#biggnife

[blazehedgehog]

As someone who I know is intricately familiar with Genesis music and the FM synth it uses; why is it that many people (including myself) enjoy the Genesis era Sonic music but when Jin Senoue tries to emulate that sound using Genesis synth samples (Sonic Superstars being the most recent example) it just doesn't sound very good? I know it's literally become a running joke in the community that Senoue uses the Genesis synth too much but it's not like Sonic 1 or 2 had bad soundtracks even though they used the same instrumentation, and Senoue is obviously a very talented composer, so I don't really understand why his attempts to emulate the Genesis soundtracks always turn out so mid.

The general theory I subscribe to is that with the soundtracks to Sonic 1, 2, and presumably even Sonic 3, those games were composed by people who were just writing "real" music. They would pick out real world instruments and write for that sound.

If you've never heard it before, for the 20th Anniversary, Sega put out a compilation soundtrack for Sonic 1 and 2, which included the original demo tracks Masato Nakamura wrote for those games.

Now these are basically just MIDI files, because they didn't need to be anything more than that. But you can tell he was thinking in terms of horn sections, bass guitar, and so on.

Nakamura would submit these MIDI songs on cassette to Sega, and Sega's sound engineers would transcribe those instruments into something that sounded appropriate for the Genesis hardware.

Now, Jun Senoue did the same thing, to a degree. Jun's first major Sonic soundtrack was Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Genesis, and Jon Burton (of Traveler's Tales) revealed Jun's own demo cassette. If you listen to Jun's tracks, they're all done on the Honky Tonk/Rhodes piano. There's no attempt to utilize real world instruments or have any kind of sound diversity. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Instead of writing music for a band, he wrote music for an individual playing a keyboard.

Worse still, it has eventually been revealed as of Sonic Origins that Jun Senoue had very little awareness of how to make Genesis sounding music. Again, he only submitted his songs on cassette. He was not responsible for the FM Synthesis conversion, just the raw notes, which were all written on, and for, a keyboard.

(throwing the rest of this ask under a "read more" tag because it embeds a lot more videos and even some images)

So when it came time for Sonic 4, and they had Jun Senoue do the retro style soundtracks for those games, he was probably pretty out of his depth. He was writing for style of music he did not really have a nuanced understanding of.

So we get this crunchy, grating, disassociated "this is what the Genesis sounded like, right?" sort of sound. The musical equivalent of one of those early 2000's "How to Draw Manga" books: somebody who thinks they know what they're doing, has actual talent in other adjacent areas, but doesn't actually get this particular niche.

This is one of the reasons why I'm actually a little warmer towards Classic Sonic's music in Sonic Forces -- it's not Jun Senoue. Somebody on that project understood enough and had Naofumi Hataya handle a lot of Classic Sonic's music. He has actual experience with chiptunes and wrote something that feels like it belongs in a Sega System 32 arcade game or something.

Not every single one of Classic Sonic's songs are stone cold bangers in Forces, but at least they sound more authentically retro than Jun's attempts, because they were written by someone who knew what they were doing.

Beyond that, I don't know why Jun doesn't just, like... do better, in a sense. I suppose I don't know his composing environment and how easy or hard it is to slot in what he'd need to sound more "authentic." I just know from my own perspective how easy it is to grab a VST or a soundfont for common Genesis/Yamaha instruments.

But even then, more authentic instruments aren't going to solve the problem that this style of music doesn't seem to be his strong suit, even if somebody at Sega keeps pushing him to do it. Thankfully, I think somebody finally realized it, given how Sonic Superstars seemed to be full of his Sonic 4 style fake-retro music and most of it got replaced at the last second.

[jeffgerstmann]

Apparently the Sharp X1 version of SMB Special is slightly better? It has Zelda 1/Metroid style screen shifting instead of just flashing between screens, at least.

Yep! It’s been awhile since I’ve played that version but I remember it being sliiiightly better.

[obscurevideogames]

Seriously, posting a Ripping Friends gif right after the creator of the show was exposed as a pedophile? I'm hoping this post was pre-scheduled and this is just a bad coincidence.

Yes, sorry for the poor timing, but it’s been in my queue for months. I made it at the same time as the other Ripping Friends GIFs that I’ve been posting on a regular basis since last year.

I’m open to going back and deleting all of them if enough of you feel strongly about it?

[blazehedgehog]

Playing Penny's Big Breakaway has made me think a lot about Treasure's games lately. How do you feel about Treasure as a studio and do you have any favorites from them?

I kind of have always appreciated Treasure more from a distance. They were made up of former Konami people, and one thing I feel like classic 16-bit Konami is known for is REALLY, REALLY difficult games. Gradius 3 and Contra 3 and Castlevania 3. Three for three. And also giving you difficulty options but then punishing you if you played on anything less than the hardest setting.

