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:
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 layerBut 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