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What games do you think have really great sounding audio (more in the overall quality department) ?
I can think of Sonic 1/2/3(+S&K), Ristar, Soleil, TF4, Mega Turrican, Alien 3, Terminator 2 : the arcade game, Atomic Runner...(lots of others I don't remember).
Thunder Force 4
The first two Sonic games (composed by the same guy, who was/still is apart of a pretty cool J-Pop band). Sonic 3 I thought also had some good music aswell.
Streets of Rage 1, 2 and 3. Number 3 the least, they tried something a bit different with that soundtrack and it didn't quite go down too well for a lot of people, even though I kinda like the wild tracks on that actually.
A couple of tracks from Thunder Force III, 'Venus Fire' and... The other one.. Thunder Force IV's soundtrack is much improved overall in my opinion.
Elemental Master has a couple of good tracks. Infact, most Technosoft games do, they have a good music team. Thunder Force II.
Mega Turrican, yep... That has some really nice tunes to it.
Probably more that I can't remember... 32X has some good stuff aswell, Knuckles' Chaotix, Virtua Racing Deluxe (kind of), Virtua Fighter (Err Jacky's theme is cool) and then there's of course After Burner with its great rocking tracks.
How about this track : Title screen theme of CA the Meowian
100% MD sound, recorded from real hardware...
I think I expressed myself pretty thoroughly here:
http://www.sega-16.com/Legacy%20of%2...und%20Chip.php
http://www.sega-16.com/Legacy%20of%2...20Chip%202.php
TmEE: Sounds pretty damn good. The drums are among the best heard on the system.
Genesis Knight: Isn't it time to change the titles to "sound processor"? The sound chips were YM2612 and SN76489.
I can't change that stuff. That's Ken.
BTW, TmEE, I'm impressed with the quality and technical excellence of the clip. Not my cup of tea personally, but I can see you know what you're doing.
Nice drums for sure, but I don't care for the lead instrument (the kazoo). Sounds like only 3 channels (awesome drums, thump bass, kazoo). Keep it up!Quote:
Originally Posted by TmEE
Nobody has brought up "Gauntlet IV" yet? Sure, the game sucks (moreso in single-player) but Tengen (of Japan!) went for the friggin' GOLD with that soundtrack. With a little tweaking and filtering, I could go and pass off "Sortie" as a cut from some generic movie soundtrack!
Many mags at the time also raved about GIV's music quality.
"Comix Zone" had one of the best domestic/GEMS-produced Genesis soundtracks.
"Target Earth" has one of the better pre-Sonic Genesis soundtracks, with little no use of PSG to boot. Awesome guitars, clear and full music.
"Revenge of Shinobi" had arguably the best 1st-gen Genesis soundtrack as far as sound quality goes. First real showcase of the Genny's sound capabilities, at a time when most other 1st-gen titles were inexplicably using rudimentary, flat-sounding sound engines that barely utilized the PSG and noise channels for music.
Seriously, this is too easy guys. The category of "Best Genesis soundtracks" is packed to the brim and has been discussed a million times over, all over; the category of "Best-sounding Genesis soundtracks" not so much, but there's a lot of examples, many of which already double as candidates for the former category.
Now "Worst" or "Worst-sounding MD/Genesis soundtracks" would be a trip!
I nominate the disappointing port of "Super Street Fighter II" for one of the top spots in that one. State-of-the-art, Q-Sound-rich CPS2 music.........downgraded to below-first-gen Genesis music. Did they SERIOUSLY attempt to compose all of the music via digital instruments on the pokey Genesis hardware?
Everybody talks about GIV but I just don't get it. Target Earth has an awesome ending theme.
Hell yeah Target Earth! What's GIV?
Target Earth - could listen to it for hours (and I did :D )
Gaiares - very memorable.
Revenge of Shinobi - kicked ass back in the day.
Airbusters - classic.
TF3 - brilliant!
