Shovel Knight for the PCE possible?

[BigusSchmuck]

Curious, what would it take to get Shovel Knight ported to the PCE? Might just be a pipe dream of mine, but its one hell of a platformer.

[Dicer]

Big Yachts blessing and people willing to do it...

[Michirin9801]

Well, you'd lose most (if not all) of the Parallax Scrolling, that much is for sure, and well, given how the soundtrack was composed using the 2A03 + VRC6 (8 channels total) some of the detail in the composition would most likely be lost, whether or not it would be noticeable though is up in the air...
(Or you could just go the lazy route and redbook the OST)
That said though, I think a better idea would be to make a side-game with the same gameplay, similar level design, but optimised for the PC engine, taking full advantage of the colour capabilities to make better graphics, which would make up for the loss in the parallax, and re-interpreting the soundtrack in a way that it would sound better on the PCE soundchip!

[ccovell]

The colour depth is below the PCE's abilities; more NES than PCE.  Audio, mostly no problem.  The layers of parallax scrolling would be a real challenge to do well; if one were to do it just on the stock PCE by using sprites as BG elements, there would be a bit of sprite flicker in-game.

What would it take?  It would take a team roughly as talented and dedicated and roughly the size of Yacht Club games.

[FraGMarE]

The colour depth is below the PCE's abilities; more NES than PCE.  Audio, mostly no problem.  The layers of parallax scrolling would be a real challenge to do well; if one were to do it just on the stock PCE by using sprites as BG elements, there would be a bit of sprite flicker in-game.

What would it take?  It would take a team roughly as talented and dedicated and roughly the size of Yacht Club games.

You know, I've seen my son play that game on the 360 many times, and I've *ALWAYS* thought an almost 1:1 version could be done on the PC-Engine.  Yea, of course, you're going to lose some parallax (but not all of it!) and a lot of the backgrounds would need to be static.  That's no big deal, to me.  But as far as colors, music, sounds, sprites, level design, etc.... i see absolutely nothing in Shovel Knight that couldn't be done on the PC-Engine.

If you're willing to go the SuperGrafx route, you could probably even keep most (all?) of the parallax.

To be perfectly honest, I think the graphics could even be redrawn to look better.  They look mostly Master System styled/inspired, to me.  Better than NES, not quite 16-bit era.

[NecroPhile]

What would it take?  It would take a team roughly as talented and dedicated and roughly the size of Yacht Club games.

This.

The Turbob could easily handle a quality port, though it wouldn't be pixel perfect.  Like most ports from back in the day, you'd have to have changes to fit the hardware (parallax, resolution, etc.).

[Michirin9801]

You know, I've seen my son play that game on the 360 many times, and I've *ALWAYS* thought an almost 1:1 version could be done on the PC-Engine.  Yea, of course, you're going to lose some parallax (but not all of it!) and a lot of the backgrounds would need to be static.  That's no big deal, to me.  But as far as colors, music, sounds, sprites, level design, etc.... i see absolutely nothing in Shovel Knight that couldn't be done on the PC-Engine.

If you're willing to go the SuperGrafx route, you could probably even keep most (all?) of the parallax.

To be perfectly honest, I think the graphics could even be redrawn to look better.  They look mostly Master System styled/inspired, to me.  Better than NES, not quite 16-bit era.

You need to look at the game a little more closely because it has like a thousand scrolling planes, a 1:1 port would be hard even on the SNES which has 3 layers... But you know, a lot of that game's parallax is so subtle that its loss would be pretty much unnoticeable on a system with 2 BG layers, so a SuperGrafx version would be pretty close!

[ClodBusted]

You know, I've seen my son play that game on the 360 many times

I guess you meant the Xbone?

[FraGMarE]

You need to look at the game a little more closely because it has like a thousand scrolling planes, a 1:1 port would be hard even on the SNES which has 3 layers... But you know, a lot of that game's parallax is so subtle that its loss would be pretty much unnoticeable on a system with 2 BG layers, so a SuperGrafx version would be pretty close!

