The Yamaha 2612 sound chip is a brilliant chip to produce music but like anything, the outcome comes from people who are able to compose and even program the compositions as well as the various sound drives produced by various developers. SEGA had their various revisions of SMPS, Konami had their own, SEGA of America helped produce GEMS. There's a lot of brilliant soundtracks that come from Europe from composers such as Matt Furniss and Jesper Kyd, games such as Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2 and Wiz n Liz (Matt Furniss), there's also Sub-Terrania, Red Zone and The Adventures of Batman and Robin (Jesper Kyd). GEMS which had a bad reputation brought some great soundtracks in my opinion such as Sonic Spinball, Comix Zone and The Ooze coming from SEGA of America and games such as Aladdin, Cool Spot, RoboCop vs the Terminator and Mick and Mac in Global Gladiators (these last four may or may not have been composed by Tommy Tallerico.) Sonic 1 and 2 is an example where the composer did none of the sound programming to how we heard it coming from the game. Yes, Masato Nakamura composed the music for these games but let's take Sonic 1 where Hiroshi Kubota (credited as Jamita) took Nakamura's demo compositions and programmed them into the sound driver Sonic 1 was using. Finally when you mentioned Streets of Rage and then Streets of Rage 2, I'm surprised there was no mention of Motohiro Kawashima who composed about 2 or 3 tracks and then also co-composed one with Yuzo for the game.
I'll be honest, I didn't even realise that Nakamura didn't program the music! I'll pin your comment, so that everyone can see this - and the work of Hiroshi Kawaguchi! Thank you for your knowledgable and considered comment - I love constantly learning more, and getting to talk and celebrate this thing we all enjoy so much!
@@jamiewilliamson9829 No problem! All I want to do with my videos is celebrate the things we all love and enjoy, so the more we can all do that, the better!
Yuzo Koshiro is a titan among us. Not just composing the music. Not just designing the patches. He had nothing to start with. _Nothing_ He wrote his own comparing and programming tools himself on the his 8bit computer that came with a similar Yamaha OPN FM Synth. In assembler. On which he composed the music and used that to create the Z80 Assembler required to drive the YM2612 in the MegaDrive. That's beyond Mozart You're now up with DaVinci. And most of it was inspired by everything coming out of the British dance scene, you can hear various chart hits in every track from SOR2.
You can't imagine Thunder Force IV or Street of Rage 2's music on the Super Nintendo any more than you can Chrono Trigger or Donkey Kong Country's on the Genesis. The real takeaway is that we didn't really know how good we had it back when every console had its own signature sound.
@@Zazalahyene Inspired more so. Heavely inspired. I think it's cool you hear it back in soundtracks from inner city and such...good life. Awesome. Maybe not that origenal but still very cool. It was orgenal enough to call it it's own. Motohiro kawashima was more orginal in his tracks. Both where a killer duo.
One of the greatest soundtracks on the Mega Drive is ''Lemmings'' and it's sad that it never gets a mention on videos like these. It's soundtrack gave us the cleanest and warmest mix of FM and PSG working together by Sunsoft. It used big, beefy FM drums and used the reverb effect a lot to create a real good stereo sound. Another good one is ''Zero Wing'' an FM Metal soundtrack where it literally sounds like Steve Harris is playing bass on it from Iron Maiden in fact a lot of the Cube Driver osts are gold on this system. ''Sagaia, El Viento, Sol-Deace, Snow Bros, Jewel Master and Gynoug'' are games with triple AAA soundtracks and arrangements.
Thank you for all those recommendations! I played Lemmings on PC, back in the day, so never experienced the Mega Drive music - but I'll add it to the list, along with the other games you mentioned! 🎵🎶👍
It's the composition that counts not whatever dog shit sound chip you use. Once you have patches established it's not about the sound chip or platform as much as what you do with the established patches. There's absolutely nothing astounding about any of the Yamaha sound chips used by Sega. It's the arrangements. All this waffle about the complexity of the chip is not really a thing when composing.
Very good video, but there's some huge omissions about the music on the Mega Drive: It's already a cliché to say that American developed Mega Drive games sounds like crap but that is a bit unfair since there's very good music in some US Mega Drive Games like the first 2 Road Rash games, the Mortal Kombat Series, Kid Chameleon, the two Vectorman games, Toe Jam and Earl as you mentioned in the video (the elevator music between levels are pure samples only, no synth), Taz-Mania and the two X-Men games are good examples of awesome soundtracks on the Mega Drive by US developers. The X-men 2 Clone wars soundtrack was composed (and programmed by) Kurt Harland, the lead singer of Information Society. However, the biggest omissions in this video are the European Mega Drive games, specially because you are from Europe yourself. The European developers did an awesome job on the YM2612 too in games like Chuck Rock, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Battletoads and Battletoads & Double Dragon, Aladdin, Donald in Maui Mallard, and Flashback, just to name a few. And, of course, Red Zone, Sub-Terrania and The Adventures of Batman and Robin, three games by the awesome composer Jesper Kyd, who also push the limits of the YM2612 to a whole new level.
Thank you for the comment! I'll pin it, so that everyone can see these awesome soundtracks and games that you have mentioned. 👍🏻 The more people that get to hear and play great games, the better! Thank you for the contribution. 🙏🏻
@@TheNatCav3 Thank you, please, indulge me by allowing me to mention more awesome mega drive soundtracks in general. Hitoshi Sakimoto wrote his own (awesome) sound driver for the YM2612 and it shines in every game he composed and/or rearranged for the Mega Drive: Two Crude Dudes, Captain America and the Avengers, Midnight Resistance, Devilish, Verytrex and others. Even Double Dragon II sounds very good since it uses his sound driver but by a different composer. Motoi Sakuraba is another composer that was very skilled on the YM2612. Notable soundtracks from him and Wolfteam (his company) are El Viento, Sol Deace, Arcus Odyssey, Granada and Earnest Evans. Treasure, the company founded by ex Konami employees, did an amazing job in Gunstar Heroes. And speaking of Konami, pretty much anything by them on the Mega Drive sounds amazing. Anything by Technosoft, really, those dudes were awesome composers that also were very skilled programming the YM2612. Quackshot and Castle of Illusion by Shigenori Kamiya. The Shinobi trilogy: Revenge of Shinobi, Shadow Dancer and Shinobi III. Super Fantasy Zone by Naoki Kodaka at Sunsoft. By the way, Sunsoft is/was another developer full of awesome tracks in every console in which they released games. Capcom (in fact, an outsourced developer) did a very good job with the Mega Man Willy Wars soundtrack. Unfortunately, Street Fighter 2 Special Champion Edition is just an ok soundtrack and the Super Street Fighter 2 soundtrack sounds awful.
@@JonGallon You need to start pumping out video game music content on your channel! Thank you for the awesome recommendations, and for sharing your knowledge!
True. Not a word lied about that. Some knew how to work with the gems stuff and others didn't. Comix zone is an example of good work with the gems driver.
So many beautiful songs on this console! Thank you for this great video. There is also a very important point between Japanese musicians and Westerners, a lot of musicians from europe and US were trained with Amiga or Atari computers and both systems offer Tracker styles music using samples or midi music. But in Japan chip music was developed with different computers, like MSX or PC88 (and often geared toward arcades machine) using MML (Macro Music Language) a type of Midi approach but with a lot of flexibility to command your sound chip allowing incredible nuances for your sounds (if you know how to do it) while using nearly no memory space compare to samples in tracker. Also the Megadrive was derived from the System 16 arcade PCB from Sega. and as you mentioned used this incredible Yamaha chip and was like a small DX7 synthesizer in our hands. Truly a marvel! 🤩
That's not really true, before the Amiga/ST, there was the C64 & Spectrum (amongst other 8 bit machines) that had sound chips that required real programming skill with very limited memory, the C64's SID effectively created the "chiptune".
Fantastic video, even though there was no mention of the music of Ecco the Dolphin, which is sublime. This video brings back so much nostalgia. Love it.
Thank u nat for the video im fanboy of sega from 90s from africa morocco Thank u for the flavor of some sega ost's that still in our ears years from 90s i still remembre my 1st time having our beloved sega megadrive playing s.o.r and sonic all the night me and my big brother what memories it is exchanging games for free with others boys of the city in morocco meeting them in arcade stores or stores of games schools ...... btw stores are not officiel at that time in morocco just used cartgridge consoles exported from europe in those stores untill playstation comes with officiel stores
Aw man I am totally with you. I had a megadrive,a SNES and an Amiga back in the day and I loved the differences in sound capabilities on all three systems. I will always love the unique FM sounds the megadrive could create.the first streets of rage is still my favourite game music.
