Support NeoGAF

[Omegasquash]

Is this guy a GOD or what?

Follin will always be revered as a master of the craft. I grew up as an SNES kid, but that Genesis sound chip has always had something going for it. It's apples to bananas for comparison. Saying one is superior to another is opinion at best.

 

[CaptainLoveline]

Honestly I prefer the sound of Genesis/MD because it's aged slightly better. A lot of music on the SNES sounds very muffled, the Genesis pulls off some really clean synth sound to this day but regardless both of them have blessed my ears with some sweet tunes. In the hands of a good audio programmer/composer/technician, it doesn't matter which chip is better but rather how well someone can utilise the tools they have.

I mean, on Genesis you can get masterpieces like this, but also get steaming turds like this.

While on the SNES you can get really great songs like this, but still have someone managing to make this awfulness.

Maybe if the SNES sound chip had more than a measly 64KB of memory and had a few more channels then yeah, it would of been undoubtedly a better chip.

 

[jett]

I mean, on Genesis you can get masterpieces like this, but also get steaming turds like this.

Good ol', reliable Sakimoto. From Gauntlet IV I like Transparent Obstacles the best.

Regarding SNES vs. Genesis, the problem with the Genesis is at its worst you'll get some horrible ear-stabbing garbage, when at worst you'll hear generic mediocrity out of the SNES.

 

[Synth]

No, neither will ever actually come close to the other. A synthesizer can't ever fully emulate DSP sound processing which for the SNES was pretty powerful for the time and hardware budget (and fully programmable unlike the preset DSPs of the later PS1/PS2 samplers).

Well, to be fair, I did say "if anything it would be closer", not that it actually would be close. Basically I just meant that the SNES is unable to even approximate what the Genesis does audiowise at even the most fundamental level.. let alone even getting into how well it would do it.

Regarding SNES vs. Genesis, the problem with the Genesis is at its worst you'll get some horrible ear-stabbing garbage, when at worst you'll hear generic mediocrity out of the SNES.

Yea, this is pretty much what causes the general negative opinion of Genesis sound. I think that if the two consoles were released today, it'd be a different matter, due to how much more widespread the basic knowledge for using an FM Synth is now.

Similarly, if we took random posters from this thread that have done zero music production and sent them off to play around both with some samples, along with say FM8... the stuff they come back with in FM8 would probably make you want to end your life lol... when it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong.

 

[lazygecko]

Regarding SNES vs. Genesis, the problem with the Genesis is at its worst you'll get some horrible ear-stabbing garbage, when at worst you'll hear generic mediocrity out of the SNES.

I don't prescribe to this narrative. You're giving the latter way too much credit there. Hearing some of the blatant dissonance on display from improper sample tuning gets pretty painful to listen to as well (and this is probably one of the reasons why actual musicians pretty consistently lean more towards the former).

You also have to keep in mind that when listening to the clear linear output of emulation which foregoes the original hardware DACs, Genesis music sounds brighter and harsher without the varying degrees of filtering imposed by the physical hardware models. A lot of the music was probably made with that filtering in mind. Likewise, SNES music can also end up sounding significantly harsher with the original interpolation disabled via emulation, which you do hear occasionally on YouTube uploads and the likes.

Another thing about emulated Genesis sound is that it's common to hear it produced at 44.1khz throughout the whole signal chain, while on the actual hardware the internal synthesis is generated at 53khz, which introduces less aliasing into the modulation and gives a somewhat cleaner timbre for bright sounds.

 

[beril]

Honestly I prefer the sound of Genesis/MD because it's aged slightly better. A lot of music on the SNES sounds very muffled, the Genesis pulls off some really clean synth sound to this day but regardless both of them have blessed my ears with some sweet tunes. In the hands of a good audio programmer/composer/technician, it doesn't matter which chip is better but rather how well someone can utilise the tools they have.

I mean, on Genesis you can get masterpieces like this, but also get steaming turds like this.

While on the SNES you can get really great songs like this, but still have someone managing to make this awfulness.

Maybe if the SNES sound chip had more than a measly 64KB of memory and had a few more channels then yeah, it would of been undoubtedly a better chip.

The sound chip has a 16-bit address-bus so having more RAM wouldn't really be an option without drastically changing the design. It'd also be kindof crazy to expect a console to have more audio ram than VRAM. I guess one solution would be having direct access to the cart instead of loading data into dedicated RAM, but it would complicate the design of the system. And the carts had very limited space either way; some games were only 8 times the size of the audio RAM. So the SNES sound chip was about as good as you could expect for a sampler based chip in a 16-bit cart based console.

