel for audio samples.

The VRC6 chip adds to those: 2 additional Pulse waves (with much finer control over pulse width), and 1 Sawtooth wave.

Just adding three oscillators makes a world of difference. This is some of the finest music ever to grace an 8-bit video game…I like it so much that I want to share it with you.

I used my mastering knowledge to put together what is, to my ears, the best-sounding version of this music. I didn’t have access to the original machine, so I used an emulator – and not all emulators are created equal. I tried a few different ones before deciding on JNES, an older, but quite good, NES emulator which supports the VRC6. Those of you who are very familiar with these machines may notice that this one sounds a bit different from the real thing. This was an aesthetic choice on my part. I just simply liked the more aggressive sound of this emulator. It suits this material perfectly in my opinion. Sorry about that, purists. Accuracy is great and all, but my goal was to convey this music in the best possible way. No spatial effects apart from stereo panning were used…unlike the CD version of this music that you can find – it has all kinds of ugly reverb added to everything. What’s up with that?

While I was working on this project, I became very familiar with the tunes, and was amazed at how they manage to build the intensity from the beginning of the game all the way up until the final battle with Dracula. Also, a lot of the tunes are in the same tempo, and in compatible keys…it gave me a great idea. Why not tie them all together into a big fat medley that takes you on a trip through the game? That’s exactly what I did…and while I was editing, I knew that I wanted it to have beefier drums in it. My first attempt was to play real acoustic drums to the whole thing, but that sounded too raw compared to the pinpoint precision of the 8-bit music. I finally opted for programmed drums, but real cymbals played live – that was the perfect combination. It turned these tunes into some of the funkiest video game music I’ve heard in a minute! You just might want to get up and dance.  Add to that some extra synth spices, and some creative studio effects, and here’s what you get:

I don’t like “remixes” in general because I feel like most of the time people hack away at what made the original tune great. I don’t like to think of this as a remix – it’s really just an “enhancement” of the original tune. I took great care to preserve and complement the things that made the original music so amazing.

Download that piece, along with the entire soundtrack, in 320k MP3 format HERE.

Thanks for listening! I’m so glad to be able to bring this music to fresh ears.

Enjoy!

<Moot>

If you like this music that I’ve just given away for free, why not consider donating? It only takes a minute.