Did anyone else neglect Hucards back in the 90's?

[Tatsujin]

I have sampled a few TC games and so far all of the sound tracks have been very forgettable. So far nothing to even approach the perfection of even one track from any NES Castlevania or Mega Man title.

lol, rarely read such a rubbish.

[kazekirifx]

That said, I wasn't too impressed with the TG-16 until I saw and played a Duo.  My experiences with early HuCard/TurboChip games left alot to be desired and I didn't like the sound/music in many of the games I had casually played.  On contrast, the CD soundtrack of the games for Turbo were, I felt, better then most of the other CD systems that I had encountered.  I shunned most Chip games in my early days and concentrated on SCD and CD titles.  That said, I had a chance to get acquainted with some chip games that had great music and got me over my original issues...  That said, some soundtracks still grate on my nerves...

Yeah. This is pretty close to my experience. I think the only hucard I was impressed with during my one year owning just the TG16 before the Duo was Air Zonk. Even my friends who had SNES and Genesis found the graphics and sound to be on par with their expectations from a 16-bit system. My only issue with Air Zonk was that it was too short. kamiboy, I would also recommend Air Zonk for chip tunes, along with Soldier Blade, my other favorite. Magical Chase is also one of the best for chiptunes, but I doubt you're ready to seek out and pay for that one yet at this point. JPN version is a bit cheaper and more common.

I prefer HuCards now over CD's. Most games are quick to get into(I find my time to play has severely diminished) and I can use my Express when I'm at the ladies place.

I can totally relate to this too. I find most hucards better for instant gratification. I like to just flip on a shmup or Naxat pinball game for a quickie. I seldom have time to get into an RPG these days (though I wish I did).

[Tatsujin]

It was at that point that a lot of FMV games circulated through his console. By deuce those game were utter rubbish. Just like 3D graphics the introduction of CD's set games back a bit in the beginning before coming into its own.

Needless, pace breaking, overwrought animated cutscenes and redbook audio tracks might have been wondrous to the technology addled young mind of the day, but it took a while before developers actually made better games thanks to these, not in spite of them.

I see the 16bit CD days as a sort of dark age for the technology. You lost the benefits of carts, such as no load times and chip tunes were made passe and you got very little worthwhile in return. 16bit consoles didn't have the processing power to take advantage of all that extra space anyway, so it was too much, too early.

I call that rubbish too. no other "16-Bit" system really profited from the CD medium as much as the PCE did. And how ironically is it, that it was also the very very first system that used the cd-medium? check some of these comparisons to see the advantage of cd vs. cart:

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=6609.60

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=6609.msg112481#msg112481

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=6609.690

That a fact... Well just for curiosity, what is the ROM size of Dracula X minus the audio tracks. Could be interesting to compare that to the largest known ROM size of a TC game, and the size of both SNES ADX and Bloodlines.

Looking at Wikipedia I see that the TurboGrafx and SNES had about eh same sized VRAM, so all the extra memory from the CD cards was all gravy.

watch here for some visual facts of what the mighty pce cd-rom was capable to throw on the sceen:

http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=6609.1290

[NightWolve]

@kamiboy: The data track for Dracula X is 19.8 MB. The largest sized HuCard game I believe is "Street Fighter II: CE" reportedly at 20 Mbits, so 2.5 MB, also, average size of HuCards is 8 Mbits/1 MB. Just thinking about it, I can't even imagine having to develop a videogame with only 1 MB of space... Skills like that are beyond impressive to me.

@kazekirifx: Rereading your first post inspired further thoughts on this. Good music is good music, I love it and it's very important to my gaming experience, so I wanna hear it in the best possible way, the way that the composer/arranger intended; I don't want awesome music being degenerated down in quality because it has to be programmed/adapted to the system's custom sound hardware. Loss in quality, whether or not clever programming helped to minimize it, doesn't impress me... You said that pre-recorded music seems 'way too easy' - well, shouldn't it be? Aren't you looking at it wrongly? Why wouldn't you want the best possible music quality included with the game, exactly the same way the composer/arranger (a good one, that is) got to hear it as it was being produced ? This seems silly to me, and I've never actually seen someone try to levy criticism at it, but each to his own.

