ActRaiser and Wolfchild Get The MSU1 Digital Audio Enhancement Treatment

A couple of rather interesting MSU-1 audio enhancement patches released this week. The first is one of the most often requested patches ever since byuu released the chip itself, while the second will surely bring fond memories to Commodore Amiga and Atari ST owners.

ActRaiser remains a unique work of art; it remains hard to think this was a first-generation title for the Super Nintendo. Quintet's hybrid platform hack'n' slash / civilization building simulator impressed both players and professional reviewers alike, with the soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro being one of the standout features in the package. The epic orchestral soundtrack showcased exactly the power of Ken Kutaragi's SPC700 sound chip, reproducing impressive instrumental samples to output clear sound trough the console's eight channel stereo output.

Now, thanks to the long standing efforts of DarkShock, you no longer need to be limited to those memory restricted samples or maximum individual channels. The recently released MSU-1 audio patch allows you to stream uncompressed, unlimited quality PCM audio tracks like the re-orchestration efforts of Abyss Rebith. The results are as close as you could possibly get to a audio CD version of ActRaiser.

If you had a Commodore Amiga or Atari ST, the name Core Design meant high quality arcade games many years before the company became synonymous with one Lara Croft. Wolfchild was one such title, a hardcore platform adventure where you take control of Saul Morrow in his attempt to rescue his father from the clutches of an evil organization. Saul's father is a brilliant scientist, and so to even out the odds Saul used one of his father's machines to turn himself into a human wolf hybrid! The Super Nintendo conversion was a North American exclusive and sadly lacked the original home computer animated intro that filled the entirety of the game's first diskette (in other words the 'save icon', for our younger NL readers), but otherwise made the best of the machine to render an enhanced experience when compared to the original.

One of the standout features in Wolfchild was the expertly produced tracker format music by Martin Iveson. When the game was converted to home consoles (and even the Game Gear), the music was loosely adapted to each console, with of course the Mega CD version coming out on top with its red book audio tracks. Now thanks to the efforts of PepilloPEV, you can use the Mega CD soundtrack while playing your Super Nintendo version.

This news post is also a good opportunity to highlight that - as part of the Diggin' in the Carts World Tour - Yuzo Koshiro recently played alongside alongside Motohiro Kawashima at London's Fabric nightclub. To all those that went along we're sure it was an awesome occasion.