Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance: Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance Music Overhaul

This hack is an overhaul of the entire soundtrack to Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance.

The original music in Harmony of Dissonance is often considered to be lacking in quality compared to other Castlevania games.

The game deserved a better soundtrack, and this patch aims to alleviate that issue.

All 31 Tracks of music from the game have been replaced, with a few being better compositions of the same songs.

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Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance Music Overhaul Hack
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By sorrow
October 25, 2020

This hack is an overhaul of the entire soundtrack to Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance. I loved Harmony of Dissonance when it came out originally, but like many, always found the music to be lacking. The game deserved a better soundtrack, and this patch aims to alleviate that issue.

All 31 Tracks of music from the game have been replaced (a few are better compositions of the same songs) and hopefully can provide a better sounding experience during playthroughs of the game.

The patch makes the following changes to the game:

1. Made a change to allow for more sounds to play simultaneously for music tracks.

2. Implemented All Instruments Patch allowing for better quality music.
*NOTE* The size of the game increases from 8 MB to about 11.4 MB

3. Inserted custom HQ Sound Mixer by ipatix, helps to reduce some of the audio noise of GBA games as well as reduce CPU usage of the GBA.

4. All 31 music tracks have been changed. A majority of the names were also updated and reflected in the Sound Test.

Known Bugs:

1. It seems that every other loop of the opening from the Konami logo has a glitchy leaf as well as a glitchy bat on the title screen. It goes away if you just let it loop or go to a menu and back out.

2. Sometimes when loading from a save file, no music plays after exiting the save room. Seems to fix itself if you just go back to the save room and re-enter the level.

3. Sometimes when checking the map, the game will get stuck on a black screen. Seems to happen if trying to check the map and close too quickly after entering new room. Saving often is recommended.

Special Thanks:

Bregalad - For taking the time to answer all of my questions and teach me a few things about Sappy and GBA music hacking.

Blazer - For creating the FE7 All Instruments Patch and allowing me to use it in Harmony of Dissonance.

Alisa180 - For adapting Blazer's FE7 All Instruments Patch to use less space in Pokémon Fire Red, and thus using less space in HoD, allowing for a smaller rom. And also, for allowing me to use her version of Blazer's Patch.

ipatix - For creating the custom HQ Sound Mixer for GBA games using the Sappy Engine and also taking the time to help me troubleshoot when inserting it in to the rom.


Database match: Castlevania - Harmony of Dissonance (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Game Boy Advance (v. 20180816-092117)
File/ROM SHA-1: B90DA0D9BE0B3A0893CD9E2C399056BCF9579E21
File/ROM CRC32: 88C1B562