Topic: I feel sorry for kids growing up on games now

[idolminds]

They arent going to get an appreciation for our awesome lo-fi chiptune music. While theres some catchy music made for games still (na naa na na na na naa na na Katamari Day-ma-shii!!!!), a lot of it is orchetrated or some rather generic rock/techno stuff, depending on the game. Everyone will know the old school Mario theme, but thats about it.

[sirean_syan]

I have the same thought on almost a daily basis, but that's most because I've got a boatload of .mod and actual NES soundtracks on my MP3 player.

[Xessive]

I've thought about that too! It came up when I was listening to some old midis of some classics like Ninja Gaiden intro theme, and The Last Ninja theme, and most of the people around me had no diea what they were.. I'd understand if they didn't know the Ninja Gaiden theme (I guess you'd have to be a fan), but if you don't recognize the The Last Ninja theme you're either too young or deprived! I never had a Commodore64, but my cousin did and that was my exposure. I had a MSX. Man I feel like a relic!

[Quemaqua]

It's amazing that people as young as us can feel like relics, but it's the truth.  Cobra has more experience with some of the older systems, but his experience and mine don't seem *that* far off.  I think I've played around with at least most of the older systems that he has, so despite our age differences our general realm of experience is somewhat similar.  And now things move so fast that you become a relic after being a gamer for just 10 years.  It's crazy.

But yeah, I feel you on the music thing.  There really is something to be said for the old stuff, which is why I have some OSV soundtracks (like the Gameplay original soundtrack for Seiken Densetsu / Final Fantasy Adventure... in all its GB bleeping glory!).

[idolminds]

I have the same thought on almost a daily basis, but that's most because I've got a boatload of .mod and actual NES soundtracks on my MP3 player.

I wish there was an MP3 player that supported these formats natively. You could have a billion hours of music.

[sirean_syan]

You'd probably run out of music before you'd run out of space. I've always thought it'd be awesome if someone put out a player that basically ran off of WinAmp 2.0 and just did things like a flash drive. Drag and drop music into your own file structure and WinAmp would just work like it does on your computer. There are like a billion and a half plugins for every type of music out there, it'd be super flexible, and you could do things how you wanted.

[idolminds]

That would be so awesome...

[scottws]

I feel bad for ones that will never get to experience the games.  Super Mario 3, the original Zelda, Goldeneye, Starcraft...

[Xessive]

I feel bad for ones that will never get to experience the games.  Super Mario 3, the original Zelda, Goldeneye, Starcraft...

And Pong.. We can't forget Pong.

[MysterD]

And Pong.. We can't forget Pong.

*Bloop......bloop.....bloop!*

[Xessive]

Haha I remember I found my dad's old Pong console! It's a classic gaming console that only plays Pong The controllers were just basically a knob (like a radio tuner) that you rotate to control the paddle. The paddles' reaction to the analogue tuning on the controller beats any software generated motion! It's basically just moving 'light' on the screen.. It's so smooth!

[MysterD]

Haha I remember I found my dad's old Pong console! It's a classic gaming console that only plays Pong The controllers were just basically a knob (like a radio tuner) that you rotate to control the paddle. The paddles' reaction to the analogue tuning on the controller beats any software generated motion! It's basically just moving 'light' on the screen.. It's so smooth!

Probably got a better framerate and much smoother than Gothic 3.

[Cobra951]

I wish there was an MP3 player that supported these formats natively. You could have a billion hours of music.

I used my PPC (PDA) a lot as an MP3 player at my last job.  Nice thing about it is that anyone with the skills can code apps to do out-of-the way stuff, like the sequenced audio formats.  The less open MP3 players aren't nearly as flexible.

This relic, yours truly, has been alive (and cognitive) long enough to see the entire videogame history unfold.  Aside from Space War, which was way ahead of its time, the early stuff was not much to look at or listen to.  ("Bleep! Bloop!" exactly.)  There's precious little worth listening to even during the early 80s Atari days.  There was some software for the 8-bit micros which concentrated on music.  The one I remember allowed you to sequence 4 simultaneous voices on the Atari 800, using music notation (Advanced Music System, I think was the name).  It would then play it back audibly and visually on a piano keyboard.  But while the 800 has 4 hardware voices, it only produces square waves, a gritty sound.  The Commodore 64 had 3 voices with different-shaped waves, including sine (pure tone) and triangle (brassy).  It was a much-better platform for sequenced audio (though the 800 was a much superior system otherwise). 

The first truly awesome game music I remember came along with the NES.  While its audio hardware is primitive, the sheer talent of the early composers made up for it.  The SNES, with its awesome sound hardware (for the time, and not bad even now), brought in the golden years of sequenced game music.  The Sega Genesis didn't even come close to its quality, although there are some great game soundtracks for some Genesis games (Streets of Rage and Castlevania Bloodlines immediately come to mind).  After that, the use of sequenced music declined.  Although it still gets used now and then, what we get is mostly pre-recorded stuff.  I've always believed that real-time rendered graphics go hand-in-hand with real-time rendered audio.  From this purist point of view, what we have now is a step in the wrong direction.  Music should ebb and flow with the visuals, something well demonstrated in Mario 64.  That console didn't have the gobs of space of disc systems (like the PSX), so music generally was forced to remain sequenced, which in turn allows for it to react instantly to events in the game code.

