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Feb. 13th, 2016 07:17 amYep. PC-FX audio really does suck in comparison to the Playstation and Saturn. Found a playlist of footage samples from a bunch of its games last night, none of which (besides that one) sound anything like Rayman, Battle Arena Toshinden, Digimon World 3, or the cancelled Sonic X-treme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEbz_r-f3Zg&index=1&list=PL1PXwlmbNk-oSV5LAfbywWMqh4iIyRsbi
I always knew the system failed commercially due to being underpowered and focusing on 2D games during a time when 3D was such a big deal as it was, but MMZ aside, I thought it would've handled any type of audio just fine. I mean, Zenki sounded decent enough, on par with most anime for its time and equatable with Suikoden II for the Playstation (which in turn sounds modest enough (compared to, say, Wild Arms) to reasonably expect of the SNES, in line with Chrono Trigger or Super Mario RPG). And for its part, the Saturn had Saturn Bomberman, which sounds flat as paper for a game with the system right in its title; as it turns out, though, that game was supposedly what was intended originally for the PC-FX as the canned Hi-Ten Bomberman, which would explain something if that's actually true.
Someone even came back to me on that forum thread, and explained that Redbook, in fact, is pretty cumbersome in its own ways, and is compatible only with music; sound effects and voice acting still need to be synthesized (or, presumably, recorded into the source code the same way as with graphics), which is why the characters' voices in Chip-chan Kick! sound pretty rough compared to anyone's in a PSX or Saturn game. The game itself only used Redbook music because it had room for it as a simple arcade-style platformer as opposed to a much more intricate RPG or dating simulator.
-----
In any case, part of this whole deal with the PC-FX stems from an idea I proposed to Chelle with the Starbound pic, about making it into some mock cover art. The Playstation had to do with nostalgia and inspiration stemming from that one game and song, the Saturn just happened to be its closest cousin, and the PC-FX, as one can tell by now, was author appeal. For comparison, we could take the aforementioned Rayman, which was originally released for the Atari Jaguar only a week before coming out polished way up for the Playstation, followed by even better versions for the Sega Saturn and MS-DOS during the months after, and was also going to appear on the SNES, 32X, and Commodore Amiga (obviously increasingly watered down from the other non-Jaguar versions). If I wanted to pay homage to the 16-bit era with something not based on anything SNES-specific, I might make two different versions based on the Super NES and Sega Genesis. (The Original Story, as I mentioned before, will be based solely on the Genesis if it ever goes through, as "Sega's" answer to Earthbound, just as Sega had Phantasy Star and Streets of Rage to Nintendo's* Final Fantasy and Final Fight series respectively.) But then again, all of this was during the 1990s, all those different systems are long defunct, and I only plan on releasing one version (aesthetically speaking) for current PC systems (actual consoles in general are out of the question).
(*Yes, I know. Final Fantasy was property of Squaresoft, which jumped to Sony with VII, and Final Fight belonged to Capcom. I'm talking about how those games appeared only on Nintendo's systems at the time, presumably due to contracts forbidding those two companies from making games under said franchises for anyone else, and why Sega needed its own equivalent series to compete with them for fans of the same genres. The Original Story could be an inverse of that, since Earthbound developer Ape (now Creatures) played second-party to Nintendo while my own development team for both that and Day of the Beehive would have been a third party altogether, especially if we were to make the latter game also for Sony and NEC. The whole thing's just a what-if concept, so just take everything with a salt packet.)
In any case, during my past time with Freedom Planet, I was reminded of my time in 9th grade (2000-01), the preceding summer, and the role that the original Playstation had in my life at the time. Ironically, this was brought on first by how well its music could have applied to Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast (something Matthew also owned, and that I was somewhat interested in early that year after already first playing it a year earlier). Someone under the YouTube name Starkiller, along with their repliers, did compare Thermal Base part 1 to Hot Shelter in that game (along with several levels from other games), and yeah, I do sorta remember GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly both advertising games for that system. But, while the Saturn was already two years dead by that point, the Playstation still carried on all the way to the mid-'00s in all three regions (2004 here in America).
Aside from all that and that Playstation that Matthew owned, this black family consisting of four brothers named Victor, David, Froderick, and Dijon Ingram (all oldest to youngest), and their sister, Sade, moved in during the summer of 2000, and we got to know them and would play certain games like Resident Evil and Moto Racers World Tour (among doing other things). We three kids also went on a week-long trip to Grandma Barbara's, where Cousin David (Yack) was playing Suikoden II, Brian tried that out himself, and I found a copy of Wild Arms (another game I was actively interested in at the time) among all David's different games. There was this one time during November, when I borrowed Matthew's copy of WA and David our neighbor's Playstation to play on my TV set at the time. (Brian and David both watched me play, and didn't think that highly of it.) And then there was this strategy book Mom found for me at the library, dealing exclusively with such games for the Playstation as Suikoden II, Bomberman World (called Bomberman Planet for some reason), Spyro the Dragon, Doom, Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown, Spice World, and Rayman. (Wasn't able to find that anywhere online, but I do remember it was orange and as big and thick as a textbook.)
