Starboard Journey

TL;DR: for OST Composing Jam 5, we imagined a fake gaming system with a fake sound chip, created using the Furnace tracker, on which all our tracks are made in the style of a high-paced, action-oriented 16-bit-era game. These tunes reflect a collaborative effort between Haberchuck and rayjkayj — classic chiptune and vgm nerds. Enjoy! (Further production notes at the end.)

* * *    N O T E :    t h e    t e x t    t o    f o l l o w    i s    c a n o n .    * * *

On Christmas Eve of 1994, Syracuse native Marty Glatz sat in his Norwich, Vermont home pondering. The rug salesman turned regional vacuum and household appliance magnate — "King of Your Rug and Everything Above," as the ads went — had wealth to burn and hardly an inkling, let alone a care, what to do with it. If nothing else, he sought a new venture, a new fiefdom of business to claim as his own that would elevate him above the whispered slights among socialites and children of silver spoons that suggested he were nothing more than "the carpet guy."

Lost in thought and a touch of disdain, he just then realized that his 12-year-old stepson, Eddie, had been looking up at him in a state of heightened distress that his early ascent from the overturned nest of sheets and pillows upstairs would displease Santa, prompting the otherwise jolly gift-bringer to skip their house for the year.

"Nah, Edster," Glatz claims to have quipped, "I gave that big son-of-a-sumtin' a free Hoover back in '86 after he got cookie crumbs and shit all over the sleigh. Ol' Nicky wouldn't dare pass up our place." He gestured at the tree where a line of S-tier gifts patiently awaited their reveal.

At 2:24 a.m., it wasn't time to wake the whole family up. Besides, scotch — even this cheap — was best enjoyed in the company of one, but a second wouldn't hurt. A compromise felt ideal.

"Go ahead, kiddo," he grunted, gesturing at the presents. "Only one, though. The rest have to wait until everybody's up."

Eddie, now wide-eyed and elated, shot up and carefully considered each item of yuletide mystery bearing his name, ultimately circling back to one particularly bulky package. He tore away at the wrapping as a predator yanks at the sinew of roadkill until—finally, oh finally—there stood before him a tower of gaming magnificence.

The Sega 32X.

Hyperbolic verbiage was read aloud, boxes were opened, wires were attached, and a few choice words were shared before the understated signal of success flashed before them:

PRODUCED BY OR

UNDER LICENSE FROM

SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD.

Glatz later admitted he had no prior experience with video games beyond watching kids furiously tapping at the machines in an arcade he passed on the walk from his first store location to the sub shop around the corner. The Babel of the Genesis, 32x add-on, and a tall game cartridge fascinated him, looking as if "from a lost civilization." He puffed thoughtfully at a cigar as his stepson sped through the opening stages of Sonic and Knuckles — again, unaware it was a title for the original Genesis — and even geared up alongside Eddie to take on a few rounds of Alien Storm. They played until dawn, eventually collapsing on the couch and floor, respectively, until the rest of family found them the next day as the game's demo screen flashed by over and over on their giant CRT.

Glatz's wife Samantha still recalls the first thing he said when she tapped him awake that Christmas morning: "I need a scotch, the phone, and my checkbook. Ah, shit, my head—water down the scotch, would ya?"

Four months, hundreds of phone calls, and several hefty investments later, a stack of papers dropped on a third floor desk of a dingy New York office that would change, well, absolutely nothing, as it were — the specs for the Nitro XX.

The system was doomed to fail from the outset: the King of Your Rug and Everything Above could dismantle and reassemble a Kirby G4 vacuum blindfolded, but was blinded by the "attitude-driven" machismo of early 90s systems. He hemorrhaged money on crass advertising and frequent brand consulting, with one such company convincing him to rent a facility that once developed small components for power plants so that they could label the system's HC1337-rk sound chip as "nuclear-capable."

Problems and financial folly lurked at every corner. Glatz insisted the system be released with a book of 'Your Mom' jokes (self-penned, though Eddie was to be listed as the primary author) and lingerie magazine. He missed meetings for game development and discussing market trends to secure an officially licensed, ultra-caffeinated soda pop. Investors hastily abandoned the project, developers quit on-site — typically right after the system's benefactor started a sentence with, "Tell me if you've heard this one before" — and the project fizzled out in a window seemingly as short as the all-nighter that inspired it.

The only game to ever pass the concept phase was a seafaring adventure RPG titled Starboard Journey, modeled in part after Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. The few accessible documents from the Nitro XX suggest ties to a vaunted development team out of Japan who, rumors say, only agreed to join the endeavor after Glatz used his cleaning connections to sanitize their hotel room, which suffered from, per court documents, "a Frankenstein of bodily fluids and Jello pretzel salad." Unfortunately, subsequent lawsuits have rendered it nearly impossible to obtain any further details.

The remaining vestiges of Starboard Journey amount to nothing more than a dated photo of now middle-aged, and notoriously tight-lipped, Eddie Gartner holding a prototype box of the title and, improbably — like, really, just what are the odds of such an occurrence?! — the game's soundtrack. The latter appears to have survived by boundless serendipity and good fortune, emerging as a bogus Napster download for "Nirvana - Enter Sandman," living on via Kazaa, sitting idle as the background music for the last functioning GeoCities website in existence, and then coming back from presumed extinction as a fraudulent listing on the Pirate Bay that contained a particularly problematic strand of a Trojan Horse virus known to incapacitate at least two hospital systems and a Central American government.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the online vgm community, which has sacrificed innumerable hours, pieces of personal computing equipment, and personal relationships to this end, we finally have full and untainted access to Starboard Journey's classic FM OST, posted here for your distinct listening pleasure.

Spread the story and enjoy!

Regards,

Haberchuck Game Audio Corp., game music jagoffs, and rayjkayj, founder and proprietor of the VGMporium podcast; follow 'em @haberchuck.music and @rayjkayj & @vgmporium!

* * *    P R O D U C T I O N    N O T E S    * * *

All tracks were created using a mix of the following channels via the Furnace Tracker: 2x 4-op FM; 2x 2-op FM; 2x WonderSwan Wavetables; 1x PSG / Noise; 1x Sample.

A DAW was used to balance + normalize levels where needed and apply a pass filter to tamper down any harsh FM high-end bits, according to feedback received in previous jams. Otherwise, the tracks are heard exactly as they were programmed.