[Pugnate]

Sure retro gaming has its moments, and the memorable melodies of the classic games we treasure in our hearts do hold meaning, but I think all that jazz is vastly overrated.

Yes much of that music was fantastic, especially if you consider the limitations of 8 bit sound. They worked with what they had, and then some. Heck I'd love to have a library of those classic tunes, just to get a nostalgic kick every now and then. But any interest in that stuff beyond a collector's ambition is not for me.

Personally I hate retro gaming. I find it stupid and boring. I am allergic to the pixilated mess of the past, and for every minute wasted on that shit I'd easily rather be in the world of ES4. There is a reason why it is called retro gaming, and that's because that stuff is just outdated. It is a waste of time.

Oh and I loved my Commodore 64. I loved games like Ghosts 'n Goblins, The Last Ninja, Ace 64 etc. Going further back, I loved Pac Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong (which had the earliest rendition of Mario) etc.

But every free moment I have to game, I'd rather play the best that this age has to offer, rather than waste time on the past. And there is just so much I haven't explored.

[Quemaqua]

Cobra makes an interesting point.  I've often wondered about that, and wondered if we'll ever someday see a return to sequenced stuff once technology gets you almost real-sounding music out of a machine's internal instruments.  I mean, to get something like Oblivion's soundtrack, you need a lot of hardware.  I think the most they used for that was 30 machines at once?  Something like that.  And it sounds almost real because the technology in sampling has gotten so good.  Maybe someday we'll be able to pack all that into a small system and get some good stuff... but I'm not sure I see it happening.

And since Pug just posted... I sort of agree, but I don't agree at all.  I would much rather spend my free time gaming with new stuff because my free time is so limited, but I still love going back and playing the classics, and this is especially true now that we have more homebrew going with the PSP and such.  That's where handhelds really beat out everything else -- the classics feel right at home, and most of the new stuff either isn't so far from what the classics were, or they have high technology but just aren't really that great.

[Pugnate]

I think Classics definitely have a place. It is probably just me, but I sometimes think it will be somewhat anti climatic for me to visit the classic games. That in some way, it may sully the fond memories. Having said that, it is somewhat sad that this generation will not know or appreciate its gaming history.

[Cobra951]

The PSP tells me that portables are not ready for miniaturized 3D gaming.  Most fully 3D games I've played on it have been more of a chore than fun.  The only really enjoyable things are along the lines of Lumines and Loco Roco, both 2D.  The SNES games are right at home too, as are enhanced PSP variants of classic games (such as Mega Man Powered Up).

While I agree that going back too far is strictly an exercise in nostalgia, the fact is that the peak of 2D gaming was about a dozen years ago, and today's portables are better suited to such games than to ports of first-person immersive 3D worlds.  Reasons, imho, their screen size and control devices are lacking.

But Pug, we were really talking about music here, not gameplay.  There are some truly awesome compositions that came along with some of those classic games, dating back to the NES days (as I said before).  Appreciating those now has little to do with nostalgia.

2 Examples:

Earthbound: Bus.mp3 (1.8 MB) created with Super Jukebox and LAME encoder from the SNES original Bus.spc (65 KB).

Final Fantasy 3: Ff3intr2.mp3 (2.9 MB) from the original spc (65 KB).

[Quemaqua]

The first thing soundtrack I ever fell in love with was Secret of Mana.  Hiroki Kikuta was one of the first names in game music I really paid attention to.  I actually took a tape player over to the TV when I first beat the game, and went back to every single area in the game so that I could get the music.  I even went through it again to get some of the boss music and stuff that only happens in certain instances.  Then when I figured out the soundtrack was on CD... I about crapped myself.  That was years later.  I own the soundtracks to every single Mana/Seiken Densetsu game to date, and I really enjoy nearly all of them.  Kengi Ito's work on the GBA remake of the original, Sword of Mana, was a bit too heavily reliant on a single theme, but all the others were great (and Yoko Shimomura's work on Legend of Mana brings the series into a nice Playstation-era sequenced score).

I really do feel bad for kids that are going to miss that magic, but it's something that truly is unique to games of those eras.

[Cobra951]

Here is an awesome resource.  Tons of original SNES music, in its original format.  Now all you need is a player or Winamp plugin.  I think Super Jukebox is the best tool for accurate playback and dumping to WAV files, plus it lets you see what's really going on during reproduction.  There's also a good Winamp plugin for trouble-free playback.

[sirean_syan]

Wow. Zophar.nets still around? Last time I was there was when I was getting all the old music plugins for WinAmp years ago. That was also my central hub for emulators when I first got into them years ago.

I think Overclocked Remix also host the original sound files for older games too. You have to look in the game data pages.

[Cobra951]

I was shocked to find Zophar still there when I searched for Super Jukebox.  That was my central emulation page back when I was really into this, meaning shortly after the concept of console emulation took off.  That was, when, mid-late 90s?

I suppose getting good tunes out of the 8-bit consoles is more impressive than from the fairly sophisticated audio the SNES hardware could produce.  The NES Megaman 2 & 3 soundtracks I think are standouts.  The standard format for the originals is NSF (Nosefart).  I'm sure Zophar has all that stuff too, plus playback software/plugins.

Edit: Yep!  This is the Winamp plugin I'm using.  The entire Megaman 2 soundtrack, 24 tracks, is one 17KB file.   

Edit 2:  How could I have forgotten about Castlevania 3?  I loved this one.  I was so happy when I got a "sound-test" option on the title screen, back in its day.