happy Pikmin 4 release day! I'm gonna rush out and get it as soon as I can, because I'm a physical cartridge kinda guy
a restoration instead of a soundfont change huh? well, the long story is down below, so you can read the whole essay if you've got some time to spare. if you already know what a restoration is, then enjoy the highest quality version of this song there is (download: [ Ссылка ]). some extra brass samples and an extra trumpet sample are used too, but I didn't use the full strings or french horn sets because the song sounded way too different with them. I promise to not be so selective with future restorations; I just like the original feel of this song way too much
so at the beginning of this year for a reason that I can't remember, I decided to play Pikmin 1 and 2 for the first time through emulation (way before the Switch ports were announced). I was early in 2 when I heard the boss theme for the first time, and it just struck me as so cool, and something I didn't expect from Pikmin. so naturally I wanted to make a video with it, and that started by searching online for a Pikmin 2 soundfont. lo and behold, one of the search results was for something called "Waffles' Pik Pack." I checked it out and instead of just the game's soundfont, I found that this person had actually gone back to the ORIGINAL synthesizer equipment that the games' sounds were taken from! I had never thought that far back into the VGM creation process, but now it of course makes perfect sense!
(as an aside, converting many of the Pik Pack's instruments to soundfonts have been a NIGHTMARE. all of the instruments are in the EXS24 format for use with Logic Pro, but it's absolutely incompatible with any VST I have. so I've slowly been going through and using programs like EXS2SFZ and Awave Studio to manually convert each instrument one by one. many of the sample recordings are also in formats both programs don't support like .m4a and .mp3, so then I need to go into Audacity to splice each sample and export one by one, and finally reassemble the instrument manually in Polyphone. why must it be this way, why 😭😭)
what I didn't expect was for the instruments to come from different places. checking the accompanied spreadsheet called "Pikmin Sample Origins," this song uses samples from the Roland SC-88 and the Kurzweil K2500R (I actually remember hearing this manufacturer from Mathew Valente's FF7 restoration streams). but the rest of the game also uses stuff from the Yamaha S90, Peter Siedlaczek's Advanced Orchestra, and so many other libraries for things like percussion and beats. this sent me down a sample origin rabbit hole starting from March all the way to now, and it still hasn't ended.
some time in April, I found something I considered a holy grail: the "VGM & Other Instrument Sources" Discord. it was exactly what I had been looking for! using their master spreadsheet of "NEWER VGM Sound Sources," I began acquiring instruments used in Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, Kirby's Dream Land 3, and Kirby 64. (fun fact about Wind Waker: it shares quite a few instruments with Pikmin 2, most notably the strings, french horns, trumpet, and piccolo. turns out one of the composers Hajime Wakai worked on both games. what a discovery!)
I even took some of the sample-hunting a step further. I obviously don't have access to any of these synthesizers, and sometimes the typical online resources were either unsatisfactory or just flat-out wrong or low quality. then I spotted another spreadsheet linked in the NEWER one called "Roland Highest Quality Sources Sheet"; bingo. so some of the instruments I couldn't get before, I now have in the highest quality possible! for example, the brass in this song isn't actually from the Pik Pack, but from it's source in Roland's LCDP06. similarly, the cymbal and snare are from LCDP01 and 03, respectively. so a slight quality bump from the Pik Pack. I could've taken the french horn from LCDP06, but the SC-88 version is quite heavily edited so I left it alone
ever since then, I've been working on many, many other restorations on my own. some favorites so far are the OoT credits theme, Kirby 64's Factory Inspection, and Kirby 64's Zero Two. I was considering not posting them, but I don't want to keep them from my audience. imagine this: listening to the original is like wearing a thick cloth over your head, then the restorations are like the cloth is removed. it's absolutely wonderful and I can't wait for you all to experience them
as for the HD soundfonts I've been compiling (Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, Kirby DL3, Kirby 64), I don't know if I'm allowed to distribute those legally 🤭 so they'll stay a trade secret for now
if you've read this far, thanks so much! I hope you're now as interested as I am in the topic of vgm origins!
• @WafflesMoguMogu's Pik Pack: [ Ссылка ]
