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Game Sound, the 7800, is it really a big deal?


Underball

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Both Fatal Run and Midnight Mutants had the same developer, Sculptured Software. Atari never actually developed their own games for the 7800, it was all farmed out to contract developers.

 

I think Jinks was done internally. The high score table is full of people who worked there.

 

Sculptured Software actually did develop Midnight Mutants, according to GDRI.

 

Peter Adams, the programmer, was one of the co-founders of Sculptured Software. According to this, he was the president of Radioactive Software. I don't know if he went off and started another company. Everyone else here appears to be from Sculptured Software. You'll see Radioactive and Sculptured mentioned on Eliminator Boat Duel for the NES.

 

I have Midnight Mutants listed as done by Radioactive Software, good catch on it being closely associated with Sculptured Software. It seem like this is another instance of multiple company names being basically offshoots of the same company.

 

Here's my current list of 7800 dev companies:

Ace of Aces			Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Crossbow			Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Double Dragon			Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
F-18 Hornet			Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Fight Night			Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Ikari Warriors			Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Kung-Fu Master			Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Pete Rose Baseball		Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Sentinel			Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Super Skateboardin		Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Title Match Pro Wrestling	Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Tomcat F-14 Fighter Simulator	Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment
Touchdown Football		Imagineering Inc/Absolute Entertainment

Alien Brigade			Sculptured Software
Commando			Sculptured Software
Dark Chambers			Sculptured Software
Fatal Run			Sculptured Software
Missing in Action (prototype)	Sculptured Software
Planet Smashers			Sculptured Software - James V Zalewski

Asteroids			GCC
Ballblazer			GCC?
Centipede			GCC
Desert Falcon			GCC
Diagnostic Cartridge		GCC
Dig Dug				GCC
Food Fight			GCC?
Galaga				GCC
High Score Cartridge		GCC
Joust				GCC
Ms. Pac-Man			GCC
Pole Position II		GCC
Rescue on Fractalus (prototype)	GCC
Robotron: 2084			GCC
Xevious				GCC

Basketbrawl			BlueSky Software
Klax (prototype)		BlueSky Software
Mat Mania Challenge		BlueSky Software
Mean 18 Ultimate Golf		BlueSky Software
Motor Psycho			BlueSky Software
Ninja Golf			BlueSky Software
Scrapyard Dog			BlueSky Software
Xenophobe			BlueSky Software

Choplifter!			Ibid Inc
GATO (prototype)		Ibid Inc
Hat Trick			Ibid Inc
Karateka			Ibid Inc

Impossible Mission		Man Development Corp/Computer Magic
One-on-One Basketball		Man Development Corp/Computer Magic
Summer Games			Man Development Corp/Computer Magic
Winter Games			Man Development Corp/Computer Magic

Donkey Kong			ITDC
Donkey Kong Junior		ITDC
Mario Bros.			ITDC

Jinks				US Gold
Tower Toppler			US Gold

Tank Command			Froggo Games
Water Ski			Froggo Games

Cracked				Robert Neve/Atari

Midnight Mutants		Radioactive Software/Pixcel Software Inc

Pitfighter (prototype)		Imagitec Design
Rampart (prototype)		Imagitec Design

Rampage				Spectral Dimensions

Barnyard Blaster		K-Byte - James V Zalewski??
Meltdown			?
Realsports Baseball		?
Super Huey UH-IX		?

 

I probably need to update a few entries though.

 

Mitch

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I always thought Winter Games & Summer Games were developed by Epyx. Jinks & Tower Toppler were done by Graftgold not US Gold who just published games, they may have been licensed through US Gold.

 

I am also pretty sure that Ballblazer and Rescue On Fractulas were developed by Lucasarts.

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I always thought Winter Games & Summer Games were developed by Epyx

 

Ballblazer and Rescue were done by Lucasfilm as you list.

 

Art Krewat (who posts here from time to time) ported the Epyx games for Atari. There's apparently pieces of CALIFORNIA GAMES as well!

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/156948-impossible-mission-update-and-pictures-and-other-ramblings/page__p__1925885#entry1925885

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Sorry no idea :(

 

I think the issue was from 1990 but can't be 100% sure but I remember the article well as they said how impressed they were with it.