My experience was this: after playing Ys Book I&II, Ys III:WoY and Gate of Thunder, I wanted MORE and no other game's lame, lazy, cheap soundtrack with blips and beeps could ever suffice - the standard was raised, and raised high! When I got the honor of playing FF IV, I lamented that it wasn't a CD, and I pondered how much more awesome Nobuo Uematsu's music would've sounded if it was, as well as how much more richer the experience would've been! The FF IV soundtrack still ranks as one of my favorites, and the SNES did a fine job (with its Sony sound chip, I believe), but I would've loved for all of it to have been in the redbook audio format! But hey, in some cases, the good music (in its original form) that couldn't be put into the game allowed for them to put it elsewhere: a separately sold soundtrack CD for extra profit.

Tangent: I know I've asked/mentioned this somewhere, but did anybody ever play FF IV with their SNES stereo cables connected to a fully set up Dolby theater system (Dolby Decoder/Receiver with Front Left/Center/Right and Rear Left/Right speakers) ?? I've wondered how many others got to experience this and this is the only game that I know of that took advantage of the surround effect in this way: When fighting the final boss, as the background music heats up and a little bit before it's about to loop back to the beginning, a kind of beep sound is bounced around your speakers; the the rear speakers get the sound, then the front right speaker gets it, then the front left, and finally the center, etc., SOMETHING like that, hard to describe... "Dolby Pro Logic," a surround sound processing technology, allowed for the encoding of 4 separate sound channels (front left/right, center, and one rear channel for both L/R rear speakers), doubling the stereo effect and nothing took advantage of it quite like FF IV... Anyway, thought I'd share and ask if anybody else had the full set up and got to enjoy it as well; I was very impressed by it!

[kamiboy]

Okay, well I guess this settles it for me, PC Engine developers fared much, much better with the CD format than SEGA CD developers ever did. Most of those ghastly FMV games on the SCD were the produce of western developers but even the Japanese developed games on the SCD were not an exact showcase for the medium outside of voiced FMV cut scenes which never impressed me a bit.

I guess growing up around SEGA hardware by proxy of my friend has given me a bias agaist the formats early days. I've yet to find the CD hardware I am looking for so I have yet to truly sample the PC Engine CD goods outside of youtube videos.

As for the music angle, I have to admit I am biased towards the simplicity of the NES/Gameboy sound chips as they put pure melody center stage. I do tend to find 8 bit sound tracks more catchy than 16 bit ones and PC Engine sound hardware is of the 16 bit persuation. It doesnt help that half of my 16 bit sound impression is formed by the grating aesthetic of the Mega Drive.

[esteban]

Tangent: I know I've asked/mentioned this somewhere, but did anybody ever play FF IV with their SNES stereo cables connected to a fully set up Dolby Surround system (with Front Left/Center/Right and Rear Left/Right speakers) ?? I've wondered how many others got to experience this and this is the only game that I know of that took advantage of the surround effect in this way: When fighting the final boss, as the tune/melody heats up and a little bit before it's about to loop back to the beginning, a kind of beep sound is bounced around your speakers; the music on all speakers goes low, then the rear speakers get the sound, then the front right speaker gets it, then the front left, and finally the center, etc. Dolby Surround 2.0 allowed for the encoding of 4 separate sound channels (front left/right, center, and one rear channel for both L/R rear speakers), doubling the stereo effect and nothing took advantage of it quite like that FF IV final boss battle... Anyway, thought I'd share and ask if anybody else had the full set up and got to enjoy it as well; I was very impressed by it!

Say what?! I did not know this! Starting with NES, I had my consoles hooked up to a standard component stereo...now, I know the NES was mono, but a lot of TG-16 HuCARDS actually had nice stereo effects.

But Dolby Surround 2.0 on SNES? Insanity! I didn't get a surround sound-capable receiver until much later, so I wouldn't have been able to experience the truly immersive FFIV 2.0 experience.




Back on topic: Did I neglect HuCARDS in the 90's?

