Sonic the Hedgehog franchise discussion

[Daytime Waitress]

Don't want to further derail the thread with console war discussion, but I did feel like addressing this point:

 

13 hours ago, scalliano said:

as a child of the PAL regions, we never really got any of that sort of marketing - both companies tended to sell the systems and games on their own merits rather than engage in the sort of cringey squabbling of the US campaigns ("Blast Processing" wasn't even a thing in the UK).

 

Same for Australia, but I remember the PR arms gaming mags of the day (Strayan and UK especially) fomenting base tribalism by filling their mailbag sections with pictures, drawn by schoolchildren, of one side's mascot ritualistically slaughtering the other. Mario uppercutting Sonic's head off, Tails murdering Yoshi with a shotgun, etc., etc.; the majority of them seemed to appear around the time Mortal Kombat exploded in popularity IIRC.

 

As a kid without the concept of brand loyalty, I thought it was a bit extreme but kind of lulzy, yet as an adult I have to ask: what in the French-fried titty-fuck was all that?

 

I guess I could see other kids idly daydreaming about murdering fictional characters, and even being motivated enough to scribble it down in detail. Not to mention that they could gain schoolyard notoriety for being published in the gaming mags. I ain't here to judge that nor psychoanalyse that.

 

But it was encouraged by adults.

They supported it to sell advertising space.

While acting as the PR divisions of major entertainment corporations.

 

What the actual fuck?

 

-----

 

As for the actual topic...

 

I owned a Master System, but primarily inhabited Nintendo's ecosystems, and the few times I got my hands on Sonic games I... didn't really think much of them. Maybe because I sucked at them, but they always felt too stop-start for my liking. It was one of the few times when I was younger that I could definitively say, "I can definitely see the appeal for other people, but it ain't my bag."

 

Tried Mania a while back, and still hit the same brick wall. Didn't swear off it, just not keen to go back any time soon.

 

Conversely, Sonic Team putting the character in the air and changing the formula from point-to-point to a circuit made NiGHTS one of my favourite games of all time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[lazygecko]

21 hours ago, Doomkid said:

When I was a little kid, I bought into the “Nintendo VS Sega” garbage. Sega made a HUGE marketing push for kids to think of the companies as rivals, but as far as I was concerned it was always a “Coke VS Pepsi” situation, and I like my classic Coke and my classic Mario the best. Sega played themselves by making it a competition which they (IMO) could never win. Conversely Nintendo hardly ever acknowledged Sega’s existence, as far as I can recall.

 

When I hit about 13 or so and realised it was all marketing garbage, I downloaded a Genesis emulator and some ROMs and instantly realised the world is better off for having both. My access to badass 16 bit games doubled.
 

I have to admit none of the titles grabbed me the way Mario’s gameplay did. As much as I’ve come to love the 2D era of Sonic, even those games feel a bit too much like “cocaine and empty calories”. I like the more measured pacing of Mario.
 

Still though, it was a good thing putting off Sega til I was in my teens - felt like unlocking a whole new side to my classic gaming options, there are some incredible Genesis games out there.

 

No one I knew in my social circle at the time actually took the console war stuff seriously. It was just seen as some cheeky fun. The more games the merrier was the mantra. It was only when I started socializing online that I noticed people actually buying into that narrative.

 

I don't think your attitude at the time was unusual though. In the 2000s I think there was definitely this very aggravating anti-Sega bias online perpetuated by the "gatekeepers" of retro gaming circles, ie the people running the websites publishing articles or putting out some of the earliest video content. Even if they actually liked some Sega games they just couldn't help making a back-handed compliment about it. These people were very predominantly Americans acting like they had some kind of chip on their shoulder from the edgy 90's marketing poking fun at Nintendo, and this kind of set the overarching online narrative that saturated public opinions on gaming forums as a whole.

 

Things are definitely a lot better today as the retro gaming community has diversified and matured greatly.

