Hi everyone,

I am in the middle of creating an old school top down RPG (pokemon/final fantasy style), and am nearing the stage where I need to focus on sound. So far I have been unable to find a program that will easily create the sort of music I want. If you've ever heard anything from pokemon or the old zelda games, that's the sort of thing I want to create. Can anyone recommend anything?

Thanks

Well, it's less about what program to use and more about what samples/sounds you're after. If you're looking for old school it sounds like soundfonts will be your solution. And most DAWs can use them. Some Googling will point you to many options. Have you written music before or is this something you're looking to learn?

By glitchy do you mean sample quality or chip based sounds?

ie :

8 bit samples:

or 8bit chip generators:

For the Chip Based sounds you can use VST plugins like:

• Plogue
• QuadraSID (C64 sounding synth)
• FMDrive (Sega Genesis)

If you are concerned with chiptunes, I recommend trackers (a bit hard at the first glance, but the work pays off), for example ModPlug Tracker, MilkyTracker and stricly for NES chiptunes - FamiTracker (Jake Kaufman aka virt uses it).

If you are a bit crazy and want to create C64 tunes (SID), look at GoatTracker.

If you mean glitch as a glitch/noise, well, then you have to tell more about details.

I wrote and produced the following with NESTri, NESPulse and NESNoise:

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You can find those VST plugins and plenty more here: http://woolyss.com/chipmusic-plugins.php?s=NESTri+-+NESPulse+-+NESNoise
When you say "Pokémon" the GameBoy comes to mind, so it's certainly that NES\Famicom synth type of sound. But the original hardware has a very limited amount of simultaneous channels (4 channels maximum or something like that).
Modern "chiptune" or "lo-fi" music pieces use these chiptune sounds without the shortcomings, so you can pair them with modern effects such as reverb, compression, delay and sampled instruments.
Example:

(track by Carlo Castellano).

You may also find interesting the effects of "bit-crushing," using a plugin to deliberately add resampling noise to your sounds to get a "lo-fi" character:
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/628838-how-to-get-lo-fi-tones-and-sounds/