Hiroshi Wada (GB Driver)
| Hiroshi Wada (GB Driver) | ||||||||
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Hiroshi Wada is the unofficial name of a sound driver used by Minakuchi Engineering on their early Game Boy games. It was programmed by Hiroshi Wada, and superseded after a couple of years by Kouji Murata's sound driver.
Contents
Release History
The driver was first used in SolarStriker (GB). Toru Osada is the only composer definitively known to have used the driver, as evidenced by that game's credit roll. However, there is some debate over the composer's credit on Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (GB), which has been variously credited as being the work of either Osada, Murata, or Makoto Tomozawa.
Features
Due to the early abandonment of the driver for Kouji Murata's driver, the driver was never utilized to it's full potential, leading to all three games using it to only employ very basic usage of its features. The code for each game using the driver contains 16 wavetables, of which SolarStriker and Mega Man use only one. Qix, uses two more, leaving a total of 13 unused wavetables.
The driver also supports an "echo" feature, repeating the last note but at a drastically lower volume. Additionally, while it seems like the driver has very basic percussion support, Qix hints that the percussion is more freeform than the "drumkit" percussion style of Murata's driver, by having uniquely pitched drums and crash cymbals.
Games
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990-01-26 | SolarStriker (GB) | First appearance. | |
| 1990-05-?? | Qix (GB) | Only game to demonstrate otherwise unused driver features. | |
| 1991-07-26 | Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (GB) | |
Last official use. |
