DnBuser & TnC: Strong & Delayed (the real story)

I thought it was time to reveal the real story about DnBuser & TnC: "Strong & Delayed" tracks. If you read my post about DJ Station and see the video on YouTube you already know the real story.

So I am sorry making up a story about a DJ Collective called "DJ Station" and a real DJ DnBuser, who was only a virtual DJ created by TnC.

Now I can only tell you how I created these "Strong and Delayed" track, I just let the DJ (DnBuser) start the mix and when I liked the intro, I started to drag new samples to the numbers in the circle.

I never used the Vocal samples, cause I just hated the femal voice they used. Fun to know while creating a track, is when you drag (for example) BD to number 1 it sounds different when you drag it to number 8...

I wanted to create more tracks in different music styles, but after the "Strong & Delayed" series, all my attempts were never good enough to publish in any way...
Maybe some day...

DJ Station a music generating computerprogram

DJ Station of DATA BECKER is a really strange computer program, it can generate music in different styles, but you can on the fly change how the music sounds like. 

How ? By adding music samples, change filters and other settings like speed or mood. 

DJ Station created an impressive number of so called DJs that generate some kind of style and mood. 

It possible to create your own DJ, but you cannot add your own picture in it or generate how the DJ should look like... that's what I miss the most in DJ Station. 

And they made a horrible bad looking icon  (see below)...

While it was designed for WIN 95/98, still it runs on Windows XP 

and higher, but cannot record/save/export the mix anymore.

With the right audio-/videograbber you can record the track and make a mp3 of it. 

 

What I like in DJ Station is you can interactive change the mix, while the DJ is playing his mix, you see every nod or switch move, crazy to see...

Because DJ Station is an old program it contajns music-styles we dont use anymore, 

like Cross-Over , Rave or Euro-House and the music or mixes it produced are very minimal and could easlily repeating itself, I like it any way. 

My bigest problem with DJ Station is mainly the vocals, mostly the female voices are annoying, boring and used too often. 

I made some tracks myself with DJ Station and upload them to Soundcloud, 

titled "Strong & Delayed".

See my other posts with the same title for more info... 

DJ Station was issued as an 2 CD-Rom package, mainly containing samples in wav format.

So installing all 15 (!) music styles will take a while...

112 MSX Basic games presents: KITCHEN.GAM (100)

Yes, the countdown is still going and today it's MSX Basic Game numbero 100 !

The game is an old listing from the MSX Computer Magazine Listingbook #2, called "Kitchen Chaos, but strangely the listings name was in Dutch. But hey, the game itself was a mixture of Dutch and English, so who cares...

Well, I did and translated the last few Dutch words and  did some rework, cause original you saw the title of the game AFTER you run out of lives.
The difficulty of the game is also strange, first easy but soon it gets a bit intense and when you make a mistake the game goes back to the easy setting.

I had a great time playing it despite that, it looks nice, it's very fast and it;s hard to beat the highscore.
What more can you expect of the good game ?

So I had to include this one into the 112 MSX Basic games collection.

Get it !
Gavitex
Mediafire

TnC House Classics presents : Don't You Want Me / Dont You Want My Love - Felix

Of course should this one be included in the TnC House Classics. I remember I was speechless when I heard the song for the first time as intro on Impact's Housedisk 1.


The version of Impact was for Music Module (MSX-AUDIO ) so I tried to create a MSX-STEREO version in Moonblaster.

A slighly modified version with a sort of videoclip you can find on YouTube with the name 2 Felix (after the name of the original artist).

I used it also in the Moonblaster Housemix Between Good and Bad Gabbaheads.
Why is the song so populair ? I have never heard any organ like that and the sample was used in many other housemusic productions...even today...

Felix had a 2nd hit called It Makes Me Crazy, less sucessfull, but still a great song with another hypnotic riff that stays long in your head once you heard it.
Lucky for me it was also made for Moonblaster by Silence so I used it in my Moonblaster Housemix Cryognity Makes Me Crazy

I only included the original videoclips here, cause I don't want to waste time searching for specials, when the originals are special enough.

Here I found some interesting info about Felix. But what are you waiting for ? Get that Impact's Housedisk 1 and play it loud on your MSX-2 !

NONE Xmas songs - MSX Style - part 3

Yes there is a part 3. I wasnt planning it, but the New Year demo of part 2 was MSX-2 only
So I got the idea to create an MSX-1 New Year demo,
but because of the limitations of MSX-1 Basic (and my own limitations) I decided to make a Happy New Year Picture demo for MSX-1.