 

[Timu]

Honestly I prefer the sound of Genesis/MD because it's aged slightly better. A lot of music on the SNES sounds very muffled, the Genesis pulls off some really clean synth sound to this day but regardless both of them have blessed my ears with some sweet tunes. In the hands of a good audio programmer/composer/technician, it doesn't matter which chip is better but rather how well someone can utilise the tools they have.

I mean, on Genesis you can get masterpieces like this, but also get steaming turds like this.

While on the SNES you can get really great songs like this, but still have someone managing to make this awfulness.

Maybe if the SNES sound chip had more than a measly 64KB of memory and had a few more channels then yeah, it would of been undoubtedly a better chip.

My god that Wizard of Oz song...used to play that game back in the day and it was miserable.

 

[lazygecko]

The sound chip has a 16-bit address-bus so having more RAM wouldn't really be an option without drastically changing the design. It'd also be kindof crazy to expect a console to have more audio ram than VRAM. I guess one solution would be having direct access to the cart instead of loading data into dedicated RAM, but it would complicate the design of the system. And the carts had very limited space either way; some games were only 8 times the size of the audio RAM. So the SNES sound chip was about as good as you could expect for a sampler based chip in a 16-bit cart based console.

Being able to switch out samples on the fly would have helped a lot to mitgate the hard RAM limit. But for some reason this was extremly difficult to pull off on the SNES and just a few handful of devs employed some convoluted trickery to do it. I still don't know technically why this was such a hassle. Genesis seemed to have no problem doing this.

 

[Audette]

Personally I prefer the sampled style of the Snes games and I find I have more favourite sound tracks on Snes but what can be done with the Genesis is awesome.

When the programmer and the composer work together it works best. The Genisis just seems more often to fall flat on approximating the sound of instruments and it usually take away from the song for me. Not saying there aren't great songs, just that often the programming of the song can be a bit shit.

Some of my favourite Genisis albums include
-Mega Turrican
-Castlevania: Bloodlines
-Shining Force 2
-Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Favourite Snes Albums,
-Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
-Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
-TMNT4: Turltles in Time
-Contra 3: The Alien Wars

 

[ghibli99]

I love both, and would never say one is better than the other. Great variety, instruments, and compositions across both systems:

Super Turrican - 1-3 (SNES)
Pop'n Twinbee - Village Sky (SNES)
FF5 - Ahead on Our Way (SNES)
Super Adventure Island - Stage 2 (SNES)
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! - Stage 1 (SNES)

Target Earth - End Theme (Genesis)
Shinobi III - Whirlwind (Genesis)
Thunder Force IV - Metal Squad (Genesis)
Sonic the Hedgehog - Labyrinth Zone (Genesis)
Super Hydlide - Title/Intro (Genesis) (this game sucked, but I still remember this song quite clearly!)

 

[lazygecko]

Time for something different

Mega Man X Corrupted - Warfare Milodon

I am using that 2op chord trick here. Playing fourths on the right, and fifths on the left for 4 notes with 2 channels.

 

[UpUpDownDown]

You're totally right, I mean there were only one or two great composersprogrammers.

Absolutely right there bro..

These all sound like nails on a chalkboard. Yesh.

... and omg at the butchering of that poor Ys soundtrack.

 

[dogen]

These all sound like nails on a chalkboard. Yesh.

... and omg at the butchering of that poor Ys soundtrack.

lol streets of rage, sonic, castlevania, and gleylancer sound like nails?

Spoiler

might want to get your ears checked buddy

 

[Dragoon En Regalia]

... and omg at the butchering of that poor Ys soundtrack.

Compared to what? It's thumping, more so than the PC-88 original, and seems to have made a great transition. FM synth isn't for everyone, but I'm not sure what's bad or notably inferior about this arrangement.

 

[Sapiens]

Compared to what? It's thumping, more so than the PC-88 original, and seems to have made a great transition. FM synth isn't for everyone, but I'm not sure what's bad or notably inferior about this arrangement.

Some people are religious about that SuperFami chip because of Kutaragi-san. Therefore, you can't argue with them and serving them facts which just make them regress even further into nostalgia. This made worse by emulators cleaning up the SF sound a little, further distorting their perception.

In reality, people need to accept that SF/MD were equally awesome but underpowered bros that were easily outclassed by other hardware at the time. One does not have the distinct advantage over the other, when it comes to the software.