I'm not talking about parallax.  I'm talking about everything else BUT parallax. Ditch the 923487 layers of parallax, and there's NOTHING in that game that couldn't be done on the PCE.  Of course, you're not going to get a zillion layers of background scrolling on a system that has precisely 1... but you might be able to fake it here and there.  I'm mainly talking about gameplay and general content.  To me, if you cut out the parallax and everything else remains the same... that's still basically a 1:1 port, imo.

You know, I've seen my son play that game on the 360 many times

I guess you meant the Xbone?

Er yea, XBox One, not 360.  Though, he plays another game on the 360 called Terraria that looks pretty 8/16 bit era-ish, in a similar way to Shovel Knight.

[CrackTiger]

Shovel Knight was designed by tech experts who did a lot of research to determine exactly what kind of accelerator chips NES games would use in the future and made the game fit within the technical limits of the NES hardware with those chips.

Just physically port over those chips into the Shovel Knight HuCard and quintuple the parallax found in the computer version.

[Michirin9801]

I'm not talking about parallax.  I'm talking about everything else BUT parallax. Ditch the 923487 layers of parallax, and there's NOTHING in that game that couldn't be done on the PCE.

Well now that you put it that way then yes, you're absolutely correct...

Shovel Knight was designed by tech experts who did a lot of research to determine exactly what kind of accelerator chips NES games would use in the future and made the game fit within the technical limits of the NES hardware with those chips.

Just physically port over those chips into the Shovel Knight HuCard and quintuple the parallax found in the computer version.

If we got to the point of actually putting Shovel Knight on a real NES cartridge, then pretty much the whole hardware would be inside of the cartridge and the NES itself would only serve to power the cartridge, provide input and MAYBE use the soundchip...
Heck I doubt it would even be able to output an image, the cart would most likely have an HDMI output in it somewhere and you'd connect the cartridge to your TV, not the actual NES...

I mean seriously, not only does the game have countless background layers, it also completely breaks the NES's colour count per sprite/tile and colour palette (Like, seriously, the game uses a few colours that aren't even on the system's palette) and it does gigantic well-animated sprites, has NO flickering what-so-ever, uses an extra soundchip for audio AND plays sound effects without clipping ANY of the sound channels on top of that, not to mention the game displays exclusively in widescreen! There are NO 4:3 options...
At that point, even if the game is on an NES cartridge, is it even an NES game still? I'd say the point where it stops being an NES game and starts being something else is the moment when you're outputting the image from the cartridge to the TV, and not from the NES...

Putting all of that extra hardware on the NES cartridge would be no problem because the thing is as big as an aircraft carrier, meanwhile all the PCE would need would be 2 or 3 extra sound channels (2 for no loss in musical detail, 3 for no sound-clipping, preferably one of them would be an ADPCM to mimic the NES DPCM without any wasted CPU cycles by playing a sample on a PSG channel) about a million extra BG layers, maybe one extra sprite layer too in order to avoid flickering (not like it would be likely on the PCE but better safe than sorry!) and some way to support a widescreen display... That's about it really... If you could cram the necessary hardware to pull that off on a HuCard then great! A 1:1 port would be pretty much a matter of actually going and making it, but personally, I'd rather just use the base hardware and push it to the limits, that's why I said a side-game with the same gameplay, but better graphics, re-arranged (read "better") music, similar level design, but all optimised for the PC engine would be a better idea than attempting a straight port of the game...

[CrackTiger]

From what I've seen in videos, every layer of parallax could be included, but it would be dialed down similar to many port made bitd. Instead of 10 trees on-screen per row in the foreground, you might only have 2 or 3 and they might be redrawn narrower. When they're spaced out evenly, it feels the same because you have the same number of layers.