TF4 - while decent, not as memorable as TF3 and it was a too scratchy/distorted. It just sounded like they were trying to hard.
Sonic 1/2 - awesome.
Eswat - I just love the music.
PSII - definitely top 5 musics of the Genesis.
Vapor Trail - short... but sweet. Thee most impressive guitar sounds from the SG's yamaha chip. I also listened to these(short) tracks for hours.
There's too many to list...
Gauntlet 4.
Okay, I've got to ask - why the hell are Sonic 1 and 2 on your list and not Sonic 3?
I haven't played Sonic 3 yet ;) Other than the first level - I'm always busy with stuff. Someday I'll sit down and play through it (it looks awesome).Quote:
Originally Posted by Genesis Knight
Whoops, okay. I forgive you, in that case. :D
I had gotten Sonic burn out after #2 (played the hell out of it) and the lack luster Sonic CD. My best friend who was into SG more than me in that later years, didn't pick it up either. That's strange now that I think about it. Guess we were both just burnt on Sonic at the time, dunno.
Sonic 3/Knuckles definitely have kick-ass music and composition quality, but not so much sound quality. It's the same case as it was with "Thunder Force 4": too ambitious for the Genesis hardware so it begins sounding scratchy and distorted in spots.
I like the music in PSIV myself.
You guys may come at me with pitchforks for this, but "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie" has a great-quality soundtrack, consisted of highly accurate renditions (sans vocals) of the vocal background songs that used to play during the show's fighting scenes. The guitars and synth are incredible and infectious. Being directly part of the targeted audience that grew up with this show, I know what I'm talking about. I was a Ranger fan to a damn fault. (By the time the "Turbo" Movie and subsequent season came out though I was done with it.) Most if not all of the songs adapted in the game were collected in the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: A Rock Adventure" cassette/CD from back in 1994. Some problems with the game's soundtrack is that it uses an ENORMOUS amount of the noise channels for percussion and backing of the main melody and guitars. At times it almost sounds like it's permanently enabled with no variation. Anywhom, another issue is that due to their not being any original game music, some of the tracks are repeated often.
Also, MMPRTM was probably one of the last Genesis games to receive TV advertisements and promotion (around the time of the movie's release in summer of 1995 of course). I only recall "Vectorman" and "Sonic 3D Blast" being the only other late-gen Genesis games receiving any promotion. The holographic (cardboard) box art was and still is BADASS and caught my eye whenever I saw it stores back in the day.
Contra Hard Corps has a really good soundtrack. It was the only time Konami knew what they were doing with the Genesis sound hardware.
The Ooze rocked, also. Really well done, although some would say it sounds a bit too similar to Comix Zone.
Maybe so, but Konami's Sunset Riders shows that technical excellence isn't always required for an awesome soundtrack.Quote:
Contra Hard Corps has a really good soundtrack. It was the only time Konami knew what they were doing with the Genesis sound hardware.
Vectorman has a pretty good sounding soundtrack, the drums and some of the subtle instruments are good.
I think that game's sound embraces the cartoony wild west feel pretty well, better than the SNES port, actually.Quote:
Originally Posted by Genesis Knight
Don't forget Sparkster. Another Konami game which actually has a cool sounding soundtrack on the Genesis. The SNES version has the same compositions, I think the Sega version sounds better though.
Out Run (Passing Breeze's outstanding)
Sonic (Labirynth Zone - favorite)
Thunder Force IV (stage 7 ---- that one with lava.... not sure if it's really stage 7 though)
Zero Wing (stages 1, 2, 3, 5 ---- perfect shmup soundtrack)
El Viento (stage 5) ---
I would say that both Renovation and Technosoft had very strong material in terms of music.
Crüe Ball (obvious reasons!)
Devil's Crash (another Technosoft gem)
Kid Chameleon (!!!)
Heavy Nova (I know evrybody hates this game - I just love it... and the music for the bosses is waaaay cool).
