Was SNES Doom really THAT bad?

I really liked the main instrument used for E1M3 and the whistle instrument for E2M2, not to mention the choir-like one for E2M4.

ShaneAmp said:

Its all just synth isnt it?, ive listened to the samples, the only one that sounds like a guitar is the lead on e1m8, but thats probly just made from a midi.. They may have all been made from a midi, but put in as a sound file and used like a mod..

That's essentially what a lot of games use/used, albeit I'd wager in some proprietary format for the most part, especially on the console side.


And on second thought, especially hearing E1M4, maybe it -is- horribly sampled guitars as opposed to horribly sampled strings. Confusing to say the least.

Katamori said:

id Software hated the Wolfenstein 3D NES port (but maybe it were another console port)

ID hated the fact that Nintendo made them censor the game of any blood or nazi references, that's probably what angered them enough to give away the source code. It'd actually be a good question to ask John Romero if anyone ever got the chance...

How do you listen to samples of music on a SNES game? I've used programs to silence sound channels of a song to listen to a single instrument, but how do you listen to the one core sample the SNES sound card manipulates to make the music (if that's possible)?

There might be a program floating around on the internet that can open up the files. I'm just going on what I'm hearing in recordings of the songs.

Back when the local grocery store still had a video game rental section, we had rented Doom for the SNES. I had played Doom before on the PC, but didn't own the game myself.. so SNES was the only option, and it was just a rental.

My friend and I... we never made it past the first few levels, I think we got pissed and quit playing at the Toxin Refinery. We were spoiled by the PC version. The SNES version was.. ok by it's own merits, but the hardware just wasn't capable of handling that game in an acceptable manner.

The Playstation version is the only console version of the game worth a damn if you ask me. I was spoiled by the PC version, but playing the Playstation version some 15 years after it's release was actually a fun experience. The controls worked surprisingly well (after tweaking them a little.. Oh how I miss console games that actually let you change your controls however you wish..). I enjoy that version of the game and will probably play it again sometime.

Mattfrie1 said:

How do you listen to samples of music on a SNES game? I've used programs to silence sound channels of a song to listen to a single instrument, but how do you listen to the one core sample the SNES sound card manipulates to make the music (if that's possible)?

There's a program call Snessor 95! it will open sounds files in a rom and spc file! you can play them back individually, and save them how they are, instead of recording them.. Both instruments and sounds are extractable! Though sometimes you will find sounds in the spc's that werent found in the rom?? guessing its a bit buggy, but it works! I didnt figure this out until after recording the sounds from zsnes, with no music on, for the mod.. Well there were only a few that i couldnt seem to get..

Mike.Reiner said:

Oh how I miss console games that actually let you change your controls however you wish.

Same here.

I never really liked the PS1 version, though I've admittedly not really played it. The ambient music sounds nice from what I've heard, but it doesn't fit the Classic Doom playstyle. It'd have been nice to hear that in Doom 3 instead of just pipes and that repetitive 128 kb/s mp3 intro song all game.

I remember playing the SNES version a few times at a friend's house, and it was a blast from what I remember. (Of course at the time my PC was a derelict 95 with a screwed up sound card, so I was stuck there with either the FM synth midi playback or the sound effects, but not both. Not really sure why I'm putting this aside here, but whatever.)
Shame he ended up selling (or was it giving?) it to his uncle or something, I'd have liked to have a physical copy for collector's purposes at least.

neubejiita said:

SNES Doom's maps are most like the PC version [...]

Yes; Although some levels were left out, the SNES Doom maps were relatively high-quality copies of the PC originals, at least compared to the JagDoom mapset in other console Doom games of that era.
Today the most accurate console/handheld versions of the PC maps are in the Xbox 360/XBLA Doom games, and iPhone Doom Classic.

SNES Doom was my first Doom, and remained the only one for a long time. Finally beating it felt like such an achievement! Just beating a whole first or second episode to see the last levels was a challenge, too.
It's still the only version of the original Doom that i take seriously. PC Doom seems too easy - cheating, saving, mouselook, all episodes on all difficulties, slower enemies, easier maneuvering... And i also think that original Doom's graphics look best at the low resolution. I even like the absence of flats.
Not to mention the music was incredible.
That game gave me doom nightmares for years!