Really nice and well produced video! Love me some FM synth. The two Sparkster games on MD and Snes is my goto example of what is essentially the same soundtrack but arranged to make optimal use of each consoles strengths.
My all time favorite soundtrack is Burning Force, for Mega Drive. The game isn't great, but the soundtrack is absolutely amazing! I love it until this day! Another absolutely great soundtrack is Gaiares. Really fantastic. The Super Nintendo has really good soundtracks (for example, Super Castlevania IV) but most of time I enjoy more soundtracks from Mega Drive. Great video!
@@BlindTrustProject you should try the Universal Soldier soundtrack. It's got some really interesting tunes. Funnily enough, the SNES version of the soundtrack seems a little worse.
@@ribenasquashUniversal Soldier is actually a bastardized port of Turrican 2. If you want to hear some truly amazing music from the same composer (Chris Huelsbeck) on the SNES check out Super Turrican 1 & 2 as well as Jim Power in the Lost Dimension 3D. Mega Turrican on the Genesis doesn't sound bad either, but it shares a number of tunes with Super Turrican and that game definitely sounds superior.
@@davidaitken8503 I really enjoyed listening to the Universal Soldier soundtrack. The company The Code Monkeys made both version but the snes version didn't get released. "Some, but not all, tracks were composed by Chris Hülsbeck. This game was originally a port of Turrican 2, but had the license slapped on at literally the last stage of development." - vgmrips
I love the way multiple square channels sound together like a primitive reverb on the SN76489 and interact with the YM2612 sounds so much! It makes chords sound so massive!!
Man this video gave me such good vibes. All the memories of hanging out playing some Sega Genesis have really been conjured back up and I just got to thank you for the Nostalgia shot! I don't know about you or anyone else, but I could go for a part 2 to this video.
11:14 The Mega Drive can, in fact, produce music like Final Fantasy 3/6. Not that they didn't have their strengths as platforms, but it wasn't an incompatibility that prevented music like that existing.
The ending theme on Sonic 2 is just so absolutely perfect after the climax of the final battle. A few hours of game play and not frigging dying, to get this amazing chilled out rendition is a hell of a moment.
I was a Christmas 89 guy with my Genesis and I will always love the Ghouls n' Ghosts sound track. I especially loved the theme for level 2. Also Sword of Vermillion had a great sound track. So many great memories of that console... I still have my "tower of power" (Model 1 Genesis with the Sega CD and 32x)... Love it!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! And btw, your username and display pic are so good that I had to go and show my girlfriend, lol. 😎 The first video on my channel is me just nerding out to T2, if you'd like a laugh.🤭
Thank you for this video. Since the nineties, I've became obsessed with Mega Drive's music. Those tones are the very core of early advanced videogames, from the arcade of late 80s to the console gaming of the early 90s, which I consider the peak era of gaming. I've been so obsessed at the point that today I produce even some kind of chiptune music through some VSTs on my workstation, specifically the YM2612 simulations. I make music as Glitch Dreamer. Sorry for the intrusion, I'm here just for sharing my experiences with some other people. 👾 (subscribed)
Thunder Force 4 has one of the best soundtracks on the Mega Drive for sure. It even uses the PCM channel to play Voice Samples when you collect power ups or "1 UPs" The main reasons for companies avoiding using loads of PCM samples is because of their large size and static nature.
6:30 "the floor for the music on the super nintendo was much higher." I disagree. It's very challenging to make clear audio instruments on the snes and it's more difficult to achieve multitimbrality and expression. The sound drivers were equally challenging to program.
Fair point! I guess that, even with all the compression necessary to get the samples small enough to fit into memory, it's still relatively straightforward to create a sample of a real instrument that sounds pleasant (versus programming a delicious sounding FM instrument). But I absolutely agree that the beautiful, clear audio output of the Mega Drive compares very favourably against the more muffled, warm output of the Super Nintendo! Thank you for your comment - I'm always eager to learn more, and discuss the things we all enjoy so much! 🙏🤘
@@TheNatCav3 The SNES uses pitched samples, not to be confused with wavetable as found on the PC Engine. This can result in detuning or simply going out of tune. The need to load samples into the memory through a slow bus could cause crackling and loading routines were a challenge for sound drivers on the SNES. Engineering a sample to 4KB can be a challenge if the audio engineer does not have experience in this type of digital music production. I think the floor for SNES music is a touch lower than that of the Genesis, even including GEMS games.
Anyone can load a few crunched Fairlight samples into a snes and get something that doesn't sound gash. The floor was deffo higher for the snes. Mostly what held inexperienced developers back was sound sample quality. Not all sound tracks needed to be masterpieces.
@@videogamesandfilm6821 you can't load a stock sampled instrument into the snes. It will need serious re-engineering. Yes sample quality is the one and only issue when dealing with samples. Even today, fast ram is limited with samplers. The OP-Z has something like literally 32MB of storage and it costs £300+. Engineering samples is a skill few had. Why not check out the soundtrack to Gun Force. A game by Dimps studio who clearly did not find it "easy" to just "dump in some samples". This sentiment as stated by you and this video is utter bunkum. That's why most SNES music lacks depth or a high enough quality sample to support the soundtrack. It's not "just" lacking a bit of quality. The quality is too low to have an impact and serve the tune.
thats an understatement. i never understood why MD and snes sounded so different. i understood they had different chips but never knew why they sounded worlds apart.
Fantastic. Subscribed! You know, with all the work being done on the Genesis/Megadrive in the modern homebrew scene I think a follow up to this video would be excellent. If you really want to go deep into the weeds, there are even websites with chiptune competitions like Battle of the Bits which explore all kinds of sound chips, and what some of those composers can produce is just mind blowing. In any case, this video is very well done and I quite enjoyed it. I hope you make more like it in the future :).
Thank you for the very generous and kind comment! I just spent some time looking through the Battle of the Bits website, and my mind is completely blown. There are so many clever, passionate, creative people doing amazing things - thank you for hooking me up! 🎵🎶
I love Matt Furniss’s work, it’s often really funky and quite recognisable in style. He did his own sound design, he was pretty good at FM programming. Some of my favorites from Matt are The Second Samurai and Alien 3. Appearantly his system was based on an Atari ST that he used to compose the Midi on.
Brilliant video - I’ve only briefly looked into how music was developed for 16-bit systems (and it was mainly Snes music) so this look at how the hardware was used to create some of the most defining music from my childhood and teenage years was eye (or should that be ear) opening. I’ve always enjoyed the Sega MD music and have a few soundtracks on vinyl, but that extra level of understanding how the music was not only composed but then implemented on the system just adds a whole other level of appreciation. Great video! Cheers!
I had the same WOW effect about sound with my first megadrive game Sonic1. Love Star light zone music, from Sonic 2 Aquatic ruin, Streets of rage1, especially the iconic intro music. And one detour to PC music - for me, most memorable music was in game Ascendancy. So rich, deep and atmospheric.
Star Light Zone was the one that stuck out for me, too! I remember reaching it for the first time, and my brother said, "This next level has amazing music" - and it has stuck with me ever since! If you love Aquatic Ruin, you might enjoy my cover/arrangement! 🎶Check if out here, if you're interested: ruclips.net/video/NdkvWm1mFS8/видео.html
Good video, thank you. I'm surprised GleyLancer did'nt get mentioned, in my opinion it is the absolute pinnacle of Mega Drive music - perhaps graphics too.
Hell yeah! It is an extraordinary piece of music! 🎵🎶🤘 If you're interested, here is the link to my arrangement of it, that I use at the end of the video: ruclips.net/video/ZXYk0sR1rU8/видео.htmlsi=Ri8mwI8URZFpyALc
The BGM you use is from Thunderforce IV. The entire soundtrack is just, f**king, amazing. My jaw dropped when I first popped in this game eons ago and witnessed this game's opening.
I'll be honest, I only discovered this game recently, after seeing @SegaLordX cover it - and god damn. Track, after track, after track... It just gets better and better! So, when I needed some extraordinary background music, there was only one place to go! I can't imagine how amazing it must have been to fire Thunder Force IV up, back in the day!
man, big thank you for this video. i was a die hard sega kid after i got my genesis. i had a super nes too but always loved my sega way more. i would buy games for the genesis but just rented snes games lol. mainly cause i loved segas boxes. i have nostalgia and get good feelings even from the really bad western games made using the gems driver lol. had to edit this after the full video: never played gauntlet on genesis, i had no idea its music was that badass, holy crap, i'm blown away. why do you not have a million subs, your editing and research... wow man, i'll be keeping a close eye on your channel. 10 out of 10 video.
