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An arcade-styled cover of the main theme of Balatro.
I had fun with the thumbnail and visuals effects for this one! I've heavily invested in the music side of these works since beginning in 2022 and I'm eager to increase the production value as well! The jokers were each handmade by me in Aseprite and I got my hands dirty in DaVinci Resolve's Fusion editor, playing with nodes to get the aberration and distortion effects of a CRT.
A few notes about the arrangement:
I caught the Balatro bug over the holidays at the end of 2024, and before I knew it I had sunk more than a dozen hours over only three days. The addictive gameplay is paired with an equally catchy theme tune that I saw as a great challenge.
This arrangement got me dipping my toes in instrument macros for the first time, which I have had a dull awareness of for a while but largely ignored. Fortunately, I can see now they are a great way to save labor and time for repeating some of the more complicated touches (basically anything a human performer would "emote" through their performance). The first time is always the most challenging, so I definitely expect them to appear more as I become more familiar. Having managed Balatro's theme, I can think of a song or two on my list I had previously thought infeasible that now may be achievable...
Another first marked by this arrangement is writing for three chips in the same module! As with most of my arrangements, I initially started with the Genesis YM2612 + SN76489 pairing, but the distinctive lead instrument demands varying oscillation speeds in the instrument itself which the YM2612 struggled to deliver. LFO speeds on the YM2612 are actually limited to 8 discrete values (one byte?). While I could manually move an LFO slider controlling total level of an operator in the macros tab, there was not way to program that in. Thankfully, the YM2151 has a full 256 levels to set LFO speed, so I pivoted to that. Each YM2151 chip has its own chip-wide LFO shared across all 8 channels, so I added a clone of it for accurate echoes of the lead. Finally a PCM for percussion, and before I knew it I was at three chips! Thanks to the fine folks at the Furnace Discord server for guiding me through my many questions.
As for non-technical aspects of the song, the 7/4 time signature is a real treat! It's paced slowly enough that I expect a stable 4/4 but the 4/4 + 3/4 setup and rhythm of the chords go a long way towards an ephemeral vibe.
The bass sounds real fuzzy and uniform as well which is interesting. Fun fact, the bass instrument on FM5 is actually an instrument from Sonic 3's drowning theme, pitched as low as it can go!
Progress on the chiptune tutorial is slow but steady! All my content so far hasn't required a script, so like everything I do I learn as I go and hope it will be easier in the future lol. Essentially I want to make the video I wish had been available when I started learning to make chiptunes, and I to create a truly comprehensive breakdown of my entire creative process from first appraising a song's potential to uploading to online platforms. In order to create the best video (and deputize y'all to create more good music for me to listen to, ha) I'm considering uploading the general bullet points to the Getting Started in Chiptune page at ficklefilms.fm. If you're interesting in being a part of the process, I'd welcome any feedback and suggestions at the channel email.
If you are a fan of covers like this, feel free to check out my previous works! I like a variety of games, so there is a decent selection.
If you have any suggestions or tips about the composition please let me know, I'm looking to improve!