SimTunes
Encyclopedia
SimTunes is a children's software toy
designed by Toshio Iwai
and released by Maxis
in 1996. It involves painting
a picture with dots (large pixels), where each color
(unless it was part of the backdrop, which was black or a bitmap) represents a musical note. The player places up to four different-coloured Bugz, which represent instruments
or vocal syllables, on this picture, and can change their starting directions and relative speeds. The Bugz crawl over the picture, playing notes corresponding with the colours, and turning, moving randomly or jumping in response to function symbols that can be added to the dots.
SimTunes was originally developed by Iwai as a game for the Super NES/Super Famicom
, known as Sound Fantasy
, in the early 1990s. It is believed that Nintendo
chose not to release the completed game because of its musical mechanics, which were unproven in home game consoles
. Many of the ideas and elements in Sound Fantasy are present in SimTunes.
Electroplankton
, for the Nintendo DS, was also designed by Iwai and is considered a spiritual sequel
to SimTunes.
Non-game
Non-games define a class of software that lies on the border between video games, toys and applications. The original term non-game game was coined by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. The main difference between non-games and traditional video games is the apparent lack of goals, objectives and...
designed by Toshio Iwai
Toshio Iwai
is a Japanese interactive media and installation artist who has also created a number of commercial video games. In addition he has worked in television, music performance, museum design and digital musical instrument design.-Education and early work:...
and released by Maxis
Maxis
Maxis is an American company founded as an independent video game developer in 1987. It is currently a subsidiary of Electronic Arts . Maxis is the creator of one of the best-selling computer games of all time, The Sims and its first sequel, The Sims 2...
in 1996. It involves painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
a picture with dots (large pixels), where each color
Color
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
(unless it was part of the backdrop, which was black or a bitmap) represents a musical note. The player places up to four different-coloured Bugz, which represent instruments
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...
or vocal syllables, on this picture, and can change their starting directions and relative speeds. The Bugz crawl over the picture, playing notes corresponding with the colours, and turning, moving randomly or jumping in response to function symbols that can be added to the dots.
SimTunes was originally developed by Iwai as a game for the Super NES/Super Famicom
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
, known as Sound Fantasy
Sound Fantasy
Sound Fantasy also titled Sound Factory during production, is an unreleased video game for the Super NES/Super Famicom.-Summary:Interactive media artist Toshio Iwai designed the game in the early 1990s using concepts from the installation art piece Music Insects, which he created during his time as...
, in the early 1990s. It is believed that Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
chose not to release the completed game because of its musical mechanics, which were unproven in home game consoles
Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...
. Many of the ideas and elements in Sound Fantasy are present in SimTunes.
Electroplankton
Electroplankton
Electroplankton is an interactive music video game developed by Toshio Iwai and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. It was first released in Japan, and was later released in North America and Europe. This game allows the player to interact with animated plankton...
, for the Nintendo DS, was also designed by Iwai and is considered a spiritual sequel
Spiritual sequel
A spiritual successor, sometimes called a spiritual sequel or a companion piece, is a successor to a work of fiction which does not directly build upon the storyline established by a previous work as do most traditional prequels or sequels, but nevertheless features many of the same elements,...
to SimTunes.
Yellow Bugz
- Ivory - PianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
(one octave higher than the other pianos) - Thumbs - Kalimba
- Toot - FluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
- Chordelia - Electric PianoElectric pianoAn electric piano is an electric musical instrument.Electric pianos produce sounds mechanically and the sounds are turned into electrical signals by pickups. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument, but electro-mechanical. The earliest electric pianos were invented...
Loop Bug - Benny - ClarinetClarinetThe clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
- Dizzy - TrumpetTrumpetThe trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
- Twinkle - A ChimeChime-Musical instrument or tone:* Chime , an array of large bells, typically housed in a tower and played from a keyboard.** An instrument of this kind with 23 bells or more is known as a carillon...
-like noise - Plucks - PizzicatoPizzicatoPizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of stringed instrument....
strings - Emcee - Loop Bug, vocal phrases
- Humbug - Humming
- Yellow Pings - Music Box
- Yellow Keys - PianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
Green Bugz
- Frets - Acoustic GuitarAcoustic guitarAn acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
- Xylo - MarimbaMarimbaThe marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...
/XylophoneXylophoneThe xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets... - Ace - DistortedDistortionA distortion is the alteration of the original shape of an object, image, sound, waveform or other form of information or representation. Distortion is usually unwanted, and often many methods are employed to minimize it in practice...
Electric GuitarElectric guitarAn electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker... - Strats - Electric GuitarElectric guitarAn electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
Loop Bug - Strings - ViolinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
- Jo - BanjoBanjoIn the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
- Twang - Referred to as an "intergalactic guitar", looks like a pipaPipaThe pipa is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments . Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12–26...
but sounds more like a shamisenShamisenThe , also called is a three-stringed, Japanese musical instrument played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usually "shamisen" but sometimes "jamisen" when used as a suffix . -Construction:The shamisen is a plucked stringed instrument... - Decibelle - Orchestra hitOrchestra hitAn orchestra hit, also known as an orchestral hit, orchestra stab, or orchestral stab, is a sound created through the layering of the sounds of a number of different orchestral instruments playing a single staccato note or chord. The orchestra hit sound was propagated by the use of early samplers,...
- Wordsworth - Vocal phrases
- Do-Bee - Vocal (doo)
- Green Pings - Music Box
- Green Keys - PianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
Blue Bugz
- Slaps - Electric Bass Guitar
- Caribe - Steel Drum
- Buzz - SynthesizedSynthesizerA synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
BrassBrass instrumentA brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips... - Bassie - Bass GuitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
Loop Bug - Yo-Yo PaYo-Yo MaYo-Yo Ma is an American cellist, virtuoso, and orchestral composer. He has received multiple Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts in 2001 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011...
- CelloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
/Double bassDouble bassThe double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2... - Horatio - Baritone SaxophoneBaritone saxophoneThe baritone saxophone, often called "bari sax" , is one of the largest and lowest pitched members of the saxophone family. It was invented by Adolphe Sax. The baritone is distinguished from smaller sizes of saxophone by the extra loop near its mouthpiece...
- Piper - ShakuhachiShakuhachiThe is a Japanese end-blown flute. It is traditionally made of bamboo, but versions now exist in ABS and hardwoods. It was used by the monks of the Fuke school of Zen Buddhism in the practice of...
- Octavius - AccordionAccordionThe accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
/OrganOrgan (music)The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with... - Loopy - PhonographPhonographThe phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
Loop Bug (uses samples from Bassie, Raver, Strats, and Chordelia) - Bumms - Vocal (bum)
- Blue Pings - Music Box
- Blue Keys - PianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
Red Bugz
- Sticks - Drum Set
- Tapper - Latin Drums
- Robo - Electronic drumElectronic drumAn electronic drum is an electronic synthesizer which mimics an acoustic drum kit.The electronic drum usually consists of a set of pads mounted on a stand in a disposition similar to an acoustic drum kit. The pads are discs with a rubber or cloth-like coating. Each pad has a sensor which generates...
s - Beats - Drum Set Loop Bug
- Comix - Sound EffectsSound effectFor the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...
- Soulfie - SolfegeSolfegeIn music, solfège is a pedagogical solmization technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfège syllable...
singing - Boomer - Latin Drum Loop Bug
- Raver - Electronic Drum Loop Bug
- Zoundz - AnimalAnimalAnimals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
sounds - Wahler - Vocal (wah)
- Red Pings - Music Box
- Red Keys - PianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...