 

I remember the article too, once reading it in the import section of a magazine shop. To this day, I regret not picking it up. GAUNTLET is a big mystery on the 7800 and any clues might one day lead to its discovery.

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Let's not make this another NES vs. 7800 thread, thanks.

Hi Mitch, the comparison is actually very relevant to the question, and I think that sound really does matter. Everyone remembers catchy NES tunes from Mario, Zelda, Contra, and that was a huge factor in that console war and also in how I remember the games of that generation. I'm not trying to stack the two against each other, I grew up with Nintendo and fell in love with Atari as an adult. But the fact remains that the NES used sound, however simple, in a way that the VCS/5200/7800 never did.

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Let's not make this another NES vs. 7800 thread, thanks.

Hi Mitch, the comparison is actually very relevant to the question, and I think that sound really does matter. Everyone remembers catchy NES tunes from Mario, Zelda, Contra, and that was a huge factor in that console war and also in how I remember the games of that generation. I'm not trying to stack the two against each other, I grew up with Nintendo and fell in love with Atari as an adult. But the fact remains that the NES used sound, however simple, in a way that the VCS/5200/7800 never did.

sorry, I was addressing Underball.

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To chime in on the original topic...

I do think sound is a big deal on any system.

It doesn't have to sound like a full orchestra, but any part of the video gaming experience that

makes it more immersive and allows you to get more "in the zone" of the game is important.

I think back to Wolfenstein 3D on PC, and how'd I'd nearly jump out of my skin when I'd hear "Achtung!"...

I used to (and still do) enjoy firing up Double Dunk or Squeeze Box on 2600 and hearing the intro tunes.

The theme to

on c64 is one of the best of all time.

 

At that end of the day, the audio is another tool that helps us enter and enjoy the worlds of the games we play.

At the very least it should not detract from the game's quality and or take us out of it, and at the best it

should help us enjoy the experience.

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To chime in on the original topic...

I do think sound is a big deal on any system.

It doesn't have to sound like a full orchestra, but any part of the video gaming experience that

makes it more immersive and allows you to get more "in the zone" of the game is important.

I think back to Wolfenstein 3D on PC, and how'd I'd nearly jump out of my skin when I'd hear "Achtung!"...

I used to (and still do) enjoy firing up Double Dunk or Squeeze Box on 2600 and hearing the intro tunes.

The theme to

on Atari 8-bit is one of the best of all time.

 

At that end of the day, the audio is another tool that helps us enter and enjoy the worlds of the games we play.

At the very least it should not detract from the game's quality and or take us out of it, and at the best it

should help us enjoy the experience.

 

Fixed that for you, C64 version is kinda sucky

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To chime in on the original topic...

I do think sound is a big deal on any system.

It doesn't have to sound like a full orchestra, but any part of the video gaming experience that

makes it more immersive and allows you to get more "in the zone" of the game is important.

I think back to Wolfenstein 3D on PC, and how'd I'd nearly jump out of my skin when I'd hear "Achtung!"...

I used to (and still do) enjoy firing up Double Dunk or Squeeze Box on 2600 and hearing the intro tunes.

The theme to

on Atari 8-bit is one of the best of all time.

 

At that end of the day, the audio is another tool that helps us enter and enjoy the worlds of the games we play.

At the very least it should not detract from the game's quality and or take us out of it, and at the best it

should help us enjoy the experience.

 

Fixed that for you, C64 version is kinda sucky

 

I like the c64 better, but everybody has their own opinions.

The 800 version is a little different, it's cool, there's just something about the c64 version I like.

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Wow, ACE magazine, I used to have all issues (50+), same with Total, Super Play and N64 magazine.

You always had to be so careful with magazines from Future Publishing, N64 magazine claimed that the N64 was the first console in the world with four control ports , and also the first ever console with analogue controls. How wrong can you be?

Basically, not the best resource material.

I still have all my Edge, which are kinda buggy but well readable.

And I got all Ultimate, that was a fun magazine

Ultimate.jpg

Edited by high voltage
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I think most of us can agree that video game music and audio is a big part of the experience.

I think if you read the thread back, it's pretty much an even split between people who care deeply and get angry or all worked up about 7800 game music being lackluster, and people who just enjoy the games as they are, and don't get so bothered by it.