[Sonikkumania]

On 11/22/2022 at 8:38 AM, NickyGoodSumPrince said:

just anything tbh, i wanna know more about the 3D Sonic Games' Protos

Well...

There's Sonic Saturn and more known Sonic X-treme which were to be released for the Sega Saturn but never saw the light of day. Sonic Lost World would later take inspiration from X-treme's gameplay.

 

Knuckles' Chaotix was originally titled Sonic Crackers. The ring system is already visible there. Possibly due to this, Chaotix still contains sprites for Sonic and Tails.

 

Also, in Sonic 2 beta, you actually get to play the infamous Hidden Palace Zone. ATM I can't confirm is the video footage from fan made hack or legit beta footage.

[Sonikkumania]

7 minutes ago, NickyGoodSumPrince said:

i already know these 💀. probably the dreamcast games?

I just thought of Behind the scenes footage of Sonic Adventure production.

[Wyrmwood]

Well really I'm 100% a Mario guy, the only Sonic games I enjoyed were Sonic Spinball and Sonic Adventure. The former because I like pinball and it was a cool spin on it (see what I did there) and the latter because because it was a Dreamcast launch title and I couldn't just play Soul Caliber all the time. In fairness there's a part of me that actually liked SA better than Mario 64 because it's not as frustratingly hard and had more variety. Liked the music too but Tails should never of been given a voice, he's annoying as hell.

[Sonikkumania]

24 minutes ago, Wyrmwood said:

Sonic Spinball

I really wanted to play it but I suck at it, lol. Fun fact, the Mega Drive and Game Gear versions of that game have a different cover art. The Game Gear version had the AoStH style Robotnik featured in, while the 16 bit MD cover had the usual intimidating US style Robotnik.

[Wyrmwood]

1 minute ago, Sonikkumania said:

I really wanted to play it but I suck at it, lol. Fun fact, the Mega Drive and Game Gear versions of that game have a different cover art. The Game Gear version had the AoStH style Robotnik featured in, while the 16 bit MD cover had the usual intimidating US style Robotnik.

 

Yeah I had a Sonic pinball game on Game Gear too but it was a Sega pinball collection with tables based on Nights and I think Samba de Amigo too. Trust me Sonic Spinball is much easier than most pinball games I've played. He's actually a perfect character for video game pinball, if they ever make a sequel I'll be right on that.

[Sonikkumania]

5 minutes ago, Wyrmwood said:

Trust me Sonic Spinball is much easier than most pinball games I've played.

I trust you bro, though I still think that MS Space Cadet and NES Pinball were more easier for being simpler >P Many years ago I got to see a Jaws parody animation featuring Sonic on a legit Sega Pinball machine, it is such a shame that I were unable to take a photo or video because I have not seen anything similar since then, lol.

[Wyrmwood]

4 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

I trust you bro, though I still think that MS Space Cadet and NES Pinball were more easier for being simpler >P Many years ago I got to see a Jaws parody animation featuring Sonic on a legit Sega Pinball machine, it is such a shame that I were unable to take a photo or video because I have not seen anything similar since then, lol.

 

Thats a shame, I went to to the very underwhelming Ubisoft World in Montreal where I got super excited when I spotted a Mario Pinball machine but turned out it was "out of order". Probably just as well, I suck at RL pinball.

[Sonikkumania]

Just now, Wyrmwood said:

 

Thats a shame, I went to to the very underwhelming Ubisoft World in Montreal where I got super excited when I spotted a Mario Pinball machine but turned out it was "out of order". Probably just as well, I suck at RL pinball.

Yeah, I saw that mentioned pinball machine in our amusement park like 15 years ago and it has not been there ever since. Ironically there is Sonic merch coin games etc. more than ever nowadays.

[Scrabbs]

Got a saturn and replayed the original trilogy (and knuckles route in sonic 3) via Sonic Jam. Still happy to say sonic 3 and knuckles is still the greatest 2D platformer ever made, nothing compares. Been playing Symphony of the Night and love that too. 