Thank you for such a wonderful comment! And thanks for sharing your nostalgic memories, as well - that energy is what drives me to create almost all of my videos, and I'm extremely glad you enjoyed this one so much. And as for Gauntlet IV, I agree, 💯! I hadn't actually heard of the game until I saw @SegaLordX cover it. The gameplay isn't the most compelling experience for me, but music just goes so, so hard that I had to keep playing, lol. Thanks for the support, it just makes me more excited and motivated to keep making videos for us all to enjoy! 🙏🏻✊🏻
Also apart the technical details that explain the final result, from my personal perception it seems the sound of mega drive timbres have more layers making it more pleasant also in this area than super Nintendo, and nice to hear on headphones, while super nintendo had a more muffled sound which could be explained by the use of samples.
Thank you for the recommendation! I just had a listen, and wow - there are some moments that would only have been possible on the Mega Drive chip. Awesome!
So many thoughts! Excellent episode, first off. As you’ve probably experienced, following the composers’ compositions will lead you to some incredible places! As someone who was there at the time, I can say you’re 100% correct about the quality floor on the SNES was so much higher. FM synthesis has always been extremely difficult, and the sample-only nature of the SNES was considered a revolution and a godsend at the time. Pay no heed to other comments here stating the contrary. Lastly, you owe it to yourself to check out Matt Furniss and Hiroshi Kawaguchi, as well as Tim Follin’s work on the unreleased Time Trax. Furniss’ best was as good as the best of the Japanese composers; check out Daffy Duck in Hollywood, James Bond: The Duel, and Puggsy to start. Kawaguchi was a peerless arcade god (Space Harrier, Outrun, and After Burner), but check out Sword of Vermilion and Rent-a-Hero on the MD. Cheers! Oh and PS: check out the soundtrack to Herzog Zwei. One of the best!
How much exposure have you actually had to amazing SNES soundtracks though? What about NES and Turbo Grafx 16? Some of my all time favorite soundtracks can be found on all four of those systems. The most expressive and versatile from a technical perspective though is definitely the SNES. You're not going to get anything like Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2 on the other three.😊
This is a great video and I’m a huge fan of the Mega Drive sound and music, for me the game that sold me on the Mega Drive was the original Streets of Rage a friend’s house and i couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I thought wow this is incredible and it left a huge impression on me. It’s sad that a few awful sounding games on the system destroyed its audio legacy but in the right hands the Mega Drive sounds amazing with some truly amazing soundtracks that were produced such as Castlevania Bloodlines which has some of the nicest FM instruments I’ve heard on the system and another great soundtrack on the system is Gauntlet which is one of those “how did they do that?”moments, a truly incredible soundtrack and game overall.
I still love the music from the first Toe Jam & Earl, Earthworm Jim, Streets of Rage 2, Shinobi III and others. Unforgettable tracks in these games. Also I recommend the channel of Savaged Regime who produces covers on a real YM2612 chip and really shows what it's capable of :) He made the soundtrack for the Mega Drive game Xeno Crisis (2019), really awesome drum & bass/ambient/metal.
Adventures of Batman&Robin, Comix Zone, Golden Axe 3, Shining Force, Splatterhouse 3, Mega Turrican, Warlock (I don't care what anyone says, that intro theme on the Genesis version sounds so much better than the SNES one), Gargoyles, and of course, every single one of Treasure's games
It's also technically challenging to make good SNES music. Recording and playing samples at first glance seems easier than programming FM. But on SNES you have to deal with limited memory and an extremely slow method of loading samples along with the tuning and loop point quirks. To really push it, then you have to look into manually programming the DSP and some of the advanced features, which actually includes being able pair channels for fm synthesis.
@@TheNatCav3 Thanks. These days I focus on the pc engine mostly. I think it has the most unused potential of the 3. I'm working on a new demo and might have some new videos on the channel soon.
Holy moly, well... Damn. I just watched it, after reading this comment, and wow... I am speechless. I think I saw about three thousand things that I thought was impossible on the Mega Drive - and that incredible music you mentioned, to boot! What an incredible experience, thank you for mentioning it!
Koshiro Yuzo's work on the Streets of Rage series is the best on the Mega Drive. And David Wise' work on the Donkey Kong Country series is the best on the SNES. I enjoy both of them immensely, but I acknowledge Koshiro San's works as the more technically impressive.
The Genesis sound chip is good but it lacks a few important things like Reverb and Chorus, which makes it sound less than ideal when it should sound as good as many 1980's FM synths (same chip sometimes). But, I don't view the SNES SPC700 to be on the same level as the YM2612. The SPC700 is vastly superior in every way. The SPC700 can even create FM using tiny wave samples then reiterating them quickly the same way Roland did in some synths to save money on memory. But since the SNES can play samples, that means it is better suited for game music. FM is great for use as instrumentation which could be sampled and used in the SPC700. I thought Strider on the Genesis had outstanding composition and use of synthesis.
Sadly, I never had a Sega Megadrive or a Super Nintendo, I was more a "Computer" family, so I went from C64 to Amiga 500, then to PC (though I purchased my own N64 during that time, so technically, was that my first console??). But when I went to my friends house, who had a Megadrive, I used to love playing games like Streets of Rage (I was always a Double Dragon fan at the arcades, so always had soft spot for beat 'em ups!.... though when the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles arcade game came out, I was all over that!... sorry, getting side traccked). But always loved the sound effects and music on the Megadrive, things like Sonic (obviously), World of Illusion and of course Hero/Ninja Turtles. I remember seeing that Michael Jackson wrote music for one of the Sonic the Hedgehog games, I think his "Stranger In Moscow" was originally written as an end credits for one of the games. Another great video that brought back some good memories! :D Oh, and Happy New Year! :D
I'm eternally gutted that I don't have any nostalgia for the Commodore computers, lol. The C64 was a beast, that belted out some absolute bangers - maybe I can dive into that, at some point! But thank you for coming back, I'm happy that you enjoyed the video, and that we are able to keep enjoying awesome things!
Music on the Genesis/Mega Drive was and still is, a beast when it's put in the hands of people with the knowledge of what FM and PSG can do. That's when the system could soar musically in just about any genre. Take for example, Master of Monsters. People don't usually associate the Genesis with orchestral music, but I defy anyone to listen to Master of Monsters and not feel the orchestral nature and emotion being brought to life. Are the samples life-like? No. But is the music emotive, rich and orchestral feeling? Hell yes. Gauntlet IV had the same vibe, and the likes of Alisia Dragoon did as well. Even Devilish, a so-so Breakout clone with music that's better than the game, pulled it off. Sure, the system was more or less better at other genres, but if someone wanted to, they could push it into the orchestral and classical genres with some fantastic results.
Honestly, I'm blown away. I had never heard of Masters of Monsters, but wow. What a beautiful, tasteful FM soundtrack. I'm going to play the game, just so I can experience the music as it was intended - thank you for the recommendation!
@@TheNatCav3 You're quite welcome. It was one of those games and that arrived without much fanfare, since it was in a genre that was very underrepresented on the system (especially in America). It got some ads in magazines and a review or two, but it just... came and went. I picked it up on a whim at a game store called Gamers, thinking it was a completely different game than what it turned out to be (I thought you controlled the beasts during battles, since I wasn't familiar with turn-based strategy games). It's gets damn hard and it's not always that great graphically, but it's deep, complex, has multiple characters to use (each with different beasts to summon and evolve), fun, and wonderful to listen to as you try to best the CPU.
Dunno about the 'sound floor' thing on the SNES. Just like the Mega Drive, some games sounded good, some sounded great, and a great many sounded terrible. IIRC Nintendo provided a starter set of generic audio samples in their development kits; many developers didn't even bother to replace them with their own, as they were kind of supposed to do.
You should,ve mention that the 6th channel can be used aa a 8bit cac to play 8bit pcm samplez. The psg chip could play 4bit pcm samples with some clever tricks. While the snes sound chip could do it all digitally. But sadly most audio sampless are just cut and highly compressed so it no longer sounds twice the same. But limitations meets creation.
Here’s is the thing: FM was and is an 80s thing. It references and retrieves the 80s more than just about any other sound technology. In the 90s in the west, anything 80s was increasingly and quickly deemed old hat, and that 90s invention, “cheesy”. That wasn’t the case in Japan. The eighties continued in earnest much longer there, with only a bit thinning and interference from the west, in the first half of the decade. In general the Japanese had little idea about, or interest in grunge or any other warmed over, re-bottling of already established ideas. FM was low status in the west. But was the marker of expensive hardware in Japan. X6800 and PC-88 just to mention two. There’s was a lot more expertise in using and mastering FM in Japan too. Just listen to City Pop and Techno kayō for the massive massive talent present in Japan, doing work on FM hardware.
Some Mega Drive model 2 variants sounded pretty bad, MD sound emulation up until 2010-ish was pretty bad, still is lacking btw., AT Games clone machines had horrible MD sound emulation and were produced and sold for more than a decade.