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I think most of us can agree that video game music and audio is a big part of the experience.

I think if you read the thread back, it's pretty much an even split between people who care deeply and get angry or all worked up about 7800 game music being lackluster, and people who just enjoy the games as they are, and don't get so bothered by it.

Hi Underball, don't get me wrong, I understand the point of the thread completely. Whenever a new generation of games drops, people tend to discount previous efforts... it would be like saying that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for PS1 sucks because the PS2 is out now and has Vice City. It's a completely anti-retro gaming arguement. But you did bring up the issue of sound on the 7800, and the 7800 uses a sound chip from the VCS (I think), and sounds nothing like it's peers or even it's big brother the 5200. I didn't wish to insult anyone, but our dear old ProSystem can be a little, shall we say, hard on the ears....
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Kind of an aside from the sound update thread, this topic has been itching at me, so I have to ask:

 

Is sound on these old systems really a big deal at all? I don't get all the fuss. People saying things like "The sound of that port is bad, it totally throws the feel of that game off, I can't play it!"

 

I'm sorry, but this just sounds plain damn crazy to me. It's crappy 8-bit bloop-bleep sound effects. They're ancient video games. Unless there's a specific sound missing from a game that is supposed to alert you to something - who gives a flying fart? Sure, the newer systems with CD and DVD/Blu-Ray have made huge advances, but that's to be expected.

 

But pretty much every system in the golden era - 2600/5200/7800/NES/SMS/coleco etc. sound like unintelligible beep boop crap anyway.

 

and NONE of it affects gameplay at all. Donkey Kong doesn't suddenly become more difficult because the music has an F# in the wrong place because of TIA limitations.

 

You guys, I dunno. I'll take the updated versions and play them, sure. always fun to hack around with stuff, love it all. But all the whiney complaints. Do you guys even really like these games, or do you hate them?

 

Some days around here, I just can't tell.

 

Lots of issues and a ton up to personal taste: from the style of music liked to the type of arrangement preferred (ie some people like chiptunes much better in games than CD-DA or sampled audio and then there's a line that some prople draw between chiptune/synth and sampled audio too -like Amiga MOD being chiptune but General MIDI not), and then there's people who don't care that much about the music in general or the sound for that matter. And you have some who hate certain types of chip sounds, but not others: love POKEY, hate SID... and for different reasons, some being the types of music commonly used (SID being not arcade like -albeit it simulated some FM synth better than others- or the heavy use of arpeggios -not limited to SID, but the C64 was the most common platform in the US to get that -in Europe you had the same stuff on most home computers and several console examples -most of Codemasters' NES stuff is like that)

 

And then there's sound vs music... TIA was OK for sound effects in the mid/late 80s (not too good for samples, but reasonable enough to hack for how rarely they were used on consoles in the late 80s -though it became an increasing issue and the only console of handling it reasonably in realtime during gameplay was the NES, not just the DPCM channel but the support for interrupt driven PCM too -which the 7800 easily could have had with a POKEY on board, though it did have RIOT for interrupts too, the Master System had to use software timed code only and rarely did it very well).

 

For arcade games with little to no music, TIA was less of an issue, for games with lots of music (especially good music), it really hurt, not just for arcade fans, but for anyone who had access to contemporary ports on other consoles/computers to compare.

 

 

TIA was never designed for music, but purely SFX and the 7800 did have a fair bit more flexibility over the VCS due to the sheer amount of CPU time to actual give to sound compared to the cycle strapped VCS (let alone RAM limits), and indeed you do hear generally better stuff on the 7800 than VCS, but still pretty limited.

 

If it hadn't been for the low cost design and really limited development time constraints for the mid/late 1984 release, the 7800 could have been expanded in several areas quite feasibly, but that just didn't happen. (and the fact that there were already several thousand units completed or ready to be completed when the system was shelved meant it would not be attractive to modify it before the final release) If given the time, GCC probably wouldn't have gone with POKEY but kept going with the idea to embed audio hardware in MARIA... (or at least a much smaller, more fixed purpose chip) actually one thing Warner could have done to accelerate things would have been to provide GCC with the core logic documents on POKEY and maybe some engineering assistance as well (assuming the designers of POKEY were still there), take the audio block of POKEY as the basis for MARIA sound or a dedicated sound chip. (hell, even if they just took POKEY and extracted only the audio/interrupt logic and put it on a newer, smaller die, they could have retained all the sound and timer functionality as well as sticking it into a narrow 20-24 pin DIP, or 16 pins if they dropped the interrupt support and went pure audio only)

 

 

 

I mean there's a reason chiptune artists/enthusiasts exist... and sites like battleofthebits, 8bc, etc.

