There's this bass sound that's all over japanese media from the 90's and early 2000's. Kind of sounds like one of those early clumsy attempts at recreating the sound of acoustic instruments, in this case an upright bass. Considering there are instruments like the Roland D-50 that have defined certain eras of music with their preset patches, I think this is probably also a preset on some popular workstation from that time.

Examples:

 

When it comes to 90s/2000s japanese video games, the answer is usually 'it's a Roland SC-55', and I suspect that's the case here, probably the SC-55 rendition of the GS 'Acoustic Bass' patch.

 

There's a few free synths to do this.. try Surge,https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/
upright Bass/slap bass/double bass! or what ever DAW you use should have a synth to create this

If you want a decent workstation with all the presets you will ever need i suggest XPAND 2
Going cheap at the mo in friday deals https://www.airmusictech.com/virtual-instruments/xpand-2/

 

Last edited: Nov 26, 2024

here is another one:

Here you can hear a few examples directly from the devices, the bass can also be spotted here:

 

To me the first video doesn't sound like 90s synth or workstation at all, tone and playing style sound like a fretless electric bass.

And it reminds me of this:

 

I didn't check your examples, but this spreadsheet is actively maintained and dedicated to finding samples used for the VGM of the era. Worth bookmarking, even if it doesn't have sources for your games specifically.

 

Yeah, I've been looking into that one, but I haven't been able to find a similar patch there. Speaking of the SC-55 or SC-88 though, Roland has completely discontinued the VST of that one. What are you supposed to do now to get to these sounds legally, buy the real unit!?

Doesn't sound like the patch I was talking about. That just sounds like one of the patches that you find all over these romplers from that time.

I guess compositionally this track has similarities, but the bass is of course not similar at all.

That being said, I'm starting to think that you might be right about it simply being a fretless electric bass. Here's another track that uses the very same sound. It's just striking to me that it always sounds the exact same tonally, when typically a bass sound can change a lot based on who plays it, what amp it's hooked up to and so on.

 

i lsitened to couple of examples and I hear a real electric bass, freetless or regular, but a real bass anyway

I can say that on some of those there's probably the Symphonic patch from an old Yamaha FX module (REV7, REV1, SPX series and more) but thats a kind of chorus-widner. it has a unique sound, something like robotic-fostery-syntish flavour. THere are a couple of plugins that emulate that. Maybe try.