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Gradius
Dec 15, 2016 10:40:59 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Dec 15, 2016 10:40:59 GMT -5
This is just my personal feelings, but I think it probably had to do with programming experience. I'm not sure what the first Konami game to used the YM2151 is, but Salamander is probably one of the first, which accounts for why it sounds the way it does, compared to later titles.
Similarly, as for as the Genesis sound chip, it's only as good as whoever programmed the sound driver. Sometimes they were excellent, other times they were just outsourced games done on the cheap/quick (the infamously bad sound of SF2CE is a good example, even though I think the music, if not the digitized samples, turned out pretty decent).
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Gradius
Dec 15, 2016 12:57:23 GMT -5
Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Dec 15, 2016 12:57:23 GMT -5
Sure, I said who but it's hard to say how much past experience or the tools (or colleague assistance) available at the time played a role, besides their natural talent. With one of the Gradius composers you can hear them improving already in the next couple of games, while for example the Toaplan composers eventually reached a fairly high level with the YM3812 chip (well, very high compared to most western DOS game composers) but never full mastery of it, and with Sega it seemed like they had been using FM for at least a couple of years already when listening to Space Harrier.
SF2CE does sound alright overall, the real catastrophe is SSF2 for me now that I've heard the X68000 version.
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Lord Dalek
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Post by Lord Dalek on Dec 17, 2016 11:36:55 GMT -5
There does seem to have been a major change in composition and execution style at Konami at some point in 1987. Earlier that year you had the original Contra, Trick Trap, Batlantis, and MX-500 which all had the same cold clinical sound of Salamander. Then they debuted the Twin-16 board on Devil World and the Konami Sound begins to really start taking form (it was their first game to use Orc5 samples and all).
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Lord Dalek
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Post by Lord Dalek on Dec 17, 2016 11:45:26 GMT -5
Even Sega had its growing pains IMHO. If you listen to their first two FM synthesis titles (Hang-On and Major League) from 1985 today, it's clear that that they're both very rudimentary compared to the far smoother and warm efforts the company produced starting with Fantasy Zone.
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Gradius
Dec 17, 2016 14:50:13 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Dec 17, 2016 14:50:13 GMT -5
HIRO (or whoever the sound programmer was) really knew what they were doing with Space Harrier, because odd sound effects aside, the music sounds fantastic, and that was 1985 too.
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Lord Dalek
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Gradius
Dec 17, 2016 17:21:57 GMT -5
Post by Lord Dalek on Dec 17, 2016 17:21:57 GMT -5
Important thing about Space Harrier is it uses a YM2203 as opposed to Sega's usual YM2150 so the sound is a bit different from something like Quartet and Bullet made the following year.
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Gradius
Dec 17, 2016 20:17:27 GMT -5
Post by Weasel on Dec 17, 2016 20:17:27 GMT -5
This gets me to wondering, is Marble Madness really the first arcade game to use an FM synthesis chip? It sounds so much smoother and less horribly grating than other games that used FM chips around the same time period.
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Gradius
Dec 17, 2016 21:39:02 GMT -5
Post by Allie on Dec 17, 2016 21:39:02 GMT -5
This is just my personal feelings, but I think it probably had to do with programming experience. I'm not sure what the first Konami game to used the YM2151 is, but Salamander is probably one of the first, which accounts for why it sounds the way it does, compared to later titles. Similarly, as for as the Genesis sound chip, it's only as good as whoever programmed the sound driver. Sometimes they were excellent, other times they were just outsourced games done on the cheap/quick (the infamously bad sound of SF2CE is a good example, even though I think the music, if not the digitized samples, turned out pretty decent). I think that Phantasy Star IV and MUSHA were the best uses of the Genesis sound chip. GleyLancer is up there too, for its use of the PSG.
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Gradius
Dec 18, 2016 6:20:02 GMT -5
Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Dec 18, 2016 6:20:02 GMT -5
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Lord Dalek
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Post by Lord Dalek on Dec 18, 2016 10:01:41 GMT -5
^Most of the problem I see with Major League is that it's just a case of "we don't know what we're doing". As you said there's no percussion, the melodies are either very short or highly repetitive, and it lacks any sort of low end. The funny thing is that (and this becomes very noticeable on the System 16 Collection Vol. 1 soundtrack album) the very next game, Fantasy Zone, fixes all of these problems and is one of the first really great sounding 2151-based soundtracks. But then again Hiro wrote Fantasy Zone whereas nobody at Sega knows who wrote Major League.
Now what really bugs me is that the System 24 runs on the same sound hardware as 16 but somehow sounds a lot worse.
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Gradius
Dec 18, 2016 14:11:12 GMT -5
Post by condroid on Dec 18, 2016 14:11:12 GMT -5
This is just my personal feelings, but I think it probably had to do with programming experience. I'm not sure what the first Konami game to used the YM2151 is, but Salamander is probably one of the first, which accounts for why it sounds the way it does, compared to later titles. Similarly, as for as the Genesis sound chip, it's only as good as whoever programmed the sound driver. Sometimes they were excellent, other times they were just outsourced games done on the cheap/quick (the infamously bad sound of SF2CE is a good example, even though I think the music, if not the digitized samples, turned out pretty decent). I think considering what they were working with they actually did a pretty decent job. The arcade version had 4 ADPCM channels dedicated to drums + sfx which had to be crammed into one channel on the Genesis. And once that was done they were left with 5 FM (+ 3 PSG) vs. 8 FM voices on the arcade board. Maybe there are some details that could have been done better, but I wouldn't call that a cheap conversion.
