Saturn > SNES

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Yeah. My issue isn't necessarily with the sound hardware of the Genesis. My issue is that a lot of devs really struggle with it, so it is a hardware problem from the standpoint that it takes a lot more effort to get good sound out of it. Konami and Techno soft (ex konami) really know how to bring the best out of it, while even Sega struggled with it early on. Capcom had a hard time with it too.

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So it's not really that the hardware is hard to work with. The Genesis sound system from what I remember is actually pretty simple and straight forward to use. Composers like Yuzo Koshiro have even said in interviews that he found it much easier to work with than the SNES. He's even mentioned the struggles they had with Actraiser due to samples and cart size limitations.

Where the issue comes in is that FM Synth takes a bit of effort to get good sounding wave forms. A lot of developers didn't want to put that effort in. Capcom really had no excuse with Street Fighter II. The YM2612 is very similar to the YM2151 they used in the Arcade, so they could have done very direct conversions while just losing two channels. Which those two channels could have been reworked to use PSG instead. The tricky part would be the PCM samples, which as shown isn't impossible. After all they did pull off a driver that can do 2 PCM samples at once, they just failed to deal with DMA properly.

So I wouldn't say it was hard to work with, Capcom was just lazy and didn't really go about it in a smart way. People have actually done direct conversions of the Arcade instruments to the Genesis and it actually sounds pretty good. There's just no attempt to rework the missing 2 FM channels into PSG or something:

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

The point is, Street Fighter 2 could have sounded a lot better with minimal effort.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

You are more than welcome to prove that theory by finding 2 identical games on the SNES and Genesis and downloading the ROM. You can unzip the files and they will show up at the exact same size as the real cart. Street Fighter II Turbo is exactly 20Mb on the SNES, while SFII SCE shows up slightly higher than the advertised 24Mb; it's actually 24.5Mb. I was going to do that last night on my company laptop (I was out of town), but the anti-virus program blocked the download.

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Street Fighter II SCE has more complete voice samples than the SNES. That alone would account for a bigger ROM. It also has the full arcade intro which would also require more ROM space.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

I've set the Genesis and the SNES side by side and played the sound clips. What you are saying is misleading. Capcom chose to use an echo effect with the death screams of the characters in Street Fighter II Turbo, while in SCE, it sounds like everyone is crapping their pants. The SCE version sounds worse. The other clips like "Perfect" and "Round" are exactly the same length.

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So let's take a look at that. Here's Ryu's "Tatsumaki Senpukyaku!" sample on the Genesis:
https://i.imgur.com/EibfN7r.png

Here it is on SNES:
https://i.imgur.com/4n8vJGk.png

Both of these were recorded from emulators for simplicity's sake. Genesis used Fusion, SNES used bsnes.

Now take a close look at the two. Notice how the SNES one goes completely dead in between key syllables while the Genesis one doesn't. This is a trick Capcom did to save space on the samples. The Samples are broken up into "key" pieces, then put back together in with slight pauses to keep some sense of tempo, but removes "unnecessary" parts of the sample to reduce space. If you listen to the two of them you'll notice the SNES clip is very choppy sounding compared to the Genesis sample. You'll also notice it's speed up a little on the SNES. You can listen to both here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/q144bs...Comparison.zip

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Screw the gaming mags, they should have brought up the broken timing of the music, and instruments dropping out on the Genesis version when any sound samples were played. The simple fact that you aren't even talking about it tells me what your agenda really is. It's not honesty, that's for sure.

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I don't think the official Genesis version has the instruments dropping out issue. I think that's only in the beta version where the driver can only do 1 PCM channel. The official release can do 2 and doesn't have that issue last I checked. As for the music tempo some parts are off, but so is the SNES when compared to the CPS1 versions. It seems like with SCE Capcom tried to make the game sound like the SNES instead of the arcade original for some bizarre reason.

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Originally Posted by stu

You really need to chill out and stop drinking the game corp kool-aid. I merely pointed out to you that you were wrong on the size of that game, now you're trying desperately to paint me with as a fanboy of something so that I can be compared to and torn down by MrSegaBlueBlood (currently an Amiga fanboy, might also be a Playstation fanboy, curiously not an Xbox fanboy even though I own a bunch of OG Xboxes and a couple of 360's :rofl:) Make up your mind. Oh and btw why don't you answer MegadriveBowlsey's question about how the audio on the SNES versions of the Strike trilogy suck compare to the versions on the "inferior" MD. :D

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Its clear you need to chill out, swearing, full of aggression, insults and better yet all in the Saturn section, a system you claim to dislike. Oh and as for Desert Strike like I said That was a game build around the MD hardware and it led development on that system and so when that happens games tend to be better on a system that they were build around. You love to throw the insults about not reading or taking it all in. Maybe you should practice what you preach. And again, other than trolling and throwing insults, what are you doing in the Saturn section and in a Saturn Vs Snes debate, both systems you claim not to like.

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Originally Posted by Barone

If you would calm down a little bit and read my posts prior writing your attacks, you'd realize that I was praising the Sega CD version.

