Hello, 

New to the forum, so greetings to all. I hope y'all are all doing well. I'm coming to you from the chipmusic community. 

Wanted to make a thread here about the project I'm working on. I will try to post updates here as they come. The project itself is a compilation album of some of my favorite tunes from The Ledgend of Zelda franchise playable from cartridge with a full GUI and track selection controls. I'm about 99% done with the actual ROM code and it's just waiting on me to finish the music. I'm going to be working on tracks until I run out of space, viable tracks, or the inclination. I'm using the UNROM mapper so I have quite a few banks to work with and fill with tracks. 

All the music was coded in MML, with multi NSFs assembled using ppMCK. The asm code was assembled using ASM6. 

Once completed, I'm planning on doing a cartridge release (Audio files will also be available). The scope of this release is really dependant on the interest and my budget/time. It takes a lot of time and money upfront to buy donor carts, desolder ROMs, remove 30 year old labels, burn EPROMS, print/cut lables, etc. So I'm thinking of doing a first run batch of like 20+ and if demand is there do another run using the funds if I even come out ahead. I'm only an indevidual after all. 

But I'm at a spot currently where song suggestions would really help if you have some favorite tunes to throw in the mix and suggest. I have picked most of my favorites that are viable, but I'm sure there are just some I don't know about or aren't coming to mind. 

Currently Finished:
Midna's Lament
Windfall Island
Kakariko Village
Deku Tree
Oath To Order
Song of Storms
Great Fairy Fountain
Ocarina of Time: Title Theme
Tal Tal Heights
Kaepora Gaeboro
Zelda's Lullaby
Dragon Roost Island
Market
Ballad of the Windfish
Kokiri Forest
Lost Woods
Kotaka Koume
Faron Woods 
Lake Hylia
Sage Laruto
Death Mountain
Stone Tower Scrapping this to make room for Gerudo Valley
Sanctuary (Link to the Past)
Astral Observatory
Link to the Past Credits Pt1
Hyrule Town
Gerudo Valley 

Currently Working On:

Peace Returns
Link's Awakaning Ending Credits
Gannon Battle in Zelda 3 (Link to the Past) [still undecided if works or not] 

Consideration Pool: 
Majora's Mask: Title Theme
Bolero of Fire
Beetles Shop
Below Deck
Deku Palace
Fairy Flying
Lanayru Sand Sea
Majoras Mask Credits
Outset Island
WindWaker Title Screen
Paleceo Winds
Dark Hyrule Castle
Ilia Theme (washing Epona)
Breath of the Wild Theme

Want to do but probably can't from channel limits: (We will see) 
Molgera Battle (love this one)
Lon Lon Ranch (Epona's Song) 

Track/ROM Preview: (only about 8 tracks were done when this was made)



 

hottttttt! And LOVING that it's mml (ppmck is some old school mac chip tunes right there)! no musical suggestions but what a unique idea that looks well executed- bravo!

edit: first for release

Yeah, I'm excited to check this out.

Why not use all new parts though? Donors aren't much cheaper than new shells/boards. Plus you wouldn't have all the added manual labor.

2nd for wanting a hard copy release on this
Also 2nd that you should be using new parts, not waisting time disassembling donor carts just to reassemble them.

This looks excellent! Sounds excellent so far, and am also definitely interested in a copy upon release.
I definitely have to echo what has already been said so far as well -- New parts is the future in terms of new NES releases.

...and since you asked for music suggestions, one of my favourites has to be Molgera's Battle Theme from Wind Waker. Not sure how feasible it is, but it was the first standout song to pop into my head.

that is different .... hope its a selection of song titles from the original to current

Thank you for the suggestions and feedback. I know shells are easily found online. Where would I get new UNROM boards from for cheap?

Including the original NES Zelda titles I felt would be redundant. People already have the originals to enjoy in NSF format and on the original carts. The titles I'm including are meant to range from 'A Link to the Past' onwards. Remakes of songs that were not originally on the NES. 

Cool project!

Most common place to purchase is here:

http://www.infiniteneslives.com/n...

Very cool! They look populated as well. I will keep these in mind in future. Going to work with the donors I already have for the time being. Found about 30 suitable ones and purchased them. Most of which had clean usable boards, and plenty of which had clean cases. (I have plenty more cases to pull from for the remaining)

 

Curious - would there be a way to add a progress bar for the currently playing song?

Apart from one at the moment, they all loop indefinitely. You may consider the rotating rupee your progress ^_^. I have already coded it in such a way that the rupee rotation will stop on it's own for the track that actually ends (Oath to Order). For any more tracks that I may add that have endings, I've coded a timer that I can re-use just by specifying a different ending target time (declared right before calling the subroutine). That being said a progress bar would certainly be codable. Would just take a bar written on the nametable and a sprite placed over it, scrolling over time. However for me, this is more resources and image clutter than it's worth for only one or a few tracks. I also don't have a real elegant position to place it on screen. 
 

Very interesting project. Hope you get it done. I would buy a copy.

It is definitely true what they say about Konami UNROM boards. Pretty easy going to desolder. ^_^

Very cool!

Count me in for a copy when you get around to making them  

Update: Hardware Check

Was having issues with mirroring (apparently my virtical mirrored rom needs the 'H' solder joint selected)  and not enough vBlanks during boot. All fixed and tested out. 

Update: Credit Sequence (EasterEgg) 

So, I added in a sort of easter egg. So if you don't want to be spoiled you can ignore this video update. Otherwise I thought this was a cool feature and wanted to share. 

That's a really cool feature to add! I'm definitely going to be trying the various songs from OoT and MM as soon as I get my hands on it!
If you correctly play a song (for example Song of Storms), will it play the song -- or does it only play the credit sequence?

I'm in. Looks awesome!

Short answer is yes. This feature is newly completed, so it is only the one song for now. 

However, I'm workshopping the idea of putting multiple possibilities and that corresponding track starting. Then it will roll the credit text. I just need to craft the available notes such that multiple tunes can be 'played' on the staff. I can have the routine that checks the users inputed code just check for multiple cases and play the right song accordingly. I may have to transpose a track if it's not in the same key as the available notes on the music staff. But ideally I actually want the classics from the game, and the actual code to match the original one too. I feel this would hit people's nostalgia closer. Just don't know if I can make it happen 100% that way. ^_^ 

New list of songs I'm considering/working on. Not all of these are going to be viable but I listened through so many Zelda tracks this past week and these struck a chord with me so this will be the pool of songs I'm going to be working from for now.

Faron Woods (completely stoked for this one)
Astral Observatory
Beetles Shop
Below Deck
Deku Palace
Fairy Flying
Lanayru Sand Sea
Majoras Mask Credits
Outset Island
Molgera Battle (love this one but dunno if the channels will work out)
Sage Laruto
WindWaker Title Screen
Gannon Battle in Zelda 3 (Link to the Past)
Death Mountain
Sanctuary (Link to the Past)
Hyrule Town (Minish Cap)
Paleceo Winds
Peace Returns
Dark Hyrule Castle
Ilia Theme (washing Epona)
Lake Hylia

i love it.the sounds or instruments remind me of willow for NES and it's really well done. Nothin' better than some good ol 8 bit tunes.

@TylerBarnes - Very cool stuff. Definitely count me in on the initial cartridge release as soon as it's ready. I collect NES cartridge "oddities", particularly music carts, and would love to add yours to my collection.

I know it's not on the list buuuut... any chance you'd consider the main BotW theme? Also, count me in on a cart. Is there going to be a kickstarter campaign for a physical, or will you just release post here with a limited quantity of physicals.