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Gradius
Dec 18, 2016 14:14:05 GMT -5
Post by condroid on Dec 18, 2016 14:14:05 GMT -5
Sure, I said who but it's hard to say how much past experience or the tools (or colleague assistance) available at the time played a role, besides their natural talent. With one of the Gradius composers you can hear them improving already in the next couple of games, while for example the Toaplan composers eventually reached a fairly high level with the YM3812 chip (well, very high compared to most western DOS game composers) but never full mastery of it, and with Sega it seemed like they had been using FM for at least a couple of years already when listening to Space Harrier. SF2CE does sound alright overall, the real catastrophe is SSF2 for me now that I've heard the X68000 version. IIRC, the X68000 port of SSF2 requires 16 Mhz to even run, and some of that additional power is used to create 4 PCM channels via software mixing. That was probably not an option on the Genesis. On the Space Harrier soundtrack the entire rhythm section (drums+bass) is actually done via a PCM chip. To me that was always what made that game sound so great. The FM instruments themselves are not that much better than Hang-on for example.
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Gradius
Dec 18, 2016 14:24:00 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Dec 18, 2016 14:24:00 GMT -5
I think considering what they were working with they actually did a pretty decent job. The arcade version had 4 ADPCM channels dedicated to drums + sfx which had to be crammed into one channel on the Genesis. And once that was done they were left with 5 FM (+ 3 PSG) vs. 8 FM voices on the arcade board. Maybe there are some details that could have been done better, but I wouldn't call that a cheap conversion. I only really say it's cheap because a hobbyist made a patch for the game that makes the samples sound MUCH better:
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Gradius
Dec 18, 2016 15:13:31 GMT -5
Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Dec 18, 2016 15:13:31 GMT -5
^Most of the problem I see with Major League is that it's just a case of "we don't know what we're doing". As you said there's no percussion, the melodies are either very short or highly repetitive, and it lacks any sort of low end. The funny thing is that (and this becomes very noticeable on the System 16 Collection Vol. 1 soundtrack album) the very next game, Fantasy Zone, fixes all of these problems and is one of the first really great sounding 2151-based soundtracks. But then again Hiro wrote Fantasy Zone whereas nobody at Sega knows who wrote Major League. Now what really bugs me is that the System 24 runs on the same sound hardware as 16 but somehow sounds a lot worse. Ok so did you not mean to imply that the YM2203 chip made Space Harrier sound better then? Regarding the System 24 games, I gave part of the answer: No sample-based chip was paired with the FM in those games to help with for example the percussion so that more FM channels could be dedicated to other stuff. The other big factor I think, as I'm looking at the games list, was that even if they got someone good to make the music, those were side project games on a smaller budget and shorter development time. I like Bonanza Bros, Crack Down and Gain Ground, but they don't feel like Sega put their best people to work on them or had as much time to make them as Golden Axe or Shinobi for example. The fact that almost all of them are in mono might also mean that the cabinets could not output stereo, but it's just a guess. Sure, I said who but it's hard to say how much past experience or the tools (or colleague assistance) available at the time played a role, besides their natural talent. With one of the Gradius composers you can hear them improving already in the next couple of games, while for example the Toaplan composers eventually reached a fairly high level with the YM3812 chip (well, very high compared to most western DOS game composers) but never full mastery of it, and with Sega it seemed like they had been using FM for at least a couple of years already when listening to Space Harrier. SF2CE does sound alright overall, the real catastrophe is SSF2 for me now that I've heard the X68000 version. IIRC, the X68000 port of SSF2 requires 16 Mhz to even run, and some of that additional power is used to create 4 PCM channels via software mixing. That was probably not an option on the Genesis. On the Space Harrier soundtrack the entire rhythm section (drums+bass) is actually done via a PCM chip. To me that was always what made that game sound so great. The FM instruments themselves are not that much better than Hang-on for example. Well you can check the video above regarding samples, but there's no excuse for the FM sounding worse (taking the fewer FM channels into consideration of course) and that's the bulk of the music. I did this remake of one of the SSF2 tracks a while back, based on the X68K version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qXE87O0D1oWould probably have to skip a couple of those drum samples (IIRC I used 7 unique ones) for the actual game to fit onto the cart though hehe, but it could still sound pretty good with noise-based cymbal sounds and FM toms. Re Space Harrier: Yeah I mentioned the sampled drums earlier, but Hang-On also has sampled drums. Both the drum samples and FM are better in Space Harrier, overall. Not that there's a huge difference between them or anything.
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Lord Dalek
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Gradius
Dec 18, 2016 21:33:43 GMT -5
Post by Lord Dalek on Dec 18, 2016 21:33:43 GMT -5
Space Harrier does have stereo PCM effects for the percussion (the actual FM is in mono on that one). By comparison all the music on Hang-On is in mono. Now that was also a stereo game but they only used the left and right channel for passing bikes.
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