Game Sack

[Barone]

One thing is the noisy guitar distortion, other thing is noisy on the keyboards and several other instruments...

Your ass can sound as you want but maybe you should try to accept that some people prefer a clearer and more stereophonic sound. "Weak" is also a very subjective term to begin with...
We don't need to start a flamewar, maybe we could just agree to disagree.
It's usually difficult to discuss about the PCE's holy grails since they seem to be overhyped to a godly level that does not allow any reasonable discussion...

[Kamahl]

Oh I'm perfectly fine with your opinion. I'm just telling you why I prefer the PCE version, that noise you hate for me makes it more raw and powerful.
By "weak" I mean "Symphonic Metal is weaker than Thrash Metal" kind of weak. Not weak in the "sounds worse" sense.

But calling it a stereo master system? Come on man, just listen to those 2 songs and tell me they sound the same to you.

[Barone]

Oh I'm perfectly fine with your opinion. I'm just telling you why I prefer the PCE version, that noise you hate for me makes it more raw and powerful.
By "weak" I mean "Symphonic Metal is weaker than Thrash Metal" kind of weak. Not weak in the "sounds worse" sense.

But calling it a stereo master system? Come on man, just listen to those 2 songs and tell me they sound the same to you.

I said "like a stereo Master System"... I was just referring to the 8bit-ish sound and then you chose to make a very unfair comparison, not me.


I think you could have compared the Dragon's Trap (Dragon's Curse) versions:

(redifermusic? hummm....)

[Kamahl]

But Wonderboy 3 sounds like crap on the PCE, I'd much rather listen to the sms FM version.
Even so, it still sounds substantially better than the PSG version. Certainly more than just a stereo version of it.

Even the SMS at it's best is miles away from what the PCE can do:


EDIT: Oh and yeah, it's Joe's music channel

[Joe Redifer]

Lords of Thunder is another discussion, but the Sega CD version mixing quality is light-years better than the PCE CD version.

It's not the mixing, it's the EQ. The Sega CD version has the drums too loud which is bad mixing. I don't like it when the drums overpower the regular music (that's why the JP version of Phantasy Star 2 sounds like absolute ass compared to the US version). The EQ on the Turbo version of Lords of Thunder is shrill and with very little bass. Neither version of the music is as good as it could/should be. The sound effects on the Sega version of horrendous compared to the Turbo version.

As for Wonder Boy III/Dragon's Curse, I much prefer the Turbo version compared to even the SMS FM version. I just don't care for the SMS FM sound. There are too few instruments to make it work and the percussion is ALWAYS horrible.

[Kamahl]

There are too few instruments to make it work and the percussion is ALWAYS horrible.

Gonna have to disagree on the instrument part. Games for the MSX with the MSX-Music addon (same soundchip) sound amazing, particularly Illusion City and Bombaman (homebrew).
It was just poorly used on the SMS.
Yeah the percussion is terrible, the chip is supposed to be used in 9 channel mode with another chip doing the percussion, otherwise it sucks.

[Joe Redifer]

And nothing else other than the SMS BIOS used 9-channel mode, correct?

[Kamahl]

And nothing else other than the SMS BIOS used 9-channel mode, correct?

EDIT: Actually, it still uses the shitty percussion mode, but it has the SN to help with more sounds.
EDIT2: Can't find the Bombaman FM OST on youtube , but here's some illusion city, still uses the percussion mode but uses it well:


Second song in particular (4:00+) is amazing.

This one actually has good drums, second song at 2:00+:

[Barone]

The sound effects on the Sega version of are horrendous compared to the Turbo version.

I think we all can agree about this.
In fact, MD has many more games with horrible sfx than PCE in comparison.

@Kamahl
Very good choice there.

[Joe Redifer]

Too bad we're not talking about the MSX, though, but the SMS which pretty much always had poor sounding FM.

[MrMatthews]

Gamer101, I honestly don't think you are capable of perceiving the tongue-in-cheek aspect of the show. No Polaroid HDTVs were actually used. We think it is ridiculous that Polaroid even makes TVs. Only high-end Sony HDTVs (LCD and CRT) were used in the making of this video and a SD Sony and Toshiba CRT. We clearly said that not all HDTVs are created equal and that some HDTVs have more lag than others. There was no bias. Please stop watching our videos, they are not for you. Thanks.

