You are Vince (or Vera-Mae) "V-Maxx" Mackie, cyborg mercenary and bounty hunter. After your mother was killed and brother kidnapped by the power-mad Lucas Ember, leader of the Black Kestrels hover-bike gang, you vowed to clean up the streets of your home, Neo City. After fighting your way to the warehouse where your brother was being held, you were struck by a dart from a hidden sniper. Your brother managed to escape on a stolen hover-bike, but Lucas gloats at you from the shadows; you've been poisoned by a nano-virus that is quickly shutting down your cybernetic systems. If you don't find a cure soon, the augmentations to your heart that give you super endurance will fail, fatally! You climb painfully into your trusty, heavily modified IROC-Z28 Camaro and gun the engine. You set out for your old flame, Doctor Alice Warren's underground lab, knowing she is the only person who can help you.

In this level you control the IROC-Z, racing against time to reach Doctor Warren's lab. Not only must you contend with a strict time limit, you must also avoid or destroy the Kestrels' hover bikes that will hound you on your way, and collect fuel en route; the IROC-Z's supercharger is powerful, but thirsty, and you -must- use it in this level, if you want to make it in time.

This is the theme to a driving section of the fictional game "XLR:H8" (pronounced "Acceller-Hate", also the IROC-Z's license plate). In my head it's a 16-bit sprite-based game that combines 2.5D side scrolling beat-em-up levels like Streets of Rage or Final Fight, and scaling/rotating driving sequences like Outrun and Road Blasters, but both game modes are more frenetic, dirty, claustrophobic and desperate. The scene above takes place about two-thirds of the way through the game. After a feverish recovery from the poison, V-Maxx wakes up in the underground lab, now overrun by Kestrel thugs and discovers Doctor Warren dead. Swearing DOUBLE VENGEANCE against Lucas and the Kestrels, V-Maxx fights their way out of the lab and tracks him down in the Camaro for an epic boss fight across two stages; one driving, and one fighting.

I'm actually pretty happy with this one. I had a concept in my head from the start, and I executed it in a cool, calm, methodical kind of way. It's more complex and cohesive, both structurally and melodically than anything I've written in a while, and I'm really getting the hang of Deflemask's interface (the 11.1 pre-release brings a lot of improvements, too). It also marks a change in my attitude and workflow. I had to break from my traditional production style of doing an entire track in one eight to ten hour stretch because I literally _do not_ have the time to do that any more if I want to make the deadline. This was composed over three or four nights, a two to four hours each. I actually found myself thinking about the track while I wasn't working on it and making notes on what I wanted to do with it. I feel like this is me maturing a bit and being more committed to music in a patient kind of way rather than something I have to go all-out in or not do it at all.

Software: Deflemask (delek.com.ar)
Hardware: Sega Genesis / Mega Drive (Emulated)

Burnout sound from http://freesound.org/people/audible-edge/ (CC-BY)

Tags: camaro, chiptune, cyborg, deflemask, double revenge, driving, genesis, mega drive, megadrive, sega, week 3 2016, View by:Strayce