Rayman 1 GBC on Chromatic

[Raymanfan201]

Is there any place we can listen to the soundtrack? I'm curious now as to how bad it actually is

its very bad its like this


well because it was the gbc

[Steo]

When it comes to the music in the original game, the only issue I have with it is the sound design, as someone who frequently composes Famicom / NES chiptune. By that, I mean lack of volume envelopes for example, just full volume squares, no volume decay, just like on off if that makes sense. I feel like they could have done a better job with the sound design, given the sound chip in the Game Boy has a lot of similarities to Famicom, aside from the wavetable channel instead of triangle, and how the noise channel is different.

That said, I've not yet even listened to the new music, but I will see what happens when I get around to it. It's going to be a bit disappointing if it's bad though.

well because it was the gbc

That's not a reason for music to be bad, plenty of Game Boy games have good music. If you dislike Game Boy music in general, that's fair, but that's personal preference.

[Raymanfan201]

there is some good gbc music like super mario land such as other but i do agree with the sound design

[Mortamon Saturn]

I would be much more interested if a fan would take on a project like Rayman 3 Readvanced for this game and create a properly upgraded PC version.

I'm genuinely hoping someone will make one!

I don't want my ReDesigner recreation project to discourage anyone from remaking the game on PC.
Same goes for the "Rayman ReColored" name I already coined for the potential "Redemption-like" stage of the project as I couldn't just stick to calling it "Rayman GBC" or "Rayman 2000" when it later got more versions which I also recreated in ReDesigner (PPC/Symbian, Palm OS Color & Greyscale).

If anyone with any game development skills has ever considered giving a proper recreation for the game, please go for it!
You can even use the name I invented if you want, or freely take inspiration from any of my improvements ideas or special assets I have shared over the years like the unique English world texts with the Japanese symbols!

You can luckily still unlock Ubi Cliff in this version. The manual describes how to use the infra-red link to do it (even listing some other games it connects to). Imo it's rather lame they didn't automatically unlock it considering they made other modifications to the game. Just like before there will only be a very, very small number of people who will experience this level.

[...]

Also worth mentioning since we have a digital version of the manual we can now also extract the images from it. Some examples:

Pretty sad that IR-compatible emulation and my Rayman GBC ReDesigned are still the most accessible ways to experience this bonus stage... but of course, I doubt they would have avoided the opportunity to make more money by using this as an argument to buy more copies of their products...

At least, this digital manual will definitely be handy!
Speaking of their modifications, they didn't even take the opportunity to fix the mistakes like the misused "it's" at the end of the storyline section on page 4!

That's not a reason for music to be bad, plenty of Game Boy games have good music. If you dislike Game Boy music in general, that's fair, but that's personal preference.

This. The various Game Boy Mario/Wario Land, Pokémon and Zelda games are enough of a proof the system can produce some extremely catchy tunes, just to name the most obvious ones!

When removing that paragraph yesterday, I just took that line as part of the same context. So my apologies for this also.

I appreciate the apology, and I wish you the best of luck regarding your well being. Mental health is very important indeed. I've been there before.

Haha don't worry, it was mostly my bad for not better structuring my typical wall of text, and for overreacting so nonsensically. I appreciate the apology regardless!
Sorry again, and thank you for the wishes, it's much better now (even despite the recent "Bad Luck With All My Tech Saga™" )! I hope you're doing great as well!

Just a quick heads up that I split this conversation from the topic in the RayWiki section which is for discussing how to document the game on the wiki.

You can tell I was broken that day because I didn't even notice if I picked the proper topic or not... despite being quite used to that RayWiki one!
Thanks for the split!

[RayCarrot]

I don't want my ReDesigner recreation project to discourage anyone from remaking the game on PC.
Same goes for the "Rayman ReColored" name I already coined for the potential "Redemption-like" stage of the project as I couldn't just stick to calling it "Rayman GBC" or "Rayman 2000" when it later got more versions which I also recreated in ReDesigner (PPC/Symbian, Palm OS Color & Greyscale).

If anyone with any game development skills has ever considered giving a proper recreation for the game, please go for it!
You can even use the name I invented if you want, or freely take inspiration from any of my improvements ideas or special assets I have shared over the years like the unique English world texts with the Japanese symbols!

Oh that is funny - cause I had also come up with the name Rayman Recolored for a potential such project It's actually something I've been considering making after Readvanced, cause the engine is very similar and I've already labeled a lot of it in Ghidra. It would also be much simpler to display in higher resolution, due to the lack of things like parallax backgrounds, and it doesn't have complex features like Mode7 or multiplayer. So thanks for letting me still use the name if so, cause I don't want it to seem like I'm copying you now haha!

