Megadrive/Genesis Appreciation Thread

[Mu5]

I can tell you all games are playable on the original media. Nuff said.

Thanks for your help, really appreciate it. No honestly, thanks. Didn't know that. Boy, thanks for the info youve made my day

[vertigo]

I think what he means is, this isn't really the place to ask about that, is it?
Plus the emulator authors might know, so you're more likely to find out by checking out their site, or a PSP open source forum or something.

[wheelaa]

Thanks for your help, really appreciate it. No honestly, thanks. Didn't know that. Boy, thanks for the info youve made my day

Glad I could help

[vertigo]

By the way, a bit of an oddity here: The European version of Thunder Force 4 seems to differ from the other versions. For some reason (probably syncing) before the actual intro it has three little enemy ships that fly off into the screen. They don't appear in the Japanese ROM that I have or the US Lightening Force ROM either that I've seen.
I've noticed with TF4 that the music plays at the same speed as the NTSC versions, but the action is slower if you're playing in 50Hz, so you get more tune but slower action.
But the intro is a bit of a mystery to me. I find it strange that they added that tiny little extra bit in.

[Yakumo]

Those 3 ships are on the Saturn version and also on the Japanese original I had. Maybe you have a beta ROM?

Yakumo

[vertigo]

Really? Interesting.

[Leon Retro]

I have always thought some of the best MD sound is found in the Sonic games. Sonic1 especially has clear crisp tunes that have a sound that for me has a totally different vibe to snes audio.

Imo the snes audio chip is better- but it's compositions and talent that counts , and both machines in the right hands play host to brilliant tunes. I always go on about one of my favourite MD games Biohazard Battle/Crying.. the music in this is totally intense.. it just complements the action perfectly!

At the end of the day I just like good tunes, regardless of the audio hardware. There are lots of old arcade games such as Bombjack and Ghosts'n'Goblins, that probably have really archaic hardware, but it's the talent of the musician that shines through!

I was watching GamerTV and they had an interview with some this Guy who's supposedly the best musician in the business I have watched him before and he's all for 5.1 Hollywood style music for games, and is always saying crap like " In the past people have had to put-up with simple bad quality audio in their games, but now they can have true Hollywood Movie quality stuff " - This type of ignorant bull**** pisses me off- but sadly it seems catchy videogame style music is going to become rarer and rarer!

[vertigo]

What you say about the Md chip: Yeh, on the one hand there is a group of games that have the happy bouncy instrument quality or the really high-class techno/cyber-rock i.e. Sonic, Fantasy Zone, Outrun, Revenge of Shinobi, Shadow Dancer, etc, but on the other hand there is so much low-grade mushy midi guitar or one note at a time stuff out there that it makes you wonder why there's such a huge gulf in quality. There often doesn't appear to be anything occupying the middle ground with the Megadrive.

Catchy videogame style music has been becoming rarer since Wipeout turned up and everyone thought the future was licensed music i.e. throw money at it and we don't have to get a music guy in and waste time, but there's been plenty of original music to go around even on disc-based systems, and with the people who've been around for a while, Nintendo, Sega, Konami, Namco, etc, that original music will never go away.
That guy sounds a bit deluded and obviously quite simply can't have been involved in the industry pre-mid-90s or can only be thinking about the Atari/NES generation otherwise his gaming memories would override the turd that slipped out of his mouth.
I'm pretty confident that there'll always be some recent game or other that gets its music stuck in your head while you're being dragged around the shops by the girlfriend.

[wheelaa]

What you say about the Md chip: Yeh, on the one hand there is a group of games that have the happy bouncy instrument quality or the really high-class techno/cyber-rock i.e. Sonic, Fantasy Zone, Outrun, Revenge of Shinobi, Shadow Dancer, etc, but on the other hand there is so much low-grade mushy midi guitar or one note at a time stuff out there that it makes you wonder why there's such a huge gulf in quality. There often doesn't appear to be anything occupying the middle ground with the Megadrive..

Agreed. But then imo that's just laziness on the progarmmers part, or just plain inablility. I mean the md is qute like that in terms of overall games I feel anyway. Lots of great games, lots of ****, little middle ground. Gunstar Heroes in one hand, altered beast in the other. If devs can't make a decent game chances are they're not gonna back it up with stonking sounds.I mean I can;t think of any **** md game with good music, but perhaps that's stating the obvious.

(Same goes for other consoles too though imo)

[muddy]

unfair to pitch Altered Beast against Gunstar Heroes.

Altered Beast was faithful to the arcade, just so happens the arcade was pants, and AB was one of the first games on the MD, unlike Gunstar Heroes. GS & Treasure had a good dev period and could learn from Sega's updated libraries etc, as well as writing their own.

Pitching Gunstar Heroes against something like Rise of the Robots is more like it!

[Team Andromeda]

I really don?t get this hatred towards Alerted Beast sound.
The music and sound effects were great.
Everybody goes on about the voice (you all know the one , but he was ****ing old man, for **** sake. He was meant to sound like that.
The other sound samples were great, in-particular ?Welcome to Your Doom?

[Team Andromeda]

Western programmers always went for the same ****ty grainy sound on the Mega Drive with Sega US being one of the worst! I could never understand why magazines at the time would say **** like Desert Strike had an awesome title theme. Sounded like crap to me yet the magazines would give it something in the 90's.

Yakumo

To be fair Rob Hubard music was great for the most part. John Madden is one of the greatest tunes ever, and the MD sound effects are better than those found inthe Snes (really impact) and also the ToeJam&Earl guys must have pushing that soundchip to its limits

[vertigo]

To be fair Rob Hubard music was great for the most part. John Madden is one of the greatest tunes ever, and the MD sound effects are better than those found inthe Snes (really impact) and also the ToeJam&Earl guys must have pushing that soundchip to its limits

This gets me thinking too. Those games that you think of as distinctly Megadrive games, such as Desert Strike and Madden seem so much better on the Megadrive. The SNES versions you always feel could have been converted better than they ended up, especially with regard to weak sound, not bothering to upgrade graphics or use the pad's extra buttons intelligently, etc.

For some reason I just remembered Strider too. Hard, loud and full of bugs, but we still played it over and over. And got repeatedly told to turn it down too. BINGBINGBINGBINGBINGBINGBINGBINGetc "[Name] will never leave [place] aliiiiive" became an in-joke between me and a mate around that time.

[Yakumo]

To be fair Rob Hubard music was great for the most part. John Madden is one of the greatest tunes ever, and the MD sound effects are better than those found inthe Snes (really impact) and also the ToeJam&Earl guys must have pushing that soundchip to its limits

Rob Hubard may have made good "tunes" but the instruments used are crap. Sounds like 99% of stuff by western developers. They just can't use the MD sound chip. Now Virgin made good use of it in Aladdin I also don't agree about Toejam & Earl since that is very basic drum beats and samples. That's not actually using any talent regarding sound programming like Technosoft does.

Yakumo

[moonwhistle]

The Megadrive's limited sound capabilities produced some of the most catchy and memorable game scores. I think it was prescislely this limitation that spurred designers to be so creative. The soundtracks to games like Hellfire, Alisia Dragoon, Gleylancer, Elemental Master, Devil Hunter Yohko....are timeless and the Snes although having a technically superior sound chip cannot compare imo.