[Gredler]

From what I've seen in videos, every layer of parallax could be included, but it would be dialed down similar to many port made bitd. Instead of 10 trees on-screen per row in the foreground, you might only have 2 or 3 and they might be redrawn narrower. When they're spaced out evenly, it feels the same because you have the same number of layers.

This is what I was going to chime in and say. Cuts would need to be made, but a similar feeling could be conveyed if the elements were planned accordingly.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Or just make it a CD game, use the soundtrack that already exists, and ditch the foofoo parallax where possible and dial it down to be doable. 


That way you aren't dicking around with adding hardware to a HuCard when we've only barely made it to the point where we're successfully putting out real cards.     

adding hardware to a cartridge might seem like "no problem" when space is the only concern...

but you also have to factor in actually designing the circuitry, manufacturing costs, "are these chips readily available", "should we use an FPGA and just do it that way", and all of that.

That stuff isn't free.

At least on the Turbo, with a HuCard, we have the perk of not really needing a mapper for anything we'd all probably ever bother to make, including a port of this game. Also, the sound chip itself is competent enough that "losing channels" might not actually be that big of a deal.

From a sound mixing standpoint, sometimes its actually better to have some channels drop for sfx when they play, because it actually sounds a bit awful when there's too much going on at once.    You get grating/blaring noise.  If you just want to enjoy the tunes, fire up the soundtest modes. 

Anyway, my main take away from this thread is the confirmation that parallax is often excessive, and overrated.

[Michirin9801]

Cuts would need to be made, but a similar feeling could be conveyed if the elements were planned accordingly.

That way you aren't dicking around with adding hardware to a HuCard when we've only barely made it to the point where we're successfully putting out real cards.     

adding hardware to a cartridge might seem like "no problem" when space is the only concern...

The extra hardware (on either version) would only be necessary for a 100% identical port, the PCE could easily handle a game with the same gameplay and even better graphics and music, so long as a few compromises were made... The NES however, absolutely couldn't...

From a sound mixing standpoint, sometimes its actually better to have some channels drop for sfx when they play, because it actually sounds a bit awful when there's too much going on at once.    You get grating/blaring noise.  If you just want to enjoy the tunes, fire up the soundtest modes. 

That's why I said re-interpreting the soundtrack would be a better idea...

Anyway, my main take away from this thread is the confirmation that parallax is often excessive, and overrated.

Excessive parallax, like the type that Shovel Knight uses, absolutely is overrated, however I think nothing beats a good parallax that's actually well-implemented and meaningful!
And I think it's especially impressive when it's done on a system with just a single BG layer, like the PC engine...

[Dicer]

From the company themselves...

"How about Xbox 360, iOS, and Tiger handhelds!?
A lot of people are learning about Shovel Knight for the first time and there is a vast sea of awesome gaming platforms out there. It is a goal of ours to see Shovel Knight arrive on all sorts of platforms — from consoles to handhelds and maybe even a few things in between? However, we have our hands full with our initial plans. Once we have some surefire details we'll be sure to tell you all about it!"

[Arkhan Asylum]

The extra hardware (on either version) would only be necessary for a 100% identical port, the PCE could easily handle a game with the same gameplay and even better graphics and music, so long as a few compromises were made... The NES however, absolutely couldn't...

Well, since the game was sort of designed to be a hopped up NES looking game, it's a little unfair to make it seem as if the NES couldn't handle this kind of game.  I'm also not sure why an NES version would need "better graphics and music" since it's a clear homage to NES gaming and would need basically what is presented, with some technical cutbacks due to real NESing.

The NES could pretty much recreate this game if the parallax is dialed down in the same sort of way the PCE would need to be done. 

The game is practically a cracked out Megaman with a Shovelknight dude.   The level layouts are so similar.     You have long stretches that cut to flip screening, with full room bosses.   

Aside from the excessive parallax in some spots, it's nothing we haven't seen on the NES from Capcom or Konami.   You would have to get clever with the background tiles + sprites for some of the bigger things, but, it's not out of the question.

