[xtiansimon]

@Synaesthesia, True. You could recreate the effects using Photoshop. And yet, you could create many more images in the same amount of time using the rig. With the rig you're working at the time of image capture to discover what's an interesting image in low-resolution without preconception. Magic! Conversely, using Photoshop you're working to draw, paint, this low-resolution style onto an existing photo.

[rainbowmverse]

This is why people use those same Game Boys to make chiptunes instead of using a good softsynth. It might be possible to make a perfect replica of a Game Boy sound chip in software, but it's still not the real thing.

[jchw]

Thanks to careful and dedicated developers like blargg and kode54, there are in fact fantastic, potentially perfect software replicas for many video game console audio chipsets. Game_Music_Emu comes to mind, with at least the SPC700 core featuring cycle-accurate emulation of the DSP and certainly near perfect audio output.

Even then, though... maybe 'perfect' is a misnomer. What one may have looked at as flaws initially, such as the phosphorus glow and curvature of a CRT, composite artifacts, low sample rate audio, and even the behavior of analog chips that could change depending on just about everything including room temperature are not really viewed as flaws or imperfections anymore; rather, they've become part of the personality of a machine. Software nowadays can emulate almost all of these aspects to some degree, but even so, the "feel" of a physical device is hard to replicate 100% in software.

When it comes to listening to audio, it makes no difference to me if the audio was produced by a highly accurate emulator or the original hardware; however, maybe for production, the feeling is different in some way. After all, humans are producing the music, not robots. The atmosphere of holding a Game Boy connected to a bunch of audio equipment is certainly a lot different than sitting in a DAW with an emulator (assuming software exists to marry those two kinds of things... maybe via MIDI or something?) - nobody doubts you can produce the exact same thing, or at least something that is nearly impossible to tell apart. But maybe the question is, would you? It's possible the environmental influence leads to different outcomes.

Right now I'm unsure. I know plenty of music I've listened to in the chiptune realm was written and produced in Famitracker, possibly using a combination of overclocking and special chips that would either be very difficult or impossible to rig up in the physical world. So I guess maybe the answer is that it depends on the artist, the song, and probably a host of other factors. But it's fun to think about, anyway.

[rainbowmverse]

>> The atmosphere of holding a Game Boy connected to a bunch of audio equipment is certainly a lot different than sitting in a DAW with an emulator (assuming software exists to marry those two kinds of things... maybe via MIDI or something?)

Most chiptune-inspired synths come in VST format. They run inside the DAW. I usually just put something together in Serum when I want a chiptune-esque sound, but I used various chip synth VSTs before I had Serum.

None quite match the feel of composing in Mario Paint on a friend's SNES decades ago.