Most of us grew up championing the banner of either Sega or Nintendo -- if you were JC, you had a TurboGrafx-16. Aligning with one or the other wasn't a choice made lightly, predicated on which games you thought looked the baddest and, of course, that pesky money issue. If you were a Sega person, you missed out on some sweet Nintendo games and vice versa.
Anyway, the point: HG101 posted a nine-minute video giving us a glimpse at how Super Metroid would've sounded if it was on the Sega Genesis, created by YouTube user Geckoyamori. Crank your speakers up to 11 and head past the break to give it a listen!
Because it does? You can get all subjective about it and say you prefer the warmth of analog synths or something but the SNES played back actual instruments samples exclusively. It had a much better chance of simulating actual recorded music.
@nighttime Some games sounded great on the Genesis, but some also sounded AWFUL. A lot of games had a sharp, tinny sound on the Genesis, while the SNES tends to have a softer sound, which at its worst sounds less offensive
That was the friggin' worst thing I've ever heard! Legit LOL from that. I don't know if it was sarcasm or what, but regardless it got a serious laugh out of me.
There are a lot of good sounding Genesis tracks, but that.. Good God!
@nighttime Personally, I feel that the Genesis sound stands the test of time better in general than the SNES, at least in the case of the better-made games. Because the SNES was the first mainstream console to have PCM sound, I feel like it is very early, primitive sounding PCM by today's standards, especially due to the memory limitations of the time. The Genesis's PSG and FM sound is more classic and arcade-like.
I perfered the Genesis to the SNES. The SNES might have had superior sound but the Genesis produced some of my favorite game songs of all time with Sonic and the Streets of Rage series.
I'm not positive but I think the Super NES had a better sound chip than the Genesis did. It sounds like it while listening to this "video". It's just such a great soundtrack, that it would probably sound good played on almost any hardware.
Some Genesis games had amazing soundtracks (Mega Turrican, Streets of Rage, Vectorman). I think this is alright but some of the songs have an abundance of "fart" notes, especially the Intro and Brinstar remixes.
@DarrenHollywood - You haven't heard of Metroid Metal? Good sir, you are in for a treat. Just about anything Stemage does is audible gold. Check out the Boss Medley; 7 minutes of various Super Metroid boss battle themes.
Let's not forget that it's the game's awesome tunes that make this sampling- though inferior based off Genesis tech- sound this amazingly good!
Just a side note:
The SNES soundchip was designed by Sony, spearheaded by none other than Ken Kuttaragi! He actually fought for Nintendo against all the higher execs at Sony and almost lost his job!
Surely you are comparing like with like and not at all comparing a game developed by a second-party closely associated with Nintendo against a third party video game which wasn't all that great.
I don't understand the need of SNES fanboys, even in this age to keep trying to lambaste the Megadrive's soundchip, it wasn't as good in nearly far more situations as the SNES chip. But let me just remind you all of one piece of music:
Analog synths are awesome when the music is written with them in mind. Go listen to some blues on a B3, or some old-school rock on a MOOG synth. Or how about some classic Doors with the Fender bass unit and Vox Continental organ. Good stuff.
Pre-sampled midi playback is awesome when the music is written with it in mind. "Orchestral" scores, "piano" music, etc, all sound best when played on digitally sampled instruments. The more samples, the better.
SNES had Chrono Trigger, which is some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard in a video game. Sega could never replicate that soundtrack on their system.
