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Old game music that doesn't sound like it could be done on old game hardware

SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
Pretty much anything from DKC2 and Yoshi's Island for me. I guess SNES might be a bit too new for "sounds like old hardware" but it's still a limited sound chip and plenty of games on the platform sound like more standard chiptune
 
R

RecursiveFault

Banned
Shovel Knight actually has music that is accurate to a custom NES soundchip that never got released in the states. I beleive Castlevania III has extra instrumentation if you listen to the Japanese version.
 
D

Dragoon En Regalia

Member
T'would be easier to say we should discuss music designed for a certain platform that resembles music from later/technologically-superior platforms. Both Gimmick! and Plok have music that could stand alongside PC Engine PSG and Sony PlayStation tracker music respectively.

It's not unique to the computer, but Tadahiro Nitta's Sharp X68000 arrangement of the Xak soundtrack is very advanced. The system has both an 2151 FM chip and an Oki ADPCM 1-channel chip; music data gets stored in .mdx for the 2151 and .pdx for the Oki. I don't know exactly how much the ADPCM channel gets used for this score arrangement, but just the opening theme alone impresses me with sounds unlike what I hear in other games for the X68k or FM Towns or PC-98/-88.
 
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lazygecko

Member
Was never quite a fan of the "this sounds/looks like it couldn't be done on the hardware" since most of the time that's just going to end up being whatever someone thinks is well crafted, rather than overcoming inherent technical limitations.

The one thing I am absolutely stumped by is getting multichannel music out of 1-bit beepers (ie the kind of thing that makes an obnoxious beep when you boot your PC)

Chronos
 
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UncleSporky

Member
Lagrange Point for NES.

Custom Yamaha sound hardware that is almost equivalent to the chips Sega was using. Sounds completely unreal for NES. This is probably going to be the one of the most notable examples you can find, it's vastly beyond anything else you can do on the console.
 
D

Dragoon En Regalia

Member
lazygecko said:
The one thing I am absolutely stumped by is getting multichannel music out of 1-bit beepers (ie the kind of thing that makes an obnoxious beep when you boot your PC)

Chronos
Click to expand...
Funny thing is, I was just about to whine about the Follins dominating threads like this, but wow, it's hard to argue with something as clever as this. Apparently it's only using the General Instruments AY-3-8910 chip, a mere three channels with none of the gizmos in the SID or the attrition of the Mockingboard. Much as Tim's decision to form a production company is respectable on a personal level, his ability with programming chips like this will be missed.
 
W

wormania

Member
Slightly newer than the other examples posted, but I was very surprised to find that "To Zanarkand" from FFX is not an actual audio recording but a midi-like file.

For other audio tracks in FFX and other games on the PS2 you can easily tell that format is being used, so this stood out to me
 
F

Falk

that puzzling face
lazygecko said:
Was never quite a fan of the "this sounds/looks like it couldn't be done on the hardware" since most of the time that's just going to end up being whatever someone thinks is well crafted, rather than overcoming inherent technical limitations.

The one thing I am absolutely stumped by is getting multichannel music out of 1-bit beepers (ie the kind of thing that makes an obnoxious beep when you boot your PC)

Chronos
Click to expand...

This isn't too different from running music through a bitcrusher set to 1-bit, except you tailor the input specifically to make the resultant output dance the way you want.

Doesn't make it any less genius, don't get me wrong.

wormania said:
Slightly newer than the other examples posted, but I was very surprised to find that "To Zanarkand" from FFX is not an actual audio recording but a midi-like file.

For other audio tracks in FFX and other games on the PS2 you can easily tell that format is being used, so this stood out to me
Click to expand...

Piano actually is one of the easiest instruments to get most of the way using midi/sequencing/modtracking/whatever. Essentially you have note-ons, note-offs, velocities, and pedal, and that's all the variables. There's no aftertouch data (how loud or how much vibrato a sustained string sound has, for example) or complicated articulation (how you hit a drum affects the sound produced) so it's very much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. There are some subtleties as to strings resonating off each other especially with the sustain pedal depressed, etc. but that makes up the maybe final 5% of the sound that most people won't notice, anyway.

This is the reason player pianos can exist.
 
N

Nanashrew

Banned
UncleSporky said:
Lagrange Point for NES.

Custom Yamaha sound hardware that is almost equivalent to the chips Sega was using. Sounds completely unreal for NES. This is probably going to be the one of the most notable examples you can find, it's vastly beyond anything else you can do on the console.
Click to expand...

VRC7 is so underrated. I can't seem to find as much of that compared to VRC6.

For comparison though:

Emerald Hill Zone (original) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vaBxXCH9b8

Emerald Hill Zone (VRC7) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dvi7BblffQ

It's really amazing just how close it gets.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Dragoon En Regalia said:
Funny thing is, I was just about to whine about the Follins dominating threads like this, but wow, it's hard to argue with something as clever as this. Apparently it's only using the General Instruments AY-3-8910 chip, a mere three channels with none of the gizmos in the SID or the attrition of the Mockingboard. Much as Tim's decision to form a production company is respectable on a personal level, his ability with programming chips like this will be missed.
Click to expand...

It's not a sound chip. It's just the CPU sending 1-bit info straight to the speaker, and using some kind of phasing technique in order to "fake" several tones at once. I'm not that familiar with the Spectrum nor its history, but it seems that the AY chip was implemented in a later revision, and several 1-bit composers viewed that as a regression because while the chip had 3 channels, with the beeper they could fake 10+ channels. You can tell Follin got much juicier, complex harmonies out of that than what he could achieve on subsequent hardware.

Here are some others:
Agent X
Raw Recruit
 
D

Deleted member 57681

Unconfirmed Member
UncleSporky said:
Lagrange Point for NES.

