The Official Gaming Music Topic

Thinking about Genesis games and some rare soundtrack gems.

One of the earliest games (we're talking age 3 or so) I felt comfortable playing was Space Invaders '91. Hell of a soundtrack: intense, encouraging, and menacing (in rare moments, soothing). It suited the game play fully.

I love the level 1 track, which reminds me of some of the enthusiastic Shenmue tracks in spirit:



So too, if you're a lil' funk boi, this one slaps:
 
The moment this started in RDR2, I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. It wasn’t until the middle of this “gameplay” section that I realized what was going on and from there, I absolutely fell in love with this moment. Incredibly powerful and gutsy, considering the player doesn’t do much, yet it’s still not a cutscene. It was a moment where both Arthur and the player could really reflect on what’s happened so far and look forward to what will happen in a bittersweet way. This singlehandedly changed my interest in the game from just “meh” to fully invested in the characters, world, and story. This song became one of my favorite jams ever.
 
The MGS 1 score is timeless classic for me.

Here is a nice version of the enlosure theme. On my favourites in the MGS Score

 
Prompted by @Tomato Convenience Store playing through the Shinobi games on the Genesis, I've been listening to a bunch of music from the console that just goes too hard.

I know it's a bit unpopular, but I feel Shinobi III's soundtrack does a better job of capturing that sense of a modern day ninja than RoS's does. "Idaten," "Sakura," "Japoneque," and "My Dear D" are all some seriously heavy hitters, but "Whirlwind" (45:29) is just a treasure:


Bunch of great stuff on the Langrisser II soundtrack, as well, but one of the grittiest tracks "The Evil Person" (25:45) is probably my favorite ("Imelda" and "The Dark Princess" are also bangers):


Battle Mania - Daiginjou is a bit more rough and unpolished a soundtrack, but really slaps. Personal favorite is "Shrine" (16:25):


Contra Hard Corps has one of my favorite game soundtracks ever. It's all pretty legit. However, "The Dawn," (55:28) especially, gives that sense of triumph and dejection that comes from finishing one of the game's bad endings (also, another slapper):


Thunder Force IV has an absolutely legendary soundtrack, with absolutely zero chill. Of all the face melting riffs from it, "Stand Up Against Myself"'s (57:22) are the ones that really get me:


Last, but certainly not least, the "Emperor Battle" from Dragons Slayer: Legend of Heroes II. This is the final battle theme, and it perfectly encapsulates the sense of futility and raw, blood boiling, aggression in the fight. It's a manic, chaotic, grueling 30-45 minutes of throwing everything you have at the boss just to survive his unbridled oppression. It feels like hell, but it's also pretty epic.


There were almost too many composers and sound engineers who just knew how to make that little black box sing.
 
Rydeen said:
Prompted by @Tomato Convenience Store playing through the Shinobi games on the Genesis, I've been listening to a bunch of music from the console that just goes too hard.

I know it's a bit unpopular, but I feel Shinobi III's soundtrack does a better job of capturing that sense of a modern day ninja than RoS's does. "Idaten," "Sakura," "Japoneque," and "My Dear D" are all some seriously heavy hitters, but "Whirlwind" (45:29) is just a treasure:

[...]

There were almost too many composers and sound engineers who just knew how to make that little black box sing.
Click to expand...

I actually prefer the Shinobi III soundtrack as well. However, when reading through OST youtube comments someone made a good point that when RoS was released in 1989 it was possibly the first Genesis/MegaDrive soundtrack to really distinguish itself from the NES and show what the audio hardware was capable of. So I think in that context I can see the argument being that RoS was a more landmark soundtrack and if you played it at the time of release it might have a bit more meaning for you. Plus it was made by Yuzo Koshiro, so it might be considered sacrilegious amongst Genesis fans to rank other soundtracks above his :p

My favorite track from Shinobi III was probably "Solitary". It just matched the level and moment so well. I hate to say it was "ePiC", buuuuuuut, haha.



And yeah, the soundchip is so underrated. I think a few reasons people look down on the Genesis soundchip is because:
  1. They experienced a lot of Genesis games via emulation with poor audio emulation (I mostly got this idea from the Digital Foundry review of the Mega SG). Given it's an FM Synth there are more ways to screw it up via emulation compared to PSG sounds from the NES/Master System and Wavetable Synth sounds from the SNES.
  2. Because programming/creating sound instruments for FM synths is difficult, a lot of American Studios used GEMS, which was a sound driver made by SoA to simplify the process a bit. From what I understand it essentially contained a bunch of "decent" sounding presets, but nothing that sounded even close to as good as the custom sounds that were coming out of Japan from Sega, Konami, Treasure, etc. https://segaretro.org/GEMS.
  3. The sample channel is admittedly a bit lower quality, so if someone hears a poor voice sample they associate that with the quality of the rest of the audio hardware.

A cool thing I'm noticing when going back to Genesis soundtracks is how the Master System chip inside the Genesis is being used as well as the YM2612, to create kind of a hybrid FM Synth and PSG sound. Actually, Whirlwind is a great example. The main melody uses the square wave channels from the Master System chip and does a similar trick found in a lot of NES games where the sound is doubled up with another square wave that's delayed to create a chorus effect.

(and to throw in one more music track):

 
Shenmue games have the greatest soundtrack. I haven't owned Quake 2 or Quake 2 Ground Zero in 20 years but I still have the MP3 files. Great soundtrack.
 
@Tomato Convenience Store
I think SNES was pure sampler rather than synth. About genesis music it might be just as you said. If sound driver doesn't allow you to take full control of the chip features there's nothing you can do about it, although I can't say if it's true regarding GEMS since I'm not familiar with it. Some people might have been just satisfied with the sound it was making, and for others it might have been too difficult to work with FM synth rather than sampler.

This one is probably one of my favorite on Genesis:
especially "Complete" and "Heroes Theme".

And regarding use of PSG, I only recently discovered that Hitoshi Sakimoto made music for genesis and he also used both chip and it sounds awesome.
 
Radar said:
@Tomato Convenience Store
I think SNES was pure sampler rather than synth. About genesis music it might be just as you said. If sound driver doesn't allow you to take full control of the chip features there's nothing you can do about it, although I can't say if it's true regarding GEMS since I'm not familiar with it. Some people might have been just satisfied with the sound it was making, and for others it might have been too difficult to work with FM synth rather than sampler.
Click to expand...

SNES used Wavetable Synthesis, which is slightly different than a sampler but has some similarities. But for simplicities sake for the discussion, I imagine emulating a wavetable synthesizer is much easier than an FM synth since you are indeed playing back tiny waveform samples.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top