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"If I could have the music from Hatsworth's boss fight against Lance Banson (Sky Pirate Magazine's Handsomest Most Eligible Bachelor of the Year) playing on loop for every boss fight in any videogame ever, I would do it." 9.0 - IGN

"All of this silliness is funked out with great music during the battles which is evilly catchy and corresponds well to the moves, headphones are a must have."

- Console Obsession

"...the audio is "just about as good as it gets" and everything here adds to the game's overall atmosphere ... there's the wonderful score ... the sound effects are also spot on. - DS-x2

"...an excellent balance of both music and sound effects ... crisp and distinguished. - NintendoDS Advanced

"Great music - 8/10" - Gamespot"

"The musical score is epic, somber, and moody, a perfect accompaniment to the epic tale being told. - Planet GameCube

"The game's audio is very solid ... the background music is well done and fits the game perfectly." - PGNx Media.

G.A.N.G. Awards 2003: Best Handheld Audio

"Awesome soundtrack that goes great with the action. 9/10." - IGN

"...probably the first GBA game to have a full-length song, complete with vocals, during its credits sequence. 8/10" - Gamespot

"... some games have shown us that the GBAs sound hardware can put out "surprisingly high quality sound effects and music. Everything or Nothing is one of those games." - Worth Playing

"Particularly Impressive for a Gameboy Advance game ... 8/10" - PGNX Media

"... one of the clearest GBA titles I’ve played. Excellent compositions, but I must also give credit to the sound guys for making the sound quality as high as possible." - GameZone

"... What also can't be denied is the quality of the music ... its closeness to the console versions' score is amazing, and the victory fanfare's enough to send shivers up your spine if you're wearing headphones." - 1UP.com

"Outstanding use of the GBA hardware for a fantastic soundtrack. Crank up those headphones. 9/10" - IGN

About Me

My profession is contract game audio. You probably already guessed this. My specialty and passion is classic video game sounds, the sort of thing I grew up with playing NES and SNES. Platforms like the GBA and DS have given me the opportunity to work within similar limitations of this golden age of game audio, which is a huge privilege.

My dream project would be a survival horror game.

My idol is Hip Tanaka.

When I'm not doing music and sound, I program in C#. My most ambitious pet project is the NesTracker, though I've also made a bunch of tools that automate my build processes for work. My favorite custom tool lets me compose DS music using my all time favorite music making tool, Impulse Tracker.

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« NesTracker version 0.5.1 Released | Main | New Layout »

NesTracker 0.5 Beta - First Public Release

DateMonday, September 15, 2008 at 12:24PM

This has been a pet project of mine for quite some time. It began as a challenge to see if I could write an emulator for the NES sound chip (2A03). After making the emulator, I decided to write some sequencing functionality, and eventually we have a fully-featured tracker that can be used to make NES music from scratch.

Download the NesTracker 0.5 Beta Installer

This program requires the .NET Framework 2.0, which it should check your system for on installation. It also requires the latest version of DirectX.

Here is a video demonstrating a recreation of the Zelda 2 overworld theme:



Download the Zelda 2 Demo Song

I encourage everyone to try this out and post feedback here. Errors especially, but also general usability comments. I have plenty of features planned for the next version, including NSF export (to use your songs on real NES hardware or in an emulator).

[Edit: I have changed the link to point to the latest install file.]

AuthorIan Stocker | Comment6 Comments |
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Reader Comments (6)

Hey very interesting.. Have you by chance seen famitracker? Render to wav is a nice feature you have on FT.
September 16, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterpeter
As a user of trackers and a 2A03 fanatic, here are some things I would love to see (and that Famitracker has yet to provide the world):

1. A Mac OS X binary.
2. Exporting to .NES
3. A tracker that runs natively on an NES, much as LSDJ runs on actual Game Boy hardware (I know this would be an entirely different ball of wax then what you are going for here, but it's a fantasy I have so I thought I'd throw it out there).
September 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterJace
Thanks for the comments, and it's great to see some interest in this in such a short time. I hope it doesn't get too much popularity before I test it on a wider scale!

Glad to hear WAV recording is a hit, it was made for debugging the sound emulator and I figured it might as well stay in release. In the future I'll probably make it more user-friendly.

As for a Mac version: NesTracker is written in C# which as far as I know does not run on Mac OS. If a library becomes it would be a possibility...

.NES export is something that is planned, but I don't know when it will be ready. NSF export will come first.

As for porting this to NES hardware, you're right, that's a whole other project. Would be awesome though. We'll see...
September 16, 2008 | Registered CommenterIan Stocker
Nice! Will try this later today, and I'll bookmark this page to keep me updated on the development :)
September 17, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterRandom
first impressions are that it sounds lovely and puts a big grin on my face.
thank you.
December 30, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterloopi
wow, that sounds great! this is an awesome project! keep it up! and THANX!
March 9, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterxero / the.fontvir.us

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