Which cartridge based console has the best music?

[samsonlonghair]

Wow. That's a pretty keen observation, J T.

[Xeogred]

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.

You are probably the only person in the world that doesn't like Mega Man X's music.

[CRTGAMER]

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 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.

Wow. That's a pretty keen observation, J T.

Wow, that is a neat take. J.T. really is an artist!

The Genesis description really matches, even the Model 1 consoles have that "Garage Band" sound with the bit of distortion described eloquently above.

[Anayo]

The twangy FM-synth of the Sega Genesis is my favorite, but that's to be expected since my 16 bit gaming world was Sega. I had to go to a friend's house if I wanted to play Super Nintendo.

[marurun]

You are probably the only person in the world that doesn't like Mega Man X's music.

You are right. It is hard being the only one here with good taste.
; )

[J T]

Here's a video player example (Bad Apple), 13Khz sound:

I'm glad you posted this because
A.) I love Bad Apple, even if I didn't particularly care much for this cover beyond the technical spectacle, and
B.) It linked me to this awesome/awful Atari 2600 version of the song:

[Sarge]

Impressive. The lowered audio fidelity reminds me of one of the labs I did in Micro, using a PIC16, EEPROM, and audio jack and both recording and pushing out some totally pristine 8-bit, 9-ish kHz audio. (That's as fast as I could push the I2C bus without crapping out entirely.)

[Jagosaurus]

As far as traditional cartridge music goes, I'm all about the Genesis. Love that bass.

The Atari Jaguar was interesting, near CD music often still with video game style. It blows my mind this was on a 1994 console cart game:

Ultra Yak Tempest 2000

https://youtu.be/a8ieUUgZiTU

[J T]

As far as traditional cartridge music goes, I'm all about the Genesis. Love that bass.

Yup.

Hey, did someone put a rave in my college basketball game?

[Soldier Blue]

The Nintendo 64 definitely has my vote. I've noticed some extremely lifelike thunder sound effects while playing Castlevania 64. I almost thought there was a storm outside.

Obviously the music is great too, we can't forget Super Mario 64 water stage music.