old school nintendo/gameboy type sound effects

[Accumulator A]

I've reached the stage in game development where I'm polishing it up and I'm ready to add sound, but I don't exactly know where to begin. I'm developing using OS X and I would prefer to use old school Nintendo beeps and boops for sound effects (think mega man) instead of realistic sampled explosions and such.

How should I go about doing this? Which software should I be looking into?

[PoV]

Not sure about Mac, but on PC I've toyed with VST Plugins that do NES, C64 and similar noises. That's an option. Another one, though I don't know how the Tracker situation on the Mac is, is to check out some classic MOD chip tunes (files in .MOD, .S3M, .IT, or .XM format). They'd have the samples, and give good examples on how to make certain noises. Hope that helps.

[Anthony Flack]

You could download a copy of Stomper, which is a fairly straightforward old-school sound synthesiser.

[TimS]

You mean like REAL bleeps and bloops?

ChipTune (http://www.chiptune.com/)
8 Bit Peoples (http://www.8bitpeoples.com/)

Sorry I've got to recommend this one - "Coffee House Rock" (ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/8bitpeoples/8bp053-03-amor_antiquita-coffee_house_rock.mp3)

As for making your own... it would depend on what you're already familiar with. If you've got Cubase or something similar just search for VST plugins and "chiptune" or "NES" and you should find what you need.

For a cheaper route, Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) comes in Mac flavor and supports VST plugins... and is free -- but it isn't really made for making music (just editing sound).

Good luck!

[tolik]

Another possibility is to get some native-system tracking tools and write music/samples in old format. Almost every old system has it's tracker and player nowadays.

Here are some examples.

SAP/Atari http://raster.infos.cz/atari/rmt/rmt.htm
NSF/NES http://nesdev.parodius.com/nt2/
SID/C64 http://noname.c64.org/tracker/

You could track just couple of notes or a small music track, use one of the players for these formats, export music into WAV and process that later.

[Leper]

Real synth-instruments make those bleeps and bloops and I have those isntruments at my fingertips :)

[Raptisoft]

Another good method is to download an Atari or Commodore 64 emulator and just make some bleeps and bloops using sound statements (this is what I did in Chuzzle).

[ManuelMarino]

...old school beeps??? ARGH :)

[jetro]

I have more than once used module trackers to make some sound effects, like PoV suggested. They are quite easy to use for that purpose, as you don't need to know how to compose actual music. :-) I have done that stuff using DOSBox and the old Impulse Tracker, but any tracker should be fine for that. You can render .wav files with the software itself, or use some module player (e.g. WinAmp/Modplug player) for that, as long as the tracker supports saving to .mod, .xm, .it or some other common enough module format.

Check oud wikipedia article on Trackers, there's a few listed for OS X as well (note that probably some of the Windows ones nowadays have also OS X support available).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker

Here's an example of such sound effect in .IT module format (http://jet.ro/files/POGO_SFX.IT). Made very quickly, used in Pogo Sticker (http://jet.ro/feats). :-D

EDIT: Just remembered I recently heard about Milky Tracker (http://www.milkytracker.net/), which is a clone of old FastTracker2. It is available also for Mac OS X.