[PsychEyeball]

Favorite game of the series would be Sonic 2 even though I never managed to get all of the emeralds (that bonus game can rot in hell). Sonic 1 is not too far behind in terms of overall fun and quality and I don't mind the slower gameplay. Contrary to about every other living person in the world, I just can't get into Sonic 3. The levels just feel so bloated and never seem to end. Even in its abridged version, I still think the game is way too long. Sonic CD has nice music, but sometimes I wonder if the levels were just designed by a robot because their flow feel so random and accidental. 

 

Only Sonic 3D games I played were SA1 and SA2. Can't say I remember most of SA1 and it likely didn't age super well since I played it way too late for it to have any proper impact on me. SA2 is much more memorable and fun, but I'd remove the "find the 3 emeralds" stages and replace them with about... anything else. Security Hall in particular had no reason to have a 5-minute time limit attached to it.

 

Didn't play anything else after that because most people typically say they hate the later 3D games and I don't have a strong enough bond with Sonic games to care about investigating them myself.

[Rudolph]

I used to be really big into Sonic as a child back when the Sega Genesis was the only home console we owned. I played the shit out of the first one, eventually completing it, but since I could only rent Sonic 2 and 3 at my local video rental store (remember those?), I never had the time to beat either; the furthest I got in Sonic 2 was Death Egg Zone, where I would eventually lose all my remaining lives, and I could never figure out how to proceed past Sonic 3's Carnival Night Zone and its rotating barrels. After I gave away my Sega Genesis (a foolish decision that I have come to regret in hindsight), I sadly lost interest in the Sonic franchise and I just cannot bring myself to replay them these days.

 

But since we are talking about Sonic, I cannot help but recommend the channel Jehtt for its hilarious redubs:

 

 

[LexiMax]

Having played all of them when they were contemporary, I feel like Sonic 2 and 3K have aged much better than Mario 3 or World.  Mario of course has superior control, and the games' were amazing puzzle boxes, with loads of secret content to discover.  However, I felt like once you got "good" at those games, the shine of them wore off quite quickly, and I found the subsequent returns to 2D Mario through the NSMB series and Mario Maker quite dull.

 

Sonic, on the other hand, was the complete package.  Not so many hidden things to discover, but if you just wanted to breeze through a game and have a good time on a lark, Sonic's graphics were much more varied, the music was top shelf, and the games just had an "energy" to them that made them fun to play for their own sake, instead of mastering them and tossing them aside.  And then Sonic Mania came out and proved that those old games' weren't flukes, the formula still works.

 

Oh, and if you liked Sonic, go play Freedom Planet 1 and 2.  The two games play distinctly from Sonic, but they definitely channel the look and feel of those old games to a T.

 

 

 

[Ralphis]

On 11/22/2022 at 12:30 PM, lazygecko said:

 

I don't think your attitude at the time was unusual though. In the 2000s I think there was definitely this very aggravating anti-Sega bias online perpetuated by the "gatekeepers" of retro gaming circles, ie the people running the websites publishing articles or putting out some of the earliest video content. Even if they actually liked some Sega games they just couldn't help making a back-handed compliment about it. These people were very predominantly Americans acting like they had some kind of chip on their shoulder from the edgy 90's marketing poking fun at Nintendo, and this kind of set the overarching online narrative that saturated public opinions on gaming forums as a whole.

 

I think I've brought this up before either on the forums or elsewhere in our community, but as a kid in the 90s, there is no doubt that Sega was the cooler system to have. Many kids had one or the other, some were lucky enough to have both, and nobody really cared which like early 2000s internet did. The Genesis had the edgier games. Be it the superior sports games, Road Rash, Mortal Kombat with blood, etc. To be candid AND entirely anecdotal, the dorkiest kids I remember in school not only usually had a SNES but they also obsessed over video games in a way that most kids with only a Sega did not. And guess what? Those SNES kids were starting up gaming websites several years later while the Sega kids just bought a PS2, played GTA3, and never thought about their Genesis again. History is written by the "winners" and most kids with Segas weren't online obsessing about emulators and games from 7 years ago when that early internet gaming culture started up.