I guess this explains why I loved the Genesis music more than the SNES. The SNES sounded a lot more artificial, sometimes muffled, like it was being played on a stereo locked in the bathroom. While the Genesis was much clearer. However, I hated the GEMS era of Genesis music, it all sounded the same: lazy and uninspiring. Genesis soundtracks that really did it for me were Streets of Rage, Outrun 2019, Galaxy Force II, and Dragon's Fury. There are a lot more but these really put the Genesis on top when it came to chip tunes.
You are welcome... Lot's of games used the 2 soundchips, like streets of rage 2, thunderforce IV, also sonic the hedgehog... That's why some games look richier in sound than others, apart of the composers of course, but you can tell there are more instruments added... Nice video. Just subscribed... 😃@@TheNatCav3
@@RetroGames4KAnd as I am sat here in your beautiful country, waiting for a bus to take me into Sevilla, I checked out some of the awesome content on your channel and have subscribed back! Gracias!
I should've subscribed after the GoldenEye soundtrack video, thankfully this one got recommended too. Better late than never. Anyway, I've always preferred the FM and PSG chip tunes of just about anything else over the SNES's samples. The music rarely felt like it "fit" to me.
Good SNES music sounds like you have an orchestra in your room Bad SNES music sounds like you have an orchestra holed up in the nearby bathroom and are hearing its echoey, distorted musical runoff. Good Mega Drive music sounds like the absolute peak of the "chiptune" concept. Bad Mega Drive music sounds like farts. Just farts.
@@TheNatCav3 And whirlwind. The old soundtrack was incredible. Great video btw the way. Thank you for making it. As a kid in the 80s and 90s I loved video game music. Graphics were average because of technology but Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 Got me loving music. The Sega Mega drive took it to next level for me coming from a master system lol ruclips.net/video/ce1L8AHSFqo/видео.html
Peoole always crap on the music of this console, and I will never understand that. I understand that there were a handful of games on the system that had bad music because the developers didn't know how to properly use the sound chip (i.e.: they used a piece of software called G.E.M.S., which you mentioned), but the overwhelming majority sounded fantastic, because the devs actually knew how to use the hardware. I actually grew up with one of these consoles, despite the fact that I was born quite literally as close to the end of the 90's as I could have been (Nov. '99). I mainly played the classic Sonic games, and those are just some examples of music that sounded wonderful. Yeah the DAC didn't sound that great, but overall, this soundchip was capable of great things. Another gripe I have with the chip is that the limited number of channels meant that sound effects had to cut out certain channels of the music, but still, it works pretty good for what it was.
Very fair point re the limited number of channels and the SFX, as that definitely impacts how we experience the music, when playing the game. But on the whole, I agree that the poor reputation is not deserved - how could it be, when there is so much greatness?!
One thing that always bothers me about these types of videos is the insistence that the audio of the Genesis is on par with the SNES from a technological standpoint. That is complete fanboy delusion. Look! There are tons of amazing soundtracks that I love on the NES and Turbografx-16 but it would be absolutely ridiculous for me to claim the sound tech is on par with what is inside the SNES even in the most capable hands. Only the Genesis gets this type of outrageous exaggeration. The SNES sound system could simply do much more than what the Genesis is capable of. That doesn't mean I don't love the soundtracks to plenty of Genesis games. The most talented musicians were doing some really difficult technical wizardry on the high end of SNES development too, including your beloved Yuzo Koshiro. Like I said. All of the top talent was going above and beyond to deliver impressive stuff on the SNES as well. It may have been more difficult to get Castlevania Bloodlines' version of Simon's theme to sound as good as it does on the Genesis, but it doesn't change the fact that it sounds objectively inferior to the original version found in Super Castlevania IV on the SNES. I agree the floor was higher on the SNES as even a moderately skilled individual could make their compositions sound okay, which wasn't the case with some of the ear bleedingly awful stuff scraped off the floor of the Genesis. The ceiling was also ultimately higher though too on the SNES and it took some extraordinary work to pull it off. Read up on what David Wise had to do to make Donkey Kong Country sound as amazing as it does, for example.
I was more into snes and it's music and found it superior to sega mega drive. as an example, Super Metroid, Mega Man X or Terranigma. real masterpieces. only music on the mega drive i really love is the music of all Sonic games. they surely knew how to do it right. but NOTHING beats Turrican 2 on the Amiga!!! 😍
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The Yamaha 2612 sound chip is a brilliant chip to produce music but like anything, the outcome comes from people who are able to compose and even program the compositions as well as the various sound drives produced by various developers. SEGA had their various revisions of SMPS, Konami had their own, SEGA of America helped produce GEMS. There's a lot of brilliant soundtracks that come from Europe from composers such as Matt Furniss and Jesper Kyd, games such as Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2 and Wiz n Liz (Matt Furniss), there's also Sub-Terrania, Red Zone and The Adventures of Batman and Robin (Jesper Kyd). GEMS which had a bad reputation brought some great soundtracks in my opinion such as Sonic Spinball, Comix Zone and The Ooze coming from SEGA of America and games such as Aladdin, Cool Spot, RoboCop vs the Terminator and Mick and Mac in Global Gladiators (these last four may or may not have been composed by Tommy Tallerico.)
Sonic 1 and 2 is an example where the composer did none of the sound programming to how we heard it coming from the game. Yes, Masato Nakamura composed the music for these games but let's take Sonic 1 where Hiroshi Kubota (credited as Jamita) took Nakamura's demo compositions and programmed them into the sound driver Sonic 1 was using.
Finally when you mentioned Streets of Rage and then Streets of Rage 2, I'm surprised there was no mention of Motohiro Kawashima who composed about 2 or 3 tracks and then also co-composed one with Yuzo for the game.
I'll be honest, I didn't even realise that Nakamura didn't program the music! I'll pin your comment, so that everyone can see this - and the work of Hiroshi Kawaguchi!
Thank you for your knowledgable and considered comment - I love constantly learning more, and getting to talk and celebrate this thing we all enjoy so much!
@TheNatCav3 I'm editing it as I got my names wrong. It was Motohiro Kawashima who helped with Streets of Rage 2 and 3. Hiro is the composer of OutRun.
@@jamiewilliamson9829 No problem! All I want to do with my videos is celebrate the things we all love and enjoy, so the more we can all do that, the better!
Yuzo Koshiro is a titan among us.
Not just composing the music.
Not just designing the patches.
He had nothing to start with.
_Nothing_
He wrote his own comparing and programming tools himself on the his 8bit computer that came with a similar Yamaha OPN FM Synth.
In assembler.
On which he composed the music and used that to create the Z80 Assembler required to drive the YM2612 in the MegaDrive.
That's beyond Mozart
You're now up with DaVinci.
And most of it was inspired by everything coming out of the British dance scene, you can hear various chart hits in every track from SOR2.
Glad I also grew up with the Mega Drive music. Particularly love that gritty sound.
You can't imagine Thunder Force IV or Street of Rage 2's music on the Super Nintendo any more than you can Chrono Trigger or Donkey Kong Country's on the Genesis. The real takeaway is that we didn't really know how good we had it back when every console had its own signature sound.
Preach. What a great time to have been a gamer! 🎵🎶🕹️
Yuzo Koshiro was taught to play piano as child in the 70s by Joe Hisaishi, composer on most of Hayao Miyazaki's films.
whoa, i did not know that!
Oh wow
And his sister drew all the characters on the streets of rage series. 😅
Many of Koshiro's compositions on the Bare Knuckles series are pure euro dance ripoffs, tho...
@@Zazalahyene Inspired more so. Heavely inspired. I think it's cool you hear it back in soundtracks from inner city and such...good life. Awesome. Maybe not that origenal but still very cool. It was orgenal enough to call it it's own. Motohiro kawashima was more orginal in his tracks. Both where a killer duo.
I feel sword of vermilion needs a mention when it comes to awesome mega drive music. Shit goes hard
One of the greatest soundtracks on the Mega Drive is ''Lemmings'' and it's sad that it never gets a mention on videos like these. It's soundtrack gave us the cleanest and warmest mix of FM and PSG working together by Sunsoft. It used big, beefy FM drums and used the reverb effect a lot to create a real good stereo sound. Another good one is ''Zero Wing'' an FM Metal soundtrack where it literally sounds like Steve Harris is playing bass on it from Iron Maiden in fact a lot of the Cube Driver osts are gold on this system. ''Sagaia, El Viento, Sol-Deace, Snow Bros, Jewel Master and Gynoug'' are games with triple AAA soundtracks and arrangements.
