David Wise has always been a fairly competent 8-bit composer, making a lot out of relatively little to work with. But I'm not crazy enough not to listen to individual Game Boy channels in isolation, so I did that to separate as much detail as I could. The 2A03 triangle wave sounds smoother than Game Boy triangle wave, and the VRC6 sawtooth sounds coarser than the Game Boy triangle wave - take your pick.Īs for adapting the music itself, I did it all by ear. This is why I also made a separate VRC6 version where I transferred the bass to the VRC6 sawtooth channel. So the 2A03 version's triangle wave bass is always at the same loudness, which loses some of the dynamic effect a louder or quieter bass accomplished in the original Game Boy version. The 2A03 version uses no expansion chips, but it's also missing something the Game Boy sound system has - volume control for the triangle wave, typically used for bass in chiptunes. My intent is that it can still be extensively edited and modified as needed in FamiTracker. And though there are lots of instruments, many of them ended up going unused, and there are no unique instruments customized for individual songs (for volume, etc.). ftm files I have provided for download intentionally have as much redundant data as possible. Now I can say that I did it, and that it turned out good. XD But I felt inspired - this was always one of my favorite 8-bit soundtracks, and Battletoads for Game Boy is not as well-known as the completely different NES game. I must say that I don't know if I'll ever attempt to convert an entire soundtrack all at once like this again.

I made two versions: a plain edition in the default Ricoh 2A03 soundchip, and another version using the Konami VRC6 expansion chip so I could use its sawtooth channel for the bass. It took me a few days in FamiTracker, but it's done. I must have been completely insane to do a project of this magnitude just on a whim.

Download Battletoads (Game Boy)