You just had to use Shenmue music at the end didn't you?? It hurts to listen to that beautiful games soundtrack! Makes me want a sequel. So. MUCH.
Anyway. I'm truly surprised that the genesis/megadrive can actually produce such crisp pcm samples. I thought the Megesis couldn't have clear audio samples...
When you said Gradius 3 I went "HOLY CRAP, THE GENNY HAD GRADIUS 3 AND I DIDN'T KNEW ABOUT IT?!" and then became dissapointed when I found out there was no Genesis port of it :(
PCM audio quality is absolutely impressive but I guess the best way to prove the Genesis' sound quality could be good is to refer to the best games it had, i.e., the Sonic games, Gley Lancer, Castlevania Bloodlines, and so on...
@dissident93 Yeah. He's using the one DAC channel to output ordinary music through the console but for a Mega Drive Genesis cartridge to play back recorded music, the DAC eats up too much space in the cartridge rom. The better quality the music is, the less space there is kind of thing.
@Adam060756 Even the SNES Street Fighter had bad samples. And the SPC700 was 100% sampled! Although the SNES did have great tunes, so did the Mega Drive. I can't hate on either one.
Just need to point this is what 1988 hardware can do. Sure the US release was in 1989, but the original HW, the japanese was already done by mid-1988.
i guess genesis / mega drive could play 2 digital audio channels at once, you can test street fighter II on genesis, 2 player game and try to use special move on both players, you could hear both players voice at once.
@hacksquad This is true, it can do it through programming. You can do this in Alien Soldier as well in the sound test by playing different samples/voices at the same time. Alien Soldier's voices sound a lot better than Street Fighter II's as well.
@Servbot01 He obviously couldn't record the 32X version to use because it would only sound as good as it sounded on the 32X you can't make it sound better. Yes he recorded that song from the Saturn version but it was converted it to the 26KHz mono PCM file that the Genesis can play and it is playing it in this video. You can play it on your own Mega Drive if you have a flash cart.
@winterhell2002 It would take just under 24 megs (in Genesis measurements) to handle 1 minute of this quality. 32 megabits allows just over a minute and a half.
@Joeredother Actually, at the exact quality being used in this video (26 kHz uncompressed mono 8-bit PCM), it's only 26 kB/s (208kbit/s) 1 minute would only take about 1.5 MB or 12 Mbits. ;)
@darkychao Certainly not arguing with that math, but we couldn't fit much more than a minute and a half in a 4 MB ROM image, Tiido would have to explain why.
@ThePhoneUpdate Ha! That'd work. :) Although my Genesis is not currently getting along with my Sega CD. If I pipe the CD audio through the Genesis, crazy things start happening. I need to instead pipe the Genesis audio through the Sega CD (Model 1s here).
The only thing that you forgot to point out was that the higher quality the sound of the music is, the more cart space is needed. Example: The High Quality "SEGA" Chant at the boot up of Sonic the Hedgehog took up 1/16 of the cartridge, compared to the lower quality version of the chant in Sonic 3, which only took up about 8%.
This isn't the only reason why samples sound like shit. Most of the time it was due to the bad hardware of the genesis. Or probably due to some hardware components not connect to aid in playing samples. Because of this there was bad sound playback as a result. But having a good sound engine could over come this. Having higher cartridge space just for samples is really wasteful. 3 or 4 Megabytes is still not enough for samples. SO they have to be heavily compress.
i saw a demo wich proves that the genesis can do it,but i spotted that gradius 3 was a nintendo game,it say's licensed by nintendo,so it,s a litle bit fake.
@johneymute OMG you might be on to something here! Guess what else I discovered: There is some music from Shenmue underneath the narration in the beginning and during the end credits. I did some research and guess what? SHENMUE HADN'T EVEN BEEN PROGRAMMED WHEN THE GENESIS WAS AROUND!!! So yeah, this video must be totally fake. :)
This is rather a misrepresentation of the MegaDrive's capibilities. Sure, it can play back decent quality sound, but at what cost to processing power and data storage?
And I would imagine the music in Tempo is heavily compressed, both in waveform and data storage. I'm not saying they tapped out the 32X, but it is better than what the Genesis is capable of on it's own, if only for the expanded color palette.