I re-used the sounds, sprites and greetings of the original, search on the net for pictures, converted them with my fav tool,  did some testing and here it is...

Gavitex LZH DSK
Mediafire LZH DSK

It took me 8 hours to finished, most of the time I was searching and converting the pictures. If you dont like it ? Well...search on YouTube for MSX demo...

But I wish you all a Merry Xmas and Happy New Year !

MSX Xmas game: Penguin Adventure

When I think of Xmas and MSX games, the first name that I can recall is Konami's Penguin Adventure. It has snow and even Santa Clause. It's a really good but hard game to handle.
I made it once to stage 3, so you know my gaming skulls now...

So I search in my own MSX archive and found an old BCF demo, that seems to be forgotten on YouTube.

When I started the demo I knew why. It had 2 little animation demo's with the famous SNOUT humor   ,
a converted picture from the cartridge box, some credits, all location of the traders, santa claus and all warps and a slotmachine just like in the game.

Only the slotmachine had some music (stolen from the MSX-2 game Red Lights of Amsterdam) and some mostly annoying PSG sounds.
So instead of uploading a video of the demo to YouTube,
I decided to search for other YouTube videos about the game Penguin Adventure.

But here you can download that old 1989 demo of BCF:
Gavitex LZH and DSK or Mediafire LZH and DSK

BCF became more famous when they created some games and their DiscStations, but of course you knew that already.

And here some great video's I found about Penguin Adventure:
1. Penguin Adventure MSX Konami overview
* The review is very nice made by a none MSX-er, it gave me a new inside info 
about the game itself *
2. Soundtrack Penguin Adventure Konami MSX
* Not the real OST from Konami, but nicely arranged, better than any so called remixes *
3. Weird Video Games - Penguin Adventure (MSX) 
* Forget all that nonsense about speed and more, just listen from 11:30 to the Penguin Adventure Rap, hilarious !!! *

  

 

NONE Xmas songs - MSX Style - part 2

This post is related to the song "Happy New Year" of ABBA. I can't remember much
"Happy New Year" MSX-demo's, with fireworks and stuff...

"Yeah yeah yeah, MCCM once published an firework listing that worked with MSX- and GW-Basic (PC), but it was so slow on MSX and PC, I had to use the KUN compiler on my MSX-2 and a Turbo Basic compiler on my PC-XT to get something that looked like fireworks..."
Noo, I won't put the listing in my blog, go to here and click on nr.35, good luck with typing in...

Well, in 1988 I got the idea to create a simple MSX-2 screen 8 New year demo with the use of my selfgenerated firework sounds and some of my creations made in Philips Designer...

So here it is, it's very old, but the listing is very readable for beginning MSX-ers or MSX-ers who forgot how to program in Basic (like me).



Mediafire: LZH or DSK
Gavitex: LZH or DSK

NONE Xmas songs - MSX Style - part 1

Of course I wanted this Xmas to have some MSX stuff in my blog, so I thought hard about the earlier Xmas posts (My Music Memories) and then it struck me. For both NON Xmas songs I could create a MSX post, so here is the first one.

On the tape I purchased from the C.U.C. composer TerjaSoft created, for both Spectravideo  SVI (side A) and MSX (side B) computers,some very nice PSG songs,
even with some animation.

At the end of the tape was WEALL, yes an nice with MSX-1 animated sprites PSG song.
Because it took a lot of time to load all the sprite data I included an timer and soundeffects to keep the waiting less boring.

So here is all SVI and MSX computers: We All Stand Together is glorious 3-channel PSG version...

At Mediafire: as file or DSK
At Gavitex: as file and DSK

I was curious about the story behind Spectravideo, so I found some info and
some fan websites.

Wikipedia
Roger's
Spectravideo Sweden
Thomas's




I think all MSX-ers should know there were once Spectravideo computers, which were almost MSX computers. And I remember C.U.C. club, who published lots of SVI/MSX related info, listings and programs, and bought lots of magazines and other stuff
at the fairs in Holland. I tried but can't find anything about C.U.C. on the net.
They really deserve their own archive of their magazines and tapes...

My Music Memories: 2 favs Xmas songs

Every blogger should have some post every christmas, so I tried to find some fresh ideas
to post. Here is part 1.

Some artists just record christmas songs almost exactly like the originals from the 50s, 60s, etc., that's ok by me. But I like the songs more, if the artists use new arrangements
to sound a little different than the traditional ones.

It was difficult to choose 2 favs songs and even more difficult to find an artist who made
a nice arrangement to that classic song.
When I finally had 2 favs I browsed YouTube to find a nice arrangement of those songs...