[Mortamon Saturn]

Same goes for the "Rayman ReColored" name I already coined for the potential "Redemption-like" stage of the project as I couldn't just stick to calling it "Rayman GBC" or "Rayman 2000" when it later got more versions which I also recreated in ReDesigner (PPC/Symbian, Palm OS Color & Greyscale).

If anyone with any game development skills has ever considered giving a proper recreation for the game, please go for it!
You can even use the name I invented if you want, or freely take inspiration from any of my improvements ideas or special assets I have shared over the years like the unique English world texts with the Japanese symbols!

Oh that is funny - cause I had also come up with the name Rayman Recolored for a potential such project It's actually something I've been considering making after Readvanced, cause the engine is very similar and I've already labeled a lot of it in Ghidra. It would also be much simpler to display in higher resolution, due to the lack of things like parallax backgrounds, and it doesn't have complex features like Mode7 or multiplayer. So thanks for letting me still use the name if so, cause I don't want it to seem like I'm copying you now haha!

Well, it's perfect then! After all, I wouldn't have come up with it if it wasn't for the "Re in Rayman fan remakes titles" trend we had with Redemption/ReDesigner, Redreamed or your Readvanced project, so if anything... I'm the one copying you, in a sense!
The name is all yours if you want to use it!
(Anyway, I realize it'd be much wiser to use a completely different title for my own project regardless if it ever goes to the second stage, as I don't want a simple ReDesigner series of custom levels to be mistaken for a proper game remaking Rayman GBC. )

I'll be very interested to see that if you have the time and will to make it afterwards!
Good luck with the rest of the work on Readvanced, it made me very happy to see you tackle an enhanced PC port of R3GBA especially when it's so competent, this is the kind of love these handheld games definitely needed!


Now, I guess all we have to figure out would be a name for a potential Rayman 2 Forever recreation, if it's not bundled with Recolored... I thought of jokingly calling it something like "Rayman 2 Remember" because it's a typical Anglicism buzzword we had decades ago in France like "Forever"!

[RayCarrot]

I'll be very interested to see that if you have the time and will to make it afterwards!
Good luck with the rest of the work on Readvanced, it made me very happy to see you tackle an enhanced PC port of R3GBA especially when it's so competent, this is the kind of love these handheld games definitely needed!

Thanks a lot I've been very happy to see the positive response for the project! I haven't worked a whole lot on it since Rayman Alive due to focusing on a few other things now, but I'm looking forward to getting back to it!

Now, I guess all we have to figure out would be a name for a potential Rayman 2 Forever recreation, if it's not bundled with Recolored... I thought of jokingly calling it something like "Rayman 2 Remember" because it's a typical Anglicism buzzword we had decades ago in France like "Forever"!

If I were to make this Recolored project then it would include Rayman 2 GBC as well! I would almost call R2 GBC an "official rom hack" of R1 GBC, cause internally it's basically the same game. If you check the levels in Ray1Map you'll start noticing that the vast majority of objects are actually the same as from R1 GBC, but with tweaked graphics. So most of the actor code is the same - they just changed the game data (graphics, level maps etc.).

[Mortamon Saturn]

Thanks a lot I've been very happy to see the positive response for the project! I haven't worked a whole lot on it since Rayman Alive due to focusing on a few other things now, but I'm looking forward to getting back to it!

Take your time! Unlike the Rayman game that allowed me to unearth a certain animation recently, there's no "Rush"!

I'll really have to go react to the individual trailers and topics eventually to give them more love, because while I did watch all of this year's edition of Rayman Alive, I've been kind out of the loop when it comes to things like watching videos and actually testing most of the newly released fan demos as I had a busy and painful September!

If I were to make this Recolored project then it would include Rayman 2 GBC as well! I would almost call R2 GBC an "official rom hack" of R1 GBC, cause internally it's basically the same game. If you check the levels in Ray1Map you'll start noticing that the vast majority of objects are actually the same as from R1 GBC, but with tweaked graphics. So most of the actor code is the same - they just changed the game data (graphics, level maps etc.).

I'm happy to hear that, it would truly make it the complete definitive experience for the GBC games, if you do make it! Especially since Rayman 2 Forever is certainly one of the handheld titles that are the most in need of improvements!
Even as one of its few enjoyers, I've always loved to consider it a Rayman GBC bootleg for how amateurishly cheap and recycled it feels... except it's indeed official!
I did notice the similitudes even further when going to back to it and using Ray1Map to replicate the Fairy Glade in ReDesigner, like the flying bombs being reskinned flying Antitoons and so many other things.

But whether it's your improved PC ports or any full-on remake anyone in the community may make in the future, I'm quite looking forward to seeing those games being refined into the best they can be!

[Steo]

This. The various Game Boy Mario/Wario Land, Pokémon and Zelda games are enough of a proof the system can produce some extremely catchy tunes, just to name the most obvious ones!