 

It's a generalization that I admit is from my own personal experience. There are surely exceptions, but it's my 2 cents on why the internet looked back and painted the Genesis as the "loser" of some great console war (even if it's not rooted in reality).

 

Exclusive Bonus content: Genesis soundchip > SNES soundchip

[Dark Pulse]

Been there since the start. Had me some good times. Spent a lot of Saturday mornings watching SatAM, skipped school some days to watch AoSTH.

 

30 minutes ago, Ralphis said:

Exclusive Bonus content: Genesis soundchip > SNES soundchip

As someone who co-founded Project2612, I will generally agree - I'm biased as fuck. But I will also caveat that with that there were also some excellent SNES soundtracks.

 

Genesis did a lot better at more rock or synthy, up-tempo stuff. SNES though was fantastic for stuff that would feel more orchestral - David Wise's Donkey Kong Country soundtracks, Yasunori Mitsuda's Chrono Trigger score, Tim Follin's soundtracks for Plok! and Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge (and Equinox, if you're willing to go for something more ambient)... all excellent SNES soundtracks.

 

Genesis had its heroes too - Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage/Beyond Oasis/Shinobi), Hitoshi Sakimoto (Devilish, Gauntlet IV, Midnight Resistance), Motoi Sakuraba (Granada, El Viento, Arcus Odyssey), Motoaki Takenouchi (Jewel Master, Shining Force II, Landstalker), Tomoko Sasaki (Ristar, World of Illusion), and of course Michiru Yamane (Castlevania: Bloodlines, Contra: Hard Corps, Rocket Knight Adventures) got her start on the Genesis.

 

Basically, a bad composer would make either soundchip suck, and a great one would draw out the very best. No matter what system you rooted for, there were just some composers who really had it.

[Herr Dethnout]

2 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Been there since the start. Had me some good times. Spent a lot of Saturday mornings watching SatAM, skipped school some days to watch AoSTH.

 

As someone who co-founded Project2612, I will generally agree - I'm biased as fuck. But I will also caveat that with that there were also some excellent SNES soundtracks.

 

Genesis did a lot better at more rock or synthy, up-tempo stuff. SNES though was fantastic for stuff that would feel more orchestral - David Wise's Donkey Kong Country soundtracks, Yasunori Mitsuda's Chrono Trigger score, Tim Follin's soundtracks for Plok! and Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge (and Equinox, if you're willing to go for something more ambient)... all excellent SNES soundtracks.

 

Genesis had its heroes too - Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage/Beyond Oasis/Shinobi), Hitoshi Sakimoto (Devilish, Gauntlet IV, Midnight Resistance), Motoi Sakuraba (Granada, El Viento, Arcus Odyssey), Motoaki Takenouchi (Jewel Master, Shining Force II, Landstalker), Tomoko Sasaki (Ristar, World of Illusion), and of course Michiru Yamane (Castlevania: Bloodlines, Contra: Hard Corps, Rocket Knight Adventures) got her start on the Genesis.

 

Basically, a bad composer would make either soundchip suck, and a great one would draw out the very best. No matter what system you rooted for, there were just some composers who really had it.

The advantage of Yuzo Koshiro was that he is a expert on the FM (thanks to the fact that he owns a PC98 and he's still used it for composing, also is FM nerd). In the case of Arcus Odyssey, they had the advantage of that is a port of a Sharp X68000 game (that has a YM 2151 soundchip, a "high end" version of the 2612). Actually the music of the Genesis is pretty accurate to the Sharp version, the snes version is good too but lacks of some songs and lack of the flexibility of the FM synth (making the FM ost sound more Epic).

