German artist Remute is continuing his series of releasing albums on obsolete game technology. The latest release is on a playable Nintendo 64 cartridge. Here’s more via CDM:
And it’s not just a cartridge as delivery format for audio files alone, either – the cartridge generates all the music in realtime from software, with just 8 MB storage space. (That’s a good thing, too, as the Nintendo 64 Game Pak carts topped out at just 64 MB of storage even on later model years. If you did just stick music on the cart, you’d have to make some pretty horrible compression.)
[Remute writes]: No tricks – this is not an embedded MP3-player, terribly compressed WAV-files or other cheating: as with all previous Remute cartridge albums the sound on this cartridge gets generated and played back in realtime by the console and it’s all happening within meager 8 Megabytes of storage space! With ‘R64’ the Nintendo 64 console is your very own synthesizer/sampler hybrid and happy to serve you every time you turn it on and press play! 93,75 MHz baby! For this wizardry Remute cooperated with genius Nintendo 64 dev Rasky, who is not only responsible for the sound engine and player-GUI, but also managed to put together an amazingly trippy 3D-experience accompanying Remute’s music – you will…uhmmm… fly. The cartridges are region-free and will fit and play flawlessly on all models of the Nintendo 64 console – no matter if NTSC-U, PAL or NTSC-J.