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: How is the campaign so far and are you happy with the turn out and orders?

cejetvole: “It’s hard to gauge whether it has been successful since it was always done as more of a passion project

I’m happy with the turn out. At least it’s gone much better than I feared. My customers/supporters are very passionate about the project and that is encouraging. One aspect of the project that I wish I emphasized more in the beginning is its use as a development tool for SNES homebrew. One of new found friends has been able to create amazing music with the device, better than lots of SNES music I’ve heard and it dawned on me that this could really improve the music of SNES music.”

RetroRGB: Absolutely, I know how difficult developers said it was to do music for the SNES back in the day. This should help make it easier?

cejetvole: “Right so that is a pretty unique use case for this, though a lot of my customers are music producers too and care more about the live playing aspect of it.”

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.“

RetroRGB: Will there need to have any registration or login account done?

cejetvole: “No registration or login.”

RetroRGB: Is there anything we discussed that you do not want me to add or talk about?

cejetvole: “One bit of information is that when the preorder period is over, we will only be selling a limited amount. Likely will be ~100 units and once that runs out, then the waiting list will be put up.”

Links to the original article as well as website listed below, and I really wanted to thank cejetvole for taking the time to do a quick interview.

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