Well, i dunno what ever happened to the Zdoom mod we did for the SNES version.. by that i mean the lastest version adn the master files to go with it.. I did however, stumble upon a version that was near the end, before all the cleanup work was done! I did alot of updates to dehacked to remove the map items that didnt appear in the SNES version, instead of blanking them out with cyan blank textures, and among other space saving work! I think i had it down to well under a megabyte! This version here is well over.. Unfortunately this contains the reduced sprites, that we though was a good choice in the first place, soon figureing out it was just the low resolution that did it.. If anyone thinks they have a late version of it (it would be in 2006 or early 7) please send me a copy if you can! i think it just ended up on a corrupt cd.. I had it so well organized to!

The Mod: http://www.mediafire.com/?vm7esk0opm63tjq

The Maps (with the SNES Hud built in!) http://www.mediafire.com/?3igcfag7fvhvlxj

the mod contains everything including the SPC files and APU DLL to run them. The maps contain a buggy version of the HUD, only known bug though is that the health meter wont display a minus when your blown up or something! probly and easy fix, but i dunno.. I couldnt say what else is missing, i know the title map to replicate the intro isnt here, i could never figure out how to make the game start into the first level like the SNES! I was surprised to find on my cd though, how far i had gotten into doing a SNES Doom 2 mod! an attemp to make Doom 2 to seem like there was a sequel made for the SNES, all the sounds, sprites, and textures all were done! Anyways, maybe this could spark a modernized version of it, or a finished one at least! Or just some nostalgia...

I use Audio Overload (some audio player of questionable content) and it has the ability to disable channels.

GhostlyDeath said:

I use Audio Overload (some audio player of questionable content) and it has the ability to disable channels.

Been looking for a program like this, tried it out, seems pretty cool! I'll see if this will help getting proper samples from the SPC's..

ShaneAmp said:

Well, i dunno what ever happened to the Zdoom mod we did for the SNES version.. by that i mean the lastest version adn the master files to go with it.. I did however, stumble upon a version that was near the end, before all the cleanup work was done! I did alot of updates to dehacked to remove the map items that didnt appear in the SNES version, instead of blanking them out with cyan blank textures, and among other space saving work! I think i had it down to well under a megabyte! This version here is well over.. Unfortunately this contains the reduced sprites, that we though was a good choice in the first place, soon figureing out it was just the low resolution that did it.. If anyone thinks they have a late version of it (it would be in 2006 or early 7) please send me a copy if you can! i think it just ended up on a corrupt cd.. I had it so well organized to!

The Mod: http://www.mediafire.com/?vm7esk0opm63tjq

The Maps (with the SNES Hud built in!) http://www.mediafire.com/?3igcfag7fvhvlxj

the mod contains everything including the SPC files and APU DLL to run them. The maps contain a buggy version of the HUD, only known bug though is that the health meter wont display a minus when your blown up or something! probly and easy fix, but i dunno.. I couldnt say what else is missing, i know the title map to replicate the intro isnt here, i could never figure out how to make the game start into the first level like the SNES! I was surprised to find on my cd though, how far i had gotten into doing a SNES Doom 2 mod! an attemp to make Doom 2 to seem like there was a sequel made for the SNES, all the sounds, sprites, and textures all were done! Anyways, maybe this could spark a modernized version of it, or a finished one at least! Or just some nostalgia...

I dont know if anyone downloaded this, but for some reason when i took it from my cd it went corrupt! i thought i would try and play through a few levels and noticed that there is also solid textures, mostly black ones.. That was not intentional! it ran fine off my disc, but making a zip file from it ruined it! Sorry..

I have an old version of SnesDoom.wad (25-Nov-2004) that seems to work. Played the first two levels and didn't notice any missing textures.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8938a17381t5cba

Even if you manage to locate where in the ROM the "instruments" are located, they probably won't be raw uncompressed samples in any format you'll be readily able to recognize or "hear", unlike e.g. opening a MOD file with a waveform editor ( I recall SNES samples used some form of delta compression, if not something even more complex).

Marnetmar said:

Was SNES Doom really THAT bad?

Nop.

But the PC version still rules 10x over.

Ledmeister said:

Today the most accurate console/handheld versions of the PC maps are in the Xbox 360/XBLA Doom games, and iPhone Doom Classic.

Not sure about the iPhone port. Tower of Babel was missing a lot of architecture from what I could tell from screenshots... Of course, they were screenshots, so maybe it wasn't ToB, but still, some other shots of familiar areas didn't look right.