Answer: Hell no. I had the TG-CD early on, but as you know, there was a dearth of software. I can't tell you how painful it was to discover that "Magical Dinosaur Tour" or "Addams Family" were the only releases slated for TG-CD...even if I couldn't afford a new game, I at least wanted to have something to drool over and look forward to!

So, given the paltry selection of CD games, the HuCARDS (which had a healthier release schedule) were definitely appealing.

Now, let's get something out of the way: I wanted to buy many import HuCARDS/CD's in the 90's, but they were so goddamn expensive it was difficult justifying ONE import when I could buy at least TWO domestic titles. Yes, some titles were worth it, but I really didn't have reliable information on imports and it was always a huge gamble.

So, my answer to the orginal question is, "No."

[SignOfZeta]

Say what?! I did not know this! Starting with NES, I had my consoles hooked up to a standard component stereo...now, I know the NES was mono, but a lot of TG-16 HuCARDS actually had nice stereo effects.

But Dolby Surround 2.0 on SNES? Insanity! I didn't get a surround sound-capable receiver until much later, so I wouldn't have been able to experience the truly immersive FFIV 2.0 experience.

This is news to me. I knew that King Arthur's Word was in Dolby Surround (considering the vintage, this is what it would be called) but I can't remember any others. I can't remember if I own FFIV anymore, I might have a JP copy. I'll look into it.

So if FFIV is in Dolby Surround, why isn't FFV, FRVI, and other stuff like Chrono Trigger?

[NightWolve]

Say what?! I did not know this! Starting with NES, I had my consoles hooked up to a standard component stereo...now, I know the NES was mono, but a lot of TG-16 HuCARDS actually had nice stereo effects.

But Dolby Surround 2.0 on SNES? Insanity! I didn't get a surround sound-capable receiver until much later,

- There it goes.

It starts at 1:20, then at 1:24 is when the "bouncing around" effect of that beep sound (for lack of a better way to describe it) starts and it ends ~1:28 before the melody restarts. You can definitely tell the use of the stereo effect as you're listening to it on youtube, going left only to right only, etc. So yeah, that's the part that you'd need to pay attention to if you had it hooked up to a surround system.

so I wouldn't have been able to experience the truly immersive FFIV 2.0 experience.

LOL @ "FFIV 2.0 experience."

[SignOfZeta]

Well, yeah, of course its stereo. Virtually everything on SNES makes at least some use of stereo. In order to do Dolby Surround though you either need clever use of a powerful sound chip (which the SNES certainly has) to hide two more channels into the stereo by real time phase inversion, or very accurate sampling (unlikely).

You also, more or less, need to pay Dolby a fee, which will then allow you to put the logo on the product. Because of this necessary chain of events, its rather uncommon for something to use Dolby Surround and not advertise it.

EDIT: I just checked and I don't own a FFIV cart anymore. Youtube probably isn't hifi enough to prove this claim one way or another, so does someone else have this cart?

[T2KFreeker]

To me, a good game was a good game. Mind you, I really enjoyed some of the later CD versions of Cart games, but still, I went for what looked good. Forst console I got that I only went for CD's only was the 3DO, for obvious reasons. 

[NightWolve]

Well, yeah, of course its stereo. Virtually everything on SNES makes at least some use of stereo. In order to do Dolby Surround though you either need clever use of a powerful sound chip (which the SNES certainly has) to hide two more channels into the stereo by real time phase inversion, or very accurate sampling (unlikely).

You also, more or less, need to pay Dolby a fee, which will then allow you to put the logo on the product. Because of this necessary chain of events, its rather uncommon for something to use Dolby Surround and not advertise it.