Does the team at ShovelTown have the resources to pull it off?   probably not.    It'd be a dick-crushing undertaking to pull a lot of that off on NES, and for what real reason?   

The only reason outside of technical dickwaving that they'd even need to do it for is if they want to exploit the current retro gaming fad of pandering to as many outlets as possible with any given game.

Seriously.  Idiots will be lining up, throwing money at them like a bunch of drunks on payday at a strip club, so they can have some sort of limited run NES cartridge to stick on their shelf next to the same game they already played and beat.   lol.   It is a sad state of affairs.

That's why I said re-interpreting the soundtrack would be a better idea...

I'm not sure of your point.  You would have to do this regardless, and I am saying it's OK to have a soundtrack where sound effects will stop a song channel during the duration of the sound effect.

PCE would pummel the soundtrack if it were a CD release.   It'd be funny.

The game unfortunately uses typical euro-esque chiptune stuff with a hint of Capcom percussion, so I got tired of the soundtrack rather fast.

It sounded a little uninspired, I guess.

[ccovell]

The game unfortunately uses typical euro-esque chiptune stuff with a hint of Capcom percussion, so I got tired of the soundtrack rather fast.

1) Manami Matsumae contributed to the soundtrack, so it is neither 100% Euro nor 0% Capcom.
2) The intro/title tune has Capcom toms a-go-go.

[Michirin9801]

Well, since the game was sort of designed to be a hopped up NES looking game, it's a little unfair to make it seem as if the NES couldn't handle this kind of game.  I'm also not sure why an NES version would need "better graphics and music" since it's a clear homage to NES gaming and would need basically what is presented, with some technical cutbacks due to real NESing.

It's not that it needs to have better graphics and music, it's just that if they actually made an NES version (without putting a whole new console inside of the cartridge) the game would most likely be watered down so hard that it wouldn't even be worth bothering with... It's not just the lack of parallax that's the issue, it's that the game uses pretty much all the colours in the NES palette and then some all at once with no regard for palette limitations either in the sprites or in the BG tiles, and then there's the music, okay they might be able to put a VRC6 in the cartridge, so the music COULD end up untouched, but it would add sound-clipping (not like that bothers you)... But in case they ended up unable to use the VRC6, which is a possibility, then the entire soundtrack would have to be redone with just the 2A03, so there goes the 3 best channels and a whole bunch of musical detail, not to mention, the sound-clipping would get worse with just the 2A03...
The gameplay would probably be fine, but the flickering in that game would be other-worldly (unless the sprites were made smaller or at least less wide) they'd have to either cut out some enemies for being too big, or put them on the BG layer and figure out if they can even animate or move them depending on level design, and if they went that route, level design would have to be changed in various spots, oh and, say goodbye to any hint of smooth animation, especially on the enemies...
Pretty much every boss except for Tinker Knight and maybe Plague Knight and King Knight would have to be re-designed, or they'd flicker so much that the fight would be near impossible to see...

I'll admit that a real NES version wouldn't be unplayable, but I know I'd rather have it on a system that can actually do the game justice, unlike the NES...

That's why I said re-interpreting the soundtrack would be a better idea...

I'm not sure of your point.  You would have to do this regardless, and I am saying it's OK to have a soundtrack where sound effects will stop a song channel during the duration of the sound effect.

PCE would pummel the soundtrack if it were a CD release.   It'd be funny.

The game unfortunately uses typical euro-esque chiptune stuff with a hint of Capcom percussion, so I got tired of the soundtrack rather fast.

It sounded a little uninspired, I guess.

I'm not saying it's not okay to have sound-clipping, what I mean is that a PCE version of the soundtrack should sound more like a PCE soundtrack, and not like NES on-steroids but missing details, also I'd like it a lot better if it turned out A LOT less Capcom-esque...

