Which cartridge based console has the best music?

[J T]

Before the CD-ROM made it possible to put any kind of music in a game, each console had its own sound chip and therefore a unique character to its music. To me, this is where a lot of the personality of a console comes from. It's like how you can recognize people just based on the sound of their voice. I know when I'm hearing a SNES game or Genesis game almost instantly, whereas I can't really distinguish X-boxes or Playstations from each other since they often use pre-recorded music rather than chip music.

I know some of the earlier cartridge based consoles can use samples, and later disc based consoles can use MIDI and trackers, but CD-quality audio really changed the game. Somewhere around the 5th or 6th generation of consoles is where I think games stopped having just 'video game music' and instead simply had 'music that happened to be used in a video game'. So that's why I set the dividing line for my question at cartridges.

So, what cartridge based consoles do you think has the brightest musical personality? Feel free to make a rank list if its too hard to pick just one.

[marurun]

The Neo Geo is definitely my favorite. It combined all sorts of disparate capabilities, and it pretty much rocked the samples, but even when working with samples it had a very distinct sound. Later in life, after SNK was no more and Playmore was running the show they started moving to streaming digital music in mono for background music, and that's when the system lots its distinct auditory personality. Some early high points, in my mind, were the first Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting, and Last Resort, which has one of the best shooter soundtracks of the time.

My second favorite is the PC Engine. No, I don't think it's one of the "best", but I do have a fondness for it. It is arguably the pinnacle of PSG audio, even if audio programmers never really did managed to get an optimal command of the PC Engine's capabilities. It also had pretty good sample playback capabilities, but doing so could be taxing on the CPU, which meant most games never pushed to use them optimally. When the CD-ROM unit came out that did change the face of video game audio, but the unit also included an ADPCM chip for sample playback without distracting the CPU, and many RPGs still used lots of chip tunes to fill in incidental spaces and provide a faster transition between tunes. Even Dracula X used a couple chip tunes in places, like the level 6 BGM, in order to facilitate faster data swapping between bosses. If anything, the PC Engine's chip audio capabilities are the most under-utilized of the 8 and 16-bit generation, IMO, despite rocking some pretty good tunes here and there.

[ElkinFencer10]

I'm gonna have to go either Neo Geo or Super Nintendo. Some Genesis games had AMAZING music, but in general, I like the smoother sound of the SNES's sound chip vs the rougher sound of the Genesis's.

[Tanooki]

I'm gonna have to go either Neo Geo or Super Nintendo. Some Genesis games had AMAZING music, but in general, I like the smoother sound of the SNES's sound chip vs the rougher sound of the Genesis's.

To save a line or two, this all day right here since we're sticking straight to cartridge. While I know a lot of people here are just remembering the arcade days, maybe a few like myself have a MVS (or AES), and perhaps a few are using dotemu phone stuff or those NeoGeo humble bundle dumps of ROMS in an emulator of choice you can still get a fair feel that way or memory. SNK really nailed it and the audio was hands down for a non-sample generated setup unparalleled. The quality of the music but also the sound effects and voices on them are just clear, clean and stunning coming from a cartridge.

And then you obviously have the SNES, when people didn't just do a shoddy port but did their best at a new game or a side developed port with no baggage(like poorly done Genesis conversions) you had some stunning music with that 33khz output on that SPC700 chip that almost felt like it was a CD being used as the clarity and cleanliness of the audio was insane for the time and even now. It was a real jaw dropper back in 1991 when you'd fire up ActRaiser and hear those sampled pieces of old symphony music (like when Music is discovered) being played. And even if it wasn't sampled scores of old music but something new like Nintendo, Square, Capcom, and Konami ended up being notable for it was amazing. We had the Genesis in house (brother dropped Nintendo for Sega) it just wasn't the same. It felt like a real generational change from the tinny buzzy harder effects of how most the Genesis library (and even NES waveforms) sounded along with the kind of muffled vocal samples in his games compared to that. Side by side when we had our SF2 and Mk1 games going it was patently obvious on the audio too when direct comparisons could be made.

