I'm working on the Nerdy Nights NES sound tutorial and I've learned how various streams may share the sound channels.
For example, the music uses all channels, but when a sound effect is playing, that channel skips playing its music track and plays the sound effect instead. Then it resumes playing the music.
Now my question: How did the "small", arcade-like NES games around 1985/1986 do this? Did many of them also use all four channels for the music, skipping the music streams when sound effects were played?
Or did they declare right from the beginning that music only plays on Square 1, Square 2 and Triangle while sound effects play only on Noise?
I'm asking because my own game shall mimic an old highscore/arcade-like game from around 1986.
So, let's take, for example "Super Mario Bros.", "Kung Fu" and "Ice Climber": Which of the described methods did they use? Channel sharing or playing music only on three streams and sounds on the last one?
For example, the music uses all channels, but when a sound effect is playing, that channel skips playing its music track and plays the sound effect instead. Then it resumes playing the music.
Now my question: How did the "small", arcade-like NES games around 1985/1986 do this? Did many of them also use all four channels for the music, skipping the music streams when sound effects were played?
Or did they declare right from the beginning that music only plays on Square 1, Square 2 and Triangle while sound effects play only on Noise?
I'm asking because my own game shall mimic an old highscore/arcade-like game from around 1986.
So, let's take, for example "Super Mario Bros.", "Kung Fu" and "Ice Climber": Which of the described methods did they use? Channel sharing or playing music only on three streams and sounds on the last one?