Devil Crash / Dragon's Fury ~ Main Theme

for YM2612 + SN76489

by MetallicOrwell

Hello and welcome back to another cover. Devil Crash was originally released for the PC Engine in 1990, and the next year for the Mega Drive as Devil Crash MD, or Dragon's Fury in the west, because God forbid innocent little American children would be playing a satanic pinball videogame. Yes, the game is exactly as awesome as that made it sound just now, so if you haven't heard of it before, now's as good a time as any to pick it up and enjoy it. The music was composed by two people: Masanobu Tsukamoto and Toshiaki Sakoda, and it's the latter we're interested in. He did work for the almighty Musha Aleste (I've covered two tracks from that game already) as well as Puyo Puyo, Seirei Senshi Spriggan and others. His style is characterized by crazy keyboard solos and a tight, rock-like rhythm section, so even if we don't know who composed which tracks, I'm pretty sure Devil Crash's main theme is his, because it sounds exactly like him. The Mega Drive version was done by Tecnosoft, so Toshiharu Yamanishi (another legend) handled sound duties. He did an excellent job, as you'd expect, and even included extra music from other Tecnosoft games. When it comes to the main theme specifically, I personally prefer the PC Engine's raw wavetable sound, as strange as that may sound, but my cover here is still based on Yamanishi's take. Let's talk about it.

Because this is a cover and not an expansion, the core structure remains the same, and the changes are minimal. Now, my objective here was to make this track sound as massive as possible. To that end, I've used my metal formula: FM 1 for bass, FM 2 and FM 3 for rhythm, FM 4 and FM 5 for leads, FM 6 for PCM drums, Square 1 & 2 for support and Noise for hi-hats. The bass is chunky (E. Bass 70, of course), but for the rhythm guitars I actually reverted to a previous version of my custom Orwell Rhythm Guitar, because it sounded better at higher octaves. In fact, the square waves play the same notes one octave down to provide a fatter lower end--never thought I'd ever use those for rhythm back-up, but it does work.

As for the solos, they're played mostly using the Synth Lead 7 preset from DefleMask, and also a further modified version of my "trumpet synth". It's funny to think it did originate from a trumpet instrument included with Furnace (probably ripped from Sonic 1), but it's undergone so many changes and refinements over the past six months that it doesn't sound anything like a brass instrument anymore. The choir is a modified version of the one by Sakimoto from Master of Monsters, and it combines hardware vibrato (LFO) and software vibrato (an effect on the pattern) to achieve a pretty realistic sound. There is also a section where I combined the piano from Streets of Rage and the one from Mime (PC-98, OPN) for excellent results. There are other small touches too, like using an earlier version of the trumpet synth for the intro, as well as the TF4 intro synth to enhance the rhythm guitar briefly.

The key ingredient here that helped me to make Devil Crash's Main Theme sound massive is the echo and reverb. The second lead channel is always used for detuned echoes, but also, the rhythm guitar is supposed to play quick notes. Instead of that, where there's supposed to be an OFF command, I played the same note at a lower volume. This is *extremely* effective and makes a whole world of difference. The drum samples are mainly from the Arachno Soundfont, because again, its power snare has just the right amount of reverb. The toms, however, are from the Yamaha MU 2000 EX's power kit. I included a shit-ton more fills and little touches to make it as intense as possible. Also, the PSG's noise channel does hi-hats, which neither of the two versions (PCE or MD) originally had, and that fills out the rhythm section better.

Overall, I'm satisfied with how this one has turned out. The complexity of the soundwaves works together with the echo to create a thick, massive sound for over three minutes of headbanging bonanza. Perfect music to go along with killing demons with pinball flippers, really.

 

See you around.

 

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