After 1 hour searching and listening to failed attempts of all kinds of (amateur) artists
I was so disappointed I decided to browse in my own CD-collection.
Within 15 minutes I found for both favs an nice new arrangement.

Here it is (as long as YouTube dont remove it).
"Winter Wonderland" of Steve Overland


"Have Yourself A Merry Christmas" of Tomorrow People

These songs can also be found somewhere on the Modern Christmas Tapes 1/2/3
( Another Xmas Post (Part III) )

My Music Memories: 2 NOT favs Xmas songs

Part 2.
There are xmas songs that me run as far as possible from any loudspeaker or if I cant escape I pretend I dont' hear it at all.

My choices may suprise you and you will probably disagree, well...you can always left a comments or stop reading...

First: my most annoying xmas song:

"Blue Christmas" of Elvis Presley
His Christmas album wasnt that bad at all, but this song was worst. Sadly this is the only song you hear from Elvis during the Christmas periode.

Why ?
Here is comes:
"Ahaahaa haahaa haahaa haahaa ffffff a blue xmas without you"
And:

"And I have a blue blue blue blue blue xmas"

Even a duet with Maria McBride cant save this song.

Second: my most boring xmas song:

"12 Days of Christmas" of ...that doesnt matter
It's just a memory game set to music, and it repeat itself over and over again.

Want proof:

Here it comes:

"On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
A Partridge in a Pear Tree"

On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

and we are just at day 5 !

If my true love send the same prenents every day I would tell her to stop,

No, the fool in this song wants all the same presents, 12 days long.

Stupid !

Even the Muppets with John Denver couldnt make the song less boring...

My Music Memories: 2 NONE Xmas songs

Here is part 3.


I looked to a couple of the "Best Xmas songs ever" and similair titles (what may help to sell those recycled CD collections) and saw in the tracklisting some songs, I think ,should never be part of any Xmas song collection.

First one: We all stand together - Paul McCartney.

Why is this a xmas song ?
It's a song for a animated children film with Rupert the Bear and in the musicvideo (just a rip from a short movie
"Rupert and The Frog Song" I see no snow, no xmas trees, no santa or reindeers, just a container full  of frogs !

Here is the complete movie to see for yourself if this is really a christmas movie.

Second: Happy New Year - ABBA.

Is this really a xmas song ?
Sorry, I think it is a song about New Year, Christmas is already gone then.
Yes, at New Year you can play that song from your Christmas CD, but nobody is waiting
for the next song like "Jingle Bells" or "White Christmas".

Here is the original video of ABBA and despite the "Happy" refrein, the lyrics are kinda sad.

112 MSX Basic games presents: BEACHBAL.GAM (102)

It's been a while since I post the last MSX Basic game here. I was a little tired of translating Dutch to English and modifing the games to make them more enjoyable. But recently I played a lot of MSX Basic games again and found a lot of ... and some exception games I had to post here. 
 
One of them is BEACHBAL, it was half Japanese half English game, based on the famous beach volleybal games. But of course much simplified, so it's 1 on 1 game.
I translated it long a ago into half Dutch/English version, so now I had to translate the Dutch part into English again. No problem, cause there was no story to translate or pages full of controls.
Instead it askes a few questions and you're in the game. 

You can play BEACHBAL again the computer or an other MSXer. I prefer a human competitor, cause the computer makes almost no mistakes, argh ! This is not a listing, but a game I found somewhere on a MSX BBS. This is also the first MSX-2 game in the 112 MSX Basic games series and plays in SCREEN 4 !
I never ever have used this screen on my MSX-2, just like SCREEN 3 FOR msx-1.

Enjoy the grafix and the playability of BEACHBAL and beat this %$#%# computer !!!

Gavitex / Mediafire

Fan of Alannah Myles

There are a couple of female  (rock) singers I really liked the music from.
Most of the time I just bought 1 album, cause most of the time the 1 after was not worth buying. But not Alannah Myles.

She had a big hit with the blues song "Black Velvet" from her 1st album, but the second single "Love Is" was a failure, more an nice album track than a potential hit single. The 1st album was loaded with fresh pop rock songs and some rock ballads which were a little cliche.

So I bought her 2nd album blindly, cause the 1st single
"Song instead of a kiss" , was a very sad song with lots of violins and very different from the style of the 1st album.
The 2nd album was a little different than the 1st album, sadly the songs seems repeat themself in the endings.
Still I enjoyed it enough to buy a 3rd and a 4th album.
After that no new album came out and the last thing I found out , was the announcing of a "Best of" with some new songs. At that time I was less interested in buying a full prize album for a couple of new songs...