OK but apart from proving Genesis can do it (which anyway anyone knows it does...), what is the point of having this predigitized rubbish in the games in the year of 2010... you people don't understand one base point - video games are not about bringing predigitized worls into them... and I am proud Genesis platform is not flooded with these gimmmicks... you see there's no value in your "that's awesome" you get it now...
@maiki60fps **Sigh** even when people say it themselves, they do not understand the point of the video. The point of the video is that it can be done. THAT'S IT! It is cool to see what can be done under extreme conditions even if we'll never see such things in a real game environment back in 1989. People like seeing their systems do unconventional things. Why people piss and moan about this is beyond me.
So people are actually using the SEGA Mega Drive console as a jukebox to play back music on a cartridge? Who needs games right?
FM 1 = (not used)
FM 2 = (not used)
FM 3 = (not used)
FM 4 = (not used)
FM 5 = (not used)
DAC = Full digital audio playback (Mono)
Cool video! Now we just have to find a way to get the Mega Drive to produce stereo digital audio, although I think that might be impossible without another DAC or PCM channel.
To those who assume from this that "Sega should have put real music in their games" – IT'S THE STORAGE, STUPID!
Developers now can waste whole DVDs on cutscenes that we just skip anyway, but back then, bigger carts = bigger costs. The typical early MD game was 4 megabit (512 kbytes). The largest ever, Super Street Fighter II, was just 40 megabit (5 megabit). Enough to store, what, one song?!
So what they did instead – real time synthesized music – just made sense.
@nightsdreamparadox In the case of the Genesis, most developers obviously didn't know how to do a good job with samples on that system. But wasting huge amounts of space just for sound was very plausible back then. I believe that Tales of Phantasia for SFC dedicated 16 megs just for voice samples, on top of a game that was already 32 megs. Plus some SFC carts used heavy duty compression that used extra chips.
@superpcenginegrafx ToP also has a music track with vocals in it (the dream will not die).
This sort of video is irrelevant to the actual soundtracks that were or could have been composed for the overall sound hardware of the console, but it does emphasize a strength that I've heard mentioned before, and that is of the sound being clear. Some Genesis fans like to rag on the SNES for its compressed samples.
i loved the genesis, i wish sega would release a new console and stop dicking around with nintendo. The genesis dosn't have bad audio, as you showed. Games like Batman had stock music that sounded AMAZING lol
@MN12BIRD Like redroweneht said this is pretty kickass and impressive for a 10+ year old game system...this is why Sega was so far head in the hardware and this video shows..in case hears!
That Gradius 3 song sounds VERY similar to the style of the Sonic Adventure games in my opinion.
GMajorVideos 1 month ago
Holy Sh**! This sounds freakin' awesome!
SuperAwesomeness64 3 months ago
Too bad Mega Drive (Genesis) didn't support ADPCM, then one could be able to fit high-quality sound in the game cartridges.
cakestalker 3 months ago
awesome stuff, a bit funny though when streets of rage 2 still sounds better ;)
Ehal256 5 months ago
You just had to use Shenmue music at the end didn't you?? It hurts to listen to that beautiful games soundtrack! Makes me want a sequel. So. MUCH.
Anyway. I'm truly surprised that the genesis/megadrive can actually produce such crisp pcm samples. I thought the Megesis couldn't have clear audio samples...
CompakNess 5 months ago
You gotta love the genesis audio in some places!
Tiamat583 6 months ago
When you said Gradius 3 I went "HOLY CRAP, THE GENNY HAD GRADIUS 3 AND I DIDN'T KNEW ABOUT IT?!" and then became dissapointed when I found out there was no Genesis port of it :(
PCM audio quality is absolutely impressive but I guess the best way to prove the Genesis' sound quality could be good is to refer to the best games it had, i.e., the Sonic games, Gley Lancer, Castlevania Bloodlines, and so on...
SpiralPegasus 7 months ago
Wait, so all this was played simply under the DAC? No FM?
dissident93 8 months ago
@dissident93 Yeah. He's using the one DAC channel to output ordinary music through the console but for a Mega Drive Genesis cartridge to play back recorded music, the DAC eats up too much space in the cartridge rom. The better quality the music is, the less space there is kind of thing.
Adam060756 8 months ago
@Adam060756 Right, this type of sampled quality takes up almost the megabit of the cartridge, I heard.
dissident93 8 months ago
@dissident93 That must be why games like Street Fighter II sound atrocious!
