German musician Remute is creating the first ‘album on a cart’ for the Nintendo 64, it has been revealed.
Remute has previously released similar carts for the Genesis / Mega Drive, SNES, PC Engine and Game Boy, but states that ‘R64’ will be the most “diverse and playful album” so far.
It will showcase 15 new songs, “ranging from ultra-catchy electro pop reminiscent of Yello, Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra to sinister techno and house excursions beaming you right back to foggy ’90s warehouse raves.”
Remute is keen to point out that this isn’t some cheap trick, too:
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!
Remute teamed up with “genius Nintendo 64 dev” Rasky, who created the sound engine and player-GUI as well as “an amazingly trippy 3D-experience accompanying Remute’s music.”
R64 carts will be region-free and will fit in all models of the Nintendo 64 console – NTSC-U, PAL or NTSC-J. The cart can be pre-ordered now for 39.99 $ via Remute’s Bandcamp page, where you can also hear some samples. Release is scheduled for March 25th, 2022.
A very limited ‘Plus Edition’ – which comes with a 7″ vinyl with special versions of the two album songs ‘Superposition’ and ‘Tradition Und Moderne’ along with a third vinyl-exclusive song called ‘Tradition And Superposition’ – will cost you 49.99 $.
R64 is part of an album trilogy, with ‘Unity’ (Game Boy Advance) and ‘Generations’ (Sega Dreamcast) following later in 2022. Remute will also re-release his SNES and Genesis cartridge albums ‘The Cult Of Remute’ and ‘Technoptimistic’ soon.
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