SHORT HISTORY OF PISTON COLLAGE/PXTONE

Japanese programmer Pixel created a game called Cave Story.  
It was met with great success.  It was praised not only for
it's retro look and feel (it could have easily been a Turbo
Grafx 16 or Genesis/Megadrive title),  but for overall just
being  a  great game with an awesome story and superb level
design.  

The music  featured  on Cave Story was chip-flavored tradi-
tional BGM  (background music)  with a distinctive low-tech
sound.    This  music  was  created with  a  program called
"Organya",and was  essentially  the  blueprint  for  Piston
Collage.  It featured  a  sound  editor  and  a  piano roll
for up to 16 simultaneous tones.  

For one reason or another, however,   Pixel decided to take
Organya  to  the  next level and began  work on what is now
known as Piston Collage (or PxTone).   While still focusing
on the sound of low tech,   it added new features such as a
"noise"  editor  for  creating  chippie  sound  effects and
precussions, support for samples and the program now allows
36  simultaneous  'voices'  (voices are called such as they
can be composed of up to 4 tones!) and now 2 delay effects.
Although still in it's infancy, PxTone is already gathering
a sizable and loyal user base in it's home land.

While it is definately a huge step up from Organya,  PxTone
is by no means a 'virtual  studio' program.   It's focus is
still on low tech chips.   ...but... can't it load samples?
So here you are, the allure of this program.  How to get it
to sound more than what it is  actually capable of.   Plus,
its just plain fun to use and very quick to compose in.

-HS

References:  

Studio Pixel
Cave Story Wikipedia Entry
Organya -(Japanese language)
Studio Pixel Fan Site