And Treasure carries some of that sensibility forward. So generally I play a lot of Treasure games, admiring the scenery and the ideas, until I get frustrated and then I go play something else.

So, like, I've only ever seen a couple levels of Dynamite Headdy. A couple levels of Gunstar Heroes. One level of Alien Soldier. And when it comes to something, like, say, Silhouette Mirage, I've never even tried touching it because Working Designs localized it and apparently made it even harder. (Thanks, Vic)

I appreciate how they pushed the hardware and they have cool sense of aesthetics, but I cannot actually say I've loved any of their games. Not in the way they deserved. They're just right on that edge of being a little too aggressive for me to click with. I liked what they did, I'm glad they got to do it, it enriched a lot of gaming culture, but... it's just not for me. They carry a little too much of that bullet hell shooter soul.

And once you get past a certain point, like post-Dreamcast Treasure, it starts feeling like a completely different beast. Their games start feeling really toothless and boring (the opposite problem).

Like, the only Treasure games I've finished are Gunstar Super Heroes and Advanced Guardian Heroes on the Gameboy Advance, and it does not make me proud to say that. Those aren't bad games, don't get me wrong, but I don't think they're great games. I guess Astro Boy: The Omega Factor was them, too. All of them have this problem where it feels like they're just, like, missing something, you know?

A special little spark, or a certain game mechanic to anchor the gameplay around, or just... something. Otherwise, they have half of a good idea and a lot of nostalgia.

So I can't really say I have any Treasure favorites. But there are also a lot of Treasure games I've never really played -- haven't touched Radiant Silvergun, I own the original Guardian Heroes on XBLA and never booted it up, never played Bangai-O, or Sin & Punishment, and so on. Maybe there would be something in there that would click with me.

[blazehedgehog]

Here's a random question - with that new Pac Man collection coming out, how do you feel about Pac Man? Could be individual games, the franchise as a whole, whatever. I feel like Pac Man and Sonic feel kinda adjacent to each other despite being wildly different games since they've both been such long standing mascot characters with tons of revivals.

For a long time, I did not care about Pac-man. I was a dumb kid who looked at those old arcade games and kind of turned his nose up at them. I remember when the Williams Arcade Collection came out on SNES and Genesis, I openly scoffed, because who would want to play old games like that? They were too simple for me.

My mom even got Ms. Pac-man for the Genesis, and I just couldn't get in to it. It was too repetitive.

As I got older, my perspective on games like that changed. Maybe it was the introduction of Xbox Live Arcade, and the renewed focus on the high score leaderboard. I never really considered myself a competitive person, but it was very interesting to see where in the field I landed. That was right around the time I was getting way in to doing Sonic Rush time trials on my DS, too. I dunno, I guess something about the repetition of working towards a high score was just what I was thirsty for in my 20's.

Pac-man Championship Edition was great, though admittedly, I never played tons and tons of it. I played a lot of it, but it never hooked me quite like it did with some people. But I respect it from a distance.

Which became how I felt about a lot of Pac-man, I guess. I played a fair amount of Pac-man 256, but beyond that, I haven't really gone too deep in to most Pac-man games.

"Pac-man the Mascot" used to feel pretty weird to me. He was this old arcade character, and it used to seem weird to me that Namco struggled to make him relevant by putting him in to generic platformers. Pac-man never really struck me as "a guy" like that. Giving him dialog and lore was strange.

But I acknowledge there are a lot of fans out there of the Pac-man World games. I myself eventually ended up putting like 3-5 hours in to Pac-man World 3 on the PSP of all places. It was fine. Had some ugly character designs, but it was charmingly weird.

I don't love Pac-man like I do some video game franchises, but Pac-man is alright in my book. I dunno if I'd necessarily buy a Pac-man collection, though. Even though I know Namco is often very loving with their collections.

[blazehedgehog]

Between Waluigi and Big the Cat, which character are you the most tired of people being ironically obsessed with?

Waluigi for sure. There was some video going around a few weeks ago where it was somebody just saying “Waluigi~” as if that was the lyrics to The Avengers theme and I feel like that was the tipping point for me where I’m fully done with ironic Waluigi appreciation.

I also don’t know if Big the Cat appreciation is ironic. I guess some of it probably is, but I have friends who genuinely like Big the Cat and root for him to be included in all the spinoffs.

Which is the thing, I guess. Waluigi feels like a weapon used to troll people. Even Nintendo kind of uses him in a “ISN’T HE TERRIBLE??” context. It’s less that people like Waluigi for who he is, and more that they like how much everyone else hates Waluigi. It’s the “Here, smell this. Isn’t it awful?” response for a video game character.