By the way, the context of the conversation you ruined was: 5th gen represented a downgrade in terms of soundtrack compositions and sound design in general.
Hint: Sega CD is not a 5th gen system. ;)

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Pretty Lame, Here's a hint Souky, NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon Saga are 5th gen games and please don't come it over Wing Commander.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Oh dear indeed...

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Huh The Amiga version sounds better and also supports Dolby Surround sound and btw sorry to Crush a dream Chris Hulsbeck wasn't at a fan of the MD soundchip at all.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4766/...8900f4c1_o.jpg

Like some say, Oh Dear!

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

So it's not really that the hardware is hard to work with. The Genesis sound system from what I remember is actually pretty simple and straight forward to use. .

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The music was never the issue in SF II on the MD its sounds better and closer to the Arcade version than the Snes, it was the MD inability to play 2 simultaneous digital sample sounds that hurt the MD version . That was a 'Hardware' issue and yes we all know you can run off to Youtube, or show off some part of miracle code or say it was Capcom.
The simple fact is next to none MD games played 2 sampled speech sound at the same time, one would cut our or not be played at all and that happens in Yuzo games on the MD like Streets of Rage II Ect.

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Originally Posted by saturndual32

Same thing happened with Rock and Roll Racing. The legendary Tim Follin worked on the SNES version but not on the Genesis, unfortunately. Many times its not about the hardware, but the developers.

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Its funny how it only ever comes into play for the MD, never for Snes or when it comes to say a Saturn and PS games. In almost all cases, none of the members of the team work on a port to another system or use the same development tools . But of course when Barone does his great MD list that goes all out the window, not a care in the world if it's using the same tools or by different members of the team or a completely different team altogether

Also has Tim Follin told EDGE mag he couldn't wait to see the back of 16-bit consoles and was all for CD-ROM which he saw as liberating for musicians at the time

This isn't really a question.

Given the Mega Drive already beats the SNES the Saturn most certainly does! :p

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Originally Posted by gamevet

It's exactly what Capcom had to do with SFII SCE and SSFII on the Genesis. The music tracks are stripped to the bare minimum in those games, with very little tracks, and some of the music tracks would cut out during speech samples. Street Fighter Alpha 2 had to be stripped down on the SNES (even with all of the data being decompressed with a cart chip), because Nintendo capped out its carts at 32Mb, but that has nothing to do with audio RAM, as you say.

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You're just making it harder for yourself.

Audio RAM is a serious limitation in the vast majority of SNES games. And the SFII iterations are no exception. That's one of the reasons why out of all 4th gen ports, the SNES is the one with butchered/shortened/sped up samples.



About SFII SCE, again, you're completely wrong. Mags didn't tell you, but the ROM has both the censored and uncensored intros stored and uncompressed. I said both.
And the uncensored one is completely unused in the US version, for an example.
That wasted space could be used to store many FM tracks. So stop right there.

SSFII has more content on Genesis and also similar laziness with graphical data usage.

In both Genesis games the music tracks were never an issue in terms of ROM space.

Stuff like this is where I only want to hear Genesis do it. Cybernator had a good OST as well but not as good.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoP4Jo3po2M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2phDLWZ5uMY

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Originally Posted by SegataS

Stuff like this is where I only want to hear Genesis do it.

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The Mega Drive could do some great music and these two are my fab 16bit soundtracks of that generation (non CD) The Shinobi is just the best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PdvVd-t1Vo&list=PL40W_mj8t9xqb8nGcIy9EipD5NtU8SggN&index =4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_S3e8u4Lvk&list=PLEE1BE609A0919509&index= 3

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

So it's not really that the hardware is hard to work with. The Genesis sound system from what I remember is actually pretty simple and straight forward to use. Composers like Yuzo Koshiro have even said in interviews that he found it much easier to work with than the SNES. He's even mentioned the struggles they had with Actraiser due to samples and cart size limitations.

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I was pretty shocked when I learned that the SNES can only loop at every 32nd sample. It must have been a colossal headache to deal with when creating sustained instruments. The compression seems to mask it a bit, but if you listen carefully you can hear loops pop even in the high quality stuff like Chrono Trigger.

In some ways I actually prefer the sound of early SNES games like Super Mario World, where they used simpler waveforms for strings. As I recall, it was just a soft saw wave in that game, the kind of thing they could generate to be the desired length and looped perfectly, while also taking up minimal space.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Huh The Amiga version sounds better and also supports Dolby Surround sound and btw sorry to Crush a dream Chris Hulsbeck wasn't at a fan of the MD soundchip at all.

Like some say, Oh Dear!

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I really could care less about what he has to say about the sound hardware, which he didn't even really say anything or go into much detail. Which if I had to take a guess, coming from the Amiga he probably didn't like that he couldn't just throw samples at it or make a MOD player like on the Amiga. He probably didn't like that he had to make FM synth wave forms.