Thank you for all those recommendations! I played Lemmings on PC, back in the day, so never experienced the Mega Drive music - but I'll add it to the list, along with the other games you mentioned! 🎵🎶👍
Lemmings on the Acorn Arc was my favourite version of the soundtrack. The megadrive was my 16bit console, and I loved it!!
It's the composition that counts not whatever dog shit sound chip you use. Once you have patches established it's not about the sound chip or platform as much as what you do with the established patches. There's absolutely nothing astounding about any of the Yamaha sound chips used by Sega.
It's the arrangements.
All this waffle about the complexity of the chip is not really a thing when composing.
Very good video, but there's some huge omissions about the music on the Mega Drive:
It's already a cliché to say that American developed Mega Drive games sounds like crap but that is a bit unfair since there's very good music in some US Mega Drive Games like the first 2 Road Rash games, the Mortal Kombat Series, Kid Chameleon, the two Vectorman games, Toe Jam and Earl as you mentioned in the video (the elevator music between levels are pure samples only, no synth), Taz-Mania and the two X-Men games are good examples of awesome soundtracks on the Mega Drive by US developers. The X-men 2 Clone wars soundtrack was composed (and programmed by) Kurt Harland, the lead singer of Information Society.
However, the biggest omissions in this video are the European Mega Drive games, specially because you are from Europe yourself. The European developers did an awesome job on the YM2612 too in games like Chuck Rock, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Battletoads and Battletoads & Double Dragon, Aladdin, Donald in Maui Mallard, and Flashback, just to name a few. And, of course, Red Zone, Sub-Terrania and The Adventures of Batman and Robin, three games by the awesome composer Jesper Kyd, who also push the limits of the YM2612 to a whole new level.
Thank you for the comment! I'll pin it, so that everyone can see these awesome soundtracks and games that you have mentioned. 👍🏻 The more people that get to hear and play great games, the better! Thank you for the contribution. 🙏🏻
@@TheNatCav3 Thank you, please, indulge me by allowing me to mention more awesome mega drive soundtracks in general.
Hitoshi Sakimoto wrote his own (awesome) sound driver for the YM2612 and it shines in every game he composed and/or rearranged for the Mega Drive: Two Crude Dudes, Captain America and the Avengers, Midnight Resistance, Devilish, Verytrex and others. Even Double Dragon II sounds very good since it uses his sound driver but by a different composer.
Motoi Sakuraba is another composer that was very skilled on the YM2612. Notable soundtracks from him and Wolfteam (his company) are El Viento, Sol Deace, Arcus Odyssey, Granada and Earnest Evans.
Treasure, the company founded by ex Konami employees, did an amazing job in Gunstar Heroes.
And speaking of Konami, pretty much anything by them on the Mega Drive sounds amazing.
Anything by Technosoft, really, those dudes were awesome composers that also were very skilled programming the YM2612.
Quackshot and Castle of Illusion by Shigenori Kamiya.
The Shinobi trilogy: Revenge of Shinobi, Shadow Dancer and Shinobi III.
Super Fantasy Zone by Naoki Kodaka at Sunsoft. By the way, Sunsoft is/was another developer full of awesome tracks in every console in which they released games.
Capcom (in fact, an outsourced developer) did a very good job with the Mega Man Willy Wars soundtrack. Unfortunately, Street Fighter 2 Special Champion Edition is just an ok soundtrack and the Super Street Fighter 2 soundtrack sounds awful.
@@JonGallon You need to start pumping out video game music content on your channel! Thank you for the awesome recommendations, and for sharing your knowledge!
True. Not a word lied about that. Some knew how to work with the gems stuff and others didn't. Comix zone is an example of good work with the gems driver.
The SNES Sony chip was made by Ken Kutaragi... Who later lead in the PlayStation project.
Great video, fantastic choices. I get chills listening to the Megadrive - I still have and use mine frequently!
So many beautiful songs on this console! Thank you for this great video.
There is also a very important point between Japanese musicians and Westerners, a lot of musicians from europe and US were trained with Amiga or Atari computers and both systems offer Tracker styles music using samples or midi music. But in Japan chip music was developed with different computers, like MSX or PC88 (and often geared toward arcades machine) using MML (Macro Music Language) a type of Midi approach but with a lot of flexibility to command your sound chip allowing incredible nuances for your sounds (if you know how to do it) while using nearly no memory space compare to samples in tracker.
Also the Megadrive was derived from the System 16 arcade PCB from Sega. and as you mentioned used this incredible Yamaha chip and was like a small DX7 synthesizer in our hands.
Truly a marvel! 🤩
Thanks for stopping by! I'm glad you enjoyed the video, and that we could spend a bit of time celebrating this thing we all love! 🎵🎶🙏
That's not really true, before the Amiga/ST, there was the C64 & Spectrum (amongst other 8 bit machines) that had sound chips that required real programming skill with very limited memory, the C64's SID effectively created the "chiptune".
Fantastic video, even though there was no mention of the music of Ecco the Dolphin, which is sublime. This video brings back so much nostalgia. Love it.
You're right, that is a great soundtrack! There's just too much awesome music on the Mega Drive/Genesis!
Evidently, Novotrade created their own sound driver based on an early version of GEMS.
Ecco definitely has the Pink Floyd feel they were going for.
Thank u nat for the video
im fanboy of sega from 90s from africa morocco
Thank u for the flavor of some sega ost's that still in our ears years from 90s i still remembre my 1st time having our beloved sega megadrive playing s.o.r and sonic all the night me and my big brother what memories it is exchanging games for free with others boys of the city in morocco meeting them in arcade stores or stores of games schools ......
btw stores are not officiel at that time in morocco just used cartgridge consoles exported from europe in those stores untill playstation comes with officiel stores
Wow, thank you for sharing these beautiful memories!
Aw man I am totally with you. I had a megadrive,a SNES and an Amiga back in the day and I loved the differences in sound capabilities on all three systems. I will always love the unique FM sounds the megadrive could create.the first streets of rage is still my favourite game music.
We'll be jamming to the music from Streets of Rage forever! 🎵🎶
The music and level design of Sonic 2 and 3 had a life long effect on me
The 16 bit days gave me some of best memories.
@@Shannon-ul5re I'm right there with you. 🙏🎵🎶
Really nice and well produced video! Love me some FM synth. The two Sparkster games on MD and Snes is my goto example of what is essentially the same soundtrack but arranged to make optimal use of each consoles strengths.
Nice - thank you for the recommendations, I'll check them out! And I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
My all time favorite soundtrack is Burning Force, for Mega Drive. The game isn't great, but the soundtrack is absolutely amazing! I love it until this day! Another absolutely great soundtrack is Gaiares. Really fantastic. The Super Nintendo has really good soundtracks (for example, Super Castlevania IV) but most of time I enjoy more soundtracks from Mega Drive.
Great video!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! And I haven't played Burning Force, nor Gaiares, but they're going on the list!
Gaiares Soundtrack is a staple of my childhood. I can still sang them from memory. So catchy.
Mega Turrican soundtrack is also an absolute banger.
@@BlindTrustProject you should try the Universal Soldier soundtrack. It's got some really interesting tunes. Funnily enough, the SNES version of the soundtrack seems a little worse.
@@ribenasquashUniversal Soldier is actually a bastardized port of Turrican 2. If you want to hear some truly amazing music from the same composer (Chris Huelsbeck) on the SNES check out Super Turrican 1 & 2 as well as Jim Power in the Lost Dimension 3D. Mega Turrican on the Genesis doesn't sound bad either, but it shares a number of tunes with Super Turrican and that game definitely sounds superior.
@@davidaitken8503 I really enjoyed listening to the Universal Soldier soundtrack. The company The Code Monkeys made both version but the snes version didn't get released.
"Some, but not all, tracks were composed by Chris Hülsbeck. This game was originally a port of Turrican 2, but had the license slapped on at literally the last stage of development." - vgmrips
Gotta love that YM2612 FM synth.
Preach. 🎶🎵🙏
Love and grew up with the mega drive too great video 👍
Thank you for stopping by! 👍
I love the way multiple square channels sound together like a primitive reverb on the SN76489 and interact with the YM2612 sounds so much! It makes chords sound so massive!!
Man this video gave me such good vibes. All the memories of hanging out playing some Sega Genesis have really been conjured back up and I just got to thank you for the Nostalgia shot! I don't know about you or anyone else, but I could go for a part 2 to this video.
Thank you! I really loved making this video, so part two is definitely possible!
11:14 The Mega Drive can, in fact, produce music like Final Fantasy 3/6. Not that they didn't have their strengths as platforms, but it wasn't an incompatibility that prevented music like that existing.
The ending theme on Sonic 2 is just so absolutely perfect after the climax of the final battle. A few hours of game play and not frigging dying, to get this amazing chilled out rendition is a hell of a moment.