Big the Cat was bad in exactly one game – Sonic Adventure. Since then, he’s mostly just been kind of hanging out, sort of hiding in the background a lot of the time, not really doing anything except going fishing and enjoying his simple view on life. He’s not loud, or obnoxious, or creepy, or aggressive like Waluigi is. He’s just a big dumb soft cat that wants to chill out and I’m here for it.

[blazehedgehog]

Following up on the last ask, I think the reason why people are so defensive about Thundercats Roar is because some people are using it as a jumping off point to condemn modern animation in general and say stuff like "every modern cartoon looks the same" and "what happened to dark and gritty cartoons?" both of which feel like super broad generalizations. The "calarts style" is a thing, sure, but it's not like Adventure Time and OK KO look the same by any stretch.

I don’t think Thundercats has ever been “dark and gritty.” But there’s this weird notion that kids are only allowed to have cartoons with short, cute character designs because anything more would be TOO SERIOUS for them! Kids are only supposed to have FUN!

Except, like, I grew up in the era of the X-men cartoon, the Spider-man cartoon, the Batman cartoon, the Gargoyles cartoon…

And even now, I think Steven Universe and Adventure Time have gotten way darker than anything Thundercats has ever approached. Steven Universe gestures towards topics of consensual sex and I think there was an Adventure Time arc about substance addiction if I’m remembering right (again: I don’t watch tons of TV).

So it’s like, even with Roar’s art style, it could still be a pretty serious show. There’s nothing stopping them from delivering on what people are actually asking for!

But it is that art style. That art style is the fad right now.

I know there are people out there trying to debunk an image like this by showing how the cartoons in question are slightly different than this template suggests, but that strikes me as nitpicking, because the similarities are still super obvious.

And this is coming from someone who, despite not watching a lot of TV, has willing sought out and watched quite a bit of Gumball because I genuinely love a lot of that show’s later seasons.

It’s just that cramming Thundercats down in to that style doesn’t feel right, given what’s come before it. If Cowboy Bebop came back for a new season and it looked like this

Would people be wrong for having a reaction against it?

Thundercats clearly has fans, and they clearly don’t like this style. Who are we to tell them they’re wrong, that they don’t matter, or whatever other dismissive reasoning we can come up with to invalidate their dissatisfaction? And in favor of what? More of the same?

This stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If you’re going to dig up an old franchise, you’re going to have to deal with its fans, otherwise you shouldn’t even bother. This isn’t an old end table at a flea market you can sand down and repaint.

This is closer to, like… how certain buildings in a city get declared historic landmarks and therefore cannot be torn down or changed. Except they’re tearing it down anyway. And that’s what people are upset about.

[blazehedgehog]

Have you watched any of Jon Burton's GameHut videos on youtube? Some really interesting stuff about the development of games like Sonic 3D Blast and Toy Story. Also, how do you feel about him working on a Sonic 3D Blast Director's Cut romhack?

I think once the “Sonic R v0.03″ video went up and it became clear he was using GameHut to dump all kinds of interesting curiosities from the archives of Traveler’s Tales, I couldn’t subscribe any faster. It’s fantastic he’s willing to be so open about this kind of stuff. Imagine how much weird, cool stuff never gets seen from other developers. Projects that get started but never finished, pitches that get rejected, etc. There are thousands of games we never knew existed.

Sonic 3D Blast: Director’s Cut is a wild proposition. I think what maybe blows me away the most is that, like, it’s easy forget these guys are probably incredibly smart. Because Jon Burton is the founder of Traveler’s Tales. The success they’ve had with the Lego games earned him an executive producer credit on all of the Lego movies thus far. And you picture a guy like that, and you think of a guy in a suit who is in meetings all day long, and to be fair he probably is.

But he got his start making games. Getting his hands dirty. Writing code. And you watch him trying to get a Sonic R prototype running in an emulator, and it’s like, he’s injecting memory addresses and doing all this stuff that for me, a “modern indie developer,” is completely and entirely over my head. Even from the perspective of being around the borders of the ROM hacking community via Sonic Retro and stuff, some of the things he’s doing are still over my head. He may as well be a sorcerer.

And that after all this time, after the company he’s built, the fame he’s earned (at least in some circles), he’s still passionate about game creation to do something like a “Sonic 3D Blast: Director’s Cut.” To dip in to 23 year old source code for a dead platform and dump new features in to that game, just for fun. That’s just… wow, you know? That’s fantastic. Tremendous respect to that guy.

I had a spiel here about needing to see it in action before I pass judgement, but in the few days it took this to get posted, a video went up detailing some of his changes.

They’re definitely interesting and on some level I’m glad he’s not just ditching Flickies entirely as a mechanic. That’s not to say hunting out enemies is some tremendously fun thing, but we already have a hack that gets rid of the Flickies. I definitely approve of pretty much everything in this video, from the enhanced controls to the improvements to the camera, power-ups, and more.

Consider my attention grabbed.