You forgot that SNES can do rock up tempo stuff great if you give it the correct samples and musician, Mega Man X proves that.

And as the Phantasy Star and Sword of Vermillion composers proved, you can do great orchestral stuff too.

Wow, didn't now that you was a co-founder of  Project2612, great stuff yo.

 

 

2 hours ago, Ralphis said:

Exclusive Bonus content: Genesis soundchip > SNES soundchip

The SPC700 has the advantage of samples, making it a Dumb-proof for any musician and great for Orchestral, also a great hardware echo effect and Noise (something that 2612 doesn't have), but the Yamaha has a lot of flexibility (you can virtually create any instrument with FM) and if one nows how to use (Koshiro), you can surpass the SNES chip easy, the major drawback is that is pretty hard to understand and you need to create it everything from scratch (although sega provide tools to help composers, something that Nintendo didn't do it)

[Dark Pulse]

9 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

The advantage of Yuzo Koshiro was that he is a expert on the FM (thanks to the fact that he owns a PC98 and he's still used it for composing, also is FM nerd). In the case of Arcus Odyssey, they had the advantage of that is a port of a Sharp X68000 game (that has a YM 2151 soundchip, a "high end" version of the 2612). Actually the music of the Genesis is pretty accurate to the Sharp version, the snes version is good too but lacks of some songs and lack of the flexibility of the FM synth (making the FM ost sound more Epic).

Yeah, the common thread seems to be that a lot of the guys who were really good on the YM2612 came from a PC98 background. And obviously that makes plenty of sense. :P

 

9 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

You forgot that SNES can do rock up tempo stuff great if you give it the correct samples and musician, Mega Man X proves that.

True! Tim Follin did do great stuff with guitars on Rock 'n Roll Racing and Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge. Mega Man X is another good candidate for that.

 

It should be noted, though, that I am speaking in generalizations. On the SNES, you very much lived or died by your samples (just like on the YM2612, you lived or died by your instruments), and if they were great and you were competent, you could make them sound great - and if they were lousy, you could make them sound terrible.

 

A lot of people here remember Doom 32X's FM farts, after all. A lot of people here are also familiar with people who properly went over those songs and made them sound absolutely great. And obviously more than a few know the SNES version of Doom is quite noted for its soundtrack.

 

It's just all relative. Both could do anything, but they definitely lent themselves better to certain things.

 

9 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

And as the Phantasy Star and Sword of Vermillion composers proved, you can do great orchestral stuff too.

Well, which ones? Tokuhiko Uwabo (AKA "Bo") did the first two all by himself (and the first one, of course, was on the Master System, so that wasn't even FM, unless you had the optional addon). 3 and 4 were done by Izuho Takeuchi (or as she's now named, Izuho Numata), with Masaki Nakagaki added in on 4.

 

4 was definitely a great soundtrack though, I'll absolutely give you that.

 

9 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

Wow, didn't now that you was a co-founder of  Project2612, great stuff yo.

Feels like a lifetime ago (it kind of was - it was founded back in 2006!), but yes :)

 

That's why I actually felt some pressure last night when Doomkid challenged me on the Sandstream to recognize a song from a Genesis game.

Spoiler

I did eventually get the answer right - but it did take a few minutes, I did need a hint, and it required me to have my memory jogged by a specific note pattern...

 

9 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

The SPC700 has the advantage of samples, making it a Dumb-proof for any musician and great for Orchestral, also a great hardware echo effect and Noise (something that 2612 doesn't have), but the Yamaha has a lot of flexibility (you can virtually create any instrument with FM) and if one nows how to use (Koshiro), you can surpass the SNES chip easy, the major drawback is that is pretty hard to understand and you need to create it everything from scratch (although sega provide tools to help composers, something that Nintendo didn't do it)

Yeah. Like, some people figured out some very clever tricks with the SPC700 (David Wise with Donkey Kong country and how he got that rising Korg synth on Aquatic Ambiance via multiple samples comes to mind; Tim Follin's harmonica on Plok's title tune also does), but it was very much a system where your composition was only as good as your samples - and of course, you had a pretty limited RAM for that, so getting the best you could out of as small samples as possible was really the thing.

