Which cartridge based console has the best music?

[Tanooki]

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.

Fair argument I suppose, but when you get into that level of fantasy then it's fair enough to throw that specialized MSU-1 chip that was invented to run Super Road Buster laserdisc on the SNES. You just need a crap ton of space on an everdrive memory card (6320Mbit in size to be exact) and you can stream a laserdisc with clean visuals, CD audio, and the rest too. So ultimately it's probably best just to keep it to retail.



Or even F-Zero remixed via the MSU-1 too:

[ElkinFencer10]

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

He's right, the N64 has it, and I'd also add the Buck Bumble theme and the Blast Corps overworld theme. The Beetle Adventure Racing menu theme is pretty great, too.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Virtual Boy has it. Seriously, listen to it. The catalog isn't big so it won't take long.

[Exhuminator]

It's the Famicom, especially when it's got the special FM chips in tow. Listen to the Famicom version of Mr. Gimmick's OST. What beats that? Nothing, that's what.

[Xeogred]

This one is too case by case subjective to me. In general, I like the NES sound font more than the Genesis, but the SNES comes out on top, yet there is no way on Earth you'd hear something like Shinobi 3 or Thunder Force IV on the SNES. The Genesis to me has the most distinguished and nostalgic sound to it, it can really take me back even when I'm rocking out to some game music of a game I didn't play growing up... that thick chunky chip sound is just too good. But I think the Genesis can have some nasty stuff too, like Carnival Night from Sonic 3... literally makes me nauseous almost or induces a headache. I never really have extreme dislikes for bad/average songs on the NES or SNES though.

Now that I'm listening to a lot of VGM podcasts and discovering even more, I am finding that I really, really enjoy some good Sega Master System and Game Gear tunes as well, and it's almost all purely new material to me since I didn't grow up with either of those. These chips have a very smooth sound to them, ethereal and atmospheric, and as VGM Jukebox loves to joke the SMS kind of has this melancholic sadness to a lot of games. Really cool stuff.

- you can't get that smooth on the NES

Big fan of the GameBoy music too when done well, it's amazing.

Funny enough, I pretty much hate the GameBoy Advance sound font. I really can't speak highly of anything from it other than those Castlevania's having amazing music, as always. And the GBA version of FFV is my favorite localized version of FFV, I do like how some of the upbeat or battle/intense tracks have a heavier sound and bass to it, but yeah. In general, not a fan of the GBA sound at all.

Also don't care to say much about the N64 in retrospect here. I love how weird, minimalist, and dark the Zelda games sound, so those are home runs. And Rare knocked it out of the damn park with Goldeneye, but more importantly Perfect Dark which is probably my favorite N64 OST in general. But beyond that and like F-Zero X or something, I don't know. It doesn't really have much character and a lot of the music just blends in. And it's not like by this time I needed CD quality, in fact I was a hardcore Nintendo kid and didn't touch the PSX until later so I had no comparison, but even back then... I wasn't having Super Turrican like freakout moments to music while playing anything on the N64 as a kid. It's too muffled, muddy, and not melodic.

Speaking of Turrican... I haven't even touched much Amiga stuff, but its sound is GODLY. Thank you Chris Huelsbeck. And if there's one guy that probably could have challenged the Technosoft Genesis sound with the SNES, it's Huelsbeck.

The PCE feels like a console gold mine just sitting there waiting for me. A strange era between the 16/32bit times... I'm sure there's probably plenty I'd love on it, game wise and musically.

I have a huge fondness for 90's CD music as well and actually would argue that it's very distinguishable. The lower quality recordings and heavier use on samples and synths makes it magical to me and along with chiptunes, feels like a lost art with games nowadays being able to use full on orchestras or whatever. So I think the Sega CD, PCE CD (Rondo of Blood is one I've played), PSX, Saturn, and 90's PC games in general, etc are actually very distinguishable and charming to me. For even some mainstream comparisons just go listen to Starcraft again, you never hear anything that sounds quite like it today.




Anyways, there's no way I can give a final answer on one, it would be an extreme death match between the NES and SNES for me.

[marurun]

I think one thing we're not touching on here is a system's "best" audio capabilities vs how it was most often used. The NES, despite having very inflexible audio capabilities, has an immense library of incredibly well-composed tunes which play to the abilities of the system fantastically. Meanwhile, on the SNES, Genesis, and PC Engine, you can actually find large groups of games that appear to use the exact same audio driver and which, despite composition quality, end up sound very same-y. As an example, I find a lot of Capcom's SNES games uninteresting, despite otherwise good composition, just because of their instrument selection. And Nintendo even released a few titles with pretty mundane sample libraries. Later Hudson releases on the PC Engine sounded good, but clearly used the same sound driver and audio library, which means it can be hard to remember which tunes go to which game.