Custom Yamaha sound hardware that is almost equivalent to the chips Sega was using. Sounds completely unreal for NES. This is probably going to be the one of the most notable examples you can find, it's vastly beyond anything else you can do on the console.
Click to expand...
This is insane.
 
T

tci

Member
UncleSporky said:
Lagrange Point for NES.

Custom Yamaha sound hardware that is almost equivalent to the chips Sega was using. Sounds completely unreal for NES. This is probably going to be the one of the most notable examples you can find, it's vastly beyond anything else you can do on the console.
Click to expand...
That is amazing. Holy shit. If i heard that in the NES days I would not have belived it was playing on a NES.
 
U

UncleSporky

Member
lazygecko said:
Nel Baldwin has been developing a bunch of programs that are essentially softsynths for the stock NES hardware, utilizing stuff like extremely fast modulation and macros/automation to go far beyond the kind of sounds you'd usually hear from it.

NoisES
CajoNES
DroNES
PR8 NES Drum Synth
Pulsar
Click to expand...

That dude is awesome, he made some original NES soundtracks back in the day including some Tim Follin esque stuff, and then a few years back he discovered the NES programming/hacking scene and joined it with his own contributions.

Listen to some of his soundtracks and read a lot about the development process here.
 
O

OnPoint

Member
KojiKnight said:
The VCR7 is getting love in this thread, but the VCR6 wasn't a slouch either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annot...e=iv&fmt=18&src_vid=-aUHiFIpRRE&v=GHG3e0bQe3I VCR6

versus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annot...e=iv&fmt=18&src_vid=GHG3e0bQe3I&v=-aUHiFIpRRE US NES version.
Click to expand...

I just hate the buzz of the sawtooth (that's doing the lows here, right?) in the VRC6 version of this song. I've always preferred the cleaner sound of the 2A03 US version of this soundtrack. I will say that the JP soundtrack is "fuller", but I don't prefer that sound personally (I usually describe it as "muddy").
 
A

Aspirations26

Member
Spwn said:
I find myself constantly amazed by what Yuzo Koshiro did with the Streets of Rage soundtracks, especially SOR2. The sounds don't sound like anything else on Mega Drive.

Streets of Rage 2 - Under Logic
Click to expand...

MrBadger said:
Anything from the first two Streets of Rage games
Click to expand...

Yeah the streets of rage soundtracks were amazing. So ahead of their time, gonna add one of my personal favorites.

Streets of Rage 2 - Slow Moon.

Started playing these games again lately, I always go back every few years just to listen to the amazing soundtrack while kickin some ass :p.
 
S

StayDead

Member
I can't really post all the examples I could think of as I'd be here all day, but most of the Game Boy games musics. The Gameboy had amazing music in most of it's top games and it amazes to me this day that they managed to do most of it using the hardware.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Dragoon En Regalia said:
T'would be easier to say we should discuss music designed for a certain platform that resembles music from later/technologically-superior platforms. Both Gimmick! and Plok have music that could stand alongside PC Engine PSG and Sony PlayStation tracker music respectively.

It's not unique to the computer, but Tadahiro Nitta's Sharp X68000 arrangement of the Xak soundtrack is very advanced. The system has both an 2151 FM chip and an Oki ADPCM 1-channel chip; music data gets stored in .mdx for the 2151 and .pdx for the Oki. I don't know exactly how much the ADPCM channel gets used for this score arrangement, but just the opening theme alone impresses me with sounds unlike what I hear in other games for the X68k or FM Towns or PC-98/-88.
Click to expand...

The 251 chip in the X68K is almost identical to the 2612 chip in the Genesis/Mega Drive. The only notable differences are two extra channels (but lacks the extra 4 the Genesis gets from the PSG) and a noise LFO. But that noise LFO alone, which might seem like an insignificant curiosity at a glance, makes one hell of a difference in the kind of timbres you can achieve. Especially when it comes to drums and percussive sounds, which the 2612 typically had a tough time with.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/utabi46b.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/utabi55f.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/utabi57c.mp3

These are all 100% programmed FM on the X68K. No PCM samples are used for anything. You can only dream about achieving the same results on a Genesis. You can get something close in certain instances using the the often neglected SSG envelopes, but that's still far from as flexible.
 
T

thesaucetastic

Unconfirmed Member
Dio said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvSK4ErPcio

This entire intro sequence to Ys IV. Having something like this in 1993 blows my mind still, especially on a console.
Click to expand...
Yo, this is bonkers.

UncleSporky said:
Lagrange Point for NES.

Custom Yamaha sound hardware that is almost equivalent to the chips Sega was using. Sounds completely unreal for NES. This is probably going to be the one of the most notable examples you can find, it's vastly beyond anything else you can do on the console.
Click to expand...
This is more so.
 
A

Aeana

Member
Dimmle said:
Megami Tensei - Hallucination Illusions of Hell

I flip out whenever I hear this song hit its stride. I believe these games also used custom sound chips but it's simply unbelievable that a Famicom game could achieve this sound. Plus, it's just a chill tune. I have never actually played the game; thanks, VGMpire!
Click to expand...

Yes, it uses a special chip that adds 8 channels of wavetable synthesis, which is quite significant, particularly in the right hands. Sadly, it was not used to its full potential in commercial games due to other constraints, but there are some pretty awesome examples of its usage by hobbyist musicians.
 
D

Dicer

Banned
Aeana said:
But this was the norm for the system. The whole major benefit of CD consoles is that they can play CD quality audio. There's tons and tons of other examples of this kind of thing on the same system.
Click to expand...

CD music back in that day and age was magical, didn't hurt that there were really some top notch composers

Here's some cart music from the good ole TG16/PCE, because you know it's awesome...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHCCoNyNFtY
 
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