 

 

 

Hell, there's other conflicts between those who love to have in-game music and hate the overuse of "ambient" soundtracks or even overly cinematic in-game music (at least if it is mismatched with the pacing and gameplay). I know some homebrew game programmers who think that way. :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally I think a really good chip tune in a game can really improve it and make it more enjoyable to play. Then again I am a massive fan of chip tunes and can quite happily sit and listen to them for ages. :thumbsup:

Yep, but "good" is relative in terms of composition as well as arrangement, though there are some exceptions that cater to pretty much anyone cross system.

 

I think most people agree this one's pretty awesome on most/all of various platforms it's been arranged for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9STiQ8cCIo0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO4eL-_iR8E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSbTAqfuQIk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPg73WFemAA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO2w9OQ_o7Y

 

 

 

I think having the RIOT as a sound chip for a new console in 1984 (and 1986) hurt Atari but in retrospect think the technological limitations of an 80s game console are part of its appeal.

 

If the sound of the 7800 were "perfect", we wouldn't have the XM expansion module now would we? :cool:

RIOT is RAM, I/O, and Timer, no audio there (though the timer could help with CPU driven digital sample playback or other software audio effects via interrupts).

 

TIA handled the audio, video, trigger inputs (fire buttons), and potentiometers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bad sound doesn't necessarily make a game harder to play, but it can make it less enjoyable. I guess if you didn't grow up in that period it might all sound like crap, but there was definitely a range of quality in game sound even in the 8-bit era. There were definitely some games that had really distinctive and enjoyable sound.

 

Dan

Yep, sound and graphics both play a big role in making a game more enjoyable or a drag... a game with mediocre gameplay, fiddly controls, and average level design can be made into really "good" game with the right sound and graphics (not a perfect example, but many point to Donkey Kong Country for that, game design and gameplay is decent but not amazing and not perfectly tight either, but the sound/music and graphics/art pushed that to what it was by far).

Likewise you could have a game with amazing gamplay but crappy graphics and/or sound that drags it down.

 

Or the best or worst of both: a mediocre/poor game with sound/graphics to match or the rare game where everything is outstanding from game design to control to graphics to art to sound/music engine to the musical compositions themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm in the "grating sounds" bother me camp. The technical limits of the TIA didn't bother me in some circumstances. It was possible to make enjoyable sound and music with even that chip, IMO. I always loved the music of CALIFORNIA GAMES on the 2600 as a kid. I didn't mind the music in games like MIDNIGHT MUTANTS either.

 

But sounds not done well can be distracting. The PLANET SMASHERS intro comes to mind. Screechy, IMO.

SFX are generally OK on the 7800, but it's when music is pushed that it's really hard pressed. (hell, even in the chiptune scene, TIA music is pretty limited, though I think most cases try to push for VCS TIA use and not 7800 -and the latter offered a fair bit more potential)

 

Hell, there's very few TIA tunes even on botb:

http://battleofthebits.org/arena/Tag/tia/

 

This one's pretty impressive though: http://battleofthebits.org/arena/Entry/Lobbyists/3691/

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess when I was a kid it was more about graphics and gameplay for me. Sound was always kind of an afterthought.

 

It's just funny to see so many people bagging on something I never really noticed back then.