 

No need to worry about that on the Genesis unless you were trying to do PCM stuff, of course, but a lot of games used that pretty sparingly. I do remember Skitchin' had some hella shreddin' guitars, though. Jeff van Dyck definitely entered my consciousness with that game...

Edited November 26, 2022 by Dark Pulse

[lazygecko]

9 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

The SPC700 has the advantage of samples, making it a Dumb-proof for any musician and great for Orchestral, also a great hardware echo effect and Noise (something that 2612 doesn't have), but the Yamaha has a lot of flexibility (you can virtually create any instrument with FM) and if one nows how to use (Koshiro), you can surpass the SNES chip easy, the major drawback is that is pretty hard to understand and you need to create it everything from scratch (although sega provide tools to help composers, something that Nintendo didn't do it)

 

It is definitely not dumb proof. Designing a set of samples that conform to the chip/format limitations can be quite challenging, and back in those days people didn't have nearly as flexible and easy to use tools for sample editing as we do today. The vast majority of developers simply relied on the bog standard library Nintendo provided with the devkit. And there are plenty of mistakes in instrument samples in tons of games causing tuning issues and the likes. I really don't like seeing this common claim by laymen that SNES music was simply easier to do across the board, because I think it undermines just how much skill and clever problem solving went into the higher tier of soundtracks and how they figured out the best creative optimizations.

 

As for the orchestra discussion, I also find that to be kind of reductive, and I think what people really mean without quite being able to articulate it is that the SNES simply does sheer scale very well. The advantage of sampling, even with the limited memory, is that you can put entire sections of string/brass/choir recordings into a single sample which span multiple performers playing in unison and stacking several octaves, so you get this really big sound that conveys orchestral symphonies well. But given the strict memory limitations, this also comes at a tradeoff of depth and expression, because you're not really gonna have enough space to fit different articulations of said instruments like staccatos, tremolos, crescendos, etc (the only games I know of that even attempts this is Actraiser 2, and it has a very diminished set of unique instruments so it could fit the different articulations into memory). This is actually where FM has a big advantage where the equivalent instrument parameters only require a few bytes instead of several kilobytes, so you can create as many variations you want (or use parameter automation to alter them on the fly). There aren't really any released games that truly take advantage of this though. But typically stuff like brass articulations have proper decays and swelling in timbre, whereas on SNES they have to approximate everything just with raw volume envelopes.

 

If you settle for a smaller scale, chamber music type of style, you could get orchestral type of music on the Genesis that instead sounds richer and more expressive with well articulated solo violins and the likes, where everything just has more texture and life to it.

[Doomkid]

15 hours ago, Ralphis said:

To be candid AND entirely anecdotal, the dorkiest kids I remember in school not only usually had a SNES but they also obsessed over video games in a way that most kids with only a Sega did not. History is written by the "winners" and most kids with Segas weren't online obsessing about emulators and games from 7 years ago when that early internet gaming culture started up.

LOL. This has to be one of the most exaggeratedly ridiculous cases of reading into people based on what console they own(ed) that I’ve ever read online, and that’s saying something. I legit laughed out loud when I read it!

 

I remember thinking that the sound seemed “scratchy” and that ports on both consoles always seemed to have better colors on SNES.. but I never built up any sort of deep theories about what people who owned Segas were like or did any research into which fanboys were the fanboyest. I just thought the SNES was a bit better, and it made sense since it was a little newer. Nintendo’s obsession with censorship was really dumb though.

[Rudolph]

Even though I am a fan of quite a few Genesis soundtracks, I reckon Earthworm Jim 1 sounds much better on the Super Nintendo.