The argument being made however was which version of Turrican 3/Mega Turrican sounds better. And the proof and answer to that question is in the music of each game and how it sounds. And let's face it, the music in Mega Turrican blows the Amiga version out of the water. The Genesis game has more depth, better stereo effects, better instruments, better bass, and overall just sounds fuller than the Amiga version.

I'd even make the argument that the Genesis version sounds better than the SNES versions for similar reasons. The Key it's in sounds a bit better than the higher pitch of the Amiga and SNES versions, it has better bass than the SNES versions, and just seems to sound fuller. The SNES version doesn't seem to have as much depth. It's not as flat sounding as the Amiga for sure, but it's still a step below the Genesis version. Oh, and the SNES version of that track is cut shorter than the Genesis version if I remember correctly.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

The music was never the issue in SF II on the MD its sounds better and closer to the Arcade version than the Snes, it was the MD inability to play 2 simultaneous digital sample sounds that hurt the MD version . That was a 'Hardware' issue and yes we all know you can run off to Youtube, or show off some part of miracle code or say it was Capcom.
The simple fact is next to none MD games played 2 sampled speech sound at the same time, one would cut our or not be played at all and that happens in Yuzo games on the MD like Streets of Rage II Ect.

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You do realize that Street Fighter II IS one of the Genesis games that has a sound driver that can play 2 simultaneous digital sample sounds right? Pay close attention, you can have a character throwing Hadokens till the cows come home and the drums don't cut out. Now if you have 2 characters do that at once the drums will cut out for the two voice samples, but that's because it would need to play 3 samples at once then. Though to be fair that later example is something that's really not that frequent in normal play.

Beyond that, there's actually lots of Genesis games that do that.

The issue in Street Fighter 2 is that Capcom didn't properly handle DMA at all in that game. For one it's using DMA to move the same data to the same location twice per frame if I remember correctly due to a bug in their code. The fact that the Genesis can deal with that without any performance hit is probably why they didn't catch it and speaks volumes for what it can actually do in that realm. The other issue with the sound driver is that they didn't do any kind of buffering to deal with DMA writes. So when DMA happens missed writes happen to the DAC which results in garbage coming out. This is why things sound so scratchy in gameplay, but if you listen to the raw samples on the cart they sound fine. This is also why when Stef patched it to use buffering, suddenly things sounded clean and pretty much on par with the PC-Engine port.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

The music was never the issue in SF II on the MD its sounds better and closer to the Arcade version than the Snes, it was the MD inability to play 2 simultaneous digital sample sounds that hurt the MD version

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Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahah
...
hahaahhahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahhahahahahahaha

The original arcade version doesn't support that. Nor does the X68000 and any of its games (I guess the X68000 sound sucks then).
But the MD version does.

Educate yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M68RcXjiFNI

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Originally Posted by Lion

I was pretty shocked when I learned that the SNES can only loop at every 32nd sample. It must have been a colossal headache to deal with when creating sustained instruments. The compression seems to mask it a bit, but if you listen carefully you can hear loops pop even in the high quality stuff like Chrono Trigger.

In some ways I actually prefer the sound of early SNES games like Super Mario World, where they used simpler waveforms for strings. As I recall, it was just a soft saw wave in that game, the kind of thing they could generate to be the desired length and looped perfectly, while also taking up minimal space.

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This. A million times.

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Originally Posted by Barone

The original arcade version doesn't support that. Nor does the X68000 and any of its games (I guess the X68000 sound sucks then).
But the MD version does.

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So nasty and so full of hate and the Arcade version did handle simultaneous sound and speaking of double, I think it had 2 sound chips too. Not that impressed with CP 1, CP2 or Sharps 6800 sound myself, sure they sounded ok but was more impressed with the sound off the Neo Geo or 3DO and Snes and SEGAs Y Board, truth be told.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

I really could care less about what he has to say about the sound hardware, which he didn't even really say anything or go into much detail.

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Only that you cared enough to post an example of his music, out doing the Amiga, only to get owned. Chris was always an Amiga and SNES fan, that what made his name. Even the SEGA Fanboy that was Jon Burton liked the Amiga sound chip over the MD when it came to samples

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I'd even make the argument that the Genesis version sounds better than the SNES versions for similar reasons

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You would.

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You do realize that Street Fighter II IS one of the Genesis games that has a sound driver that can play 2 simultaneous digital sample sounds right

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Yes I do, but like I said years and years ago, becasue it was having to handle 2 simultaneous digital sample sounds it paid a price, with not the best speech, Maybe you should pay attention.
The MD could handle fantastic quality sample speech, it only got issues when it needed to play simultaneous digital sample sounds at the same time. Like I said before play Greatest Heavyweights on the MD, its not able to play both boxers taunts at the same time (no issues at all when being played apart) , Play SOR II and see the MD not be able to handle 2 lots of speech samples at the same time, play Revenge of Shinobi and hear the MD not be able to play simultaneous digital samples at the same time and so things like a shirken hitting the sword would cut out.

It was a Hardware oversight by SEGA and to be fair, not many games really needed to play simultaneous digital speech samples at the exact same time.


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