I was excited that this was going to be a cover of the Ventures' "Walk Don't Run", lol.
That FM bass doesn't sound that great to me, and gets pretty weak in the lower registers. I'm not sure if the extra-bitness is really going to help us that much. I could be wrong.
On PCE, you might as well just use a normal, punchy, enveloped bass and not waste the resources, as the timbre may not be much different. Good FM/Synthy bass is the kind of phat, thumpy/punchy sound that you can feel in your nuts while you're playing.
How old are you exactly? I mean, I was growing up playing PS2 also. We can't be that far apart really, lol. I was born in 1988.
At least you grew up with broadband basically, so downloading and experiencing all of this stuff wasn't a pain in the ass.
Technically, Batman's soundtrack is better on PCE, but the mixing could use some work, I think. The rhythm tracks shouldn't drown out the lead. That's not a good time.
I'm curious how some C64 drums would sound if you sampled them onto the PCE, actually. You can get some pretty rattly percussion out of the C64. Some of it might sound cool. The drums are also fairly wet. The reason PCE drums often sound "better" is that they're more dry, so they have a better contrast against the leads.
Those same kind of drums would probably get completely lost, or sound out of place against a SID tune, as most sid stuff is pretty wet sounding.
But, wet drums against the usual PCE sound miiiiight sound cool.
I'm surprised you don't like the SID more, honestly. You like eurobeat and crap right?
^^^ This is probably my favorite SID tune ever. It's 100% lit as f*ck. One of the rare times where the arps are doing something productive with their existence, instead of being some blaring dumpster fire that's trying to be the lead.