Big rom, shitty voice samples.
Adam060756 8 months ago
@Adam060756 Even the SNES Street Fighter had bad samples. And the SPC700 was 100% sampled! Although the SNES did have great tunes, so did the Mega Drive. I can't hate on either one.
dissident93 8 months ago
Just need to point this is what 1988 hardware can do. Sure the US release was in 1989, but the original HW, the japanese was already done by mid-1988.
villahed94 8 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
One of my favorite videos on YT. :-)
Christuserloeser 8 months ago
i guess genesis / mega drive could play 2 digital audio channels at once, you can test street fighter II on genesis, 2 player game and try to use special move on both players, you could hear both players voice at once.
hacksquad 8 months ago
@hacksquad This is true, it can do it through programming. You can do this in Alien Soldier as well in the sound test by playing different samples/voices at the same time. Alien Soldier's voices sound a lot better than Street Fighter II's as well.
Joeredother 8 months ago
Why did you put the Saturn version of the song and said it is form a modded Mega Drive?
Servbot01 8 months ago
@Servbot01 He obviously couldn't record the 32X version to use because it would only sound as good as it sounded on the 32X you can't make it sound better. Yes he recorded that song from the Saturn version but it was converted it to the 26KHz mono PCM file that the Genesis can play and it is playing it in this video. You can play it on your own Mega Drive if you have a flash cart.
MN12BIRD 1 month ago
so, how much memory does it take for 1 minute with such quality?
i know 1 minute of CD audio is larger than a mega drive cartridge.
winterhell2002 8 months ago
@winterhell2002 It would take just under 24 megs (in Genesis measurements) to handle 1 minute of this quality. 32 megabits allows just over a minute and a half.
Joeredother 8 months ago
@Joeredother Actually, at the exact quality being used in this video (26 kHz uncompressed mono 8-bit PCM), it's only 26 kB/s (208kbit/s) 1 minute would only take about 1.5 MB or 12 Mbits. ;)
darkychao 8 months ago
@darkychao Certainly not arguing with that math, but we couldn't fit much more than a minute and a half in a 4 MB ROM image, Tiido would have to explain why.
Joeredother 8 months ago
If I have a Sega CD addon could I use the homebrew WAV engine via that instead of getting a flashcart? Just burn to a disc?
ThePhoneUpdate 9 months ago
@ThePhoneUpdate No, it won't work like that, unfortunately.
MrGameSack 8 months ago
@MrGameSack Ah, thinking about it I could just... put a CD in the SEGA CD and play that xD
ThePhoneUpdate 8 months ago
@ThePhoneUpdate Ha! That'd work. :) Although my Genesis is not currently getting along with my Sega CD. If I pipe the CD audio through the Genesis, crazy things start happening. I need to instead pipe the Genesis audio through the Sega CD (Model 1s here).
MrGameSack 8 months ago
<3 SEGA <3
Bylga 9 months ago
The only thing that you forgot to point out was that the higher quality the sound of the music is, the more cart space is needed. Example: The High Quality "SEGA" Chant at the boot up of Sonic the Hedgehog took up 1/16 of the cartridge, compared to the lower quality version of the chant in Sonic 3, which only took up about 8%.
AJtheEpic 11 months ago
@AJtheEpic
This isn't the only reason why samples sound like shit. Most of the time it was due to the bad hardware of the genesis. Or probably due to some hardware components not connect to aid in playing samples. Because of this there was bad sound playback as a result. But having a good sound engine could over come this. Having higher cartridge space just for samples is really wasteful. 3 or 4 Megabytes is still not enough for samples. SO they have to be heavily compress.
SgtThom 10 months ago
i saw a demo wich proves that the genesis can do it,but i spotted that gradius 3 was a nintendo game,it say's licensed by nintendo,so it,s a litle bit fake.
johneymute 11 months ago
@johneymute OMG you might be on to something here! Guess what else I discovered: There is some music from Shenmue underneath the narration in the beginning and during the end credits. I did some research and guess what? SHENMUE HADN'T EVEN BEEN PROGRAMMED WHEN THE GENESIS WAS AROUND!!! So yeah, this video must be totally fake. :)
Joeredother 11 months ago
@johneymute Why would it matter? The sound still goes from a Mega Drive, not a Super Nintendo.
