Hi, I'm new to the forum, and I came here to share with you guys my massive Ace Attorney music project: remaking (or demixing in this case) the entire soundtrack of the first game (including the DS exclusive songs) in the original GameBoy (NOT the GBA). Here's a link to the YouTube playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwZ4SNZR5rQIVeQ-kbzrwUEJFqb9HwZxU

This took me an ungodly amount of time to complete, but I did my absolute best to be as faithful to the original soundtrack as possible. I based this mostly on the GBA versions, but for some songs I took a few notes from the DS versions (which are slightly different here and there) if I felt they sounded better. I used midis ripped from the games and based myself on that, but I still took some creative liberties here and there. The original GB has a fairly limited sound engine, but I still think these sound really good considering the cuts and adjustments I had to make.

I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I did making them :)

FAQ:

Does this play on a real GameBoy? Yes, it does . I basically used a modified version of the Pokémon Crystal sound engine and actually programmed the music to the rom (which is probably the most cumbersome way to make chiptunes). Then I recorded the songs through one of the best emulators for the GB around. The original hardware should read the rom just fine.
Why did you do this? Mostly because I really like the original AA's soundtrack and I am knee-deep into making chiptunes now. But the inspiration came from a YouTube comment I read on a song from the GBA version: "this sounds so bad it could be played on the original GameBoy". Well, turns out the video just had really bad sound quality, and the GBA versions don't sound nearly as bad as that. After reading that comment, I began wondering how the game would actually sound on the GB, and one demix lead to another and this was the result. Also, AFAIK the game was originally planned for the GB and after going through all the songs, I can't help but notice that most of them fit almost exactly into the GB's limitations, especially compared to the complexity shown in the latter games. So maybe they were initially composed for the GB and then arranged for the GBA.
Favorite and least favorite songs to arrange? My favorite is definitely Blissful People, it just came out almost perfectly when I played it on the GB for the first time. I also really like how Objection, Maya's theme, Gumshoe's theme, Investigation ~ Core and Jake Marshall's theme sound. The worst is definitely Turnabout Sisters' Ballad, for me it's just... fine as it is, but it's very difficult to make it sound any better than this.

Wow what dedication! It sounds really good though!

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Thanks! It wasn't as hard as one might imagine, since I now have the process pretty optimized. Still took about 150 hours in total over a year or so, which is kind of nuts.

This makes a lot of sense since the first game was planned for the Gameboy Color before the team saw the Gameboy Advance.

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Damn great job! It all sounds really cool

Can't believe I didn't see this sooner! That'll teach me to sit in the sprites forum all the time.

Excellent work! I especially love the oscilloscope visuals, really nice touch.

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Thanks a bunch :) The program to make the oscilloscope view was an awesome find, since it's really easy to render the videos (for the most part, some of the music had problems after rendering and I had to change the audio track before uploading). For some of the older music I uploaded before the AA ones, I recorded a sort of "piano roll" that comes with the rom I'm using. All these tracks were made in that same rom, so I can see every single music being played natively in that way, which really helped in the process of making them. However, it's a pain to increase the measle native resolution of the GB, which is why I've given up on making that sort of video. I really like the oscilloscope through, you can't see what are the actual notes being played are, but it's much easier to see the changes of the waveforms, vibrato effects, stereo, etc.

oh my GODDDDD this soudns so good!! i haven't even listened to this all yet but my god this deserves WAY more views than it has!
youve done a really good job with this!

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This is absolutely amazing! I really like what you did here. It sounds so good!