Pokey Soundchip

This soundchip was used in the Atari 800/320 XL/XE Series in the 80s and is (in my mind) the most sexy of all chips, perhaps only closely rivalled by the Commadores’ SID chip.  It has wonderful arpeggios and a wonderful range from punchy bass to some excellent treble sounds ranging from sawtooth stuf to more smooth sine wave sounds.  Here is a random assortment of some of my favourite songs from childhood:

• Ninja Commando – Adam Gilmore
• Winter Games 88′ – Chris Murray
• Exterpator – Rob Hubbard
• Storm – David Whittaker
• Zybex – Adam Gilmore
• Red Max – David Whittaker

And oddly, here is a much more recent song, a finalist in the written for the Grayscale Project competitions a few years ago, which I think makes excellent use of the range of functions this chip had while remaining faithful to the way they were used: Error 505

Commadore 64 Sid Chip

Some Commadores SID chip was one of the most awesome.  This three-channel wonder had almost everything you could want from a mini-synth.  I could write a whole website about the great C64 SID artists and tunes here (actually most were the same names as the Atari).  Well … here is the first few top tunes I was able to find in my Winamp playlist:

• Red Max – David Whittaker
• Draconus – Adam Gilmore
• Starforce Fighter – Wally Beben

Atari ST/STe’s YM-2149 Chip

Now, I admit I do like this one, despite the fact in many ways less flexible than both the SID and the Pokey.  In my mind it was almost a step back from Atari when the YM-2149 featured in Atari’s  ST and STE .  But, this chip does have something that no others ever did – a wonderful dirty gritty, boomy-crunchy sound (I think thats the technical term).  Here are some good ones I remember.

• Bloodmoney
• Quick Snax Dizzy
• Summer Olympiad Song 4
• Outrun Theme
• R-Type Theme
• Visitors From Dreams – DMA (Quite more recent bit of YM Engineering)

Well, these next few may seem a little out of place because the sound chips that went into most of the computer consoles behaved very differently (in terms of how they loaded the music data and played them back).  But what the hell … here are some of SEGAs good tunes that I am particularly fond of:

A couple from the Mega Drive/Genesis’ SN76489 chip:

• Sonic 2 Chemical Stage
• Sonic 3 Bonus Stage

And one from the Master System:

And finally… Alex Kidd Theme