For me both is critical... that's what ruins some games for me, though I do tend to like some music/sound that other think is "bad". (Master System Double Dragon sounds pretty decent for example and I like a fair amount of Spinball's MD music OK)

 

Hell, they ruined the remakes of Tie Fighter and X-Wing that way too... they got makeovers using the fully texture mapped hardware accelerated X-Wing vs Tie Fighter Engine in the late 90s (along with higher polygon count models), and that's fine, but then they went and pulled all the neat dynamic MIDI from the originals and replaced it with a long (about 18 minutes iirc) generic compilations of a bunch of Jon William's Star Wars music... sure it's good music and fitting for the game's theme, but not the game itself... it ruins the atmosphere and engaging dynamics of the interactive MIDI music. I'm a bit partial to the soundblaster rendition of the music (partially nostalgia, but I didn't get Tie Fighter for DOS CD until a year or so ago... I had the win9x remade before that and the DOS CD X-Wing), but there's also support for a lot o other devices and general MIDI is pretty nice. (especially on Tie Fighter)

 

The game designers went through the trouble of not only making all new (often John Williams inspired) tracks for the games, but also making them fully dynamic with in-game action (Wing Commander did that earlier, not sure what game in the genre did it first). It's really hard to describe just how significant it is, from the heat of the action and the thrill of hearing the music shift when you get a kill or when you loose an ally/wingmate to that of calm to the heat of a dogfight and to the final victory theme that's your well-reward reward for success, and more than that.

 

The looping CD-DA ruined that experience... XvT lacked it too, but X-Wing Alliance brought it back full force, but this time using dynamically played tracks compiled from the movie scores, not looping audio, but select tracks matched expertly to different conditions and actions in-game. Good Times. :D

 

 

 

And hell, there's some games I wouldn't have even noticed if it hadn't been for the music, like Vapor Trail on the Genesis. It's a pretty neat game, and I like it (single player is a bit of a drag though), but I ended up taking interest because of the awesome music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHXru-sM_Ko

 

 

 

And then there's the haunting nostalgia from hearing the music (or sound in general) from games I grew up laying or watching my dad play. (especially NES as that's what he played most when I was really young)

Air Fortress in particular really hits me, Rolling Thunder to some extent, Codemaster's Quattro pack, and Xexyz jump to mind too... oddly thsoe more so than Mario or Zelda (he and I both played the latter much more)

Top Gun the 2nd Mission for that matter comes to mind too, and that's pretty awesome music in general. (Konami loved to push all the sound channels on the NES well, including DPCM -in that case percussion as well as slap bass)

 

We only had a handful of games when I was really little (never had a huge NES library back then... even now it's pretty sparse), so a few realy memorable games hit hard. (interesting that several of those are fairly uncommon/obscure/niche games)

Edited by kool kitty89
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2. not only was the sound chip a step down from the 5200 and Atari 8-bit computer line that used the Pokey chip, but the fact that developers could've added the chip to their carts and many chose not to created an uneven sound quality across the game library. Some games had much better sound than others, and those that had better, deeper sounds were those using the Pokey chip. So there's a sense of, I dunno...loss there. A pining for what could have been if only Pokey were included in the stock hardware.

The whole cart add-on thing was a bit excessive given POKEY was there (lower cost options with greater optimization would have been better, but even so they could have only used a full POKEY initially and later replaced it with a cut-down version with a smaller die an smaller package with lower pin count). Really though, slapping POKEY inside the 7800 (even if on a riser board) should have made more long-term sense (later added to the main board as consolidation progressed). Provisions for sound expansion are great to have, but certain things make more sense to include internally. (the idea of using POKEY in the interim is odd in a cost perspective as if even only 1 popular game used it, that would have basically negated the cost savings of leaving it out of the system, let alone multiple popular games)

 

I don't think Atari Corp ever ran out of POKEYs, so the sheer supply made it attractive even if it wasn't a cheap option... and if 3rd party publishing actually caught on, the small/cheap SN76489 probably would have been the first choice for on-cart (off the shelf on the mass market, very small and cheap chip) followed by the AY1913. Hell, the YM2149 Atari was buying from Yamaha may have been cheaper than POKEY for that matter. (albeit certainly not a hypothetical low cost sound only POKEY -or even sound+timer+interrupt POKEY)

 

You could also argue a standard sound add-on could be better than putting it on-cart only (at least for potential of more comprehensive add-ons -like the YM2413 offered for the SMS and MSX), a dedicated expansion port supporting such would have been nice, but short of that, using a pass-through form factor might have been OK. (like the planned high score cart -and the current expansion module)

That's actually something Atari Corp could have done to fix that mistake after the fact: introduce a simple expansion module to address early models lacking the features and include them standard on all others. (even from the low-cost standpoint it would have been a solid investment, except POKEY's interrupts would be useless, so that's one more thing that could be omitted in a possible redesign, for that matter they could have reasonably boosted RAM a fair bit too, though the addressing would be a bit off compared to if they'd included more RAM from the start: regardless, 8 kB should have been very affordable, an added 4k on cart and later models using a single 8k SRAM chip rather than 2 2k chips -saving board space and component cost)

 

 

And pretty much no developers got the choice in adding a sound chip as almost all games were Atari Corp published, so it was Atari's decision to make the cost sacrifice.

