Our Process
I received a very well put together and specific briefing for this project, with tons of references from Megadrive Sword & Magic classics, as Battle Axe and Act Raiser, and an extensive list of "do"s and "don't"s, so we had a pretty clear sound from the start: melodic, epic and memorable Megadrive style tunes.
Wich is pretty much my alley since I was raised listening to Power Metal and grew up in this era of gaming.
To maintain the megadrive aesthetic period appropriate, I studied it's chip sounds and limitations, using the right number of channels and simulating it's waveforms with emulation VSTs. We figured eventually that since the melodic instruments were so aggressively Megadrive, we didn't need to be so strict to maintain the vibe and ended up using some 16-Bits samples from SNES and vintage sound machines for drums when fitting.
Since music duty was shared by mutiple composers, apart from it's stylistic purposes, the Megadrive consistency served the function of being the glue to tie every composer style together in a coherent sountrack.
This was my first long project in the industry and it set a golden standard for briefing, communication and workflow. I'm really proud of what we accomplished.