Got this video recommended to me and, being a big Genesis/Mega Drive fan, was quite pleased. 👍
Thank you, this makes me very happy to read. 🙏🤘
I was a Christmas 89 guy with my Genesis and I will always love the Ghouls n' Ghosts sound track. I especially loved the theme for level 2. Also Sword of Vermillion had a great sound track. So many great memories of that console... I still have my "tower of power" (Model 1 Genesis with the Sega CD and 32x)... Love it!
Mate, that was a great video, I really enjoyed it. I love the Megadrive and yeah, that includes the banging tunes it's capable of producing.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! And btw, your username and display pic are so good that I had to go and show my girlfriend, lol. 😎 The first video on my channel is me just nerding out to T2, if you'd like a laugh.🤭
@TheNatCav3 Cool, I'll check it out, I love T1 & T2, they're some of my favourite films.
Thank you for this video. Since the nineties, I've became obsessed with Mega Drive's music. Those tones are the very core of early advanced videogames, from the arcade of late 80s to the console gaming of the early 90s, which I consider the peak era of gaming. I've been so obsessed at the point that today I produce even some kind of chiptune music through some VSTs on my workstation, specifically the YM2612 simulations. I make music as Glitch Dreamer. Sorry for the intrusion, I'm here just for sharing my experiences with some other people. 👾 (subscribed)
Thank you for coming to share your passion!
I need a YM2612 AUv3 for iPad so bad!
Well done. A high quality video with high quality sound. Thx. You got a new subscriber.
Thank you 🙏🏻
Thunder Force 4 has one of the best soundtracks on the Mega Drive for sure. It even uses the PCM channel to play Voice Samples when you collect power ups or "1 UPs" The main reasons for companies avoiding using loads of PCM samples is because of their large size and static nature.
6:30 "the floor for the music on the super nintendo was much higher." I disagree. It's very challenging to make clear audio instruments on the snes and it's more difficult to achieve multitimbrality and expression. The sound drivers were equally challenging to program.
Fair point! I guess that, even with all the compression necessary to get the samples small enough to fit into memory, it's still relatively straightforward to create a sample of a real instrument that sounds pleasant (versus programming a delicious sounding FM instrument). But I absolutely agree that the beautiful, clear audio output of the Mega Drive compares very favourably against the more muffled, warm output of the Super Nintendo! Thank you for your comment - I'm always eager to learn more, and discuss the things we all enjoy so much! 🙏🤘
@@TheNatCav3 The SNES uses pitched samples, not to be confused with wavetable as found on the PC Engine. This can result in detuning or simply going out of tune. The need to load samples into the memory through a slow bus could cause crackling and loading routines were a challenge for sound drivers on the SNES. Engineering a sample to 4KB can be a challenge if the audio engineer does not have experience in this type of digital music production. I think the floor for SNES music is a touch lower than that of the Genesis, even including GEMS games.
Anyone can load a few crunched Fairlight samples into a snes and get something that doesn't sound gash.
The floor was deffo higher for the snes. Mostly what held inexperienced developers back was sound sample quality. Not all sound tracks needed to be masterpieces.
@@videogamesandfilm6821 you can't load a stock sampled instrument into the snes.
It will need serious re-engineering.
Yes sample quality is the one and only issue when dealing with samples.
Even today, fast ram is limited with samplers. The OP-Z has something like literally 32MB of storage and it costs £300+.
Engineering samples is a skill few had. Why not check out the soundtrack to Gun Force. A game by Dimps studio who clearly did not find it "easy" to just "dump in some samples".
This sentiment as stated by you and this video is utter bunkum.
That's why most SNES music lacks depth or a high enough quality sample to support the soundtrack.
It's not "just" lacking a bit of quality. The quality is too low to have an impact and serve the tune.
Other soundtracks to consider with a version on both system is Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure and Universal Soldier.
mega drive 2 will always be one of happiest memories of my childhood
Great video!
Thank you!
Spot on! Great video!
Thank you!
This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen
If that's even ten per cent true, you're already being too kind - thank you!
thats an understatement. i never understood why MD and snes sounded so different. i understood they had different chips but never knew why they sounded worlds apart.
4:49 The PSG and it's various copies were in EVERYTHING
brilliant video my friend! documentary quality...
You're very kind, thank you - and I'm really happy you enjoyed the video!
Fantastic. Subscribed! You know, with all the work being done on the Genesis/Megadrive in the modern homebrew scene I think a follow up to this video would be excellent. If you really want to go deep into the weeds, there are even websites with chiptune competitions like Battle of the Bits which explore all kinds of sound chips, and what some of those composers can produce is just mind blowing.
In any case, this video is very well done and I quite enjoyed it. I hope you make more like it in the future :).
Thank you for the very generous and kind comment! I just spent some time looking through the Battle of the Bits website, and my mind is completely blown. There are so many clever, passionate, creative people doing amazing things - thank you for hooking me up! 🎵🎶
@@TheNatCav3 Absolutely! Keep up the good work dude :).
The Krisalis sound driver could do great stuff😊
I'll check out some of the games! Thank you for the info!
I love Matt Furniss’s work, it’s often really funky and quite recognisable in style. He did his own sound design, he was pretty good at FM programming. Some of my favorites from Matt are The Second Samurai and Alien 3. Appearantly his system was based on an Atari ST that he used to compose the Midi on.
@@dykodesigns Indeed, Matt Furniss is one the best! Always loved his bass lines 😁
@@dykodesignsI'm glad you mention Furniss. Also a big fan of his MD work!
amazing video, instasubscribed! Seriously, the Megadrive was capable of so much magic in the right hands and you pointed exactly why it happened
@@losalfajoresok Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the video, and thanks for subscribing! 🙏👍
Brilliant video - I’ve only briefly looked into how music was developed for 16-bit systems (and it was mainly Snes music) so this look at how the hardware was used to create some of the most defining music from my childhood and teenage years was eye (or should that be ear) opening.
I’ve always enjoyed the Sega MD music and have a few soundtracks on vinyl, but that extra level of understanding how the music was not only composed but then implemented on the system just adds a whole other level of appreciation. Great video! Cheers!
Thank you for saying, I'm glad you enjoyed the vid (and the music!) 🤘🙂↕️
I had the same WOW effect about sound with my first megadrive game Sonic1. Love Star light zone music, from Sonic 2 Aquatic ruin, Streets of rage1, especially the iconic intro music. And one detour to PC music - for me, most memorable music was in game Ascendancy. So rich, deep and atmospheric.
Star Light Zone was the one that stuck out for me, too! I remember reaching it for the first time, and my brother said, "This next level has amazing music" - and it has stuck with me ever since!
If you love Aquatic Ruin, you might enjoy my cover/arrangement! 🎶Check if out here, if you're interested: ruclips.net/video/NdkvWm1mFS8/видео.html
Good video, thank you. I'm surprised GleyLancer did'nt get mentioned, in my opinion it is the absolute pinnacle of Mega Drive music - perhaps graphics too.
Hydrocity zone act 2 is my absolute favorite song of the entire 16bit generation
+1 for this. Absolutely epic.
Hell yeah! It is an extraordinary piece of music! 🎵🎶🤘 If you're interested, here is the link to my arrangement of it, that I use at the end of the video: ruclips.net/video/ZXYk0sR1rU8/видео.htmlsi=Ri8mwI8URZFpyALc
@TheNatCav3 i have an hour of driving to do this morning and I will do this listen to your arrangement! Thank you!
@@kinorai Nice one! Just promise to keep to the speed limit, once it drops! 🚗 🎶🎵
@@TheNatCav3 😬😬😬 I already told the police that you would pay for my speeding ticket... Because in a sense, it's your fault! 😜😜😜
People don't even understand that sonic 2 is like the best game for the saga Genesis one of them anyway😊
Sonic 2 ♥️
The BGM you use is from Thunderforce IV. The entire soundtrack is just, f**king, amazing. My jaw dropped when I first popped in this game eons ago and witnessed this game's opening.
I'll be honest, I only discovered this game recently, after seeing @SegaLordX cover it - and god damn. Track, after track, after track... It just gets better and better! So, when I needed some extraordinary background music, there was only one place to go!
I can't imagine how amazing it must have been to fire Thunder Force IV up, back in the day!
man, big thank you for this video. i was a die hard sega kid after i got my genesis. i had a super nes too but always loved my sega way more. i would buy games for the genesis but just rented snes games lol. mainly cause i loved segas boxes. i have nostalgia and get good feelings even from the really bad western games made using the gems driver lol. had to edit this after the full video: never played gauntlet on genesis, i had no idea its music was that badass, holy crap, i'm blown away. why do you not have a million subs, your editing and research... wow man, i'll be keeping a close eye on your channel. 10 out of 10 video.