Putting the soundtrack on CD would be the easiest route, but c'mon what's the fun in having a CD play NES music on-steroids? If the game used the CD for the music, I'd vouch for the soundtrack to be re-created with the YM2151, then just record that and put it on the CD, now THAT would be a good version of the soundtrack!
(I know I wouldn't do it though because I suck at FM and I'm not enough of a fan of the soundtrack or talented enough to attempt to cover it, also it's too different from my style)

[Arkhan Asylum]

1) Manami Matsumae contributed to the soundtrack, so it is neither 100% Euro nor 0% Capcom.

Yeah.  I know.   Her contributions (2 songs?) were great.   I like the melodies and general progressions of a lot of her music.   

I liked bits and pieces of the rest of the soundtrack.   Some songs were great (the campfire song is 100% awesome) , some songs were half great, some songs were just eh.

I wonder really if it's just that the soundtrack is so big.  There were what, almost 50 songs?    You can't win em all.

Regardless though, this is a subjective bit that's influenced by my jaded nature that is the result of that barrage of NES/gameboy chipwank stuff that was flooding the scenes for awhile (and still kind of is).   I won't deny that he did a fantastic job with the overall soundtrack and capturing the NES sound and spirit, and as a whole, I think it's probably one of the best "NES sound" album things out there.

It's not that it needs to have better graphics and music, it's just that if they actually made an NES version (without putting a whole new console inside of the cartridge) the game would most likely be watered down so hard that it wouldn't even be worth bothering with... It's not just the lack of parallax that's the issue, it's that the game uses pretty much all the colours in the NES palette and then some all at once with no regard for palette limitations either in the sprites or in the BG tiles, and then there's the music, okay they might be able to put a VRC6 in the cartridge, so the music COULD end up untouched, but it would add sound-clipping (not like that bothers you)... But in case they ended up unable to use the VRC6, which is a possibility, then the entire soundtrack would have to be redone with just the 2A03, so there goes the 3 best channels and a whole bunch of musical detail, not to mention, the sound-clipping would get worse with just the 2A03...
The gameplay would probably be fine, but the flickering in that game would be other-worldly (unless the sprites were made smaller or at least less wide) they'd have to either cut out some enemies for being too big, or put them on the BG layer and figure out if they can even animate or move them depending on level design, and if they went that route, level design would have to be changed in various spots, oh and, say goodbye to any hint of smooth animation, especially on the enemies...
Pretty much every boss except for Tinker Knight and maybe Plague Knight and King Knight would have to be re-designed, or they'd flicker so much that the fight would be near impossible to see...

I'll admit that a real NES version wouldn't be unplayable, but I know I'd rather have it on a system that can actually do the game justice, unlike the NES...

I think you'd be surprised what kind of BG tile stuff can be used for big enemies.  ShovelKnight already harkens back to that crap with their uses of black backgrounds for the bosses.    The technodrome in TMNT or the Air Marshall's ship at the end of Bucky O' Hare is pretty large.

It's all generally doable.  It's just a question of time/effort/is it worth it really?

They already successfully created an NES homage game here that pretty much plays as tightly as an NES game would, so I don't think they really need to waste their time. 

Putting the soundtrack on CD would be the easiest route, but c'mon what's the fun in having a CD play NES music on-steroids? If the game used the CD for the music, I'd vouch for the soundtrack to be re-created with the YM2151, then just record that and put it on the CD, now THAT would be a good version of the soundtrack!
(I know I wouldn't do it though because I suck at FM and I'm not enough of a fan of the soundtrack or talented enough to attempt to cover it, also it's too different from my style)

Itd be cool to have a version that is a combination of all kinds of wangly 80s sound hardware.

like Roland/Yamaha synth combinations.   

Beats the goony early 90s studio piano crap that some PCE games ended up with, lol.