Agroulinggrwaler1999 10 months ago
This is rather a misrepresentation of the MegaDrive's capibilities. Sure, it can play back decent quality sound, but at what cost to processing power and data storage?
Pirochiro 11 months ago
And I would imagine the music in Tempo is heavily compressed, both in waveform and data storage. I'm not saying they tapped out the 32X, but it is better than what the Genesis is capable of on it's own, if only for the expanded color palette.
vincentx77 1 year ago
amazing!!!!!
PanterAmetal100 1 year ago
OK but apart from proving Genesis can do it (which anyway anyone knows it does...), what is the point of having this predigitized rubbish in the games in the year of 2010... you people don't understand one base point - video games are not about bringing predigitized worls into them... and I am proud Genesis platform is not flooded with these gimmmicks... you see there's no value in your "that's awesome" you get it now...
maiki60fps 1 year ago
@maiki60fps **Sigh** even when people say it themselves, they do not understand the point of the video. The point of the video is that it can be done. THAT'S IT! It is cool to see what can be done under extreme conditions even if we'll never see such things in a real game environment back in 1989. People like seeing their systems do unconventional things. Why people piss and moan about this is beyond me.
Joeredother 1 year ago 14
So people are actually using the SEGA Mega Drive console as a jukebox to play back music on a cartridge? Who needs games right?
FM 1 = (not used)
FM 2 = (not used)
FM 3 = (not used)
FM 4 = (not used)
FM 5 = (not used)
DAC = Full digital audio playback (Mono)
Cool video! Now we just have to find a way to get the Mega Drive to produce stereo digital audio, although I think that might be impossible without another DAC or PCM channel.
Adam060756 1 year ago 2
@jowrab And the same rule applies to other systems of the time as well.
Redifer 1 year ago
If this is the case, HOW THE HELL DID DOOM SOUND SO CRAP?!
Gamepopper101 1 year ago
To those who assume from this that "Sega should have put real music in their games" – IT'S THE STORAGE, STUPID!
Developers now can waste whole DVDs on cutscenes that we just skip anyway, but back then, bigger carts = bigger costs. The typical early MD game was 4 megabit (512 kbytes). The largest ever, Super Street Fighter II, was just 40 megabit (5 megabit). Enough to store, what, one song?!
So what they did instead – real time synthesized music – just made sense.
nightsdreamparadox 1 year ago
@nightsdreamparadox In the case of the Genesis, most developers obviously didn't know how to do a good job with samples on that system. But wasting huge amounts of space just for sound was very plausible back then. I believe that Tales of Phantasia for SFC dedicated 16 megs just for voice samples, on top of a game that was already 32 megs. Plus some SFC carts used heavy duty compression that used extra chips.
superpcenginegrafx 1 year ago
@superpcenginegrafx ToP also has a music track with vocals in it (the dream will not die).
This sort of video is irrelevant to the actual soundtracks that were or could have been composed for the overall sound hardware of the console, but it does emphasize a strength that I've heard mentioned before, and that is of the sound being clear. Some Genesis fans like to rag on the SNES for its compressed samples.
megavolt67 1 year ago
Genesis does what Nintendon't after all?
pushstartscreen 1 year ago 16
@pushstartscreen I'd like to see the supposed glorious snes do any better...
mafiosotucanazo 1 year ago
i loved the genesis, i wish sega would release a new console and stop dicking around with nintendo. The genesis dosn't have bad audio, as you showed. Games like Batman had stock music that sounded AMAZING lol
Forthias 1 year ago
You should do an entire video of the Genesis playing SNES music.
SegaFanatic5188 1 year ago
That's insane
sabombardonist 1 year ago
Good stuff.
jeffro11 1 year ago
Wow, amazing video... errr, umm.... amazing sound! I'm going to fav this one in hopes more people see it!
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
@MN12BIRD It worked cause I wouldn't have seen it otherwise.
redroweneht 1 year ago
@MN12BIRD Like redroweneht said this is pretty kickass and impressive for a 10+ year old game system...this is why Sega was so far head in the hardware and this video shows..in case hears!
X3CuT1oNR 1 year ago
wooooooow
Feon2 1 year ago
Awesome! Tiido is famous lol xD.
FlackoWeasel 1 year ago