Matra has released a Shockware cartridge version of Deep Dungeon Adventure. As a bonus to celebrate this, DemonSeed made a reworked version of the game's "Descending Theme". This is an SCC enhanced re-arrangement, using the same technique featured in Trilobyte's upcoming adventure game Moon Over Arba Minch. The replayer is derived from the PT3 player developed by [WYZ]. This song is now available from our freeware downloads section.

If you have any freeware material you'd wish to share with the world, you may consider submitting it to us. And who knows, your work may grace the monthly downloads top 10!

Relevant link: Deep Dungeon Adventure - Descending Theme

Spanish composer commandcom has finished his E.P., a Konami tribute containing three well known MSX themes. In this collection you'll find the modern James Bond styled Difficult Move (SD Snatcher), Power of Anger (Salamander) and Stage one of King Kong II. All songs feature consistent production values and are well worth the download - which is free anyway, so what are you waiting for?

Relevant link: Push Space Key

Ah.. BASIC MML, who has not started with it before hopping over to tracking! For those who love MSX-BASIC music, sd_snatcher has released a pack of 9 discs full of music made in BASIC, used to test and develop the MSX-Audio BIOS v1.2.

You can use this pack on both the MSX-Audio and MSX-Music. If you have the MSX-Audio BIOS v1.0 you'll need to change the CALL MUSIC command to CALL AUDIO on every song you play. But if you use the MSX-Audio BIOS v1.2-pre4 you just need to type CALL AUDIO once, and from that point it will enable the CALL MUSIC command too, so you can play the music without any modification.

Relevant link: BASIC music pack

Most people tend to clean up their place at the start of the new year, some people do it at the end of the year. Meits for instance, recently browsed his harddisk and discovered a number of game rearranges that were just collecting dust, in a digital way. Meits decided our freeware downloads section was a better place for them, and so here they are!

• Aleste 2 - Area 1
• Sword of Legend Lenam - Intro
• Randar 3
• SD Snatcher - Church

More X-Mas presents are afoot this year, stay tuned. Meanwhile, if you like to donate your freeware material to our downloads section, send them to us and perhaps you even end up in the monthly top 10!

Relevant link: Downloads section

We have added a large bag of Moonblaster music by Meits to our downloads section. This collection is Meits' version of something which - probably - every MSX musician has: a large collection of unfinished tunes, ideas, sketches and such. Among them is music from Aleste, Randar 3 and plenty others. There are 70 songs in this collection, there's likely to be something in there which suits your taste! This unfinished music is provided 'as is', do with it what you want, listen, study, finish, or anything else you can think of.

Relevant link: Meits' unfinished music collection

MRC regular poke-1,170 has submitted a remix for the new 8 bit operators project "Wanna Hld Yr Handheld". This project is all about remixes of The Beatles, made by chiptune composers. As such, the result is lovely Avant Garde and electronic, made by over 20 of the biggest international names in 8-bit chip music. All of them utilizing re-tooled, classic Game Boys, Ataris, Commodore 64s and Nintendo Entertainment Systems. Poke used his MSX to create When I'm 64, using good old Moonblaster and ye olde config from the 90's: FM-PAC, Music Module and a handful of PSG noises.

Relevant link: MySpace - 8 bit operators

bgMSX is a site dedicated to MSX music and currently contains more than 2,250 songs from 124 games and 54 composers. Recently, the soundtracks of Fuzzy Logic's demos Muzax, Muzax 2, Muzax 3 and Imagine's game WEC Le Mans have been added to their ever growing database. Hans Cnossen and wolf_ are the composers of Muzax's music and Jonathan Dunn is the composer of WEC Le Mans' music.

There is a section on the website to evaluate your knowledge of MSX music. The system determines which MSX songs are the most popular amongst users based on the number of hits. Moreover, the level of difficulty is adjustable and is based on the previous results obtained. Your score will be saved so other people can take a look at it.

Relevant link: bgMSX

YouTube musician phekkis uploaded a couple of his songs, including 5 remixes of MSX Konami music:

• F1 Spirit, End Credits, 2001
  
• Salamander, Stage 3 (Eonius), 2004
  
• Knightmare medley, 2008
  
• Nemesis 3, Stage 1, 2008
  
• Nemesis 3, Stage 8, 2008

Relevant link: phekkis on YouTube

Yesterday Omega has relaunced the MSX Radio station. The audio quality has been improved and the playlist has been renewed. More music is available now, including a few songs made by Omega for the Moonsound and some oldskool PSG classics. If you think some essential game songs or scene songs that deserve to be played are missing then don't hesitate to contact Omega, either by email or by using IRC (#msx at undernet).

Relevant link: MSX Radio

In 1988, Scaptrust released one of the most famous adult games on MSX: Starship Rendezvous. In the Netherlands, editor-in-chief of the biggest Dutch MSX magazine (MCM) Wammes Witkop once denied publication of a review of this game on moral grounds, which afterwards lead to hilarious situations in the game tips section of his magazine. While many more adult games have been made by other companies, such as the Peach-Up series, it's Starship Rendezvous that remains unique among all others.

One of the reasons could be the equally unique musical style of this game. The music, made by Masaharu Iwata and Hitoshi Sakimoto, sounds harsh and extreme at times, but it's exactly this extremeness that added to its reputation of sounding different compared to ordinary FM-PAC music. The music of this game also is quite lengthy, which is usually a trigger for Wolf to do a remix. And so, less than a week ago, he decided it was time for a new remake. In just two days, this was the result: Starship Rendezvous - Close Encounter. The title is not based on any official track title from the game, other than that it's the music heard during the non-spaceship scenes, the 'doing it' scenes, or whatever you'd like to label it. Close Encounter is probably the most artistic name for this!

This version is well over ten minutes in length, the second-longest remix in our database and the longest one based on a single cue. The remix is entirely orchestral, with the final 4 minutes containing variations and (loud) additions by Wolf, making up for a better symphonic experience. Listening over headphones is recommended!

If you have freeware material for our downloads section which you wish to share with MSX fans around the world, please send it to downloads@msx.org and we will consider your submission. Each addition to the downloads section will be announced in a newspost, and if your entry does well enough: the download will be mentioned in the monthly downloads top 10 or in the related downloads top 10.

Relevant link: Starship Rendezvous - Close Encounter (mp3)