[Michirin9801]

Putting the soundtrack on CD would be the easiest route, but c'mon what's the fun in having a CD play NES music on-steroids? If the game used the CD for the music, I'd vouch for the soundtrack to be re-created with the YM2151, then just record that and put it on the CD, now THAT would be a good version of the soundtrack!
(I know I wouldn't do it though because I suck at FM and I'm not enough of a fan of the soundtrack or talented enough to attempt to cover it, also it's too different from my style)

Itd be cool to have a version that is a combination of all kinds of wangly 80s sound hardware.

like Roland/Yamaha synth combinations.   

Beats the goony early 90s studio piano crap that some PCE games ended up with, lol.

It would indeed, but you know, I've only suggested YM2151 because I'm a big fan of the kinds of sounds they got out of the PC-98 and X68000... In the 90s >w>
PCE chiptunes are still the best to me though, so I'd prefer that...

[Addendum]
I imagine you're gonna say something along the lines of "Oh if you prefer PCE chiptunes why suggest something for the CD?"
Let me just explain myself better: My preferred choice would be PCE chiptunes, but in case the soundtrack had to be redbook for one reason or another, I'd rather have something that's almost as good as PCE chiptunes, but that you can't really do on the PCE soundchip, so "redbooking" the YM2151 would be my go-to choice for that soundtrack...

[Arkhan Asylum]

why not do PCE + YM2151 hybrid tunes? 

Kinda like how MSX does PSG + SCC + FM and forms megatunes, lol.

the Etrian Odyssey games did a good job of having PC98 style tunes, but also had modern versions.

[Michirin9801]

why not do PCE + YM2151 hybrid tunes? 

Oh okay, that would be the best thing ever xD

[Arkhan Asylum]

https://youtu.be/t97jql3JWYQ

There's not alot of stuff floating around for MSX that uses it because the SCC was Konami's special chip so it's not like Falcom was releasing games for some other company's cartridge, lol.

But there is some stuff people have tweaked and diddled with.


https://youtu.be/ERvoLnFqx-A

This Ys stuff is a nice mix.  You get some nice depth and warmth out of the SCC (It's kind of like a PCE)

but this stupid AKB48 song is still the best: https://youtu.be/zTh8DIocUGw

lol

It would sound better if the MSX wasn't stock with an OPLL setup, but, it was cheap, worked, and still sounded nice. 

You could basically combine YM2151 and PCE and get hopped up versions of stuff like this.

I like the NES sound from a nostalgic standpoint since I grew up hearing it every day, but there are better options that I wish more people would use for their shit.


EDIT:  https://youtu.be/BvUe8LnIh2o

it all sounds so good.  I am tempted to go sit and rediddle a Shovel Knight tune to this setup.

[spenoza]

I think it we could source YM2151 or similar cheaply enough we should totally put them on new HuCard games.

[Michirin9801]

Yeah this is all very nice stuff, but I just think 2OP FM is just a little weak in comparison to the 4OP >w>

I like the NES sound from a nostalgic standpoint since I grew up hearing it every day, but there are better options that I wish more people would use for their shit.

I like NES sound too, but I just think it's way overdone and I'm somewhat sick of it... (I'm particularly sick of VRC6 which everyone and their moms use)
At the very least I wish more people would do Sunsoft-style NES music rather than Capcom-style...

it all sounds so good.  I am tempted to go sit and rediddle a Shovel Knight tune to this setup.

Well why not? Do your best!

I think it we could source YM2151 or similar cheaply enough we should totally put them on new HuCard games.

It would be much easier to play YM2151 tunes on the CD though...

On a side note, Deflemask does support the YM2151+PCM, so I could make a PCE+OPM+PCM hybrid tune by using 2 instances of the tracker, the thing is that the YM2151 alone already has more than enough sound channels for pretty much anything I'd want to cover, so if I were to make a hybrid tune I'd probably just use 2 or 3 FM channels, maybe sampled drums and put all the rest on the PCE...

[Arkhan Asylum]

Well why not? Do your best!

