Trolling Famicompo

In general, what makes a Famicompo entry a "troll entry"?

Straight, poor fidelity DPCM rips of (usually) anime themes, activating every expansion but using just DPCM, composing a few bars and then infinitely droning. Doggtales.

Submitted to annoy, for the troll's amusement. Just like any other troll activity.

"poor fidelity DPCM rips of (usually) anime themes": I'm guilty. I converted "Max 300" (a DDR song) to an NES ROM back in 2004 as a proof of concept; I didn't try entering it in anything. (It runs on my PowerPak with minor video glitches.) Hopefully my more honest cover of "Maxx Unlimited" (ogg, s3m) should make up for that. But if someone were to chop up a tune into short pieces and sequence them like a 1-channel MOD, would that be trolling too? Compare the theme songs of Space Racer and Turbo Cup (mp3 here).

"composing a few bars and then infinitely droning": If someone programmed an algorithmic composer that could make a passable 3-minute piece of music using only the 2A03 channels and entered a 255-song NSF using each track number as a seed into the composer's PRNG, would that be trolling too?

Doggtales is just "this video contains" as an NSF. But then "this video contains" is a YouTube Poop meme, and YouTube Poop originated in trolling.

Speaking of Doggtales, I wonder if it would be possible to make a "singing" NES song, preferably to the extent of not halting the CPU, as would be the case with 7-bit samples. Kinda like that one Konami arcade beat-em-up where every song sounded like a cheesy Saturday morning cartoon intro. I mean granted, it's using possibly custom built hardware to do all that, but what if there was an infinite memory budget and an infinite financial budget to make an NES game?

You were referring to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was ported to NES without samples as TMNT II: The Arcade Game, correct?


It wouldn't even take that much extra hardware. It'd only take 1. lots of memory (cheap now), 2. bankable $C000-$DFFF, 3. a scanline counter to make up for the lack of APU DMC IRQ (because the APU's IRQ can do raster splits or sample playback, not both), and 4. the budget to produce such a game. A tiny boot EEPROM, a 128 KiB PRG RAM, a 32 KiB CHR RAM, and a big eMMC would suffice.

I would so listen to that!

Tepples, the appellation of troll entry is not an objective evaluation. It's an accusation of the author's ill intent and/or a subjective judgement that it lacks worth. It's no good to arbitrate rules for it, as trolls tend to thrive on the abuse of these kinds of rules. If you're having fun musing about it, though, please carry on.

Actually, cpow, I had sketched plans to write a procedural music entry for Famicompo 10, but I found myself more engaged by other projects so I didn't get around to it. I've still got a few pages of notes and C code lying around from it that I might put to use someday.

There was a famicompo entry a few years back that (possibly accidentally) gave some channels a different loop length than the rest, and the result actually sounded not bad. Not exactly procedural music, but the resulting combinations were good enough that I didn't mind listening for a long while. It was FCM7 Original 66, Adlib Inferno, I think.

I'm just trying to figure out how to avoid being officially accused of ill intent if I were to enter something experimental. A lot of times on Slashdot, I point out a corner case that some people haven't thought of, and I get accused of trolling. And even in the Dadaist anti-art that is YouTube Poop, there's often brilliant stuff that emerges from techniques that originated in trolling the audience.


That's been going on at least since Klax, whose tracks "Dance of the Fairies" and "Caverns of Cthulu" had at least one channel's loop length fail to line up yet fail in a pleasant way.

And there's another reason for procedural music. As the supply of distinct melodies becomes depleted, saying a robot did it (and having that actually be the case) may be the only remaining defense to the sort of accidental copyright infringement that George Harrison got in trouble for when he ended up recreating the hook of a Chiffons song in his own "My Sweet Lord".

The key is in the words "corner case": correct, but unappreciated.

I don't consider it trolling, but a corner case is akin to a sports match where the referee takes out some calipers and declares the ball "not out-of-bounds". Of course, half the fans will get angry, won't they?

I think the answer is easy. Is your post actually helpful to the person who asked, or is it solely a display of your knowledge on the subject? Apologies for a bit of a callout, but this is an example of a recent post that I'm quite sure was not helpful to the person who asked the question. I read that and thought all it did was make things less simple and understandable for the beginner. (Disclaimer: No, I did not read through your post history looking for a specific example. I ain't dat petty. I remembered that post offhand, because I remembered my reaction to it when it was first posted!)

I'm actually very, very prone to this myself, in a slightly different way. I make extraordinarily long posts covering all the corner cases I can think of precisely to avoid replies like the one linked. Which then is too much to read and still not helpful. But uh... I'm never surprised by that.

I think ccovell's analogy is perfect for the feeling of someone pointing out a corner case your post didn't cover. Which is why I go to such great lengths to prevent it, I suppose.

No, the game I was talking about wasn't TMNT, it was yet another arcade only game that never got ported to anything. Conversely, it wasn't based on anything, a rarity for late 80's/early 90's Konami games. The first stage had lyrics like "Break out! Break out fighting!", if it helps. It had a forgettable name like Fighting Force or Violence Fight or something.

As for the definition of trolling, the general consensus on certain anonymous imageboards seems to define it as "pretending to be retarded" when you actually weren't. Is the song cacophonic? The joke's on them, it was simply pretending to be a bad song.

