Roland SoundCanvas VA
It never fails to impress me just how much of an impact the Roland SC-55 and its descendants had on the videogame industry. I've variously heard them in other media, like Guy Moon's cartoon music or Jay Chattaway's Deep Space Nine scores, but when we're talking about market adoption, the market was game composers. Basically from day 1, so many games absolutely relied on the SoundCanvas to produce the entire score; Bubsy for Super NES comes to mind, so does Super Mario RPG, so does Gex 1. I wrote once that the SC-55 was reasonably-priced, overpowered, and positively overflowing with broadcast-quality sounds, and you didn't even need to use a computer if you had the SoundBrush counterpart. Why the SB couldn't have been built into the SC is a bit strange to me, but the point is, if your studio space was at a premium, or you were one of those weirdoes who didn't have a computer (what do you want? Computers used to be expensive), you could assemble an industry-leading studio with just a SoundBrush, a SoundCanvas, and a MIDI controller.
The list of games that didn't use a SoundCanvas would be a shorter read, but here are a few noteworthy stops on the SoundCanvas train...
° PS1: Earthworm Jim 2 (Tommy Tallarico)
° SNES: Super Mario RPG (Yoko Shimomura)
° SAT: Sonic 3D Blast (Richard Jacques)
° PC: Scrabble 2nd Edition (Tony Trippi)
° PS1: Gex (Steve Henifin)
° SNES: Bubsy (Matt Berardo)
° N64: Pokémon Snap (Ikuku Mimori)
° PC: Doom (Bobby Prince)
° N64: Mario Kart 64 (Kenta Nagata)
Suffice to say, the SoundCanvas line is the undisputed champion of videogame music. Whilst it's easier to recognise in the scores for PlayStation games, simply because of the mastered audio, it was, at the very least, sampled and used on the Super NES and N64. If you don't want to bother with this VSTi or that soundfont while making period-authentic videogame music, the only one you really need to concern yourself with is Roland SoundCanvas VA.
Now, for everyone who was keen to throw their money at Roland Corporation for SCVA, I'm afraid you're out of luck, as Roland gave a half-hearted excuse for discontinuing it, then discontinued it. However... for the people who like free software, guess what Roland's done? Exactly the same thing that Creative did when they discontinued all E-MU product lines: made SCVA into abandonware.
Behold...
Roland SoundCanvas VA
Yes, indeed. The powerhouse of 1990s/Y2K game music is now free to use. Good on you for holding out for the free version and not giving $70 to a company that doesn't bother to innovate anymore! Now, get out there and write some PlayStation music like nature intended.