/sonicdemo

A demonstration of Commander X16's graphical and audio capabilities by reproducing the Green Hill Zone's parallax scrolling from Sonic The Hedgehog

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I am a huge fan of the FM sound for the Commander X16. As such,
I've spent many hours making various experimental scripts and
programs to play various other sound chips on the Commander,
including PSG sources such as SID and other FM chips such as
OPL (The AdLib sound chip), YM2203, and now the YM2612 of
Sega Genesis fame.

There are many in the X16 community who are not super keen
on the FM sound, and don't feel that it should be used in
the machine. I'm of course glad that the chip is actually
going to be used.

The main reasons I feel that people are overlooking this
type of sound are threefold:

One: They just prefer PSG chip music - fair enough!

Two: FM music is "just hard" - I plan to do some more work
     to dispel this particular myth. I actually find PSG
     to be more difficult if you want to get anything more
     advanced out of it than basic beeps and hisses.
     Yes, FM patch design is not simple, but if you start
     with nice-sounding patches as a given, the playback
     of music on the YM2151 is MUCH EASIER in my opinion.

     I plan to do an interactive livestream to help people
     learn more about the chip some time soon.

And the most important reason I made this demo:

I think a lot of people underestimate the X16, and consider
it an 8bit system. It's true that the CPU is 8bit, but VERA
and the advanced sound capabilities make this system more
akin to the consoles of the 4th generation (the "16bit" systems)

Not all of these systems were even really 16bit, e.g.: Turbo Grafx 16.

The Commander X16 is able to do lots of things that weren't possible
until the 4th gen, and the FM sound was a big part of games of that
era. I want to play games on the X16 that take advantage of the
4th-gen power of the Commander X16!

So, I have made this demo to demonstrate the system running something
of that era to show that it can do so!

I hope you enjoy the demo, and hope it makes a good case that the X16
is not just a faster Commodore 64!

-- ZeroByte