You know, most of the group projects we do in the Café are usually pretty extensively pre-planned. Stuff like the Major Jams and the Coffee Jam have weeks of planning and foresight done by Café Staff before they’re ever revealed to the public. However, every once in awhile, you’ll see a project just pop out of nowhere, with no planning or background from staff, that just completely takes over the entire scene. Such is the case with the current Café craze, a collective effort from a bunch of affiliated artists to cover DoricDream’s “FamiCommodore” in as many formats as possible.
For the uninformed, FamiCommodore is a fire N163 track released around 2 to 3 years ago. DoricDream wanted to compose a SID track, but at the time, she didn’t know how. Her workaround was to emulate the sound of a SID by using 3 of the N163’s wavetable synths, and the result was FamiCommodore. It’s a certified bop if you’ve never heard it before; I recommend putting it on and listening to it while you read this article.
Cut to about a week and a half ago. Café Regular Blue Mario stumbles across Zeinok’s (who you may know as the creator of OVGen) oscilloscope view of FamiCommodore. Blue Mario took a liking to the song, and decided to make a cover of it using just the standard 2A03. To make the process go faster, he asked Zeinok for the module, which helped speed up the process. Blue Mario’s cover soon became a high profile piece on the Café Discord as Blue Mario was keen on keeping us updated about it.
Meanwhile, Zeinok gained a renewed interest in FamiCommodore after sending Blue Mario the module, and decided that he was going to make his own cover, a SID version, to see just how close the original FamiCommodore got to true emulation. Zeinok announced his cover right after Blue Mario released his 2A03 cover, and Café denizens were quick to point out that covering FamiCommodore was starting to become a trend. People started joking that they were gonna make their own covers of FamiCommodore using their signature chips.
Well, a lot of people decided to put their money where their mouth was and actually go through with their covers. We’re talking like, seven or eight people actually working on covers of the song for the joke. As more and more people got serious about making covers, the trend began to snowball throughout the server, and it wasn’t long before it was dominating the entire scene. It had gone from a joke about coincidental cover timing to a full blown grassroots effort to cover FamiCommodore on as many formats as humanly possible.
The cover ship had set sail, and at the wheel were two people: the aforementioned Blue Mario and Dr. Z. These two were responsible for transforming it from a simple fad into a full blown project. Blue Mario took control of the logistics. He set up a Google Doc that acted as a home base for the project, containing a list of everyone who was working on a cover and what format they were using to ensure there weren’t two people making a cover on the same format.It also served as a repository for links to everyone’s covers. Dr. Z, on the other hand, acted as the project’s diplomat. He approached Café staff and asked if all the covers could be released on official Café channels. After securing a sponsorship from us, he went off to inform DoricDream of the project. When he returned, he had secured a green light from her to release all of the covers officially.
Speaking of the release, the arrangers set themselves a deadline for when they need to be finished as to not have this project go on forever. That deadline is February 28th, so if you’re interested in this project, be sure to keep an eye on the blog around then, and we’ll keep you updated on when and where the album is gonna be coming out. At the moment, there are 17 people who have committed to arranging a cover, with about nine of them having already finished. If you want to give some of the early covers a listen, here’s a playlist featuring Blue Mario’s 2A03 cover and Zeinok’s SID cover, as well as a TurboGrafx-16 cover from Wavetable Guy, an MMC5 cover from TakuikaNinja, a Genesis cover from Ozaleto, a PoKEY cover from VinsCool, a VRC6 cover from fupaboychris, and a Logic Pro remix from bleeckrs. Aside from those, the only other cover that’s finished is Harieiv’s ModBox variant, which you can listen to by clicking here.
Anyways, that’s all we really have on the story for right now. So, if you were wondering what was with the massive amount of FamiCommodofe covers popping up on your Twitter feed, there’s your explanation. We’ll talk more about this once all of the covers officially drop. Huge shout out to DoricDream for giving these guys the green light to release their covers in an official capacity. If you’re not already following her endeavours, I highly suggest you do, she’s awesome.
That’s all we have for today, folks. Stay safe and remember to update your drivers.