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thearkhound · 5 years

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Kazuhiko Uehara interview with MSX Magazine (2005)

This is the second Konami-themed interview featured in a 2005 commemorative issue of MSX Magazine, following the previous translated Hideo Kojima posted here. This time the person being interviewed is Kazuhiko Uehara, who joined Konami as a sound designer in 1986 (the same year Hideo Kojima himself joined), where he worked on games such as Space Manbow and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. He was involved with the creation of the SCC sound chip that Konami employed in many of their later MSX games, starting with 1987′s Gradius 2 (aka Nemesis 2), although it was originally designed for their racing game F1 Spirit.

At the time interview was published Uehara-san was an executive producer at Pawapuro Production, a subsidiary of Konami that were involved in the development of various sports games for the Japanese market, most notably the Power Pro Baseball series, which the studio took its name from.

The interview was conducted at Osaka two days after the Kojima interview at Roppongi Hills and it started with the MSX Magazine editorial staff showing of Gekitotsu Pennant Race, a baseball game by Konami for the MSX running on the MSX Game Reader.

SCC: A Sound Chip Born From The Rivalry With The Famicom

Uehara: Amazing! The SCC sounds like it should. I made this “strike” sound effect. Wow, it brings me back! Gekitotsu was made with the SCC from get-go. This was the beginning of the Power Pro series.

MSX Magazine: The reason we created the MSX Game Reader was because we wanted to play your company’s games (on a current computer). There were many models of the MSX back in the day and the tone of the PSG sounds differed between them. Why was that?

There were a few reasons. Some MSX models have balance differences between the PSG and SCC, so the bass output might had varied between them. Personally I really liked how the Yamaha models sounded. Speaking of which, I have some old documents here that could help me remember things. Wait a moment. (Mr. Uehara takes out a bulky file). Because I worked on the previous program, I gathered documentation of how to control the work, algorithm and such. However, this is all the documentation that remains that hasn’t been thrown out yet.

When you joined Konami, did you became involved with hardware? When I heard about it from interviews and such, I thought the SCC chip was built on a hardware level.

Not at all. I was involved with software, or rather I should say I was a “sound creator”. When I’ve joined Konami there was the MSX Team, the Famicom Team and the Arcade Team. The Arcade Team was the most abundant and flourishing when it came to sound sources. That was followed by the Famicom Team, which had one more sound port (than the MSX). But I was assigned to the MSX division (laughs). Its stock PSG sound source could only produce three types of sounds, so I couldn’t helped it but feel envious.

Mr. Kojima told us the same thing. (laughs)

I really regretted it. I was wondering whether it was possible to increase the number of sound ports on an MSX. At the time there was this application called “Idea Notes”, in which employees of Konami would submit ideas directly to the President. There I suggested exploring the possibility of using an additional sound source that could be employed through the MSX’s cartridge slot. I’m not sure if this suggestion was what caught their attention, but we were given the go ahead to develop the SCC chip and that’s how it came to be.

Was your frustration with competing against the Famicom’s sound source your initial reason for making the SCC chip?

That’s exactly the reason. The MSX is supposed to be from the same generation as the Famicom, yet...

It seems that everyone else felt that way too about the MSX. When you joined the MSX department, you had a feeling that you were missing out. So there was much joy when the SCC appeared. With such sound chip, the MSX could finally compete against the Famicom.

Nemesis 2 was the first game to employ the SCC, but we originally developed it for F-1 Spirit. Due to scheduling changes, Nemesis 2 ended up being released first.

Creating A Waveform By Trial & Error, Sometimes Using A Bug

There’s an “editor” referenced in this document. Did you happen to create a tone editor?

Yes. We made a so-called tone editor, which would later be known as a “synthesizer”.

There was once a time when music was composed with raw hexadecimal data.

That’s how it was when I’ve joined Konami. It took way too much time and effort, so we developed various tools to increase our efficiency.

That was the wave form of the SCC.

I think it might been with Space Manbow or Metal Gear 2, but there was an instance in which the waveform was being overwritten by the software.

You mean the “Waveform Change Program”.

That’s right. That was it.

