Vanessa (Vanessaira)

SUPER MIDI PAK UPDATE/INTERVIEW

The Super MIDI Pak is a specially made Super Famicom (SFC) cartridge designed to turn your Super Nintendo (SNES) into a MIDI synth.  The purpose behind the project is to allow users direct access to their SNES’s musical hardware.  For which its many different musical applications could be utilized.  RetroRGB was recently able to follow up with a brief text interview of Rian Hunter (cejetvole).  Who is the creator of the Super MIDI Pak and hoped to get a quick status update on the project as well ask a few questions that might clear up any thoughts or concerns potential customers might have before the pre order window closes on October 15th. 

Interviewed questions and answers below:

RetroRGB: As the initial pre order window closes on October 15th.  What are the post pre order plans?

cejetvole: “The chip shortage makes doing a second run a little complicated but I think after the initial run, we’ll collect email addresses in a waiting list and if the list gets large enough and we’re able to collect the parts necessary we’ll do a second run.”

RetroRGB: Can the MIDI use of Super MIDI Pak be expanded to be compatible with other MIDI standards like General MIDI (GM)?

cejetvole: “Yes so its use as a consumer MIDI synth a la Roland MT-32 is another use case that came up often. It’s currently not made for that since it lacks a GM sample set but I will work on packing a GM sample set into 64K SNES memory so people can have the option of using it as a quirky MT-32 replacement.”

RetroRGB: GM capability would be outstanding. 

cejetvole continues: “Yeah it’s 99% GM compatible except for the minimum voice requirements and the default sample set, the former I cannot change but the latter should be possible to some degree.”

RetroRGB: How easy will the firmware be able to be upgraded?

cejetvole: “Really easy.  Basically just going to the website and clicking upgrade with it connected.
 
 

LINKS

Super MIDI Pak Main Site  |  https://www.supermidipak.com/

Previous RetroRGB Article  |  https://www.retrorgb.com/super-midi-pak-coming-to-sfc-snes.html

Rian Hunter’s Twitter  |  https://twitter.com/cejetvole

Rian Hunter’s YouTube  |  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC61iV3r0JwYrLMdkJcwPI4g