You talkin' about Violent Storm? You best remember the game you bust down a door to a medieval arcade center and wrestle the Road Warriors in front of half-naked incarcerated dames.

Go ahead. Constructive criticism is welcome.


I realized that, and that's why I wrapped it up and put the tl;dr part in.

Anyway, you all might have to wait a while for my procedural music because the 2014 compo multicart's ROM image is due soon.

That's the game, Jedi, thanks! I wonder if an NES game could have music with "lyrics" like Violent Storm does.

The most lyrics I can think of in an NES game is the title of Skate or Die 2.

Imagine if 20 different people all decided to cover the same some fad-song everyone hates. That'd be a pretty good trolling, intentional or not.

Another troll entry would be similar to what you'd find on massive video game MIDI cover sites; the occasional midi that is completely off rhythm, out of key or out of tune, wrong notes, entire sections of the song skipped or screwed up, etc.

Like U.N. Owen was Her? I must admit, this was the quickest instance I have ever gone from loving a music track to detesting it so abhorrently.

Or worse, if everyone were to enter Robo's theme from Chrono Trigger. You just got Rickrolled.

@Jedi: At least no-one tried to cover the HORRIBLE scene with that rapping dog from the Titanic animated film!

The korean version and the english version of the rapping dog as seen here.

challenge accepted

Make sure it's a 2A03+FDS+MMC5+N-163+VRC6+VRC7+5B fustercluck.

Hi, came back after months to notice tepples' and my conversation was forked into another thread, and I guess the split killed the reply notifications. I'll start by agreeing with:

Though I'd temper my opinion a bit and say "trolling" includes both malicious (lazy, intentionally boring, ear splitting) and playful (things meant to generate a laugh but not an earnest attempt at competing).

The standard was quite a bit lower in 2004 due to the novelty of the idea and due to the more rudimentary nature of the tools. Circa 2001 I remember being impressed with Xodnizel's (FCEU author) conversion of the TMNT theme as a .NES ROM. Of course back then samples needed to be hand packed and arranged in ROM, I'm pretty sure. However, I wouldn't be impressed in the same way had it been entered into a music contest, even in 2001.

Avant garde entries should be welcomed. The difference is that doing such work requires significant effort, which would obviate the trolling aspect. The worst that could happen is that the author would be accused of not fully fleshing out his implementation or submitting the results of a failed experiment as something musically relevant. Even then, "musical relevance" is subjective.

Same as above, effort required. However, unless getting high fidelity at a low filesize is obtainable, it's not likely to impress.

"This video contains" uses Gourmet Race from Kirby Super Star.

Slashdot was a troll (and anti-troll) haven before the times of 4-chan and Reddit, so genuine and feigned overreation was rampant there, especially during its prime. It's the Internet and all, but if you're actually thinking about how to avoid being labeled a troll you probably don't need to think too much about it. I don't perceive oversensitivity and false troll accusations to be an issue in the NES music community, but I also don't socially engage on a regular basis.

Agree. An example is RushJet1's Hopper Dopper Popper, which originated from a YouTube Poop.

Maybe you've just roboricktrolled me, but are you aware this exists?

Posting experimental things ought to be permitted; a lot of people make experimental music.

I was thinking of algorithmic compose too. Well, if you write it yourself, then presumably it can be used. However, I believe Famicompo requires to specify the duration (although perhaps you can type in "4 years" if that is in fact the duration!! it would be hard to judge though). What you could do is figure out which song you like best, and then add a instruction to XOR the song number by that one, and then change the number in the header to specify only one song, and add a comment specifying that you can get more. And then, that single one is the one being judged.

There is also the exhibition section, where you can post files regardless of duration, number of tracks, etc and including MML and FTM source files. I don't know if ASM is a valid file type in exhibition section, although allowing it would help if you are posting algorithmic compositions.

If people want to post terrible music, well, maybe some people like it and then they can give a high rating if they do; some people hate it and can post a low rating and perhaps comment to say if you really hate it. I know there are some files in Famicompo which I find to be really terrible music, but I am not complaining. I certainly do not recommend posting such things, but I do not intend to stop them from doing so, either.

However, one thing that might help is that there could be a rule that says you are not allowed to enable any expansion chips which you will not use, with the exception of MMC5 (which provides a small amount of ExRAM and a fast multiplication register) and FDS (which provides extra RAM). However, then you should disallow their use if neither the extra audio channels nor these other features are used, and I believe most music engines don't use these features anyways.

Regardless of what the rules are, well, consider that there exists IOCCC, which has a "best abuse of rules" category.

Thanks Whelkman.


The NSF environment already provides 10K of RAM at $0000-$07FF and $6000-$7FFF. And an 8x8 bit multiplication without MMC5 and without huge LUTs still clocks in under 160 cycles. Do music engines do a lot of multiplications?

As I have said above, I do not expect it. But maybe some kinds of software synthesis might find the use of MMC5 and more than 10K RAM to be useful, or algorithmic compositions might, or something; I don't really quite know. I don't expect these things to be particularly useful in music much, but maybe it does have a use in some cases; just because you don't know of any doesn't mean none are possible.