When Scitron released one of their game music albums the other day [TL’s note: Likely referencing to The Legend of Game Music Premium Box set, which contains a CD consisting exclusively of MSX shoot-’em-up music], I heard a story that Ms. Miki Higashino, who was involved with the music of the original Gradius, tried to remake the first stage music from Space Manbow on an SCC for another shoot-’em-up, but she had problem trying to make it sound different from the original.

That’s because it was a very difficult system to work with. The truth is that there was a bug in the sound loading program. Under certain conditions it would fly into the program data instead of the waveform data. Because of this adding any additional programming would’ve altered the sound. It was a huge bug, but I choose not to fix since it ended up producing interesting sound that wouldn’t had been possible otherwise.

Because of such accidents that an amazing soundtrack like Space Manbow was possible. It’s such an awesome heavy sound.

It’s a coincidence that such a bug exists. The waveform produces sounds like that, no matter where they’re reading the data from.

We heard that during the recording of Space Manbow they would bring in 8 MSX computers into the studio, synchronize them by connecting a custom-build interface into each of their ports, and then collect all the sounds with a mixer.

That was precisely the development board for the SCC, which was around the size of two MSX units. We worked it so that each port would sound off one by one, but it felt so good. Different EQ and effects were applied to each port.

It seems quite difficult to produce the tone of the SCC.

Nowadays you can use a so-called “Pro Tools” to view the waveform, but such things wasn’t possible back then. Strictly speaking, if it had a round shape, it would make a round sound and if it was a sharp shape it would be a sharp sound, so there was already a process of trial and error. As I’ve explained before about the Waveform Editor, the method would involve drawing a waveform and then distributing the spots over it, so that also caused some trial and error. At the first it was just a theory, and then we tried to apply it.

Konami’s mainly used the SCC chip instead of other sound sources such as OPLL or FM.

The MSX Team wasn’t used to FM sound sources, since there was naturally a lot of restrictions involved. If you look at Konami as a whole (and not just the MSX department), we did have the know-how of using FM sounds, since we employed it in many arcade games, but in terms of familiarity the SCC was still preferable.

The Sound & Soul of the SCC Still Lives

The MSX used PSG and FM as sound sources in addition to the SCC, but the SCC was unique to the MSX, so its tone was pretty fascinating. Even nowadays it’s being used on a genre in the music scene known as “Chiptune”.

Is that so? That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of that. The hardware was cheap, so it could be a bit noisy. But since the sound wasn’t clear, a loud noise could be interpreted as a harmonic overtone. I think that could be part of its charms.

As a sound source based on waveform memory, the SCC had a clearly different tone compared to other sound sources such as PSG or the PC Engine. Was that a conscious decision?

There was no reverb or delay on the hardware. Because of that, the SCC relied on data tremendously. There’s only 8 sound ports used, including the 3 ports used by the stock PSG sound source, but basically it sounds dull having only one tone come out from one port at a time. With a keytone there, it ends up using two ports as an echo port, but if you have the sub-port do some amount of interruptions and lower the volume, you’ll end up producing some incredible sounds.

There are people still making music on the MSX that are familiar with such techniques. Techniques that were made by Konami.

Even now, I always tell the sound team that “our work is influential and our jobs are very important, so you must absolutely never cut corners no matter what.” It is a sound that enters your ears without knowing it, which is why I think it’s some people are influenced by it.

The spirit of the SCC seems to be refusing to die.

Sometimes, even within Konami, someone will ask me about a certain sound effect. For example, the alert sound in Metal Gear when Snake gets discovered, that was composed specifically for that game. Then there’s the item acquisition sound in Parodius, which sounds similar to a ding dong sound in a TV quiz show. Those kind of simple sounds are archived somewhere.

Sometimes when they play such a sound effect on TV, I would go “ah”.

You recognized that sound! That’s nice! Actually, those sounds are from on a library CD. It seems to be played in various places since it’s free to use.

Speaking of sound effects, I love the sound effects of King’s Valley 2. They’re very fun to listen to, especially the sound effect of the flying knife.