Yeah exactly. There are of course some games where the music isn't great, and that of course relates to how well people knew how to use the hardware. Tim Follin knew what he was doing on an NES for example, bangers with only 4 channels (not even using the DPCM channel). Of course, Sunsoft made great use of the DPCM channel for bass samples, and it sounded really full due to this. Of course, Game Boy is not exactly the same as NES. It has similarities, but it has a wavetable channel instead of a triangle wave, and doesn't have the extra DPCM channel. It means you can use different waves instead of being forced to use triangle of course.

Anyway, point is, the hardware is not why the music may sound bad.

Haha don't worry, it was mostly my bad for not better structuring my typical wall of text, and for overreacting so nonsensically. I appreciate the apology regardless!
Sorry again, and thank you for the wishes, it's much better now (even despite the recent "Bad Luck With All My Tech Saga™" )! I hope you're doing great as well!

It's fine of course. I was a little stressed out at the time monitoring the thread, as a few people had already tried to post here regarding the politics behind it as well. I was essentially trying to remove things in a hurry too, so things wouldn't get controversial in a thread for a Rayman game, and the idea would have been to ensure any of it gets split into the political views topic.

It's great to hear that you're doing better now. I'm not too bad myself either. Of course, I still have the GI issues here and there, but my overall mood and well being is in a good enough place.

[Sofia98]

Hi, I dabble in music production with a retro feel from time to time and I was wondering if there's ever been a project to remake the original Rayman soundtrack by Rémi Gazel using the Rayman GBC soundfont.

This re-release of the game for the Chromatic would have been the best time to make such a thing, but they cheaped out.

[RayCarrot]

The new music has been ripped:



We now also know it was composed by Kabcorp using hUGEDriver.

Besides this it would appear the ROM has been recompiled as all the data and code is now relocated. The vast majority is still the same though. But some vignettes were altered:

I made a post about it here for more details.

[superdisk]

Hey, I was the programmer on this re-release. Cool to see people digging into it Your findings here and on Bluesky are all basically correct. Hope you enjoy the new soundtrack!

[Steo]

Hi and welcome to Pirate-Community!

I've still yet to receive my copy of the game and have not listened to the new music just yet, though I took a look at your GitHub just now. As someone who really likes chiptune and often composes Famicom / NES music in my spare time for fun (and listen to it on the real hardware), I think it's a really cool project to have something like this for Game Boy that can be used for homebrew. I must try it out at some point even for fun, and just to hear whatever I try compose on the real hardware.

EDIT: I'll look forward to hearing the music soon. For some reason I've been trying to avoid hearing it until I actually receive the game itself.

[RayCarrot]

Oh nice to see you here!

While on the topic of the game I thought I should also mention I've made a password generator for R1 GBC. It'll be available in the next Rayman Control Panel beta update. I made a Bluesky thread digging into how the password system works: https://bsky.app/profile/raycarrot.bsky ... 27blrunk25

Interestingly the game allows passwords with up to 127 lives It only validates the lives count isn't 0, but not that it's not above 99. You can also set the level index 2 values higher than ever possible, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

[Steo]

Nice! It's kind of interesting that it doesn't validate the upper limit.

[Steo]

I only finally got this game today. I can see what people meant by the music, given it's very different it probably just seems odd to them if they are used to the original. What I will say though as someone who makes chiptune, is that the sound design is vastly superior in the new soundtrack. I feel the original soundtrack could have done a far better job at replicating the Rayman 2 soundtrack than it did, and some tracks just sounded like abrupt beeps that start and stop at high volume.

I compose on 2A03 mostly (Famicom / NES), and the pulse (square) channels on Game Boy are extremely similar. It was clear that the original soundtrack could have made far better use of volume envelopes, and even stuff like duty cycle switching and even arpeggios if they wanted to. The new soundtrack seems to do just about all of this stuff, including making use of the wavetable channel (I believe I heard a sawtooth in the intro). It's possible that the devs just had very little knowledge about the Game Boy sound chip at the time, as even Tim Follin used to make brilliant use of all these things back in the 80s in games like Silver Surfer and Solstice. It's definitely not a case of these tricks being unknown when the original game was developed, Game Boy can definitely do these things.

Anyway, that's my input regarding this. The sound design is far far better than that of the original game, and they are really good tracks in my opinion, the types of tracks in chiptune that really make the best use of what's available. Whether or not one thinks the tracks themselves fit into a Rayman game though, that's up to how they like their tea I suppose.

[RaypersonNikol]

the lead tester is Mr. Blinky?! He's the guy behind Tamagotchi mods and patches, I didn't know he tested this remake of Rayman for the Game Boy Color!