Since Joe's "real life" kept him from getting a new episode together this week, I've been revisiting some older moments of this thread. This HDTV episode reminded me of something that happened recently. I was watching a non-gamer friend of mine struggling through his kid's New Super Mario Bros Wii. After trying valiantly to get through one of the first desert levels, he reluctantly passed the controller over to me.

And holy shit, the lag was terrible! I know the Wii isn't the most bleeding edge of today's consoles, but I was still surprised by how prominent the lag was and how much more difficult it made the game. And yes, I still beat the level.

I really don't know why lag happens, but do they maybe have something hooked up improperly?

[gamevet]

Since Joe's "real life" kept him from getting a new episode together this week, I've been revisiting some older moments of this thread. This HDTV episode reminded me of something that happened recently. I was watching a non-gamer friend of mine struggling through his kid's New Super Mario Bros Wii. After trying valiantly to get through one of the first desert levels, he reluctantly passed the controller over to me.

And holy shit, the lag was terrible! I know the Wii isn't the most bleeding edge of today's consoles, but I was still surprised by how prominent the lag was and how much more difficult it made the game. And yes, I still beat the level.

I really don't know why lag happens, but do they maybe have something hooked up improperly?

The lag is caused by video processing within the television. If you're inputing a low-resolution image, the television (usually LCD or Plasma) has to upscale the image to that of the native resolution of the television's screen. If the television has cheap components (video processing), the lag becomes even more evident.

[Christuserloeser]

I really don't know why lag happens, but do they maybe have something hooked up improperly?

Probably composite instead of component.

Or they used component but forgot to set the Wii to 480p.




- Oh, aaand they probably have enabled all the video filters their TV offers when those should be deactivated for whatever channel they have hooked up their Wii to. Most TVs nowadays offer a "Game Mode" which should be enabled for that channel as well.


There still will be some form of lag even using component in 480p mode with all the TV's filters deactivated and its game mode enabled - but nothing anyone could possibly ever notice.

[Kamahl]

Too bad we're not talking about the MSX, though, but the SMS which pretty much always had poor sounding FM.

True but it's a shame, it's the exact same chip . Kinda like how most MSX WSG soundtracks sound better than PCE soundtracks, even though it's a weaker chip.

[tomaitheous]

I said "like a stereo Master System"... I was just referring to the 8bit-ish sound and then you chose to make a very unfair comparison, not me.


I think you could have compared the Dragon's Trap (Dragon's Curse) versions:
(videos)

I'm not out to convert people to love PCE music, but come on. Your example in the post proves just the opposite of your point. The PCE's renditions of the SMS PSG's musics are just so much more than just stereo SMS. SMS has single timbre square tones and week percussion; PCE has a huge range of tones and timbres (instruments) and more channels to play them to get a fuller sound. If you don't care for PCE chiptunes much, fine enough. But the comparison to a stereo SMS is just down right insulting. Comparing it to a stereo NES would insulting too, but definitely not as much as the SMS ;>_>

For my opinion; I'm not the worlds biggest PCE chiptune fan, but nor am I either for FM. But I'll take the PCE's renditions over the SMS FM renditions most of the time and in this example too. Also, I'd like to point out that the PCE has better hardware stereo separation than the MD. The MD only has full left, full right, or mono stereo panning per channel. The PCE has a two 4bit volume levels corresponding to left and right per channel. Just saying. When people prefer something, it usually involves some degree of conditioning as an influence. For a good amount of time during the later 16bit era and into the 32bit era, I didn't care for PCE chiptunes at all. They were inferior in the face of CD music for games. I actually felt the same way about Genesis FM too, but not as much as pce chiptunes (mostly because they lacked the 'bass' or bottom end of Genesis FM). It wasn't until the past 10 years that I started to acquire a taste for old pce and md chiptunes (outside the few game tracks that I loved for both systems) as well as other systems from around that era.