 

Then again, it is the only multiconsole game that I can think of, so maybe there are other cases where the Genesis port has a better soundtrack. In a way, it is a shame that series like Sonic and Streets of Rage were exclusive to the console: it would have been interesting to hear how they sound on the Super Nintendo.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Rudolph

[Herr Dethnout]

9 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Well, which ones? Tokuhiko Uwabo (AKA "Bo") did the first two all by himself (and the first one, of course, was on the Master System, so that wasn't even FM, unless you had the optional addon). 3 and 4 were done by Izuho Takeuchi (or as she's now named, Izuho Numata), with Masaki Nakagaki added in on 4.

 

4 was definitely a great soundtrack though, I'll absolutely give you that.

I was speaking mostly of 4, but it's in general too (Except the first cuz is SMS duh) :P

 

 

9 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Yeah. Like, some people figured out some very clever tricks with the SPC700 (David Wise with Donkey Kong country and how he got that rising Korg synth on Aquatic Ambiance via multiple samples comes to mind; Tim Follin's harmonica on Plok's title tune also does), but it was very much a system where your composition was only as good as your samples - and of course, you had a pretty limited RAM for that, so getting the best you could out of as small samples as possible was really the thing.

 

No need to worry about that on the Genesis unless you were trying to do PCM stuff, of course, but a lot of games used that pretty sparingly. I do remember Skitchin' had some hella shreddin' guitars, though. Jeff van Dyck definitely entered my consciousness with that game...

Yup, sampling on snes is probably the most overcomplex thing I've seen (no to mention that Nintendo give little to not information about it in his devkits), but after that you can make everything sound fairly good with it (the advantage of having previously made instruments), making it "easier" than FM where if you didn't know what are you doing you can screw up all (Doom X32, I'm looking at you), even Follin Brothers had a pretty bad time with Spiderman & X-Men MD ost (sounds "fine" but yeah, lost a of the depth and presence(?) of the SNES version). Although to be fair, SEGA was more helpful in this aspect than Nintendo. heh

About PCM, the best example I know is MD Street Fighter 2, where they used a technique to giving more samples on the DAC (software mixing I think is called, i dont remember :P)

 

 

9 hours ago, lazygecko said:

It is definitely not dumb proof. Designing a set of samples that conform to the chip/format limitations can be quite challenging, and back in those days people didn't have nearly as flexible and easy to use tools for sample editing as we do today. The vast majority of developers simply relied on the bog standard library Nintendo provided with the devkit. And there are plenty of mistakes in instrument samples in tons of games causing tuning issues and the likes. I really don't like seeing this common claim by laymen that SNES music was simply easier to do across the board, because I think it undermines just how much skill and clever problem solving went into the higher tier of soundtracks and how they figured out the best creative optimizations.

Dumb proof in the sense that you can make something sound pretty good without knowing much about programing instruments (Not like the FM synth :P), but yeah, sampling is pretty hard, iirc the samples loop needed to be in a multiple of 64 or will not sound properly, that combined with the sparse information made it a trial and error situation.
About the devkit, I remember in a music forum disscusing about that samples, and SNES composer said that the "Nintendo Stock Samples" didn't existed (or at least he wasn't aware of that) and needed to creating his samples by his own (explaining too how hard it was :P).
 

 

9 hours ago, lazygecko said:

As for the orchestra discussion, I also find that to be kind of reductive, and I think what people really mean without quite being able to articulate it is that the SNES simply does sheer scale very well. The advantage of sampling, even with the limited memory, is that you can put entire sections of string/brass/choir recordings into a single sample which span multiple performers playing in unison and stacking several octaves, so you get this really big sound that conveys orchestral symphonies well. But given the strict memory limitations, this also comes at a tradeoff of depth and expression, because you're not really gonna have enough space to fit different articulations of said instruments like staccatos, tremolos, crescendos, etc (the only games I know of that even attempts this is Actraiser 2, and it has a very diminished set of unique instruments so it could fit the different articulations into memory).

