The Nintendo Game Boy is quite possibly the most popular console in the international chiptune community. You might have seen musicians cranking out tunes with LSDJ or Nanoloop, but now there’s a new option for writing bangers on the DMG. It’s Drum Machina Go!, put together by [audiowanderer].
The original Game Boy has a four-bit audio engine with two pulse channels, one waveform channel, and a noise channel. To that end, DMGo! gives you those four channels to play with, each with a 16-step sequencer. There’s also an FX section, ADSR controls, and various filtering options to make your sound juicier, richer, or grainier, depending on your taste.
There are also helpful sync options via the link port, such as for use with other Game Boys, or you can use PULSE OUT sync to hook up to your Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators or KORG Volcas if you have them. There are also fun features like the MANGLING FX which lets you decay and destroy your musical creations live by playing with the D-pad and buttons.
If you’re eager to try a new way to compose on the Game Boy, you can throw it on a flash cart or in an emulator and start tinkering away. We’ve featured other fun Game Boy music hacks before, too, like this nifty project that turns it into a MIDI sequencer.
Watching it on that awful GameBoy screen reminds me of an old joke:
A Frenchman catches a fish and celebrates by opening it like a bottle of wine.
The bewildered fish stares at him and spits out two urinal cakes.
“Finally,” says the Frenchman, “a fish with impeccable taste in le hors d’oeuvres.”
He releases it them back into the river and keeps the fish for himself.
I don’t get it?
How do you open a fish like a bottle of wine?
How did the fish get the urinal cakes?
“He releases it them back into the river and keeps the fish for himself.” no where’s the joke in that as it is relatively normal not to keep urinal cakes but do keep a fish you’ve just caught.
I’m pretty sure something got lost in translation here as I’m confused.
and exactly how does this remind you of the gameboy screen?
Here we go!
I will be using this, Ive actually got a gameboy port to sync port convertor so I could plug it in to my Korg Volcas.