Treasure handled Contra Hard Corps for Konami, so they were probably responsible for how the game sounds as well.
Kollision: Heavy Nova's got some mean ol' porn music tracks
No, Treasure DIDN'T handle Contra Hard Corps, some of their staff were producing Contra III though.
One other I just remembered : Gunstar Heroes !!! Super good !!!
Contra hardcorps has very good soundtrack too... last boss tune is so awesome.
Heavy Nova has some nice tracks, and really ground shaking bass (least in my room through my HiFi).
Crüe Ball has VERY great tracks... only if the drums would have been PCM then these would have been amongst the best sounding metal tracks ever !!!
Revolution X : Aerosmith has nice ones too, but PCM is missing !!! Metal is so poor without great drums !!!
Road Rash 3 has some very cool tracks too, but these a need some PCM drums !!!
But Vectorman... I don't like its soundtrack (only few tunes)... gets annoying in my mind...
Devil Crash MD (aka Dragons Fury) has some of the best tracks too... Technosoft makes good music... I like to play it with OMAKEBGM02.
Sparkster has some nice tunes, same for Rocket Knight Adventures.
Grind Stormer, Dangerous Seed, TF3, TF2 all of them have some nice tracks in 'em.
Sega should have insisted PCM channel use from developers... FM drums sound so poor... FM with PCM drums just kicks ass !!!
I thought Contra Hard Corps sounded like ass. The instruments are crappy (huge emphasis on the kazoo which I think is *supposed* to be an electric guitar. LOL! Also the voices are of an atrocious quality. So no, Konami did not know what they were doing with the Genesis sound hardware in that game. Rocket Knight Adventures and Sparkster sound much better... so does Castlevania Bloodlines.
Dragon's Fury was, by far, the worst sounding Technosoft game. The TurboGrafx version sounds better.
You are a cool guy, Zebbe. :pQuote:
I think that game's sound embraces the cartoony wild west feel pretty well, better than the SNES port, actually.
This is the way I heard it (from Charles MacDonald), Konami collaborated with Sega to develop the game and Sega had treasure doing in house work on the game. Not directly handled treasure, but they did have a hand in it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zebbe
Its interesting because I have heard that as well but it feels so similar. Some of the levels and bosses feel like they could be straight out of Gunstar Heroes
Who is Charles Macdonald?
http://cgfm2.emuviews.com/blog/index.php. He mainly does a lot of reverse engineering these days (for MAME, PCE, SMS, and Genesis).Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
I used to think that Ray's character select voice quip said "Watch your Mother!", as if he were warning me to do so in his attempts to forceibly bed her or do other bad things. Turns out he actually said "Lock and Loaded!" which I couldn't understand due to the garbledness.
I didn't pick him much.
Anyone notice how Konami's MD Castlevania and Contra games were radical departures from the rest of their respective series and far less emphasized in their canon as if they were "wild childs"? I believe Hard Corps and Snatcher were Konami's last games for the Mega Drive, while they continued developing for the Super Famicom well into 1995/199-ah you know the third-party deal!
There is nothing in Contra Hard Corps that is supposed to be guitar (or kazoo). It is 100% synth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
shinobi 3:
inner darkside
the horse level theme
More like 100% kazoo LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL... c'mon everyone, LOL with me! LOLOLOLOL... anyone? :(Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
Anyway all joking aside, I do not like the way kazoos sound. And many parts of the game sound like a kazoo, especially the first stage.
My fav soundtrack games:
- Sonic 1
- Streets of Rage 1 and 2
- Golden Axe
- Phantasy Star IV
What the hell is a kazoo?
http://www.aues21.dsl.pipex.com/imag...asticKazoo.jpg
It sounds kinda like someone doing farting sounds with his mouth.
One great sounding game which is usually overlooked is Master or Monsters.
Well, it is VERY hard to get decent sounding distortion guitar with YM2612... so the best you get is something "kazoo"...