 

3. Again, it was a step down for those that had experience on 5200 and Atari 8-bit computers, but the console also was competing against NES and SMS, two consoles with better sound chips.

SMS is pretty weak, but certainly better than TIA for music, not really for SFX though. (NES is another story)

 

Was it all bleeps and boops? Sure. But there's a difference in quality in those bleeps and boops. Tinny or static filled bleeps and bloops lacking bass of any sort don't sound all that great compared to bleeps and boops that are less tinny, non-static filled, and have some amount of bass to them.

 

Of course, there's working within limitations to produce pretty good sound that matches the game (Midnight Mutants, IMHO, is a good example of this) and just being limited. I couldn't image Commando on the 7800 being all TIA sound, for instance, as part of the "appeal" of the chiptunes it uses is that bassy sound produced by the Pokey chip adding to, I dunno...some sense of danger or "seriousness" to the proceedings that reflects the fact that you're basically in a war zone. But Midnight Mutants uses the tinny sound of the Tia, as well as the less clear sound separation to create it's sense of whimsical ominousness. However, most games using just the TIA suffer because they either had better sound in the arcades (or other consoles or computers) or the developers didn't seem to use the limitations as a basis for providing sound that 'fit" the game.

 

Not all "better" sound chips produce sound that is "better" if one considers the milieu created in the game. Case in point: I've always dug the tunes used in Alien Syndrome for SMS (a very underrated game, disliked by some in part because it's not an arcade port but an SMS specific version using the arcade original as a basis). In Japan, the SMS (Mark III over there for a time) had an FM chip that had better sound separation, but playing Alien Syndrome via the Kega emulator (which reproduces the FM sound hardware very well) revealed to me that Alien Syndrome's "haunting" soundtrack on my US SMS is in fact created by the lack of the FM chip in the US console. Playing the game with the FM chip emulation enabled, the sound is too clear, and it has the effect of lessening how "deep" or "low" the bass sounds. It has better sound quality if simply taken on the level of being able to readily hear the different nuances of sound, sure, but the worse separation caused by the stock chip in US consoles "crunched" the sound in such a way that the bass...I dunno..."growls". The less clear sound quality makes it "dirty"..."dank"...dangerous sounding. It fits the game better, IMHO.

Yeah, there's some cases where limitations force some neat stuff, but many others where it makes poor sound more likely. The SMS's sound chip is really bare bones (square waves and fixed pitch noise -unless you sacrifice a square wave channel), the AY8910/YM2149 (Intellivision/Vectrex/ST/MSX/Spectrum128/CPC/mockingboard/various arcade games etc) was similar in being square only, but was significantly better due to 5-bit volume control (more important for sample playback hacks) 12-bit frequency rather than 10 (albeit POKEY is only 8-bit -plus additional octave shifting, or merging 2 channels to 16-bit res), more flexible noise generation, and a hardware ADSR envelope (the latter can be hacked as an additional non-square bass channel too). Actually a damn shame Sega didn't do like the MSX and use that chip in the SG-1000 from the start rather than copying the choice Coleco made. (should have doubled for joystick I/O as well)

 

Plus, the SMS didn't always get the most focus on the FM renditions... Out Run sounds a bit off (arguably better in PSG), Altered Beast sounds better in PSG in some respects, and then you've got stuff like R-Type and Double dragon which are pretty much universally better in FM, or Phantasy Star which is amazing in FM. (the chip the SMS used was pretty limited too, probably the cheapest/simplest FM chip Yamaha ever released, a cut-down derivative of the OPL2 Adlib used in PCs)

 

 

Most NES games that got down converted from the sound enhanced famicom ports (due to the stupid decision to remove the audio line on the cart slot) were not improved by that, but I think there are exceptions. I prefer parts of the Zelda soundtrack over the FDS version, more so the SFX than the music. (some really funky/unfitting sound effects in the FDS version, from doors in dungeons to boss roar/sounds among other things)

 

 

 

 

Well let's take a look at donkey kong junior for the 7800 and NES. the graphics and control are identical. but the sound for the 7800 really is unpleasant. don't get me wrong, I love the 7800. the NES had a limited sound range but it was pleasing to the ear, where as the 7800 wasn't very melodic, that's just my personal opinion.