[Sarge]

Yeah, I reckon the Neo Geo has a lock on this category overall. But I also struggle to think of iconic tunes for the system, outside of some Metal Slug stuff.

Most folks either think SNES or Genesis. They're both so different, though, that it really takes a good composer and recognition of limitations to make things sound good on either. Sweeping RPG epics? SNES, all day, e'ry day. Pumping house or gritty techno/rock? Genny is where it's at. Of course, there are exceptions (Rock 'N' Roll Racing, folks!), but generally, I side with SNES.

Now, the confounding factor is the NES. It's not the most capable, but dang, if I don't love the sound of Konami/Tecmo/Sunsoft/Natsume's tunes on the system. I like it better than most Genesis music.

[CRTGAMER]

N64 - Sweet Corn!
Pop in Conker the Drunk Dance Music or the Mighty Poo levels, the music up there at CD quality.

[Tanooki]

SNK really nailed it and the audio was hands down for a non-sample generated setup unparalleled. The quality of the music but also the sound effects and voices on them are just clear, clean and stunning coming from a cartridge.

It is mainly sample based though, with 7 sample-based channels, 4 FM-based and 3 PSG-based (perhaps with some functionality flexibility between them, not sure).

I don't find Neo Geo as impressive as some of you due to the high price of the system and games, and the huge cartridge size potential (10x most SNES or MD games and 20x with later used bank switching methods), but it did sound very good in general.

We're not debating price dude, the quesiton was best music, not highest price. If you fail to find it as impressive because the prices suck that's not really based in logic, just lack of affordability. But who couldn't afford a quarter in the arcades for a good 15 years?

Sarge now there he makes an interesting case for and against the NG -- what's really memorable? Not much outside of SNK circles other than perhaps a few Metal Slug and Samurai Shodown tunes most likely unlike the 16 and 8 bit generations where you can have a few bars played/hummed and suddenly you're mentally transported right back to the game and recall the whole score. And I do agree it's sad but I felt the same way about the NES and the TG16 (Duo) I had too, it sounds better than the Genesis most the time outside of the rough recorded samples still not being the best on NES either. The audio while basic if not more basic still sounded crisper, cleaner, and easier on the ears.

[J T]

Yeah, I reckon the Neo Geo has a lock on this category overall. But I also struggle to think of iconic tunes for the system, outside of some Metal Slug stuff.

I agree that a lot of the tunes aren't as catchy and memorable as some other consoles music libraries, but I think this may be more of a function of the composers than the console, though it's hard to parcel out the two when making sweeping statements about the console's music. Here are, in my opinion, some of the catchiest Neo Geo tunes. These all get stuck in my head, and I'm happy to have them there.

Magician Lord: Dale of Evil Gods


Neo Turf Masters: Germany


Nam 1975: Level 1

[Tanooki]

I'm not dismissing your argument and yes the back switched games were upwards of over a CD in size yes which would top your single disc PS1 titles (N64 capped out at 64MByte/512Mbit like Conker's Bad Fur Day and Resident Evil 2.)

I'm not going to argue the costs though if you're talking about home ownership, those damned re-pinned AES(MVS) carts were $200 and up new. Even now for the loose MVS carts you're anywhere from $20-1000 on a game though most fall into the $20-150ish area which nauseatingly puts it right there with the NES/SNES if you're a game collector. I just know the NG was very easily found in arcades as I played it a lot with just a few quarters so I was basing it on experience before expense.

You're not mistaken on those two, also just some classic stuff like Samurai Shodown 1 and 3, Metal Slug and a few sequels, both of the Bust-A-Move puzzlers, various shooters like Blazing Star and Last Resort are pretty stand out. It just depends what you check into.

[Sarge]

Also, it should be noted that the Genesis can do PCM audio streams, so you could technically just stream a recorded song from cart. It would be a dreadfully inefficient use of space, though. I've read a thread somewhere else that argued that this capability makes the Genesis the better sound chip, but really? Yeah, technically you could just put a whole CD worth of data on a cart, but that would have been insanely expensive back in the day.