Interesting, yeah, when you had asked about the other FF/Squaresoft games, I got curious and googled around. There's a list of SNES games that actually earned the Dolby Surround logo (seen in the packaging), and apparently the first one to do so was the one you mentioned:

King Arthur's World - Jaleco
Art of Fighting 2 - Takara / KAC
Fatal Fury Special - Takara
Flintstones - Ocean
Jurassic Park - Ocean
Jurassic Park Part 2 - Ocean

So yeah, we know for sure that the SNES supported surround output. But without Dolby, was it still possible? I found this post that sheds some light on it:

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?17404-PC-Engine-games-with-Dolby-Surround&s=42fcc390c728bab8e7e4e9a0230232a4

Publishers need to have their games certified by Dolby Labs in order to put the trade mark Dolby logo's on their packaging. For this reason pubishers will often support matrixed sound but not mention Dolby. Even recent games on the Wii do this. Wii Fit and Bomberman Land Wii have matrixed sound but do not have Dolby certification.

Also, there's an old 2008 post by Chris Covell saying that Roland Sound Space was a kind of simulated surround effect (recall the RSS logo on the back of Dracula X). It appears this "matrixed" sound and Konami's use of RSS were workarounds to having to pay Dolby a licensing fee and getting the game certified by them (in the RSS case, the licensing fee was cheaper perhaps?). Lemme stress the "appears" part too because I'm speaking about something I'm not very familiar with.

The other possibility is my Sony Surround receiver/system had an interesting reaction to this particular FF IV stereo effect. I know I didn't imagine it; I REALLY thought that it was cool they were doing fancy things with the sound effects at the time, but I'm not gonna say I'm 100% about this... I'm not sure about even the order of the bouncing sound effect (too long ago to remember a detail like that), if it was like FL, FC, FR, RLR, etc. or was it just the way I heard things.

My issue is, if the sound signal is not encoded the way a Dolby certified Surround receiver expects it to be, how can a surround effect be decoded by it ?? Like Konami's use of this RSS... Did I need to buy Roland equipment to enjoy it? I didn't get to play most of my NEC games with my Turbo Duo connected to the Surround receiver, so I dunno if Dracula X sounded any different beyond stereo effects.

EDIT: I just checked and I don't own a FFIV cart anymore. Youtube probably isn't hifi enough to prove this claim one way or another, so does someone else have this cart?

Oh, I still own mine, I'd never give it up! I bought it used for $5 bucks from a resale shop that I used to hang out at as a kid. I wonder if the battery has survived though and if I'll find my last game saved. I wouldn't start a new game just to get to the end to find out if my memory was accurate about this surround effect. On the other hand, I do have the SNES Game Genie; if there's a cheat code to get you to the end, that'd help!

To me, a good game was a good game.

Yeah, I second that. It just simply was the case that I started to find more games that I enjoyed in CD format, this referring to the period before PS1 made it the standard. However, I continued on with my NES/SNES rentals during that era. I wanted to play games, and if they still had to be in cart format, so be it!

[SignOfZeta]

I was under the impression that Roland Sound Space was just like...reverb. Its a two channel effect, and therefore not matrixed like Dolby Surround. Dolby Surround actually hides four channels in the space of two. Its f*cking GENIUS as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't sound anywhere near as good as Dolby Digital or DTS, but it took a lot more brains to make it happen, it rolled out decades earlier, and its fully compatible with much older gear.

Regarding Wii and GC games with Dolby Surround (Dolby Surround II, in these cases): The systems themselves officially support the process, so you'd think the game makers would just be able to use the process without individual certification...doesn't that make sense? It seems like it would be this way. I don't know.

As for hearing Dolby Surround-like effects come out of your system when it isn't officially there in the source: this is possible. Especially with the lots of reverb and stuff. It is certainly possible for the Pro Logic circuit to place certain things more in one channel than the other out of simple coincidence. Its also possible that it was put in there for real and they just skipped the certification. Also, if you were running in one of those special DSP modes like Hall, Concert, Jazz, whatever...anything can happen in those modes, especially on cheaper gear.

[city41]

I prefer chip tunes over redbook audio most of the time. Chiptunes are something unique to video games, and I really enjoy what some developers are able to pull off with them. The original cart music on Neo Geo and SNES games in particular are quite awesome. I vastly prefer the cart's music over the arranged CD music for Neo games. 
 
But for the Turbo in particular it does seem most hucard games don't do too much with music. Someone mentioned Air Zonk and that's really the only game I know of where I feel the music is interesting.

