Many of us have favourite SNES-era soundtracks, especially as they have that distinct sound of Nintendo's 16-bit machine. Of course, the actual technicalities of how those soundtracks came together can be fascinating, as composers and sound designers were working with resources a thousand miles removed from the range of tools available in modern day development.
If you're curious about the topic, then this video from GST Channel is definitely worth a watch. It goes into the detail of the hardware that was used, and explains the significant challenges that developers faced in utilising what few tools they could find. It also highlights how much of the source code from the era is long gone, so putting together this information won't have been easy.
Check it out:
It's a fascinating video, and gives a nice snapshot of the nature of game development in the early to mid 1990s.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 24
As I recall, David Wise's compositions for Donkey Kong Country involved painstakingly recreating the samples in microcode or something like that.
Producing tracks like Aquatic Ambience on the SNES hardware was extremely challenging.
Wasn't the reason the Lost Vikings soundtrack is so notoriously hard to rip from the ROMs because Blizzard basically said "screw it" and wrote their own EVERYTHING? I think it was Lost Vikings.
@Noelemahc Wouldn't be surprising, it seems like a lot of devs at the time had to improvise!
When SNES was the current console I didn’t really think about the sound. Nowadays I don’t much like it’s distinct sounds. The sampled orchestra worked well for RPGs at the time, but very repetitive as a collection now.
What do we learn?
Give proper Tools out.
I'm more curious about how the Genesis largely had awful music by comparison. I mean all that blast processing and they couldn't figure out how to make it have good sound quality?
Yeah okay a small handfull of genesis games had amazing music I'll give it that.
@Zeldafan79 Completely different hardware, completely different way to produce music.
@Zeldafan79 The SNES had a Sony soundchip that used a sampler (with extremely limited memory). The MDG used an onboard synthesiser, the actual model of which varied between console revisions, so while some games would sound good on original hardware, on the model 2 or later it would sound different.
I think the art of videogame music in the 90s is fascinating from every angle. One thing that I always notice whenever I replay Final Fantasy 7 is that the music is pretty much 100% midi which could easily have been done on the Snes. All the power and headroom of a 32-bit CD-ROM console (and the budget of Squaresoft) and the music is pretty much on par with Secret of Mana. And then the N64, with audio options far inferior to the PSX, gets treated to utterly magical compositions from Rare which subtly and dynamically change as you move. It's not a bad thing that audio limitations are effectively non-existent these days (I once amateurishly coded a game for phones which would play 300 speech samples at once to give the effect of a crowd, without even thinking that I should flatten them down into a single WAV for performance) but the ingenuity the 90s guys had is always fantastic to think about and learn from.
@Zeldafan79 the Genesis used real-time FM synthesis which is only as good as your coded instruments were. Games like Comix Zone, Road Rash 3, Langrisser, Contra Hard Corps, Sparkster, Beyond Oasis, Castlevania Bloodlines, Shadowrun all had AMAZING soundtracks, most of which could not be done on the SNES, particularly Comix Zone's guitar trickery.
Under normal conditions, a multiplatform game will have a better soundtrack on the SNES, but sacrifices such as track length would still have to be made (Langrisser's ending theme is a LOT less impressive on the SNES because it is not seven minutes long there).
A great example is Rock n Roll Racing: it has more tracks on the Megadrive but way, WAY better sound quality on the SNES. On the flipside is Langrisser which is a glorious heavy metal concert on the Megadrive but sounds way more generic on the SNES. And let's not mention Doom 32x at all, even though SEGA's sound chip should have made porting the DOS sound trivial, instead we got... That... While the SNES had an appreciable General MIDI sound.
@Zeldafan79 Bro, you gotta pay the proper respects. Shinobi III. Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer. Batman. Castlevania: Bloodlines. Phantasy Star IV. Thunderforce IV. Devil Crash. Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Golden Axe. Sonic the Hedgehog II. Plz.
NINJA APPROVED
@BloodNinja totally with you, those games have amazing soundtracks, brilliant games as well. Then the best of snes is incredible also. Axelay, Contra, Castlevania, ghouls and ghosts, DK, Gradius 3.
@Axelay71 It's amazing how much Konami just nailed in it the music department, back then.
NINJA APPROVED
So that's how they made the seinfeld theme
@Zeldafan79 my brother and I always got a laugh from the speech samples on the Mega Drive version of Street Fighter II back in the day. Still do in fact!
I’d like to know how the sound quality of Secret of Mana’s soundtrack (technically speaking) sounded so much ahead of any other 16 bit soundtrack of the time. I’ll always recall thinking that the track ‘Into The Thick Of It’ sounded like it was being played on a real guitar (or whatever the instrument is).
Arh those retro sound tracks sure do bring back good old memories! My favourites were Donkey Kong (SNES), Sonic the Hedge hog and of course SMB
@Noelemahc Yup: http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Advanced_Real-time_Dynamic_Interplay
Glad to have always been following GST's every move. The channel deserves more love, give it a follow!!
@BloodNinja totally mate the 16 bit era in general still amazes me. When you think everything was coming off chip. With CD consoles I think developers have got lazy.
@Zeldafan79 I'm resisting the urge to list a bunch of Mega Drive/Genesis games with what I consider to be great music since others have given some examples. I do urge you to check out the music from Gauntlet IV, though, if you have not already done so. Now, I'm biased. I love the system, and I can rattle off a list of dozens of Mega Drive/Genesis games with great sound just from memory. It's more than just a small number of games that sound good. I won't deny that when the system sounded bad, it could sound very bad. But my intention with this reply is to provide actual substance. Many of the system's games with poor sound were western-developed games. Part of that was due to sound being a lower priority at the time. Another thing many of those western-developed games have in common was using a sound driver called GEMS. GEMS was designed to make it easier for composers who didn't have experience programming FM synth directly to compose for the system. There may have been other issues with GEMS, but as I understand it, one of the problems was that the default instruments were poor and, with sound being a lower priority, were not changed. The previously-mentioned Comix Zone is an example of a GEMS game that doesn't sound bad, so good sound could be achieved with that driver with some effort and there are other examples as well.
Never heard of this channel, but it's really great! The various themed mixes highlight a ton of great Japan-only gems, especially from stuff that'd I'd never play, like the hundreds of Mahjong/casino games...
@Axelay71 Definitely. Most modern music just sounds like bad movie music. Too cinematic, doesn’t sound fitting for a game. They really don’t make ‘em like they used to!
Totally agree they don't, Rtype final 2 out at the end of month which I've preordered, looking forward to that one.
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