RBI Music

[BeefMaster]

I found RBI's music on Planet Emulation in .NSF format (a direct dump of the music from the ROM) and noticed some stuff.  First, the info lists a composer: Norio Nakagata.  He's not listed in the RBI credits, so I'm not sure where whoever dumped this data got that (I don't know how .NSF dumps are done, but I was under the assumption that any composer data was manually added).

Second bit of info: I hadn't played through the "season" in awhile, and when I heard the season-ending music, I recognized the tune as a hymn called "Thine Is the Glory" (an Easter hymn).  I found that the tune of the hymn is a piece called "Judas Maccabaeus" by Handel.  Not real useful info, I know, but it's neat to know the roots of at least some of RBI's music.

I have attached the zipped up .NSF file.  I believe you can find .NSF players at Zophar's Domain, and there are also WinAmp plugins, although I haven't used them.

[Gantry]

Interesting stuff Beef, going to see if I can find more info on Nakagata...

On the season ending music, you saying "Thine Is the Glory" is also a tune based off of Jedas Maccabeus, making it the original source of the music? 

[Gantry]

The first google hit shows Nakagata being the original composer of a few Namco NES titles, including Family Stadium...

[BeefMaster]

Interesting stuff Beef, going to see if I can find more info on Nakagata...

On the season ending music, you saying "Thine Is the Glory" is also a tune based off of Jedas Maccabeus, making it the original source of the music? 

Yes - Handel is the original composer, and "Judas Maccabaeus" is the original tune.  "Thine Is the Glory" is simply new words on top of the existing tune; that's how I know the tune, so that's how I initially recognized it.

I did a bit of searching for whether there's been another version of Meridian, the NSF player I use, and I found this, which appears to be a work-in-progress program to compose NES music.  I'm going to look in to this a bit more, but if it what I think it is, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that I could put new music into RBI (well, I'd probably need nightwulf's help to put it in, but I could write it).

[BDawk]

Didn't that shitty--Major League Baseball have similar music to RBI?

[fknmclane]

The eternal mystery that is RBI gives us more useful knowledge every day.  Blessed be RBI.

[Gantry]

Didn't that shitty--Major League Baseball have similar music to RBI?

I don't believe that MLB had the RBI music, as that game was made by LJN, a rival of Namco and later part of Acclaim.  Super Batter Up, which was made by Namco for the Super NES, had a spiced up version of the RBI theme...

[Stock]

Didn't that shitty--Major League Baseball have similar music to RBI?

I don't believe that MLB had the RBI music, as that game was made by LJN, a rival of Namco and later part of Acclaim.  Super Batter Up, which was made by Namco for the Super NES, had a spiced up version of the RBI theme...

Baseball stars has similar music to RBI, except BBS has a hard drum beat going along with it.

[Gantry]

Not much else on Nakagata based on the google search.  He pretty much stuck to video game composition and did one movie, the Japanese Sci-Fi flick Cyber Ninja.  I guess it's time to break out Teoma, Yahoo and A9 to see if I can dig up some dirt.  No bios, no info, just game soundtrack credits...

[Gantry]

This would be for the real RBI diehards (read way more into it than me):

Namco Game Music Volume 1

He's got a track on there, bid away...

[nightwulf]

I did a bit of searching for whether there's been another version of Meridian, the NSF player I use, and I found this, which appears to be a work-in-progress program to compose NES music.  I'm going to look in to this a bit more, but if it what I think it is, it isn't out of the realm of possibility that I could put new music into RBI (well, I'd probably need nightwulf's help to put it in, but I could write it).

I'd be interested in doing something with the sound in RBI too. There's a ton of free space in the area that the sound engine exists in ROM, so really adding anything anyone comes up with should be trivial.

I've attached the page of ROM that handles sound. This is a disassembly, with comments added in at places where I understand what's going on. Towards the bottom, you can see all the actual data fed to the sound engine for every sound in the game. I didn't spend much time dealing with it, and other than the first byte representing what channel the sound is played through, I have no idea how any of it works. If anyone wants to glance at it and see if you can figure out how it works, here it is.

Nightwulf

[fknmclane]

C'mon nightwulf.  You know no one is gonna do anything as good as you can do.  Just get it over with. 

[nightwulf]

Not necessarily. I'm probably the only one here who'd spend time trying to figure out the sound engine through the code, but we've all heard the songs enough to know them perfectly. I don't think it's out of the question that someone else might be able to find a pattern in that mess.

Nightwulf

[OctoFranco]

Amazing the wealth of information here about this game.  Someone should do RBI's Wikipedia page.  Could probably get it as the featured article eventually.

And god help me I actually played nine games against the computer just so I could hear that ending music, since I'm too lazy figure out how to play BeefMaster's file.

[nightwulf]

Well here, let me save anyone else from irritation.

Nightwulf

[fknmclane]

Someone should do RBI's Wikipedia page.

I'm pretty sure Gantry already did.

[Gantry]

Yeah, but I never got around to finishing it, I have to do that...

And someone just yesterday added a paragraph about McGwire and the arcade predicting that he'd break the homer record.   A little off with his description of the stats though, but nice to have others work on it...