Advantages of SNES hardware vs. Genesis hardware

I already have captured audio directly from the consoles. Since the discussion was audio, I didn't bother with direct video capture. But I did capture audio directly, un-edited, un-EQ'ed, unbiased.. And god forbid, no AGC.

Btw, your VA6 sounds exactly the same as my VA3. They don't sound different because as far as I know, their sound circuitry is identical. VA2 was a little different, and it had a problem but by VA3, they just re-used the same stuff all the way to VA6. VA7 far different though.

Yeah I mean I can capture audio from both the snes and the genesis, instead of just the genesis. I still remember the first time I fired up super street fighter 2 on my genesis, I thought the audio was broken on my console because it sounded so terrible. It turns out that the audio was working fine, the game is meant to sound terrible.

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Originally Posted by evildragon

I already have captured audio directly from the consoles. Since the discussion was audio, I didn't bother with direct video capture. But I did capture audio directly, un-edited, un-EQ'ed, unbiased.. And god forbid, no AGC.

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Originally Posted by Drakon

Yeah I mean I can capture audio from both the snes and the genesis, instead of just the genesis.

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Gah, the problems of editing a post before someone else out-types me, lol!

Anyway, yea I can do that too, but I need to find my adapter. It's around here somewhere.

Uhh, I can capture from both, with flash carts on both so I could compare any game against any game (well 98% of the libraries which is what the flash carts will load).

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Originally Posted by evildragon

Gah, the problems of editing a post before someone else out-types me, lol!

Anyway, yea I can do that too, but I need to find my adapter. It's around here somewhere.

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Understood. It's not going to stop me from filming on my side though. I like my videos capturing authentic scan lines.

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Those two games don't count because of reasons. TA's world view is far too important to be shattered by something as silly as facts

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I own Contra corps on the MD and the speech is terrible and music not the best at all . Contra III music score and quality if far far better imo . Not that Contra Hard Corps is doing simultaneous speech either , but never mind

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How is it not obvious that the MD palette is flawed

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It should have been in the thousands not the hundreds - Almost every MD developer I seen interview biggest issue with the MD was it limited colour palette .

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Then of course there were crazy enough developers who did push the MD to the limits, like Zyrinx

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All good developers will push a machine to its limits and do things it's not really meant to do . I'm still amazed at effects on Awesome on my humble Amgia - Scaling and rotation and top notch music to boot .

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You can clearly hear multiple PCM samples being played during the fighting sequences

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Doing it well , It sounds like crap and that's thanks it the limits of the chip . If the MD had more Hardware support of sample channels it wouldn't be an issue and you wouldn't have to worry about tools or poor programming - Which I think it a bit rich given SOJ and Capcom had their top Teams working on the port

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That's why I stepped in and told TA to just shut up, he's talking out of his ass here

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If there anything worse than a partisan American ? My God its like Fox news on here - You're either with us or against us

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TA forgets that the Genesis has two CPU's

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Nope I don't . The Saturn had more CPU's than the PS but it still came short in key area's I think you'll find even in the Sound area now and again

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so I can't cut them out, that's the whole point TA wants, isn't it? Raw footage

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This is too much to take . You want Mortal Kombat III, Red Zone, SF II, Contra Hard Corps, Adv Of Batman & Robin ? and what about a MD to play them on? No wait.. how about a MD II, a Multi Mega or even better a WonderMega for the best MD sound possible ?

Here you go.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8188/8...02e3ebd5_b.jpg



I don't need lectures on MD games or what is to be a SEGA and Mega Drive fan from little upstarts .

For an audio comparison? My crt has scanlines too.

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Originally Posted by evildragon

Understood. It's not going to stop me from filming on my side though. I like my videos capturing authentic scan lines.

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I agree with team andromeda the audio from contra III makes contra hard corps sound like a complete joke. I still like the audio from both games but contra III is clearly better. I'm sure potentially all megadrive games could have had audio sounding like verytex, but almost all genesis games didn't sound nearly that good. For whatever reason the snes audio hardware was just easier to take advantage of making the average snes game sound way better than the average genesis game. It's really a shame that there's no way to remove the snes audio muffle unless you fpga the entire sound chip.

Contra 3 and Hard Corps both sound equally bad imo. Though, of course both games could have sounded better with instruments that don't suck.

So anyway, it seems TA wants to see a game that uses Multi PCM that sounds good? Well, there really aren't any as far as I know. There is Alien Soldier, which sounds good enough.

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Originally Posted by Drakon

I agree with team andromeda the audio from contra III makes contra hard corps sound like a complete joke. I still like the audio from both games but contra III is clearly better. I'm sure potentially all megadrive games could have had audio sounding like verytex, but almost all genesis games didn't sound nearly that good. For whatever reason the snes audio hardware was just easier to take advantage of making the average snes game sound way better than the average genesis game. It's really a shame that there's no way to remove the snes audio muffle unless you fpga the entire sound chip.