I've returned to the Turbo after a very long hiatus. I currently only have a TG16 and a Turbo Express, so I'm currently 100% hucarding it. I don't mind. I'm sure I'l get a Duo eventually, but for now hucards are keeping me mighty happy.

[roflmao]

But for the Turbo in particular it does seem most hucard games don't do too much with music. Someone mentioned Air Zonk and that's really the only game I know of where I feel the music is interesting.

There are some truly extraordinary hucard soundtracks.  Feel free to check out a website I recently put together to sample some of the goodness: http://turbomusic.risemedia.org.  I'd at LEAST check out Dragon Spirit, Soldier Blade, Devil's Crush, and Dungeon Explorer.  Also, I'll be adding another 15 or so soundtracks in the next couple of days.

/self-promoting-plug

[kazekirifx]

Another thought regarding the OP: I think the notion that CD games were superior was a large reason why I was willing to pay a lot of money to buy the hardware to play them in the first place. If, at the time, I had really thought of HuCards as equal to CD games I don't know if I had been willing to buy the Duo just to expand the available library to choose from. There were still plenty of attractive HuCards I didn't own when I bought the Duo. For those who bought the Turbo CD or Duo back when the system was still alive: What made you choose to pay up and get the CD Rom hardware? Wasn't there a belief that the games would be somehow technically 'superior' to hucard games, or did you just want to expand the library you had access to? I know now in retrospect hucards seem like a very cool, unique, and appealing format; but come on, did you really see hucards and CD's as equal in the early 90's before or after you had just paid hundreds of dollars for the technology?

@kazekirifx: Rereading your first post inspired further thoughts on this. Good music is good music, I love it and it's very important to my gaming experience, so I wanna hear it in the best possible way, the way that the composer/arranger intended; I don't want awesome music being degenerated down in quality because it has to be programmed/adapted to the system's custom sound hardware. Loss in quality, whether or not clever programming helped to minimize it, doesn't impress me... You said that pre-recorded music seems 'way too easy' - well, shouldn't it be? Aren't you looking at it wrongly? Why wouldn't you want the best possible music quality included with the game, exactly the same way the composer/arranger (a good one, that is) got to hear it as it was being produced ? This seems silly to me, and I've never actually seen someone try to levy criticism at it, but each to his own.

My experience was this: after playing Ys Book I&II, Ys III:WoY and Gate of Thunder, I wanted MORE and no other game's lame, lazy, cheap soundtrack with blips and beeps could ever suffice - the standard was raised, and raised high! When I got the honor of playing FF IV, I lamented that it wasn't a CD, and I pondered how much more awesome Nobuo Uematsu's music would've sounded if it was, as well as how much more richer the experience would've been! The FF IV soundtrack still ranks as one of my favorites, and the SNES did a fine job (with its Sony sound chip, I believe), but I would've loved for all of it to have been in the redbook audio format! But hey, in some cases, the good music (in its original form) that couldn't be put into the game allowed for them to put it elsewhere: a separately sold soundtrack CD for extra profit.

Your opinion is very similar to how I felt in the 90's, and I agree even now that music tracks need to be fully recorded in order to reach their full arrangement potential. (Or at least have a chance of reaching that potential. There are certainly plenty of fully recorded tracks that one can argue could have been arranged better.) In essence, fully recorded music is technically superior, and the only reason we had chiptunes in retro games is due to hardware limitations. However, most of us grew accustomed to video games being accompanied by chiptunes from a relatively young age. So, when it's all said and done it may be a very strange and illogical quirk that many retro gamers have, but we have developed a nostalgic fondness for chiptunes. It's probably similar to nostalgic feelings someone might have from hearing the sound of bowling pins being knocked down, the smell of cotton candy at a fair, or the noises associated with listening to a vinyl record. I know there are many reasons one might enjoy retro games such as the addictive simplicity of the gameplay, or just a general preference for 2D art over 3D. But, in the end, isn't it also the graphical and processing limitations of old gaming hardware and the nostalgic feelings associated with them that is one of the main reasons that old timers like me play retro games to begin with?