What game do you really like that most would consider to be crap/mediocre?

[Kamahl]

Probably one of the most popular, nice sounding samples on the console has got to be the famous SEEEEGAAAA at the beginning of Sonic, but it takes up 1/8 of the cartridge space of the original Sonic.

Totally worth it, that voice is forever ingrained in my brain.

[retrospiel]

Agreed.

Sonic Team borrowed it from SOJ's 80s TV commercials:





It inspired the "Seggga" scream used by SOA. - I always thought "Seggga" was a play of that Japanese Sega scream, but it turns out it wasn't! Or at least not intentionally.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...s/posts/840458

"Brilliantly, each TV spot ended with actors shouting ‘Sega’ at the screen, with crazed abandon. ‘We heard it from some of the kids we interviewed while they were horsing about,’ says Lapin. ‘You can’t have four or five 11-year-olds sitting still in a room, it just doesn't happen. So they started messing about, pushing each other, shouting “Sega, Sega”. In the excitement of the moment they'd just start randomly shouting it – so we picked up on that.’ It soon became a schoolyard meme – a dream scenario. The company had become part of sound-bite culture."

So Sonic 1's "Seeegaa" inspired those kids to shout "Sega" at each other which inspired those marketing guys to come up with the "Seggga" scream.

[Obviously]

Totally worth it, that voice is forever ingrained in my brain.

Definitely. It's iconic, and every Sonic game that doesn't start with it should be ashamed of itself.

[sandplasma]

Wonder Boy in Monster World and Chiki Chiki Boys. I'm a sucker for hack n' slash platformers.

Dude, Chiki Chiki boys is one of my most prized possessions lol - one of my favorite!

[Obviously]

Dude, Chiki Chiki boys is one of my most prized possessions lol - one of my favorite!

I'm not sure who considers either of those games mediocre.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

It's not really a matter of the Genesis not being able to play decent quality samples, it's a matter of how much space a high-quality sample takes up and how much they usually compressed them.

Probably one of the most popular, nice sounding samples on the console has got to be the famous SEEEEGAAAA at the beginning of Sonic, but it takes up 1/8 of the cartridge space of the original Sonic.

Good point there. If I remember correctly, one of the SNES's tricks was hardware support for decompression of digitized samples, meaning they could cram higher quality, yet more compressed, samples into their games while using less space.

[Kamahl]

Good point there. If I remember correctly, one of the SNES's tricks was hardware support for decompression of digitized samples, meaning they could cram higher quality, yet more compressed, samples into their games while using less space.

True, the SNES has builtin ADPCM decoding (in fact, you pretty much have to use ADPCM). That said, the garbled sound most people hate has all to do with the way the genesis plays samples. The PCE version of street fighter 2 uses really low quality samples (4bit, 7khz) and it sounds substantially better than the genesis one. The PCE can easily do stable PCM playback while the genesis can't (not easily).

The interesting bit is that if you're playing a high quality sample (say, 8bit, 16khz), you can barely notice uneven playback so it's an auto fix in a way. Even playing a 8khz sample at 16khz will sound substantially better.

Basing playback on the YM timer should also improve things a lot, pretty much trading uneven playback for potential aliasing (but that limits you to 11khz on the best case).

[Dragonmaster Lou]

Hmm, quick summary (or link if it's been posted here or elsewhere before) as to the difference between how the PCE and Genesis plays samples, and/or just how most Genesis games play samples for that matter, please?

[Chaniyth]

Kamahl,

I don't fully agree with you, Capcom and Konami were notorious for "garbled" sound samples for the Sega Genesis, however, there's a bunch of Genesis games from other companies that have clear PCM sound samples. It's not the fault of the chip, it's the fault of the developers being lazy and not taking the time to figrue out the hardware, also the possibility of the cart storage sizes too. Games such as BattleTech, Robocop vs. Terminator, Space Harrier and more all have clear PCM sound samples that do not sound garbled at all.

It's still better than the muffled sound of the SNES [which even back in my "Nintendo Fanboy" days, it bugged me that the SNES sounded muffled] the muffled quality even comes out through the SNES music if you listen carefully, it's a bit "fuzzy".

[Gentlegamer]

I didn't know how old the Sega jingle was, I was surprised when I bought a SMS recently that the start up BIOS includes the Sega jingle, in non voice form. The first time I had encountered it was in the famous intro to Sonic the Hedgehog back in the day.

[Kamahl]

Kamahl,

I don't fully agree with you, Capcom and Konami were notorious for "garbled" sound samples for the Sega Genesis, however, there's a bunch of Genesis games from other companies that have clear PCM sound samples. It's not the fault of the chip, it's the fault of the developers being lazy and not taking the time to figrue out the hardware, also the possibility of the cart storage sizes too. Games such as BattleTech, Robocop vs. Terminator, Space Harrier and more all have clear PCM sound samples that do not sound garbled at all.

It's still better than the muffled sound of the SNES [which even back in my "Nintendo Fanboy" days, it bugged me that the SNES sounded muffled] the muffled quality even comes out through the SNES music if you listen carefully, it's a bit "fuzzy".

You misunderstood my post. The garbled sound is the fault of the chip as far as it's caused by the way PCM is done on it (other chips do not have that problem), but I also said you can work around it rather easily making it ultimately the developers fault.

And yes, the SNES sounds muffled 90% of the time. I actually hate an aspect of it's sound more than the muffling but I don't know a word to describe it. The Super Turrican soundtrack is a good example of it.

[sheath]

If I were going to pick one game that I really like that the rest of the world seems to have dismissed, or dismissed with an invalid caveat, it would have to be Virtual On. Really that is two games, as I love Virtual On and Virtual On Oratario Tangram and find them the best arena based combat games ever even with a game pad and no Twin Sticks. If I had my way, First Person Shooter gameplay would have died in the 90s, and everything involving shooting would play exactly like Virtual On with tweaks to the aiming and special moves.

GunValkyrie was damn near perfect except for the absolute hardcore try and re-die level design. Halo, CoD, Battlefield, you name it, all of it would have more sophisticated, immersive, and best of all Action oriented gameplay with Virtual On's approach.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

It's still better than the muffled sound of the SNES [which even back in my "Nintendo Fanboy" days, it bugged me that the SNES sounded muffled] the muffled quality even comes out through the SNES music if you listen carefully, it's a bit "fuzzy".

Personally, I thought digitized voices and effects on the SNES actually sounded pretty good and weren't all that muffled, at least when compared to the gravelly/garbled sound on the Genesis. The music, yeah, I'll agree that it was very muffled sounding -- like an MP3 file recorded at way too low a bit rate.

[Obviously]

If I were going to pick one game that I really like that the rest of the world seems to have dismissed, or dismissed with an invalid caveat, it would have to be Virtual On. Really that is two games, as I love Virtual On and Virtual On Oratario Tangram and find them the best arena based combat games ever even with a game pad and no Twin Sticks. If I had my way, First Person Shooter gameplay would have died in the 90s, and everything involving shooting would play exactly like Virtual On with tweaks to the aiming and special moves.

Cyber Troopers and Oratorio Tangram are two of my favorite games ever. The twinsticks add to the experience but I'm one of the few people who can handle it without as well.

[OverDrone]

Love the Virtual On series, with Tangram being the high point for me.

I never bothered with twin sticks, the price on those things was ridiculous.