Thank you for such a wonderful comment! And thanks for sharing your nostalgic memories, as well - that energy is what drives me to create almost all of my videos, and I'm extremely glad you enjoyed this one so much.
And as for Gauntlet IV, I agree, 💯! I hadn't actually heard of the game until I saw @SegaLordX cover it. The gameplay isn't the most compelling experience for me, but music just goes so, so hard that I had to keep playing, lol. Thanks for the support, it just makes me more excited and motivated to keep making videos for us all to enjoy! 🙏🏻✊🏻
It just makes me feel good. So true. Music is real magic.
@@PonderSmoke860 🙏🎵🎶
Like and subscribed. Thank you for the awesome trip down memory lane.
My pleasure - thanks for stopping by!
Also apart the technical details that explain the final result, from my personal perception it seems the sound of mega drive timbres have more layers making it more pleasant also in this area than super Nintendo, and nice to hear on headphones, while super nintendo had a more muffled sound which could be explained by the use of samples.
0:19 My grandpa has the same rug, it's nostalgic
Biohazard Battle played through an actual sound system is flat out amazing.
Thank you for the recommendation! I just had a listen, and wow - there are some moments that would only have been possible on the Mega Drive chip. Awesome!
So many thoughts! Excellent episode, first off. As you’ve probably experienced, following the composers’ compositions will lead you to some incredible places!
As someone who was there at the time, I can say you’re 100% correct about the quality floor on the SNES was so much higher. FM synthesis has always been extremely difficult, and the sample-only nature of the SNES was considered a revolution and a godsend at the time. Pay no heed to other comments here stating the contrary.
Lastly, you owe it to yourself to check out Matt Furniss and Hiroshi Kawaguchi, as well as Tim Follin’s work on the unreleased Time Trax. Furniss’ best was as good as the best of the Japanese composers; check out Daffy Duck in Hollywood, James Bond: The Duel, and Puggsy to start. Kawaguchi was a peerless arcade god (Space Harrier, Outrun, and After Burner), but check out Sword of Vermilion and Rent-a-Hero on the MD. Cheers!
Oh and PS: check out the soundtrack to Herzog Zwei. One of the best!
They have all been added to the list! Thank you for such a kind and considered comment, and for some awesome suggestions! 🎶🎵🤘
Streets of rage 2 has the best music in any game on any system
8:32 - 100% aggree with you.👏👏👏👏
I love the sound of the megadrive my all time favourite console so distinctive
Preach ✊
I have no nostalgia for either console and the Genesis is more expressive to me. They both do sound amazing in their own way though.
How much exposure have you actually had to amazing SNES soundtracks though? What about NES and Turbo Grafx 16? Some of my all time favorite soundtracks can be found on all four of those systems. The most expressive and versatile from a technical perspective though is definitely the SNES. You're not going to get anything like Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2 on the other three.😊
Perfect video!
@@shishiri1 Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! 🎶🎵
This is a great video and I’m a huge fan of the Mega Drive sound and music, for me the game that sold me on the Mega Drive was the original Streets of Rage a friend’s house and i couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I thought wow this is incredible and it left a huge impression on me. It’s sad that a few awful sounding games on the system destroyed its audio legacy but in the right hands the Mega Drive sounds amazing with some truly amazing soundtracks that were produced such as Castlevania Bloodlines which has some of the nicest FM instruments I’ve heard on the system and another great soundtrack on the system is Gauntlet which is one of those “how did they do that?”moments, a truly incredible soundtrack and game overall.
Preach! We'll be jamming to Streets of Rage forever!
Chemical plant zone. The best.
Sorry by the SNES always sounded flat to me. Like muffed and clamped in its frequency range
Sorry, I must add that the Gems audio tools were the biggest crime
I still love the music from the first Toe Jam & Earl, Earthworm Jim, Streets of Rage 2, Shinobi III and others. Unforgettable tracks in these games. Also I recommend the channel of Savaged Regime who produces covers on a real YM2612 chip and really shows what it's capable of :) He made the soundtrack for the Mega Drive game Xeno Crisis (2019), really awesome drum & bass/ambient/metal.
I'll check him out! Thank you for the recommendations!
Adventures of Batman&Robin, Comix Zone, Golden Axe 3, Shining Force, Splatterhouse 3, Mega Turrican, Warlock (I don't care what anyone says, that intro theme on the Genesis version sounds so much better than the SNES one), Gargoyles, and of course, every single one of Treasure's games
Amazing recommendations - thank you!
It's also technically challenging to make good SNES music. Recording and playing samples at first glance seems easier than programming FM. But on SNES you have to deal with limited memory and an extremely slow method of loading samples along with the tuning and loop point quirks. To really push it, then you have to look into manually programming the DSP and some of the advanced features, which actually includes being able pair channels for fm synthesis.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insight! You have some fascinating content on your channel, as well!
@@TheNatCav3 Thanks. These days I focus on the pc engine mostly. I think it has the most unused potential of the 3. I'm working on a new demo and might have some new videos on the channel soon.
Have you heard the soundtrack for Overdrive 2 on the Mega Drive? I'm surprised you didn't play a bit because it's crystal clear and mind blowing!
Holy moly, well... Damn. I just watched it, after reading this comment, and wow... I am speechless. I think I saw about three thousand things that I thought was impossible on the Mega Drive - and that incredible music you mentioned, to boot! What an incredible experience, thank you for mentioning it!
20:34 This transition 🧘♂️❤ 🏙️ 🤜🏼
Thank you for noticing! I'll be honest, when I first cut that together, I did get goosebumps... 🤭 So much awesome music to celebrate!
Midnight Resistance music needs a mention
Loved your video
❤🙏🏻
Koshiro Yuzo's work on the Streets of Rage series is the best on the Mega Drive.
And David Wise' work on the Donkey Kong Country series is the best on the SNES.
I enjoy both of them immensely, but I acknowledge Koshiro San's works as the more technically impressive.
Two absolute masterpieces!
MegaDrive music has aged much better. It had the worst and best. The best is still clean.
That is true. the compressed samples of the SNES do not hold up today in a lot of cases.
12:53 Dora had a Ple-thora
The Genesis sound chip is good but it lacks a few important things like Reverb and Chorus, which makes it sound less than ideal when it should sound as good as many 1980's FM synths (same chip sometimes). But, I don't view the SNES SPC700 to be on the same level as the YM2612. The SPC700 is vastly superior in every way. The SPC700 can even create FM using tiny wave samples then reiterating them quickly the same way Roland did in some synths to save money on memory. But since the SNES can play samples, that means it is better suited for game music. FM is great for use as instrumentation which could be sampled and used in the SPC700. I thought Strider on the Genesis had outstanding composition and use of synthesis.
Thank you for such an informed, considered comment!
Sewer Surfin' on Turtles was, definitely, better on the Mega Drive.
Chemical Plant Zone goes so hard. 🤘😈🤘
Sadly, I never had a Sega Megadrive or a Super Nintendo, I was more a "Computer" family, so I went from C64 to Amiga 500, then to PC (though I purchased my own N64 during that time, so technically, was that my first console??). But when I went to my friends house, who had a Megadrive, I used to love playing games like Streets of Rage (I was always a Double Dragon fan at the arcades, so always had soft spot for beat 'em ups!.... though when the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles arcade game came out, I was all over that!... sorry, getting side traccked). But always loved the sound effects and music on the Megadrive, things like Sonic (obviously), World of Illusion and of course Hero/Ninja Turtles.
I remember seeing that Michael Jackson wrote music for one of the Sonic the Hedgehog games, I think his "Stranger In Moscow" was originally written as an end credits for one of the games.
Another great video that brought back some good memories! :D
Oh, and Happy New Year! :D
I'm eternally gutted that I don't have any nostalgia for the Commodore computers, lol. The C64 was a beast, that belted out some absolute bangers - maybe I can dive into that, at some point! But thank you for coming back, I'm happy that you enjoyed the video, and that we are able to keep enjoying awesome things!
Music on the Genesis/Mega Drive was and still is, a beast when it's put in the hands of people with the knowledge of what FM and PSG can do. That's when the system could soar musically in just about any genre. Take for example, Master of Monsters. People don't usually associate the Genesis with orchestral music, but I defy anyone to listen to Master of Monsters and not feel the orchestral nature and emotion being brought to life. Are the samples life-like? No. But is the music emotive, rich and orchestral feeling? Hell yes. Gauntlet IV had the same vibe, and the likes of Alisia Dragoon did as well. Even Devilish, a so-so Breakout clone with music that's better than the game, pulled it off. Sure, the system was more or less better at other genres, but if someone wanted to, they could push it into the orchestral and classical genres with some fantastic results.
