Can’t comment more praise than the other ones below have, so I’ll just say that when listening to the 2026 version, I kept eyeing my bass and darkglass plugin. Metal cover when? :D
Vision well executed! Felt like I just opened my console and getting hyped to play the game.
The drum fills were going a bit too hard sometimes, Nyango Star “this drummer is at the wrong gig” style, but hey, I enjoyed it!
Mix needs a bit of polish as others say, but in my monitoring setup at least I get good level balance most of the song, just lacks consistency across it.
I find this so accurate to the style that at first it gave me an uncanny valley feeling of “hey, is this a copyright-free spoof of one of the ACTUAL tunes?”. Then started to warm up and enjoy it a lot.
I think you nailed it!
Soundwise, I can’t believe that this is musescore as others said. Bit fizzy, not too bright, but also not abrasive. In the end that I call a “rendering issue” and who’s to say that an actual gameboy on low volume wouldn’t feel like that.
I like this a lot! Crispy synth, cool beach vibe, nice melody and that shaker got me shaking! Really enjoyable.
I would have liked a little more development. This is stellar as an A section, in perhaps an A-B-A structure where you then introduce a new B idea, even with some different instrumentation in the middle, then you go back and mix these ideas in a third section.
As it stands, your tune is just an evolving loop, makes me want more.
Then again, actually going through the full Pokemon OSTs there are plenty of simple one loop tunes.
For a mixing nitpick, the intrument coming in at 0:35 is loud! And when it changes chord at 0:40 it lowers in volume and kinda sits perfectly. Instruments be like that sometimes, they give different volumes on different registers. Don’t be afraid to mess with your notes amplitudes or even automation to even things out.
Very upbeat energy on this one, ends up sounding more like a title screen theme more than a battle theme which is nice. Good mastery on Serum and layering it, too.
For my ears, the track lacked a bit of compositional development. I see that it has an A-B-A structure, which should be great, but in the end it leaves me wanting. What I think it happens is, even though the melody on top is good and the bass and rhythm are pounding happily in the bottom, there is not much happening in the middle. Whoosing pad and some soft stabs here and there are nice, but it should have been a lot more interesting in there. I can’t say if that’s an era thing, but from the eras I listened to, the middle voices had a lot of contrapoint melodies and other hooks to keep things interesting and going forward.
All in all, great and enjoyable work. And extra points for Bling Ditto!
Great work! I like your use of soundfonts, you took me back to an era where it was me and my Yamaha keyboard writing MIDI demos. That pitch wheel Guitar and the slap bass is an era of its own!
Good composition all around, keeping energy up, and I liked the loop point and fade like many OST renderings do.
I love the composition. The classic(al) canon progression sounds perfect for this theme.
I didn’t know a lot of Pokemon music before the Jam, and right now, if I found this tune in a compilation of the Gameboy era OST, I wouldn’t question it at all!
As a nitpick, I think that maybe the mix blends TOO much, if that’s possible. When you are using shorter pizzicato notes I’m as happy as can be, but when using full note values it somehow sounds too legato to me. Maybe too much release time there?
Anyway, that’s just me and if anything I’d consider it a “render” issue. It fits the mellowness of the tune tbh.
The popping unfortunately was part of how Soraboy handles the wavetable channel sounds. I added a Waveshaper effect to distort it out while keeping a similar timbre.
Good points about the low intensity section.
Thank you for reviewing!
Hi guys, I just managed to squeeze in a minor update addressing the extraneous popping on the bass! I added a Waveshaper as a distortion to keep the general timbre.
Thanks everyone for the help!
I submitted my entry. No noise channel after all, I felt I was running out of time.
In the end, I don’t know how much I succeeded in making it Pokémon, but I sure sticked to the Gameboy limitations.
First ever track, first ever submission, this was fun. Bring more!
That was my suspicion, that they were reserving the noise channel for move sounds during the battles.
Also didn’t realize FireRed LeafGreen was a remake, thank for pointing that out.
To be honest, I’m brand new to this and although I’m old enough to have been a kid right at the GameBoy era, I never played Pokemon. So I’m trying to absorb the themes, the sounds, the structures all at once. I know that I’ll be failing to get close but I’m having great fun exploring the space. This is a very deep rabbit hole.
Hello Toss and gang!
I’m one of the ones that only now diving into the Pokemon music through references.
I’m particularly focusing on the 4 battle themes from Red/Blue.
In all the references of the battle themes I only hear the 3 melodic channels. I was expecting that they would also have a drum track based on the Noise channel, but I can’t hear any.
To anybody with more experience, did the Red/Blue soundtrack not use the noise channel, or is could it be that the references for some reason ommit it?
