Why did genesis and SNES music sound different?

[ShawnD1]

I utterly disagree. While there were a few iconic tracks that have managed to stick around, I'd much rather listen to the soundtrack from Persona 4 than Dragon Quest 4...

I can't remember any songs from any games I've played recently. Do games like Halo 3 or Fallout 3 even have music? GTA has actual songs from the radio so that doesn't really count as being an original soundtrack.

The most recognizable songs were on the Genesis and Super Nintendo. Sonic 3, Mario RPG, Zelda.
Even Nintendo has stopped putting effort into this. Search youtube for "twilight princess music" and see if you can find anything that resembles music.

 

[ZimZum]

I miss cartridge based consoles. No scratched discs that become unreadable $50 costers. No disc drive errors, no load times. You could beat the hell out of those cartridges and they just kept going.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I can't remember any songs from any games I've played recently. Do games like Halo 3 or Fallout 3 even have music? GTA has actual songs from the radio so that doesn't really count as being an original soundtrack.

The most recognizable songs were on the Genesis and Super Nintendo. Sonic 3, Mario RPG, Zelda.
Even Nintendo has stopped putting effort into this. Search youtube for "twilight princess music" and see if you can find anything that resembles music.

One of the big things that makes a game for me is the music. The first two Halos had great music. I didn't like the third one as much. Really its no different today than it was then, or has ever been. Some games have good music, some suck.

 

[ShawnD1]

I miss cartridge based consoles. No scratched discs that become unreadable $50 costers. No disc drive errors, no load times. You could beat the hell out of those cartridges and they just kept going.

I'm not entirely sure why we got away from cartridges. I bought the PS1 instead of the N64 and it had the worst load times imaginable. Even today we're stuck with games that have horrendous load times. fallout 3 - about 40 seconds on xbox, about 80 seconds on the PS3. My video response was loading from a PC hard drive and it was 17 seconds. From a Flash drive would probably be even faster. I can't imagine having to wait even 17 seconds for a Sega Genesis game to load. That would be completely unacceptable back then.

 

[reallyscrued]

I can't remember any songs from any games I've played recently. Do games like Halo 3 or Fallout 3 even have music? GTA has actual songs from the radio so that doesn't really count as being an original soundtrack.

The most recognizable songs were on the Genesis and Super Nintendo. Sonic 3, Mario RPG, Zelda.
Even Nintendo has stopped putting effort into this. Search youtube for "twilight princess music" and see if you can find anything that resembles music.

The damn truth.

Genesis music was best of all time. MK III, Golden Axe, Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, (Super) Hang on...(remember that 6-Pak?)

SNES was good too, Contra III, Super Mario World, Zelda, yada yada.

I liked last console gen's music though.

 

[gorcorps]

I miss cartridge based consoles. No scratched discs that become unreadable $50 costers. No disc drive errors, no load times. You could beat the hell out of those cartridges and they just kept going.

Color me crazy, but I remember many cart based consoles had problems too. I think it took a few years before the original NES started to develop problems.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I'm not entirely sure why we got away from cartridges. I bought the PS1 instead of the N64 and it had the worst load times imaginable. Even today we're stuck with games that have horrendous load times. fallout 3 - about 40 seconds on xbox, about 80 seconds on the PS3. My video response was loading from a PC hard drive and it was 17 seconds. From a Flash drive would probably be even faster. I can't imagine having to wait even 17 seconds for a Sega Genesis game to load. That would be completely unacceptable back then.

Cost was a huge factor.

 

[ShawnD1]

Color me crazy, but I remember many cart based consoles had problems too. I think it took a few years before the original NES started to develop problems.

The NES was the Xbox 360 of its day. It was a piece of shit from day one because it was horribly designed. The contacts in the system and the game made a very weak connection, or as Silent Rob would say, "a butterfly in China flaps its wings and fucks up my NES."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59fychinSAc

When I got a Sega Genesis, it blew me away how it didn't screw up. The games would work 100% of the time. SNES and N64 were also flawless when it came to getting the game to run on the first try. There really isn't anything magical about this; flash media like USB drives and Sega games will almost always work as long as it makes a solid connection. One of the biggest selling points for these newer SSD hard drives is how they're incredibly reliable and will still work after being thrown against the wall.

 

[ZimZum]

Cost was a huge factor.

True I dont know how much cartridges cost to produce but I'm sure they cant compete with the ability to stamp out game discs at under $1 a piece. But on the other hand there is no greater piracy deterrent than the cartridge.

 

[ZimZum]

The NES was the Xbox 360 of its day. It was a piece of shit from day one because it was horribly designed. The contacts in the system and the game made a very weak connection, or as Silent Rob would say, "a butterfly in China flaps its wings and fucks up my NES."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59fychinSAc

When I got a Sega Genesis, it blew me away how it didn't screw up. The games would work 100% of the time. SNES and N64 were also flawless when it came to getting the game to run on the first try. There really isn't anything magical about this; flash media like USB drives and Sega games will almost always work as long as it makes a solid connection. One of the biggest selling points for these newer SSD hard drives is how they're incredibly reliable and will still work after being thrown against the wall.

My Genesis has been stepped on, dropped, had untold beverages spilled on it, been kicked (both accidentally and on purpose) and to this day after 15+ years of abuse it still works as well as the day I got it.

 

[darkswordsman17]

True I dont know how much cartridges cost to produce but I'm sure they cant compete with the ability to stamp out game discs at under $1 a piece. But on the other hand there is no greater piracy deterrent than the cartridge.

Yeah, especially since those CDs could hold 650MB and it was feasible to package multiple discs together even. The N64 cartridges topped out at 64MB, which hurt music, video, and textures especially hard. To add insult to injury, Nintendo wouldn't budge on licensing fees (practically couldn't since they had very slim margins on the cartridges in the first place). But yeah piracy was low, although I don't think piracy was nearly as well developed on the consoles back then. I mean, look at the DS, it uses cartridges but that hasn't done anything to limit piracy. Cost is definitely still the primary factor.

I think it will be interesting to see what they do with the next systems. I see Sony sticking with Blu-Ray. I think DVD will continue, just because I don't see digital only distribution quite ready for consumers, but I think we'll see a push toward it. Ideally, I think at least 2GB of DDR5 paired with 8+GB of onboard flash (with a fast low latency bus) would be great so that they could load a lot of the game very quickly. Have some larger, much cheaper solution for storage. Or maybe just let you save and stream everything off your computers/devices/memory cards (please Microsoft, just go with SD cards...)/external drive. Probably dreaming, but we can hope.