Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX2) - Theme of Solid Snake (Famicom 2A03+Konami VRC6 Cover)
Channel: Andrew Ambrose
Date: 2023-06-26

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally done something with the sound expansion of the Konami VRC6 on the Famicom! 
Wasn't that recent Nintendo Direct fantastic? One of the many news tidbits that made me happy was that Konami would be including all the Metal Gear games that came before Metal Gear Solid in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 as bonuses (yes, even Snake's Revenge xD), meaning we're getting another rerelease of both the original Metal Gear and Konami's immaculate MSX2 swan song Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake! Metal Gear 2 not only expanded and improved the ideas and design of the original game, paving the way for Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation, but it also had a masterful soundtrack composed by Masahiro Ikariko, utilizing MSX's AY-3-8910 PSG chip and the Konami SCC wavetable chip to great effect. It's easily one of the greatest soundtracks to any video game, with a wide range of emotions to fit the various events of Hideo Kojima's groundbreaking story. After seeing the trailer, I knew I had to do a cover of the game's intro theme, the Theme of Solid Snake, to celebrate, and I chose the 2A03 and the Konami VRC6 since they would fit quite well despite being short of two sound channels. Initially, this project was far more difficult than I perceived, since I didn't know exactly how loud or quiet each of the channels should be in each part of the song. The Theme of Solid Snake has very intricate volume changes, and I had to do my very best to replicate them all in Dn-FamiTracker. The peak meter feature in foobar2000 did provide me some help, but I still had to do plenty of guessing work. Despite the initial difficulties, I managed to decide how I wanted to do things, and everything sounded very good in the end. In a somewhat controversial move, I decided to have the 2A03's pulse channels handle the song's melody rather than the VRC6's pulse channels, similarly to what was done for Shovel Knight's music, despite the VRC6's pulse channels having a larger range of pulse widths. I think the project turned out well despite said decision, but I understand if you might think I should've went with the other option. Either way, I'm happy with how this project turned out, and I hope to hear your thoughts on it. I also hope that more people will check out Metal Gear 2, or at the very least listen to its soundtrack like I did; it's absolutely worth it. ^w^ 

Here are the downloads for this song: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HtHCKIjyT_VolhsC9M_hJTCU_HwTYQH1?usp=sharing 

Composed by: Masahiro Ikariko 
Famicom Arrangement by: Andrew Ambrose 



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Eric M Ambrose
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