Ah, okay. Yikes, you scared me there for a minute. My ears aren't THAT old yet. ;)
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Ah, okay. Yikes, you scared me there for a minute. My ears aren't THAT old yet. ;)
I was very impressed with the intro to Justice League: Task Force
Data East may have not been the best developer, but their games always had good music. Even Captain America and The Avengers had some good tunes. They always included a sound test in the options also (in everything I've played anyway). In all, I think there were more games with good music than bad. It's just that the hardware revisions made even some of the good stuff sound bad also. Wasn't there a thread once that listed games that had sound tests? Anybody have a link to it?
Hitoshi Sakimoto programmed the music for Captain America and The Avengers... so that's why it sounds so good. That guy knew how to get the most of the Genny.
Cool, wikipedia also credits him with Two Crude Dudes(crude buster) another great sounding game. I wonder if he did the port to the Genesis?
Another great sounding game is Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter. It also has a sound test and Moby Games credits the music to Kazuo Sawa. He's another great composer who has done tons of well known games. He seemed to do most of his work for the NES or SNES. I can't find any other Genesis/MD game credited to him other than Mazin Saga which is sad because it sounds great.
Yeah, that's exactly how my thoughts went too: this isn't too bad, but it sounds distorted (emulator problem perhaps), and then I got to 1:12. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
Honestly, I think a VRC6 arrangement might be pretty interesting too. (and I mean full-on Komami action with heavy DPCM usage ;))
That or an SMS FM composition taking advantage of the full 9 channel YM2413 (rather than the 6 channel version in the VRC7), not to mention actually using the PSG too. (unlike actual SMS games with FM . . . particularly bad for some SFX IMO)
Though it does actually seem like there's quite a few famitracker TFIV mixes on YT, some using VRC6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdhZgmdFC4A (funny contrast to see NES DPCM sampling acoustic drums rather than FM drum samples as typical for Konami and such, more so since Technosoft used FM drums exclusively on the MD ;))
Oh, and this VRC7 TFIV example sounds MUCH cleaner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VryK6KY196w
And again, the MD version sounds much better if you lowpass filter the hell out of it. (that YT video in 240 vs 360p shows that . . . except 240p also drops the quality, of course)
Some SMS/Mark III games use PSG in FM mode, they just don't add any new sound channels.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Some games use FM square waves, but AFIK they don't use the SN76489 sound channels at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
The PSG sounding parts in the FM soundtrack sound the same as the same instruments in the PSG soundtrack:Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
Maybe it's the recordings, but I'm hearing a noticeable difference in the square-wave like FM instruments and similar PSG stuff . . . it's close, but different, especially in Monster Town. (sounds like there might be some envelope control affecting the square wave sound, not sure -the harmonics are slightly different in both cases though)
The PSG noise channel is probably the most dramatic difference from FM, and that's definitely something that some games would have benefited from using over FM for some SFX and percussion sounds. (even more so since you have sound channels to spare and can slave a square wave channel for noise pitch control)
i honestly dont hear much or any difference
but thats probably just me
Those are likely both emulation. They sound the same to me on real hardware. Only some tracks have noticeable PSG carry overs, the rest are pure FM and don't sound at all like the PSG bgms. I think that the developer never finished the FM soundtrack once they got word that the game wasn't going to be released in Japan. The SMS version also doesn't do FM on real hardware. On a hunch I stuck in Turma da Monica after WBIII didn't work, and it actually had a mostly FM soundtrack.Quote:
Originally Posted by kool kitty89
The fact that this thread exists and is titled the way it is really gives the Genesis a bad image. It implies that all but a few sounds made by the system are crappy. Imagine a Nintendo fan visiting the site, checking it out out of curiosity. He sees a thread called "Genesis sounds that aren't crappy". Can you imagine how much LOLing he will be doing? We Sega fans actually need a thread dedicated to seeking out those elusive few sounds that aren't actually crappy... if they even exist. Hopefully nobody from Nintendoage sees this or they will rightfully have ammunition for life.
We did list ones that sounded great (well I did). Maybe if some model 2's or other versions didn't sound muffled there wouldn't be an issue. The only Mega Drives that matter to me are model 1 va3 to va6. Those are best sounding ones. The games can't be helped in terms of sf2, but it sounds bad. So I hear you though, but look at all the bad sounding modern clones licensed by Sega or Model 2s or Sega Smash Pack on DC it gives the impression the Genesis sounded "bad" wait didn't you bring Genesis has a bad rep in videos you made ? It has a rep for a reason. Now put Dynamite Heady on a Model 1 va6 or masters of monsters or castlevania and there is no issue. Edit. Fuck Nintendoage. Atariage knock offs. They act like nothing Nintendo or none of themselves shit don't stink. They own themselves because most are blind outside Marioland. I bet AVGN USED to post there.
In terms of stock hardware, all model 1s up to VA6.8 should be fine with relatively minor variance in that . . . aside from age-related issues (capacitors), though some revisions may consistently sound slightly better than others.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vector
For model 2s, the VA3 onward will sound reasonably good stock (less heavily filtered -less bassy- than those model 1s, but reasonably clean and not distorted). Audio-modded model 2s or 3s (any save VA2 and 2.3 -which use discrete YM2612s) will sound the cleanest and clearest of all models though.
On Joe's comment though, it should also be mentioned that this thread focused far more on speech and (to lesser extent sampled SFX) quality rather than overall sound and music (not to mention the many games with zero samples speech or SFX) rather than music and chip synth SFX.
Games with actually bad music are more specific and actually more technically straightforward to deal with: it's typically a combination of a bad (or just limited) sound driver and inexperienced or lesser skilled sound programmers/composers working on the arrangements to make them sound good given the characteristics of the sound hardware. (in terms of creating the instrument sounds desirable, and arranging the music to cater to those sounds tastefully) There's probably fewer cases where it's just the fault of the programmer/composer OR the sound engine, and not a combination of the two. (since there's nearly always examples of typically bad/weak sounding music drivers that a few games used quite well -like GEMS in Earthworm Jim 1 and 2, and Comix Zone, and relatively nasty sounding arrangements in music drives that typically have good results . . . then again, a lot of the bad/weak sounding stuff came from western developers using rather bland sounds -same problem with DOS games and US arcade games using FM, and there's many sound drivers that were never used by developers/composers with those problematic tendencies -would have been interesting to see how something like SMPS would have been utilized by the many devs opting for GEMS :p )
On that thought of games using no sampled speech at all, that's an interesting consideration: does the MD actually have more frequent use of speech/voice samples than the SNES? The PCE has less than either, but that makes sense given the shift towards the CD format and generally small ROM sizes used.
Having many examples in general, and a good chunk of those sounding rough, would accentuate the issue in general compared to the SNES, especially for early games. (MD was using speech in games from basically day 1 -particularly since Sega arcade games used speech a lot, so by the time the SNES was launched, you already had a back-log of games with considerable amounts of speech)