I still don’t know how that particular sound effect came to be. I was once asked how I did that, but it was actually the result of a hardware bug. I have no way of reproducing that sound. It actually happened that way.

You probably come up with many sounds ideas while on a ride.

There was a point where I was trying to make all sorts of sound effects I could think of. To give an extreme example, there was one time I tried to make the sound effect for the first step, second step, and third step different for each step. The closest I ever got to do something like that was for SD Snatcher.

Certainly, the “boh” sound effect when you reach the harbor in that game is an example of that. Or the background noise when you enter the game center.

But in the end I came to the conclusion that a good sound effect can be used multiple times. You can use the same sound effect in various places and nobody would noticed it. In the end, I would be fixated on a particular sound that I put all my heart into. So I became more focused on trying to make good sound effects instead.

Memories of Working With The MSX Team

Is there a particular game that you have fondest memories working on, Mr Uehara?

Well, it was before the SCC was made, but the first game I worked on when I’ve joined Konami was The Maze of Galious. But the first music I’ve ever composed was the ending theme to Vampire Killer [an MSX2 version of the original Castlevania that was made in parallel with the Famicom Disk System version]. I did something unusual when composing this track and that was using a “1 Port Echo”. There was no one else doing that back in those days and since it was being used for a whole music track, it ended up consuming a large amount of data. But when it comes to actually playing the games, my favorite is Nemesis 2.

There many people who proclaim that Nemesis 2 is the best shoot-’em-up they ever played in their lives. Recently Konami released Gradius V for the PlayStation 2, which continues the story of the MSX Gradius series. After 20 years of losing hope, we can finally destroy the final boss [Dr. Venom].

Back then I would often be asked if “you could only bring one game with you to a deserted island, which one it would be?” Without hesitation I would often reply Nemesis 2. Besides that, I also loved Gekitosu Pennant Race. It was the precursor to our current Power Pro series. In terms of sound, I was satisfied with how SD Snatcher and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake turned out. I hope that you agree.

According to Mr. Kojima earlier, because the MSX team weren’t selling as much as the Famicom team, they were given much greater leeway and because of that there was less compromise with the quality.

That’s right. That’s something we tried to uphold. I think the MSX team were the most conscious of what the Konami brand meant.

That’s because they were assigned to do MSX games.

At first I wondered “Why MSX?”, but in retrospect it was an absolutely necessary first step.

We didn’t love the MSX at first either, but we eventually learned to appreciate the platform. It wasn’t something we wanted at first, but we were assigned to.

After the MSX department was disbanded, Kojima moved on to work on the PC [TL’s note: Uehara is likely referring to the NEC platforms rather than the PC as we know it in the traditional sense, since Kojima worked on Snatcher for the PC Engine in 1992 and Policenauts for the PC-9821 in 1994 after his MSX days were over], while I shifted my focus to the Super Famicom. I still wanted to work together with Kojima, but at the same time everyone wanted to work on the Super Famicom. My boss at the time nominated me to be in charge of the sound effects for the Super Famicom department since I’ve proven myself with the MSX. I was pretty flattered that they thought highly of my work, but then Kojima accused me of betrayal. (laughs)

It seems like it was a wonderful period for both of you.

We created the Konami Sound with that kind of feeling, which is why it’s amazing that even Power Pro series still has that Konami sound. Nowadays I barely do any sound work since I’ve been promoted to producer, but the younger staff members have almost no tangible memories of what’s been taught to them.

Perhaps it’s the DNA.

Maybe that’s it. It sounds like the Konami Sound no matter who is listening it. It’s something that’s been passed on.

One last question. What does SCC stands for? I heard it could mean “Sound Creative Chip” or “Sound Customize Chip”, but a official meaning was never given to MSX Magazine back in the day.

Wasn’t it written here somewhere? Let me check for a moment! (starts opening a document). I’m sure it was written somewhere. I’ll have to ask some of the other people involved and ask them about it. That will be my homework.

Oh. We’ll ask you again if we do another interview (laughs). Thanks for your time.

#Konami #MSX #SCC #Nemesis #Gradius #Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake #Snatcher #Metal Gear #F1 Spirit

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