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Contra HC does have 4 channels playing at the same time, the point was proving to TA it wasn't impossible for developers back then to do it. They didn't figure out how to get the quality that can be achieved today, but they still did it. This, of course, speaking only of the Z80, because if you dedicate the 68k to doing it (as TA seems to think since he keeps saying tech demos don't count), you get awesome quality like in Toy Story.

Either way, people overrate the bad music quality on the MD.
Anything by Sakimoto sounds awesome (Verytex, Midnight Resistance, Devilish, Master of Darkness, Two Crude Dudes, ...)
Anything by Technosoft sounds awesome (TF Series, Herzog Zwei, Devil Crash, Elemental Master)
Vapor Trail & Atomic Runner sound awesome.
The 3 Shinobi games.
The 3 Sonic games.
The 3 Golden Axe Games.
SoR 1 & 2.
Sonic 3D blast.
The Shining Force games.
Jewel Master sounds awesome too.
Socket and Battle Mania 2 sound AMAZING.
Decap Attack is pretty good sounding too.
Ristar of Course
Stuff by Howard Dossin (Comix Zone, The Ooze)
Stuff by Matt Furniss (Puggsy, Fido Dido, Alien 3, Second Samurai, Wiz 'n' Liz, Resq, Lion King - No, the SNES version isn't better)
EA Sports titles have awesome music (2)
All the Treasure Games too.
Columns sounds great too.
The two Earthworm Jim games.
Gleylancer, Gaiares?
Mega Turrican.
YS 3.
Batman and Super Fantasy Zone sound amazing too.
Cool Spot sounds much better on the genesis.
TMNT Hyperstone Heist (better music than the SNES one, much closer to the arcade in that area)
Sparkster sounds really good too (This one isn't as good as the SNES one)
All the Wolfteam games have above average sound.

When I hear Contra III all I hear is echos of really short sampled instruments and sound effects coming out of a metal tube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcaN_9OlOF0

Really? I always thought contra 3 has some fairly epic music...oh well guess it's just me then. Obviously not all the music in contra 3 is epic but considering how early that game came out in the life of the snes it stands up pretty well.

Man midnight resistance looks awesome. I tried googling it but I figured I could ask here. Is there anywhere I can find a list of all megadrive / genesis games sakimoto composed for?

I'm going to disagree about hyperstone heist. I always thought turtles in time on the snes sounds better.

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Originally Posted by Raijin

Contra 3 and Hard Corps both sound equally bad imo. Though, of course both games could have sounded better with instruments that don't suck.

So anyway, it seems TA wants to see a game that uses Multi PCM that sounds good? Well, there really aren't any as far as I know. There is Alien Soldier, which sounds good enough.

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For the record I also find the samples in Hard Corps to be too scratchy. As for Turtles in Time and Hyperstone Heist, even my non-gaming wife describes the SNES soundtrack as a cheap keyboard sound but can tolerate the Genesis music. I think we lose sight of the fact that all of this stuff sounds bad to the average air sucker.

Anyway, I agree with Kamahl on his music selections. On youtube you are much more likely to find badly emulated renditions of Genesis music though, and SNES is almost always enhanced emulation. I wonder why that is.

-edit-

Also, I think Genesis sound is best when it caters to its strengths. Using FM and PSG to the maximum effect of ten instruments and only using extremely short samples to complement that and sound effects was always the best sound. People get hung up on sample quality WAY TOO MUCH. In the 90s it was all bad.

ContraIII has horrible sounding and very unmemorable soundtrack, and sound effects are a complete joke. CHC has some lovely compositions (though there is plenty of bad sound) and SFX are a lot better, explosions etc. sound like what they should sound.

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Originally Posted by sheath

In the 90s it was all bad.

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Nah, the Amiga had really good sample quality in some games, both in the music and the SFX.

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Contra HC does have 4 channels playing at the same time, the point was proving to TA it wasn't impossible for developers back then to do it.

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Take those utter lies back, right now. I said it couldn't do simultaneous speech or samples well - Which the Mega Drive couldn't and why games like Sf II sounded like shit when it came to simultaneous speech and samples . Contra hard Corps on the MD sounds poor and even the samples cut out when the need to comes in to play simultaneous samples .

Now when it comes to colour and sound the Snes version is just way out in front of the MD version . The music on stage 3 blows the MD music score of Hard Corps completely out of the water (and lets remember that's from a game that came out in 1991 and on a Cart half the size of the MD version )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ma9sqgYo4