TOKYO -- Walk around Akihabara enough and you might spot some gaming celebrities.
On Saturday, game music composers including Yasunori Mitsuda, composer of some of the world's best game soundtracks like Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, made an appearance outside of Sofmap, a massive retailer in the middle of Tokyo's electronics district. Mitsuda (pictured above right) was there to demonstrate Korg DS-10 Plus, a synthesizer application for Nintendo DS that was released earlier in the week. A crowd gathered on the opposite side of the sidewalk, cordoned off in a special viewing area, as the weekend foot traffic of Akihabara passed ceaselessly between them and the stage.
Korg DS-10 Plus features a number of upgrades over the original synthesizer app, which was released in the U.S. last year and billed as a "professional-grade synthesizer in the palm of your hand." Most notably, the new version has a variety of upgrades that utilize the additional processing power of the Nintendo DSi hardware. When used with a DSi, the software can now generate 12 simultaneous tones, 4 analog synth simulators, and two four-track drum machines -- double the original's.
Mitsuda, whose company Procyon Studio helped produce the game, gave a live demo of the game's features along with Ridge Racer composer Nobuyoshi "Denji" Sano (top left). The Black Mages member Michio Okamiya was also in attendance. (The three men performed live together using DS-10 hardware at a Tokyo concert last year.)
Representatives of the game's Japanese publisher AQ Interactive said at the event that plans had not yet been made to sell the software in the U.S.
Photos: Chris Kohler/Wired.com
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