In space everyone can hear you rock out to Sega Genesis music. This is the Megasynthesis from Sonicware, and this is a song that I built called Grind Engine. Let’s take a look at the Megasynthesis and all of the fun things that you can do with this thing, for those 16-bit music fans out there, which I assume are all of you.

It’s the bass track. Love that Sega Genesis bass.

Does that sound?

And that’s that sound.

Put them all together.

I mean, if that doesn’t make you feel like you’re fighting a boss battle against a giant enemy spaceship with crab claws and homing lasers, then I don’t know what would.

Here it is, the Sonicware Megasynthesis, which is super fun to say. You can see where they got the inspiration on the design. Looks a lot like the Sega Genesis or the Mega Drive, for those of you who grew up on the Mega Drive. The Genesis is my favorite game console. I love Sega Genesis music.

I grew up on games like Thunder Force II, Revenge of Shinobi, Altered Beast, Herzog Zwei, Phantasy Star II, and so many more. My favorite game soundtrack of all time is MUSHA. And this will allow you to create those kinds of songs.

Now it’ll take some work to get songs that are that good, obviously, but this will do it. It’s a really cool synthesizer. I’m going to turn this thing on. It’ll run on battery power and wall power.

And if I don’t use it for long enough, the battery shuts off on me and makes me look like a fool during the middle of a review. So hold on, I’m going to walk over here, turn on the battery, walk back over here, and turn on the Megasynthesis.

Now bear with me, it’s been a long time since I’ve actually reviewed something seriously and not just screamed about beer drinking and truck stunts. This is actually a pretty sophisticated piece of gear. I should point out immediately that it does not come with its own power supply—you have to buy one separately.

I’m using adapters from Soulbay, from Amazon. Cheap adapters that come with a whole bunch of plugs. This plug is the same plug that works on the Korg Volca series, by the way.

This is on the high end of entry-level synthesizers, roughly $250. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and I think it’s worth every penny. This is great for hobbyists, like if you’re just looking to recreate some of your favorite Sega Genesis songs or Mega Drive songs.

Or if you’re looking to make that 16-bit sound for fun and just to tinker with it, this is perfect. If you’re a professional and you’re looking to work this into your studio and make some cool songs based around the 16-bit sound, this is also perfect. It’ll do all that stuff. It’s a really versatile piece of gear and I’ve had a lot of fun with it.

Now this is the first piece of Sonicware gear that I’ve owned, and the learning curve was kind of steep at first.

Sonicware will direct you immediately to some very helpful tutorial videos that will get you up to speed fairly quickly. It took me about a full day to learn how to use this thing. It’s like the language is slightly different than one of the Rolands or the Korgs, but they all work more or less the same once you figure out the workflow.

You can build a bunch of songs in there and save them. I’ve got a ton of patterns in here by now.

A lot of fun.

You can adjust your BPM here.

One track, track one. Slow it down.

Mute, play, track two.

Every Sega Genesis lover gets chills when they hear that sound. It just says Genesis.

This is the core of that song called Beyond Robot. It’s actually very simple—only three tracks from the Megasynthesis which hold the entire song together. The bassline, another baseline, and then the drums.

This thing comes with a whole bunch of built-in preset sounds and some patterns to help you get started. That’s great because it’s a little tricky to figure out at first, and it’s really hard to make your own sounds if you don’t know what you’re doing. So you’re going to play around with the ones they’ve given you, and there’s plenty in there to make your own songs, especially if you’re just diving in to make some Genesis-style music as a hobby.

This will keep you busy for quite some time. Yuzo Koshiro provided a whole lot of sounds and some patterns, and he’s one of the most famous game soundtrack designers of all time. He did Revenge of Shinobi, one of my favorites.

Let’s listen to that. Many of you should be familiar with this song. That’s one of the preset patterns, and what’s really cool is that you can dissect it like I showed you earlier, except this is one of Yuzo’s songs.

So that’s just track one. That’s track two.

Three.

Four.

Bye for now. Hope there is.

That’s a badass drum beat right there. That’s a very cool song, so we’ll unmute that.

Some other ones too, like this one here.

I think that’s the best bass.

Those are hidden back there.

Man, he’s good.

But what if we want to make our own songs?

It’s hard to describe how these things work because when I make songs I just get sucked into it and I’m not really sure what I’m doing—it’s just that something’s happening and I’m capturing it.

You pick a bank, an empty bank, and hit play—there’s nothing in there. Then we’re going to record a sequence. Start with a bass line. You can manually record your steps in a sequence, or you can hit play and let it record.

You can do different lengths. It’s a pretty versatile little machine here.

We’re going to hit play and do something real simple. I’ll probably pick my sound first. Let’s go with a bass. Bunch of FM bass sounds.

So we’re going to do something simple and throw a lead on top of it.

Ready?

That’s probably not a great song, but it’s a good example of how you put things together. There are so many different variables and options and so many different things that you can do. So much more than I can show you in a short video.

If you’re interested, check some other tutorials online or Sonicware’s website. They’ve got a lot of stuff on there to help you out. It’s a very cool device.

If you want to save, you just hit save. Okay, hey, it’s saved. There it is. Boom.

So Megaronin will be going into some Buck Rogers in the 25th century jazz bar. Sounds pretty awesome, especially if Erin Gray’s in there.

Did I say that out loud? You know I did.

What’s up Wilma? Can I buy you another round?

I’m gonna get Twiki out of here.