Mad Butcher said:

I have an old version of SnesDoom.wad (25-Nov-2004) that seems to work. Played the first two levels and didn't notice any missing textures.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8938a17381t5cba

My version is actually newer, i think, my disc is labebled 2005, but thats just when i burned it, seems to me its very close! Thanks though!

Maes said:

Even if you manage to locate where in the ROM the "instruments" are located, they probably won't be raw uncompressed samples in any format you'll be readily able to recognize or "hear", unlike e.g. opening a MOD file with a waveform editor ( I recall SNES samples used some form of delta compression, if not something even more complex).

It seems i have found all the instruments now! i just had to dig through each spc individually, though most of them i could get from the rom itself, i didnt think to look in the spc's ha! For some reason some sounds i couldnt find are stored in the spc's, either thats weird programming, or buggy programming on snesor95's part.. They sound find, sampled at 8000, but alot of them sped up to save space. To load them into a mod, they have to be re-sampled to the same pitch as the midi instrument. it can be a bit tricky, but most of the time, i just load the midi samples into goldwave, copy the sample rate, then change the snes samples to the same playback rate, and it works, not every time though! It just doesnt sound right though, when its not running on the snes chip, that reverb it has makes twice the difference! i wanted to remake some doom 2 tracks using them, im gonna try xmspc, and see if playing it in an emulator will make that difference.. if not, then the mod sounds pretty much like a midi with slightly different instruments...

Clonehunter said:

Not sure about the iPhone port. Tower of Babel was missing a lot of architecture from what I could tell from screenshots... Of course, they were screenshots, so maybe it wasn't ToB, but still, some other shots of familiar areas didn't look right.

Well, I was mostly talking about general map layout, not necessarily flats/textures/artwork (I shoulda made that clear before).

But, I'm looking around Tower of Babel now in both iPhone Doom Classic and PC Ultimate Doom, and everything looks pretty much the same.
The game uses a modified Boom-type engine, though, so different resolution, aspect ratio and antialiasing may make things look a little different.
Strange though, the skies are flipped left-to-right in the iPhone game... something I'd forgotten, or just hadn't noticed before.

Anyway, if you like, I can post screenshots from the game, from level(s) of your choice.

Doom SNES is something I've swept under the rug. I've got certain expectations that must be filled for ports and I refuse to deal with no ceiling/floor textures, one-sided enemies, lower bit rate for sounds, slow framerates, etc. To me that's too much castration in order to run it on 16-bit hardware. Some like the crudeness of it, but I guess I'm spoiled. When it comes to console Doom, I prefer the PSX and N64 incarnations, although the 360 version was delightfully clean looking.

GoatLord said:

Doom SNES is something I've swept under the rug. I've got certain expectations that must be filled for ports and I refuse to deal with no ceiling/floor textures, one-sided enemies, lower bit rate for sounds, slow framerates, etc. To me that's too much castration in order to run it on 16-bit hardware. Some like the crudeness of it, but I guess I'm spoiled. When it comes to console Doom, I prefer the PSX and N64 incarnations, although the 360 version was delightfully clean looking.

Think of it from a console gamers point of view though.. Back in the day i could barely afford to rent games as it was. The thought of a home computer, wasnt even thought of! No internet, no extras like magazines. The SNES Doom was the only one that existed in my world! I ended up buying the same cart i used to rent from a local video game store here, which only had one copy! So to me it was the original Doom, then the N64 version was my Doom 2 (didnt have a PSX until after N64) The PSX version was like a remake and expansion pack to me.. When i finally got a computer, was when i realized that it had the same maps, so until i discovered new maps, i always stuck with the consoles... Crude yes, but at the time was something new and exiting!

I discovered Doom in 1994, playing the PC shareware and eventualy commercial releases. I hated having to use the low-res mode and smaller field of view so it could run on my puny 386. Less than a year later my dad put it on his laptop, where it ran ultra smooth. After enjoying the PS1 and N64 incarnations as well, I ran SNES Doom on an emulator. My sour reaction was based on having played the "cleaner" versions first.

I would play every Doom port except SNES, 3D0, and Saturn.

SNES - Horrible graphics and buggy as hell. Just why?

3D0 - It had better graphics than the Jaguar version but at the cost of smooth framerate.

Saturn - So much potential. But Rage Software fucked it up. Horrible framerate, no light sourcing, less tracks, more pixelated.