Honestly, I'm blown away. I had never heard of Masters of Monsters, but wow. What a beautiful, tasteful FM soundtrack. I'm going to play the game, just so I can experience the music as it was intended - thank you for the recommendation!
@@TheNatCav3 You're quite welcome. It was one of those games and that arrived without much fanfare, since it was in a genre that was very underrepresented on the system (especially in America). It got some ads in magazines and a review or two, but it just... came and went. I picked it up on a whim at a game store called Gamers, thinking it was a completely different game than what it turned out to be (I thought you controlled the beasts during battles, since I wasn't familiar with turn-based strategy games). It's gets damn hard and it's not always that great graphically, but it's deep, complex, has multiple characters to use (each with different beasts to summon and evolve), fun, and wonderful to listen to as you try to best the CPU.
Dunno about the 'sound floor' thing on the SNES. Just like the Mega Drive, some games sounded good, some sounded great, and a great many sounded terrible. IIRC Nintendo provided a starter set of generic audio samples in their development kits; many developers didn't even bother to replace them with their own, as they were kind of supposed to do.
it's not hard to go out and record samples, especially if your profession is music. Plenty of underground Amiga developers did it back in the day.
Hyperstone Heist has a lot more detailed graphics in a lot of areas.
You should,ve mention that the 6th channel can be used aa a 8bit cac to play 8bit pcm samplez.
The psg chip could play 4bit pcm samples with some clever tricks.
While the snes sound chip could do it all digitally.
But sadly most audio sampless are just cut and highly compressed so it no longer sounds twice the same.
But limitations meets creation.
And if you REALLY kick the hardware in the nuts it can play 4 samples at the same time.
Here’s is the thing: FM was and is an 80s thing.
It references and retrieves the 80s more than just about any other sound technology.
In the 90s in the west, anything 80s was increasingly and quickly deemed old hat, and that 90s invention, “cheesy”.
That wasn’t the case in Japan.
The eighties continued in earnest much longer there, with only a bit thinning and interference from the west, in the first half of the decade.
In general the Japanese had little idea about, or interest in grunge or any other warmed over, re-bottling of already established ideas.
FM was low status in the west. But was the marker of expensive hardware in Japan. X6800 and PC-88 just to mention two.
There’s was a lot more expertise in using and mastering FM in Japan too.
Just listen to City Pop and Techno kayō for the massive massive talent present in Japan, doing work on FM hardware.
I have always preferred the Genesis/Megadrive sound over the SNES. Not that the SNES sounds bad, far from it just not quite as good.
10:33 - Composers: Masayuki Nagao and Michael Jackson.
Finally, someone gives the Devilish its due.☆
When I found that tune in Deflemask, it blew my mind to pieces - I had to include it in the video! 🎵🎶🤘
Sakimoto's work is godlike...shame you didn't include anything from the "Master of Monsters" OST.
The GEMS sound engine was a mistake...
Some Mega Drive model 2 variants sounded pretty bad, MD sound emulation up until 2010-ish was pretty bad, still is lacking btw., AT Games clone machines had horrible MD sound emulation and were produced and sold for more than a decade.
I guess this explains why I loved the Genesis music more than the SNES. The SNES sounded a lot more artificial, sometimes muffled, like it was being played on a stereo locked in the bathroom. While the Genesis was much clearer. However, I hated the GEMS era of Genesis music, it all sounded the same: lazy and uninspiring.
Genesis soundtracks that really did it for me were Streets of Rage, Outrun 2019, Galaxy Force II, and Dragon's Fury. There are a lot more but these really put the Genesis on top when it came to chip tunes.
The megadrive/genesis/snes were all outdated af. That being said, I loved my genesis. Still have it and a library of carts.
It was the best generation
5:51 ...The Mega Drive had 10 channels, not 6. 6FM channels YM2612 + 4 channels from the SN76489 chip. Both combined made greater tunes.
Fair point! I did not express that properly, so thank you for the correction.
You are welcome... Lot's of games used the 2 soundchips, like streets of rage 2, thunderforce IV, also sonic the hedgehog... That's why some games look richier in sound than others, apart of the composers of course, but you can tell there are more instruments added... Nice video. Just subscribed... 😃@@TheNatCav3
@@RetroGames4KAnd as I am sat here in your beautiful country, waiting for a bus to take me into Sevilla, I checked out some of the awesome content on your channel and have subscribed back! Gracias!
MK1 on the Megadrive has a better soundtrack than the arcade. There I said it.
Limitation???? Dude! You need to see MSX 1 !
Fair point!
The 1st Batman game had good mudic
No disagreement from me! And I know that is one of the favourites of @SegaLordX!
I should've subscribed after the GoldenEye soundtrack video, thankfully this one got recommended too. Better late than never. Anyway, I've always preferred the FM and PSG chip tunes of just about anything else over the SNES's samples. The music rarely felt like it "fit" to me.
Thanks for stopping by, again! 🎵🎶🕹️🎥
If you think final fantasy 3 has good music you should listen to music from Final Fantasy 2😊😊
Good SNES music sounds like you have an orchestra in your room
Bad SNES music sounds like you have an orchestra holed up in the nearby bathroom and are hearing its echoey, distorted musical runoff.
Good Mega Drive music sounds like the absolute peak of the "chiptune" concept.
Bad Mega Drive music sounds like farts. Just farts.
You sir deserve a very heartfelt SMASH on the subscribe button!
Thank you! 🙏👍
💯 agreed
🙌
Shinobi 3 soundtrack is incredible
Listen to solitary
I'm gonna go and put it on right now!
@@TheNatCav3 And whirlwind. The old soundtrack was incredible.
Great video btw the way. Thank you for making it.
As a kid in the 80s and 90s I loved video game music. Graphics were average because of technology but Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 Got me loving music.
The Sega Mega drive took it to next level for me coming from a master system lol ruclips.net/video/ce1L8AHSFqo/видео.html
I much prefer the C64 SID sound
Peoole always crap on the music of this console, and I will never understand that. I understand that there were a handful of games on the system that had bad music because the developers didn't know how to properly use the sound chip (i.e.: they used a piece of software called G.E.M.S., which you mentioned), but the overwhelming majority sounded fantastic, because the devs actually knew how to use the hardware. I actually grew up with one of these consoles, despite the fact that I was born quite literally as close to the end of the 90's as I could have been (Nov. '99). I mainly played the classic Sonic games, and those are just some examples of music that sounded wonderful. Yeah the DAC didn't sound that great, but overall, this soundchip was capable of great things. Another gripe I have with the chip is that the limited number of channels meant that sound effects had to cut out certain channels of the music, but still, it works pretty good for what it was.
Very fair point re the limited number of channels and the SFX, as that definitely impacts how we experience the music, when playing the game. But on the whole, I agree that the poor reputation is not deserved - how could it be, when there is so much greatness?!
One thing that always bothers me about these types of videos is the insistence that the audio of the Genesis is on par with the SNES from a technological standpoint. That is complete fanboy delusion. Look! There are tons of amazing soundtracks that I love on the NES and Turbografx-16 but it would be absolutely ridiculous for me to claim the sound tech is on par with what is inside the SNES even in the most capable hands. Only the Genesis gets this type of outrageous exaggeration. The SNES sound system could simply do much more than what the Genesis is capable of. That doesn't mean I don't love the soundtracks to plenty of Genesis games. The most talented musicians were doing some really difficult technical wizardry on the high end of SNES development too, including your beloved Yuzo Koshiro. Like I said. All of the top talent was going above and beyond to deliver impressive stuff on the SNES as well. It may have been more difficult to get Castlevania Bloodlines' version of Simon's theme to sound as good as it does on the Genesis, but it doesn't change the fact that it sounds objectively inferior to the original version found in Super Castlevania IV on the SNES.
I agree the floor was higher on the SNES as even a moderately skilled individual could make their compositions sound okay, which wasn't the case with some of the ear bleedingly awful stuff scraped off the floor of the Genesis. The ceiling was also ultimately higher though too on the SNES and it took some extraordinary work to pull it off. Read up on what David Wise had to do to make Donkey Kong Country sound as amazing as it does, for example.
6:59 and 12:15 - Both are poor examples. In both cases the majority of the SFX in them are not FM synthecized, but PCM sampled sounds.
I was more into snes and it's music and found it superior to sega mega drive. as an example, Super Metroid, Mega Man X or Terranigma. real masterpieces. only music on the mega drive i really love is the music of all Sonic games. they surely knew how to do it right. but NOTHING beats Turrican 2 on the Amiga!!! 😍
All those SNES games you said are masterpieces, as well! So many amazing games and experiences!