I think her first album was the best she's ever made, although she recovered recently a new version of her big hit "Black Velvet", with no suprises. She has still a great voice, but the songs are just not really catchy anymore.

Some links to websites:  Google+  and a strange Polish (?) website


A lot of female artists covered her "Black Velvet", so I choose different ones, a duet with Ali Milner and a group called The Johnson Report


BTW: I remembered that Ernst Schuller of Unicorn Corportation made Alannah Myles covers
in FM Basic.

I searched and found them on The Library Series #1, full of own compo's and great MSX-fan musics.
If you like you can download it from Gavitex or Mediafire. I liked some of the songs that much that I converted them into FAC Soundtracker or Moonblaster musics. Which ones ? In another post maybe...

The Colour Demo's of EMP-Soft

Thinking of a good title was the hardest part, while creating this post. 

When my MSX co-worker at EMP-Soft, Elko, had an FM-Pac, he started creating a lot
of short melodies in FM Basic, includng some covers and some just melodies. 

But the duration these melodies was so short, to short to upload to any MSX BBS. 

So when Elko had some blues melodies and some spanish melodies I decided to create a music demo for each set of melodies and in a different languages.
The Blues demo is therefor in English, the Espana demo in Spanish, the Bang Bang demo
in French and the Musikbox demo in German. 

But why I called it the Colour Demo's of EMP-Soft ? 

The Blues demo was made in black/blue cause these colours seems to fit best for that style of music, and Espana was made in yello/red, which seems to me the best colours to describe Spain. 

The last 2 were made in the colours I not had used before, that is why The Bang Bang demo is in yellow/green and The Musikbox demo is black/white.

Yes, these FM Basic music demo's were all made for MSX-1 and all GFX was created by me by using a special drawing program VSTEKEN. 

I think it was a listing from MCM (once famous Dutch  MSX Magazine), but of course I change it a little to make it better.

I never finished all my modification, so I never uploaded my version VSTEKE2.BAS.

VSTEKEN had just 1 good feature, it could create a Basic program from the drawing you made.
So every line, circle, paint was correctly recorded and exported to a Basic program with linenumbers and all...
Very rare for a drawing program. 

I already described the Blues and the Espana demo, so next is the Bang Bang demo.

Bang Bang was just another MSX FM Basic listing I found somewhere, the maker is Japenese (Gan-P) I guess...

It's an amazing piece of music, with just lots of drum sounds  and lot of basslines...

I loved it so much that I stripped the listing, so I could easily make my own versions.

The first is the original,
the 2nd is with other
"more cooler" instruments, the last one uses total random instruments. I love random...

The 4th demo, Musikbox, was more a collection of short PSG musics I converted to FM Basic versions, the title of the songs can be found in the listing itself, some titles were already lost, when I made this demo.
Still, the 5th song is the best of them all...

All 4 demo's are in 1 LZH file and a DSK file, so you can choose.
Hope you like it, I had a great time reviewing the demo's for this post.

Well, I had some spare time so I translated and updated the original VSTEKEN.BAS into English, called VSTEKENE.BAS.
So you can try creating better drawings than the ones in these demo's...

Gavitex LZH DSK

Mediafire LZH DSK

PS: For the DSK version I created an MENU.BAS drawn by VSTEKENE.BAS....

Happy Halloween: Bit2 Slasher demo (MSX)

When I uploaded the "valis - the fantasm soldier 2 - scary part" I remembered I had somewhere a Japanese demo which had also some kind of horror in it. I first though it was from T&E Soft, but after searching more than 20 disks, I had to admited it was Bit2.

Yes, the guys that made nice programs like Quinple, Nyancle Racing and Graphsaurus.
Then I watched this demo, very dark and no happy ending. Was that the same Bit2 ?

Because of all the Japanese titles I dont know what the demo is all about and more important I could find out what the title of the game was. 

Yes, I only have the intro-demo, not the game itself. Kinda sad, it could be a very good game if it had the graphics of the demo. 

Why I called it the Bit2 Slasher demo...watch this

Of course this was not the entire demo and I saved only the best part, cutt off the disk loading times otherwise the YouTube movie should be to boring too watch. 

I saved the Japanese texts, music and soundeffects cause that's part of the story the demo tries to tell.

Happy Halloween !

TnC Collected Works: TnC ToolZ & DemoZ part B

I started to release that 2 screens full of programs, was not enough to show all the tools and demo's I already selected for part B. I had the modify MAINMENU.BAS to screen 5 to have 4 screens. That was so much work, I felt like I had to start over again. Only the submenu's with Manual/Program were untouched...