Yeah, TIA was never intended for music and even POKEY had more emphasis on SFX, but ended up a pretty good music chip too. (in some ways better than the contemporary AY8910, more so for sound/noise capabilities and provisions that made software tricks much easier, both universally better than the bare bones SN76489 TI introduced -that was still much better for music than TIA though)

 

 

 

 

Let's not make this another NES vs. 7800 thread, thanks.

Hi Mitch, the comparison is actually very relevant to the question, and I think that sound really does matter. Everyone remembers catchy NES tunes from Mario, Zelda, Contra, and that was a huge factor in that console war and also in how I remember the games of that generation. I'm not trying to stack the two against each other, I grew up with Nintendo and fell in love with Atari as an adult. But the fact remains that the NES used sound, however simple, in a way that the VCS/5200/7800 never did.

The A8 manged it though, homebrew aside. (with homebrew there's a lot more too)

And I dare say that Pitfall II is a pretty good exception on the VCS (albeit added sound hardware ingeniously hacked in), though Pitfall II in general could fall into that category. A shame the crash (and some other complications) put an end to the plans for Crane's DPC ended with that one game. :( (might have even been interesting if they'd built onto that into a proper add-on for the VCS with plain ROM carts plugging into it)

 

 

 

The best example of in-game music on the VCS (or a commercial game using TIA in general) may be in Gyruss:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S08q8le7ajY

Still some issues from the limited frequency range (is it only 4-bits?) but pretty good nevertheless. (no SFX though, but a lot o Gyrus ports are like that)

 

Of course the 8A/5200 port sounds better... another one of the few pre-crash (or in-crash) examples of substantial music on a console. (Frogger comes to mind too, but Gyruss pushes the music further), and of course there's the awesome remixed of the NES remake of gyruss too. Incedentally, the arcade used the AY8910 sound chip mentioned above. (Intellivision, ST, Vectrex, MSX, etc)

Edited by kool kitty89
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I'm sorry, but this just sounds plain damn crazy to me. It's crappy 8-bit bloop-bleep sound effects. They're ancient video games. Unless there's a specific sound missing from a game that is supposed to alert you to something - who gives a flying fart? Sure, the newer systems with CD and DVD/Blu-Ray have made huge advances, but that's to be expected

 

As long as it sounds good I like it but I would say that those games that has awsome chipmusic in them are supperior to those games that has no music at all. It is funnier to play certain games when there is a good BGM in them.

 

But I do exceptions for games with crappy music, then it would have been better without the music

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The best example of in-game music on the VCS (or a commercial game using TIA in general) may be in Gyruss:

 

Still some issues from the limited frequency range (is it only 4-bits?) but pretty good nevertheless. (no SFX though, but a lot o Gyrus ports are like that)

 

I did not know that Gyruss were ported to the VCS. I must have that game. I hope it is'nt to expensive

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The best example of in-game music on the VCS (or a commercial game using TIA in general) may be in Gyruss:

 

Still some issues from the limited frequency range (is it only 4-bits?) but pretty good nevertheless. (no SFX though, but a lot o Gyrus ports are like that)

 

I did not know that Gyruss were ported to the VCS. I must have that game. I hope it is'nt to expensive

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=9&pub=5574883395&toolid=10001&campid=5336500554&customid=&icep_uq=atari+gyruss&icep_sellerId=&icep_ex_kw=&icep_sortBy=12&icep_catId=&icep_minPrice=&icep_maxPrice=&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg

 

Looks pretty affordable. (not super cheap, but not bad at all)

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As somewhat of an aside, if someone can compose a tune on the POKEY (maybe as part of the new XM unit) that matches the quality of something from the SID, then you'll get my attention. To be honest, I look forward to that day as I know the chip is capable enough.

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