Always amazes me that video game music composers for systems like the NES and Mega Drive had to write it all in hexadecimal.

Kara Goldfinch

Always amazes me that video game music composers for systems like the NES and Mega Drive had to write it all in hexadecimal. It's absolutely mind boggling to me, compared to today's consoles where they can use whichever DAW they like and export audio files.
I just read some documentation about the Game Boy's sound chip. The only parts I understood was what each channel is used for and the sounds it can produce. The parts about getting it to do things... not a clue.

Kyle Davis

@KaraLG84 I’m generally in awe of pre-2000 software development.

Compute resources and tools were primitive by today’s standards and the market was much smaller.

And learning this stuff was steep! You might get a book, but no tutorials, blog posts or YT how tos.