So, yeah, while I have no history at all with the Saturn (aside from my brief obsessions with Sonic X-treme and Game Tengoku after discovering those at different times), even without naming any specific systems, all of that (and for that matter, Philosoma's premise and final boss that inspired a certain planned Eldritch Abomination for Starbound) is all the more reason to attempt a PSX aesthetic in general with Day of the Beehive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEbz_r-f3Zg&index=1&list=PL1PXwlmbNk-oSV5LAfbywWMqh4iIyRsbi
I always knew the system failed commercially due to being underpowered and focusing on 2D games during a time when 3D was such a big deal as it was, but MMZ aside, I thought it would've handled any type of audio just fine. I mean, Zenki sounded decent enough, on par with most anime for its time and equatable with Suikoden II for the Playstation (which in turn sounds modest enough (compared to, say, Wild Arms) to reasonably expect of the SNES, in line with Chrono Trigger or Super Mario RPG). And for its part, the Saturn had Saturn Bomberman, which sounds flat as paper for a game with the system right in its title; as it turns out, though, that game was supposedly what was intended originally for the PC-FX as the canned Hi-Ten Bomberman, which would explain something if that's actually true.
Someone even came back to me on that forum thread, and explained that Redbook, in fact, is pretty cumbersome in its own ways, and is compatible only with music; sound effects and voice acting still need to be synthesized (or, presumably, recorded into the source code the same way as with graphics), which is why the characters' voices in Chip-chan Kick! sound pretty rough compared to anyone's in a PSX or Saturn game. The game itself only used Redbook music because it had room for it as a simple arcade-style platformer as opposed to a much more intricate RPG or dating simulator.
-----
In any case, part of this whole deal with the PC-FX stems from an idea I proposed to Chelle with the Starbound pic, about making it into some mock cover art. The Playstation had to do with nostalgia and inspiration stemming from that one game and song, the Saturn just happened to be its closest cousin, and the PC-FX, as one can tell by now, was author appeal. For comparison, we could take the aforementioned Rayman, which was originally released for the Atari Jaguar only a week before coming out polished way up for the Playstation, followed by even better versions for the Sega Saturn and MS-DOS during the months after, and was also going to appear on the SNES, 32X, and Commodore Amiga (obviously increasingly watered down from the other non-Jaguar versions). If I wanted to pay homage to the 16-bit era with something not based on anything SNES-specific, I might make two different versions based on the Super NES and Sega Genesis. (The Original Story, as I mentioned before, will be based solely on the Genesis if it ever goes through, as "Sega's" answer to Earthbound, just as Sega had Phantasy Star and Streets of Rage to Nintendo's* Final Fantasy and Final Fight series respectively.) But then again, all of this was during the 1990s, all those different systems are long defunct, and I only plan on releasing one version (aesthetically speaking) for current PC systems (actual consoles in general are out of the question).
(*Yes, I know. Final Fantasy was property of Squaresoft, which jumped to Sony with VII, and Final Fight belonged to Capcom. I'm talking about how those games appeared only on Nintendo's systems at the time, presumably due to contracts forbidding those two companies from making games under said franchises for anyone else, and why Sega needed its own equivalent series to compete with them for fans of the same genres. The Original Story could be an inverse of that, since Earthbound developer Ape (now Creatures) played second-party to Nintendo while my own development team for both that and Day of the Beehive would have been a third party altogether, especially if we were to make the latter game also for Sony and NEC. The whole thing's just a what-if concept, so just take everything with a salt packet.)
In any case, during my past time with Freedom Planet, I was reminded of my time in 9th grade (2000-01), the preceding summer, and the role that the original Playstation had in my life at the time. Ironically, this was brought on first by how well its music could have applied to Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast (something Matthew also owned, and that I was somewhat interested in early that year after already first playing it a year earlier). Someone under the YouTube name Starkiller, along with their repliers, did compare Thermal Base part 1 to Hot Shelter in that game (along with several levels from other games), and yeah, I do sorta remember GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly both advertising games for that system. But, while the Saturn was already two years dead by that point, the Playstation still carried on all the way to the mid-'00s in all three regions (2004 here in America).
Aside from all that and that Playstation that Matthew owned, this black family consisting of four brothers named Victor, David, Froderick, and Dijon Ingram (all oldest to youngest), and their sister, Sade, moved in during the summer of 2000, and we got to know them and would play certain games like Resident Evil and Moto Racers World Tour (among doing other things). We three kids also went on a week-long trip to Grandma Barbara's, where Cousin David (Yack) was playing Suikoden II, Brian tried that out himself, and I found a copy of Wild Arms (another game I was actively interested in at the time) among all David's different games. There was this one time during November, when I borrowed Matthew's copy of WA and David our neighbor's Playstation to play on my TV set at the time. (Brian and David both watched me play, and didn't think that highly of it.) And then there was this strategy book Mom found for me at the library, dealing exclusively with such games for the Playstation as Suikoden II, Bomberman World (called Bomberman Planet for some reason), Spyro the Dragon, Doom, Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown, Spice World, and Rayman. (Wasn't able to find that anywhere online, but I do remember it was orange and as big and thick as a textbook.)
So, yeah, while I have no history at all with the Saturn (aside from my brief obsessions with Sonic X-treme and Game Tengoku after discovering those at different times), even without naming any specific systems, all of that (and for that matter, Philosoma's premise and final boss that inspired a certain planned Eldritch Abomination for Starbound) is all the more reason to attempt a PSX aesthetic in general with Day of the Beehive.