I got enough other crap going on with trying to finish Inferno for MSX2, lol.

but, MSX with non stock stuff also has: https://youtu.be/jHOHthgL4U4 (lol)

you can do OPL4 on MSX, it just requires a cartridge and was never included in a machine off the shelf, so no games really were written for it.

Theres all kinds of non game MSX stuff floating around that is OPL4 out the ass.

[elmer]

I think it we could source YM2151 or similar cheaply enough we should totally put them on new HuCard games.

I *think* that we'd need a wait-state on the HuCard bus in order to meet the electrical timings for the YM2151, but I'm not sure.

The YMF289B would be plenty fast-enough and the YMF262 *might* be, and they're less than $2 (including DAC chip) from China.

This was already jokingly-discussed here ...

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=21695.msg482377#msg482377

I'm sure that TheOldMan or one of the other modern-HuCard guys could put something together ... if they were interested enough.

Yeah this is all very nice stuff, but I just think 2OP FM is just a little weak in comparison to the 4OP >w>

Absolutely ... 2op sucks ... 4op is OK.

But 6op? Absolute Heaven!!! Yamaha SY77/SY99 ... <sigh>

It would be much easier to play YM2151 tunes on the CD though...

Yep.

[elmer]

It would be much easier to play YM2151 tunes on the CD though...

Yep.

BTW ... for those of us around at the time, approx 8 years before the Playstation 1 ... the incredible
jaw-dropping shock of the PCE wasn't that it could do amazing chiptunes, even ones of the quality of the LoX games.

It was that it could do this ...

... and similar things, while the Genesis sounded like a POS, and the SNES sounded like something from a bad commerical.

This was *real* music.

Nobody else could do it.

The Megadrive CD caught up ... eventually.

But the PCE was almost a generation-ahead in bringing this aspect of gaming to people.

[Dicer]

It would be much easier to play YM2151 tunes on the CD though...

Yep.

BTW ... for those of us around at the time, approx 8 years before the Playstation 1 ... the incredible
jaw-dropping shock of the PCE wasn't that it could do amazing chiptunes, even ones of the quality of the LoX games.

It was that it could do this ...

... and similar things, while the Genesis sounded like a POS, and the SNES sounded like something from a bad commerical.

This was *real* music.

Nobody else could do it.

The Megadrive CD caught up ... eventually.

But the PCE was almost a generation-ahead in bringing this aspect of gaming to people.

Seeing the Ys opening for the first time...fuck me it was just on another level, that intro will always be among my favorites it just showed gaming on another plane of existence.

Fucking CHILLS

[Sarumaru]

Elmer, that is so true. I think everyone who was around at the time when CD audio first hit games knows what an impact it made and how it changed gaming as a whole. When I got into the Turbo CD, hearing REAL music in games gave me the tingles. Our team got some criticisms from random shitty gamer hipster-20-something year olds about how we should have gone with chiptunes for our game. I rolled my eyes into the back of my head so hard I almost passed out.

Dicer, when I first saw the Ys I&II intro, I almost cried by how moving it was, sensory overload. I preached about this system so hard afterward. It was simply amazing.

I do enjoy chiptunes, but I will always remember the transition from beeps and boops to fully orchestrated music and real instruments.  I really think that if you weren't around during that time, it's harder to appreciate it because it has become so commonplace.

[BigusSchmuck]

Elmer, that is so true. I think everyone who was around at the time when CD audio first hit games knows what an impact it made and how it changed gaming as a whole. When I got into the Turbo CD, hearing REAL music in games gave me the tingles. Our team got some criticisms from random shitty gamer hipster-20-something year olds about how we should have gone with chiptunes for our game. I rolled my eyes into the back of my head so hard I almost passed out.

Dicer, when I first saw the Ys I&II intro, I almost cried by how moving it was, sensory overload. I preached about this system so hard afterward. It was simply amazing.