I think it no only depends of the SPC700 but also of the Cartridges memory, is known that the SNES was capable of multi-sampling (Dracula X used it extensively, and his samples where also big AF), and about the articulations, I know that is posible to emulate it rather than using a sample (case of the tremolo, just don't remember the game :P). 

 

 

9 hours ago, lazygecko said:

This is actually where FM has a big advantage where the equivalent instrument parameters only require a few bytes instead of several kilobytes, so you can create as many variations you want (or use parameter automation to alter them on the fly). There aren't really any released games that truly take advantage of this though. But typically stuff like brass articulations have proper decays and swelling in timbre, whereas on SNES they have to approximate everything just with raw volume envelopes.

Yup, I said that flexibility was the biggest advantage of the FM Synths even if not altering the instruments on the fly, you can create virtually every instument imaginable with differents degrees of accuracy.

 

 

9 hours ago, lazygecko said:

If you settle for a smaller scale, chamber music type of style, you could get orchestral type of music on the Genesis that instead sounds richer and more expressive with well articulated solo violins and the likes, where everything just has more texture and life to it.

I agree, but still making a convicing orchestral sound (strings, hits, and the most painful, choirs) is pretty hard on the FM, although there are good examples like Pulse and I said above, there are some where his result was... Interesing (Shining Force 1 is the first to came to my mind when talking about failed attemp of orchestral music). With samples you can giving great sounding orchestral even if lacks of articulations. :P

[Rudolph]

17 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Plok!

Holy shit, I did not know this game even existed! And you are right, its soundtrack kicks ass! :o

[Ralphis]

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

LOL. This has to be one of the most exaggeratedly ridiculous cases of reading into people based on what console they own(ed) that I’ve ever read online, and that’s saying something. I legit laughed out loud when I read it!

 

I remember thinking that the sound seemed “scratchy” and that ports on both consoles always seemed to have better colors on SNES.. but I never built up any sort of deep theories about what people who owned Segas were like or did any research into which fanboys were the fanboyest. I just thought the SNES was a bit better, and it made sense since it was a little newer. Nintendo’s obsession with censorship was really dumb though.

 

SNES dork spotted

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

even Follin Brothers had a pretty bad time with Spiderman & X-Men MD ost (sounds "fine" but yeah, lost a of the depth and presence(?) of the SNES version).

Apparently the Follins had nothing to do with the MD port, so that was someone else porting Tim Follin's music, which is why it sucks.

 

The only MD game Tim ever got to work on directly was Time Trax... which was never officially released. Luckily, a beta ROM was found and dumped, and it had the music, so we get to enjoy it.

 

2 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Holy shit, I did not know this game even existed! And you are right, its soundtrack kicks ass! :o

Damn right it does. Tim Follin in general kicks ass, and I will throw his name into the VGM arena until my dying breath.

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

Tim Follin in general kicks ass

He also designed Contradiction: Spot The Liar!, a neat throwback to 90s FMV adventure games with some surprisingly good acting.

 

Too bad, the game ended on an unresolved cliffhanger, as Follin reportedly lacked the budget and resources to produce a proper sequel.

[prfunky]

5 hours ago, Ralphis said:

 

SNES dork spotted

Lol!!!!!!

 

[The Dommo]

i personally adore sonic. doom was just a thing i picked up while waiting for frontiers.

[Sonikkumania]

On 11/27/2022 at 9:30 PM, The Dommo said:

i personally adore sonic. doom was just a thing i picked up while waiting for frontiers.

Uhuuhh?

Spoiler

 

 

[Sonikkumania]

So just recently I've spotted a lot of videos on my YT feed regarding a lost Sega video game titled "Segapede", which seemed to contain the level design from Sonic 2 Hidden Palace.