Bad Apple!!

"Bad Apple!!" is the seventh track in the soundtrack of the 1998 bullet hell video game Lotus Land Story, the fourth entry in the Touhou Project series created by Team Shanghai Alice. The instrumental theme was originally designed to be played during the third stage of the game, as chiptune on the Japanese NEC PC-9800 computer platform, at 161 beats per minute using a frequency modulation synthesis chip.[1]

For other uses, see Bad Apple.

"Bad Apple!!"
Song by ZUN
Released1998 (1998)
GenreDance/Electronic
Length1:22
LabelAlstroemeria Records
Composer(s)ZUN

It is notable for leading to a much later remix by Masayoshi Minoshima and singer Nomico and following the remix a subsequent accompanying black-and-white shadow puppet-video. In the 2010s, the version sung by Nomico and the black-and-white video sequence were ported to several second-generation video game consoles and graphing calculators, for retrocomputing and demoscene competitions, becoming a graphical equivalent to the "Hello, World!" programs of older computer systems in the demoscene communities.[2]

Naming

The name likely derives from the proverb that "one bad apple spoils the bunch".

Pop song
"Bad Apple!!"
Song by Nomico
Released2007 (2007)
Length3:39
Songwriter(s)Alstroemeria
Producer(s)Masayoshi Minoshima

In 2007, a longer cover version featuring the Japanese singer Nomico was released in the album Lovelight by the artists group Alstroemeria Records, lead by Masayoshi Minoshima.[3] It shared little similarity with the original soundtrack, borrowing only a little of melody samples, but nonetheless it was notable as being the only vocal song in the album, and for its lyrics dealing with depression and apathy.[4]

Music video

In August 2008, a user in Nico Nico Douga uploaded a video of a crude storyboard based on the remixed music, asking for anyone to animate it.[5] Several animation videos started appearing, with relatively few successes.[6][7] [4]

Between October 2008 and October 2009, a collaborative group led by Anira (あにら) created a shadow-art (black and white) animation video based on the storyboard, which was released on Nico Nico on 27 October 2009.[8][3]

10th Anniversary

In 2017, the Alstroemeria Records group released a 10th Anniversary Bad Apple!! album consisting entirely of "Bad Apple" remixes.[9]

Demoscene

The shadow puppet video has been used in the demoscene as the basis of many ports for older computer platforms, presumed to be incapable of playing back full motion video.

  • In June 2014 the "8088 Domination" demo included a section rendering the "Bad Apple" shadow video on an 1981-era IBM 5150 at 640×200 resolution and 30 frames per second.[10][11]
  • In June 2014 about two minutes of "Bad Apple" have been ported to the Commodore_64 as 2000 frames at 12 frames per second on a single side diskette.[12]
  • By 2015 "Bad Apple" had been ported to the 1982–Vectrex console;[13][14] along with ports to the 1977–Atari 2600, 1985–Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), 1988–Sega Genesis, and Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus series graphing calculators.[13]
  • In 2017 fenarinarsa released an Atari STE demo rendering the video at 320x200 resolution at 30fps with 50 kHz audio.[15]
  • In 2019 YouTube user otter_us made a Python program which converts an image into an Braille pattern, ran every frame of the music video, converted it into an subtitle file, and uploaded a blank YouTube video with the file as the subtitles.[16]
  • Also in 2019 an Arduino Mega was programmed to render the video (without sound) at 128×176 resolution and 60 frames per second.[17]
  • In 2020 an Amiga AGA was released at the NOVA2020 demoparty[18]
  • In Mid 2020, Sarah Purohit programmed her Epyc 64 core processor to display a 16x8 graphic of the video using the CPU's thread usage in task manager.[19][20]

References
  1. "東方幻想郷" [Bad Apple!!]. Toho Music database (in Japanese). Retrieved 21 September 2019. BPM: 160.73 (TimerB：202); 拍子: 4/4拍子; 再生時間: 1:22; 調性: 【0:04～】変ホ短調(E♭m), 【0:58～】ト短調(Gm); 使用楽器: 矩形波、@54、@74、@99、@101、@181、ドラム音
  2. Dell, Peter (2018). "Bad Apple HD". WUDSN. Retrieved 21 December 2019. Bad Apple advanced to the modern "Hello World" for the retro computing demoscene. It has been converted to even the most obscure platforms including Atari VCS and Vectrex
  3. "Bad Apple!!". Know Your Meme. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  4. "Bad Apple Explained: History and Analysis - YouTube". YouTube. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
  5. "【ＵＰ主が見たい】Bad Apple!! ＰＶ【誰か描いてくれ】". Nico Nico Douga. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
  6. "【東方】Bad Apple!! PV を描いてみた。ver.1.1【線画だけ】". Nico Nico Douga (in Japanese).
  7. yange. "【東方】Bad Apple!! ~ver.short~ PV【完成版】". Nico Nico Douga (in Japanese). Retrieved 1 January 2021.
  8. あにら. "【Touhou Project】"Bad Apple!! feat. nomico" - Silhouette PV". www.nicovideo.jp (in Japanese).
  9. "10th Anniversary Bad Apple!!". Touhou Wiki. Released: 2017-05-07 (Reitaisai 14); Tracks: 11
  10. Pardo, Lisandro (23 June 2014). "8088 Domination: Vídeo full motion en una IBM PC" [8088 Domination: Full motion video on an IBM PC]. Neoteo (in Spanish). Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  11. Benchoff, Brian (21 June 2014). "(Better) Full Motion Video on the First PC". Hackaday. Retrieved 22 December 2019. display video at 640×200 resolution at 30 frames per second on a 30-year-old computer. … playing the 'Apple' animation on an 8088.
  12. "Bad Apple 64 - A mighty impressive C64 demo!". 30 June 2014. Retrieved 4 December 2020. over 2000 frames packed to a single disk, with each frame packed to around 70 bytes and running at 12fps streaming fully from disk
  13. Williams, Carl (16 July 2015). "Bad Apple Ported to the Vectrex, Something that Should Technically not be Possible". Retro Gaming Magazine. Bad Apple has also hit the Sega Genesis … Bad Apple hitting the Atari 2600? The Nintendo Entertainment System? Texas Instruments 84+? … Bad Apple has been ported to all of those platforms
  14. Fabio, Theodora (24 April 2015). "Extreme Vectrex Multicart Plays Bad Apple". Hackaday. Retrieved 19 September 2019. audio was possible by having the Vectrex's 8-bit DA-converter perform double duty both for the video circuit and the audio. … volume must be turned to the max … DAC can only output audio in this scenario when vectors are not being drawn,
  15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvRzV5gn0U8
  16. youtube.com/watch?v=G8DjxY8FNKA
  17. Day, Lewin (8 January 2019). "Bad Apple!! Via The Arduino Mega". Hackaday. Retrieved 19 September 2019.
  18. "You Mad, Apple? Demozoo.org". 5 June 2020.
  19. @winocm (25 June 2020). "Well, I got it running for the most part. Here's Bad Apple on taskmgr on a very large computer" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  20. Purohit, Sarah. "bad_cpu.py". Gist. Archived from the original on 30 December 2020. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
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