MRC MuSiXmas Challenge: Full results

First of all, the expectable congrats to wolf_

I was very surprised by the fact that there were such quality tunes. Also the fact that I didn't expect so many people to participate and be really good as well. Good job.

My top 11 would be:

01. wolf - silicon christmas
02. wiz - white christmas
03. dionisi hernadez - navodad
04. meits - the xmas files
05. frederik boelens - iceworld
06. frederik boelens - sd-xmas
07. bifi - oldschool msxmas
08. vincent van dam - kvk-xmas
09. joram van hartingsveldt - jingle things
10. drmsx - merry christmas mr lawrence
11. ccfg - joulubugi

Why.

Didn't find much of christmas in wolf_'s tune. Probably cuz I don't know a lot of x-mas tunes or he mixed it away very well. The guy knows how to handle stuff. Making the samples just a few bytes large and keep the envelopes perfect shows a lot of skill. I envy his skill.

I never heard of Wiz, but he blew me away with his bright scc tune. Just like wolf_'s tune it sounded like an scc should sound, though wiz used a real scc. He's a very close 2nd place for me, and if my mood was slightly different, they'd swap places easily.

The novadad tune was little weird. For the sound I didn't really like it cuz I'm spoiled with nice bright tunes in this age. Though, this man drew a sound from the PSG which was unknown to me for all those 18 years of knowing MSX music. Some parts really sounded un-PSG, more like FM-PAC. He kept the composition very full and almost made me forget it's just 3 channels of squarewaves and one channel of noise.

Hmmm... I like my own song, otherwise I wouldn't submit it. It turned out to be a big disappointment afterall. The song was made using blueMSX 2.1 to be able to use more sampleram than my genuine moonsound has. I was shocked to hear the song being so crippled by destroyed envelopes on a real msx. Won't happen again.

Both of Frederik Boelens' tunes were almost equally of appreciation for me, though I liked iceworld most. It gave me the oldschool happy moonsound tunefeeling. Even a little more oldschool than the moonsound itself actually is. For this tune goes as well, that my mood slightly differed from the situation now, I'd let hem blow me away from the 4th place I gave myself (haha, bad luck chao5 ).

I liked the SD-snatcher x-mas tune by the man's hand a lot as well. I think I even remember the original sd-snatcher tune which was base to this song. I always like own work over covers and since I don't hear anything I'd ever heard in Iceworld, Iceworld won the match. Great tune for sure.

Bifi's tune was very nice and I didn't expect him to make a complete mml tune. It was sad that only his mp3 was completely flawless afterall. Once again showing the differences between MSX a and MSX b. I know how hard it is to make mml tunes so that's why I leave it behind like a plague. I almost went drunk, overlooking Beefmeister's listing. He's a monk

Vincent's psg tune did have something, the samples. Though he couldn't match novadad. It's little pity that the rhythm sample doesn't continue on all places, leaving a gap in the song. It gave me the feeling the song wasn't completed yet.

jinglethings. Completely flawless tune, though very standard. It didn't appeal to me a lot. It's good, nothing more, nothing less. It reminded me a bit of the first explorations of MSX composers on the moonsound in 1996, but it turned out the moonsound can do more than that.

I didn't really like merry christmas mr lawrence. One reasong could be that I wasn't able to let it play on a real MSX, though just in a replayer on my pc. I thought the tune is too empty. Probably the original is like that as well, I don't know. But I found it a bit boring anyways.

Don't really know what to say of joulubugi. I guess other tunes were just better.

Sidenote:
Moonsound: can do almost everything you want on an MSX. Sometimes it makes a simple tune sound great, just because of its sound (my tune was very simple, though the samples I grabbed from a synth did the trick).

SCC: Tried it just once, using (wasn't it?) SCC-Musix. Don't really remember the name anyhow, but it turned out to be a pain in the butt to let something descent drop out the speakers, so I gave up. SCC tunes get compared to Konami, if you want it or not. This challenge shows that composers listen to Konami as well.

PSG: If you want a PSG tune to be special, you need talent. dionisi hernadez whows he has it. If he'd be the treshold of standard, all others (I heard so far) would fail.

I've been out of the MSX scene for quite some years and back a bit now. I found out there are quite some unknown musicfileformats to me. Don't really know what that's good for, but that might be just me.

€ 0,02

I wonder what snout's list would look like and why?

Btw,. I wonder why there were no MB-STEREO or MSX-MUSIC entries in this challenge. If I'd had the time I would have done an MB-STEREO and a Musica (PSG+FM+SCC) entry. Alas, alas....

P.S. Bifi - did you just read my mind?! What's your list dude?

Btw,. I wonder why there were no MB-STEREO or MSX-MUSIC entries in this challenge.

bleh... old PSG is hot because it's retro and kinda unexplored, opl4 is hot because it offers more freedom..

there were some webserver issues for the past ~30 minutes.. are you still having trouble downloading 'em?

change -> there are still server issues... going to see what I can do about it to fix it...