I do enjoy chiptunes, but I will always remember the transition from beeps and boops to fully orchestrated music and real instruments.  I really think that if you weren't around during that time, it's harder to appreciate it because it has become so commonplace.

As do I. It was quite epic seeing the transition back in the day. However, I'm not so sure if Shovel Knight's sound track would sound equally as epic with a orchestrated cd audio soundtrack. I can imagine it would be like what those guys did with the remake of Wonder Boy Dragons Trap. It sounded really out of place and totally butchered one of the best songs in that game. Take a listen for yourself.
Turbob version:

Remake:

[Michirin9801]

I do enjoy chiptunes, but I will always remember the transition from beeps and boops to fully orchestrated music and real instruments.  I really think that if you weren't around during that time, it's harder to appreciate it because it has become so commonplace.

It really is harder to appreciate... Let me offer a bit of perspective: I'm 20, when I was little the PS2 came out and pretty much everything used "real" music, so everything sounded pretty much the same, but you see, I grew up playing on my older cousin's Super Nintendo, and I always thought that the SNES sounded much better than anything else (and I still do think that), it sounded a lot more unique and charming than every system newer than it...

Fast forward a few years to when I had my Wii and was downloading Rondo of Blood for the Virtual Console and introducing myself to the PC engine, that game blew my mind! It was better than the SNES Dracula X which I grew up playing in Every Single Way! Except for the sound...
The sound in Rondo of Blood was fine, but honestly, I couldn't help but to feel that Dracula X on the SNES had the better sound, the songs were a lot more pumping and hype than their CD counterparts, I just loved how the SNES sounded in that soundtrack, particularly in the first 3 stages...

Now if only Rondo of Blood sounded like this in-game: https://youtu.be/hK9CsmhW6-w

After playing Rondo of Blood and having my mind blown so hard that I had to pick up the pieces of my brain that were splattered on the wall and put them back in my head, I played a bunch of HuCard games, and well, my perspective on the TurboGrafx's sound changed for the better... After listening to Bloody Wolf, Devil's Crush, Super Star Soldier, Final Soldier, Dragon's Curse and Bomberman '94, to name a few, I took a very strong liking for the system and its sound, I liked it about on-par with the Genesis and its FM sound, maybe a little better? But then the two games that skyrocketed my love for the HuC6280 were Magical Chase and Soldier Blade, those games blew my mind just as hard as Rondo, and it was a one-two punch because I've played them both back to back, and then I was like: "Okay, this is absolutely incredible! I LOVE this sound and I wanna make music for this soundchip!" That cemented the system as my 2nd favourite sound right behind the Super Nintendo, but not too far behind it...

Meanwhile the CD impressed me with its graphics and visual effects, not to mention all the ♥~sweet sweet parallax scrolling~♥ that they've managed to cram on a single BG layer
But the music, well, while I did like it better than pretty much anything from the 5th generation and forward, if only because of its distinctively 90s style, it will just never beat the sounds that the HuC6280 makes in my book...
Unless A: It uses chiptunes (and possibly plays sampled drums on the ADPCM)
Or B: It plays recorded chiptunes from different soundchips on the ADPCM

[Arkhan Asylum]

This is all true, but,

Let's not forget the kind of garbagey CD audio that was in some of the PCE games.   Pop 'n Magic makes me yearn for chiptunes at times because its got some hokey sounds going on.

Even Faucet Armor sometimes is like "man. this is kinda dopey"

Sometimes, the shit they came up with really doesn't fit because they used a weird mix of these cheesy 90s synths instead of a studio band. 

BUT

let's also not forget this:

To me, this is one of the best CD soundtracks on the PCE CD without any question.   

With great power comes great responsibility.

Or you can just be a shithead like me and use a MIDI cart with a C64, and record the bass/leads on a real C64, back into a PC. 

CHIPTUNES ON A CD OGOHFIJOIJAFSD

lol.