It’s a niche market, but there are definitely a lot of people out there who are down to make some beats that feature all of your classic video game drum samples.
The company developed Famidrums – essentially a drum machine inspired by the original Nintendo Entertainment System. What Samplescience has focused on is the console’s sound chip – specifically, its DPCM sample and triangle/noise oscillators.
There’s some vintage stuff here with samples from Super Mario Bros 3, Super C, Lifeforce and Kid Icarus. All drum sounds were either extracted from the games themselves or have been sourced from classic analogue drum machines. There are 30 different kits to choose from with multiple audio outputs, an LFO, trim and patch controls and includes in-built reverb.
Famidrums runs as a VST/AU plugin on PC and Mac, and the WAV files can be uploaded to any kind of sampler.
For more details, head to samplescience.ca.