There are also lots of qualities that represent the flaws of the system. Some of those flaws are glaring, some lend personality, and some are completely eliminated in the hands of talented programmers and designers. The Genesis has lots of crazy flangy-sounding crap as a result of people abusing the FM synth. Yet that same FM synth is insanely pure-sounding in the right hands. The Genesis could play back clean samples (Dynamite Heady, for example), but often didn't. Some games, like Street Fighter II, had horribly low-quality sample playback. The SNES, despite being a sample-based system, was limited to very small, low-quality samples. Some, like Koshiro, would carefully craft their samples to make them sound exquisite (Actraiser), but many didn't, instead choosing to use heavy reverb and filtering to cover the low-quality sampling, leaving the soundtrack to sound like it's being played from the bottom of a metal trash or even underwater.

So while my Neo Geo and PC Engine picks are what I think are the best at what they do for their respective generations, I think my dark-horse music-maker favorite might just be the venerable NES. Those composers and programmers knew their platform well and the best tunes definitely still sounded like NES tunes, but were awesome both despite and because of it.

Here are some tracks from my system picks to perk up yer ear-holes:
Neo-Geo




More later. It's too late. Bedtime.

[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.

Fair argument I suppose, but when you get into that level of fantasy then it's fair enough to throw that specialized MSU-1 chip that was invented to run Super Road Buster laserdisc on the SNES. You just need a crap ton of space on an everdrive memory card (6320Mbit in size to be exact) and you can stream a laserdisc with clean visuals, CD audio, and the rest too. So ultimately it's probably best just to keep it to retail.



Or even F-Zero remixed via the MSU-1 too:

Well, but then you're kinda cheating, since you're using another external chip. I know the SNES can push better audio just by its lonesome, but it chews up a ton of cycles, so it'd be pretty much useless in a gaming context. At least that's my understanding.

Same deal with the Famicom add-ons like the VRC6 and Sunsoft 5B, but no question those make things sound amazing. I'll take an NES with the VRC6 over the Genesis most of the time.

[Tanooki]

Oh I figured the Genesis having that kind of storage was cheating too, it's why I chose that one. I agree that added chips can work wonders and very much so I like your comparison to the VRC chip vs the Genesis, totally agree. While you speak of the 6, I think the game we're all imagining here is Castlevania III and I totally agree. I can't off hand think of a game on Genesis in most cases that top that combo either. There's a few, but not many.

[Sarge]

What was the max cart capacity on a Genesis, anyway? I don't know if I'd necessarily consider just bank-switching cheating, at any rate. But it sure as heck wasn't feasible back in the day.

The MSU-1 is pretty sweet on the SNES. Still haven't tried Road Avenger on it, need to some day. I did try the MSU-1 hack of LttP and it's pretty slick.

I don't think any other system could pull off Streets of Rage, but that's about it. (Seriously, even remixes of those songs don't sound right. It's like those songs were brought into this world fully-formed and absolutely perfect.)

[J T]

I'm glad there has been some good discussion in this thread, since I really have no idea how to answer the question I posed. The discussion has me musing over how the different musical personalities of the consoles feel to me. I had this weird realization that I could describe each console's musical characteristics the same way I would describe different albums from Nirvana.

The NES is Bleach
It is the prototype and the foundation. It's simplified and underproduced, the flaws stand out, but that rawness hits a nerve and you come to love it, not just in spite of its imperfections, but because of its imperfections. Strip this kind of music down to its bare essentials, and this sound is what's left. This is the genre-defining style in its pure, unadulterated form. It has the raw, creative passion of first realizing you really have something to say.

The Genesis is Incesticide
It's got all the distorted noisy energy of early garage band years, which when done right is intensely edgy and abrasive, however, the whole endeavour is always in danger of being kind of irritating when the tinny sound of garage door reverb twangs and hits the ears wrong at times. It has the courage to try a lot of different things, which is commendable, but it also loses its cohesiveness as a result. It's hit or miss, but in its best moments there is nothing else as raucously rebellious and cool.

The Gameboy is Nevermind
Despite displaying less technical capability than contemporaries of its era, it had universal appeal that somehow has managed to stand the test of time. It's better than it really has any right to be; it just has that magic-in-a-bottle factor that makes it an undeniable classic. You know other forms of music are technically better, and if you walk away from it for awhile you start to think you've probably outgrown it, but when those first notes kick in again, ugh, who are you kidding! You love it. Everybody loves it. This is the signature sound and you don't want to go anywhere without it.

The NeoGeo is In Utero
This takes the sounds of the early days, but pushes them in new directions that weren't possible before. The defining roots of the sound are still there, but they aren't always in the forefront. This one's not afraid to branch out and be a bit more thoughtful and calculated. It's not necessarily better music, but it has higher production values. There are more flourishes and embellishments. The songs are a bit more complex now, which makes them more interesting, though paradoxically also less memorable. Nevertheless, this one can soar to new heights of beauty and drama that just weren't possible in its predecessors.

The SNES is MTV Unplugged in New York
Take all the rough edges, sand them down and soften everything, and you find a tender emotional center to the songs that is every bit as vital as the abrasive rawness of Bleach was. There's a depth of feeling here that doesn't show up elsewhere. This one is beautiful, and lyrical, and homey. It's comfortable in its own skin. The angst isn't gone, but there's a loveliness to it all that makes you want to hang on to every single note that drips out. People may not think you're as cool for listing this as your favorite, but it's clearly the easiest to enjoy and listen to repeatedly.