In the end I was proud of the result, although I had difficulties writing for every program a short description and still use no more than 112 files. I manage and I'm planning to use this MAINMENU.BAS for the rest of the series,well sometimes with another logo of course.

BTW: the TnC characters was made in Philips Videographics after converting the MSX-2 start-up screen screenshot made in BlueMSX emulator into a screen 8 picture with the best picture to msx convertor every (and online): http://msx.jannone.org/conv/

And for screen 5 picture I took a screenshot from the screen 8 picture with the TnC characters and converted to screen 5 with ...the MSX Screen Conversor 

Here are the links to Gavitex and Mediafire 

The screenshot show the new MAINMENU.BAS in screen 5, the crazy textfile changer DIALECT v2.1 and the simple scroll-demo of EMP-Soft, simply called EMP-demo. 

I am still proud of this demo, cause it was written completly in MSX-Basic without any KUN complier or Turbo-Basic, with it's own characterset and adjustable speed of the scroller. 

The music was a song called Thunderblade and I converted the FM Basic listing to FAC Soundtracker format so both FM-Pac and Music Module users could listen to the song. Lately I listened to the FM Basic listing and the EMP-demo, I have to say the FAC Soundtracker version is better...

On YouTube I found the song was called Type II from Thunderblade.

TnC Collected Works: TnC ToolZ & DemoZ part A

 It seems as a good idea to collect the best tools, demo's and music I had created in the period I was most active on my MSX-2 computers.

And when I had a couple, I realized most of the programs where written in Dutch, not very handy if you want to share it with non-Dutch MSX-ers around the world.

Translating was too much work, so I created a short description what the purpose was of each program...

But I wanted more, a nice menu so you had easy access to the programs, without typing to much...

So the first version of MAINMENU.BAS (or MM.BAS) was created in screen 8, and with only 2 screens, not a lot of programs could be displayed.
Still I could fill an entire disk, and called  it "TnC ToolZ & DemoZ part A".

First I started collecting my tools and demo's and when I'm out of tools, I will continue
the serie with "TnC SoundZ & DemoZ part A", with of course lots of noise.

I used my very first TnC logo as background in MAINMENU.BAS, when I start with a "SoundZ & DemoZ" disk I will use one of my new logo's, created by SupMSX

The screenshots show the MAINMENU.BAS, the PCX Picture Show and the Silly Prompt Changer (in Dutch). There are plenty of interesting programs on this disk and if you really want an English version of any program, leave a comment...

Here is the link to Gavitex, or Mediafire

TnC House Classics presents : Open Your Mind

There are so many versions of this classics, but this original can still compete against them.
It´s really hypnotizing song that stays in your head for a very long time once you heard it.
The breaks, the samples, the main loop, everything is in place.


But then I read the comments on YouTube, it's just a speedup version of the Simple Minds song "New Gold Dream" !!!  Yes, really !!!

And the sample came from the first  "Total Recall" with Arnold Shwarzenegger.

The video is also special, seeing miss Thatcher morphing into mr. Stalin. and back...

Cant fight it,  I want more U.S.U.R.A.
And more....

Ok that's enough for now, bye !

TnC House Classics presents : Is There Anybody Out There ?

When housemusic started, there were producers that just put some synths, some housebeat, a rapper and a lot of samples together and called it housemusic.

Most of that stuff in the early 90s sounds nowaday sooo old, but this one of The Bassheads is a long time favorite of mine.

And yes, "Is There Anybody Out There" has that old school formula for making

house music...

Somehow I still like it, it just fits and the changes in the track are very enjoyable.

Wanna hear more, here is the Extended and the Non Verbal Communication goes were Extended stops, with great use of panflutes and whale sounds ???

PS1: I tried to copy the piano riffs in FAC Soundtracker for use in my own house-track
"No-Acid part 3", but I failed.

PS2: What happened to "part 1" and "part 2" ? Well, they were never finished, but parts were all re-used in "part 3"

PS3: In a desperate attempt to finish it, I converted the FAC Soundtracker song to Magic Music Module, added some effects and created a very simple animated demo for it, called...

PS4: In the profile of Zooitroep you can see a glimp of that "No Acid" demo, maybe the only MMM demo every made...

Happy Halloween: Fantasm Soldier II intro (MSX)

I have said it before, the most scariest part of
any MSX game was the 2nd part of the intro demo of Valis - Fantasm Soldier II for MSX-2.
So special for Halloween I uploaded only that part
to YouTube.

Enjoy !

The link is here