 

[Krakin]

Just play the Sky Sanctuary Zone from Sonic and Knuckles and you will see the strength and weakness of the Genesis at the same time.

 

[EPSYLON EAGLE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgXQjbGsWF4

No words for describe.

 

[OtakuReborn124]

I think the SNES sound chip was overall better, but there were some really impressive works on the Genesis, particularly with how creative the developers were with it. Moonwalker I distinctly remember as being a particularly good adaptation of Michael Jackson's music. (Smooth Criminal and Beat It)

Genesis generally did better with soundtracks that used sharper instrumentation (snare drums, electric guitars, trumpets, etc.) while SNES did better with soundtracks that were more orchestral (violins, timpinis, woodwinds, etc.) in nature. Fire Emblem 4 had one of the better soundtracks of the generation (Disturbance in Agustria and Girl of the Spirit Forest) As a result, Genesis games generally sounded more upbeat while SNES games generally sounded more epic.

My favorite Genesis game.

Mitula's Temple theme

Overworld Map theme 00:35 always gets me :')

God damn it, now I have to play Shining Force II again. All the nostalgia from that overworld theme.

 

[Audette]

I generally feel while the people people avoid sound effects in games during these topics. I feel like I had a lot of games on genesis, aand the sound effects and the music usually come out sounding similar and match that "Tin" sound people complain about. It's the nature of the stock synth being used. Not to say their are not games with good sound effects on genesis.

My take away from this is that Genisis gets over generalized providing sound effects and music similar to the other older systems, beeps and boops. SNES gets over generalized as a orchestra machine, just as much.

SNES can do great synth music too

 

[Krejlooc]

SNES can do great synth music too

This isn't synth

 

[lazygecko]

I generally feel while the people people avoid sound effects in games during these topics. I feel like I had a lot of games on genesis, aand the sound effects and the music usually come out sounding similar and match that "Tin" sound people complain about. It's the nature of the stock synth being used. Not to say their are not games with good sound effects on genesis.

There's a very common design pitfall with SFX design for the hardware, where if you want to make noisy sounds, you simply max out most of the paremeters (most importantly, the feedback amplitude), which introduces this overpowering white noise which isn't very flexible with its timbre, unlike other forms of 8- and 16-bit noise types. The white noise remains more or less static no matter how or what frequency it is being played in.

If you just start thinking more outside the box though, you can achieve a very rich selection of sound effects, and be noisy but without being screechy. Just listen to the sound effect work in Revenge of Shinobi for example, which has some of the best sound design of any 16-bit games (those creaky wooden door sounds felt mind-blowingly realistic to me back in the day). Typically noisy effects like thunder, explosions, flames, etc all sound quite smooth and pleasant here. This is acheived by playing moderately bright sounds in a rapid speed sequence of random pitches to essentially "fake" noise rather than the common method of just generating it directly with feedback, and ends up being way more flexible in how you want to "shape" it..

It's kind of a shame how Yuzo Koshiro started relying more and more on PCM samples for SFX in his later games. They have aged far from as well as his intricate FM sound effects. I think the FM punch/impact sounds in Streets of Rage 1 are better than the sampled ones in 2 and 3, for example.

 

[EPSYLON EAGLE]

The Megaman VII soundtrack is not FM sinthesys, but anyway is very good demonstration of Super Nes capabilities.

Genny can do orchestra themes, and final result it's very good.

This is impressive for a 1991 FM based soundchip, imo it's superior to the Amiga version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXueZtvBAp0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZveSr4Do2oQ

 

[Krejlooc]

This is impressive for a 1991 FM based soundchip

Prepare to have your mind blown, then - that soundchip is from 1988, not 1991

 

[dlauv]

X-Men 2: Clone Wars theme is p good.

The Escape Theme from the same game too.

Final Boss theme.

Sounds so krisp, and the first is structured less like game music and more like traditional music.

Of course you have the Streets of Rages, Mortal Kombats, Sonics and Thunder Forces of the genny world that people ignore in favor of multiplat comparisons. That Tim Follin R&R Racing one is especially egregious. That guy was a genius on any hardware, but tended to neglect the Genny. We got him back on CD, for better or worse.

 

[IronicSonic]

Of course you have the Streets of Rages, Mortal Kombats, Sonics and Thunder Forces of the genny world that people ignore in favor of multiplat comparisons. That Tim Follin R&R Racing one is especially egregious. That guy was a genius on any hardware, but tended to neglect the Genny. We got him back on CD, for better or worse.

Already loving that playlist good sir. Thank you

 

[tkscz]

When it comes to SNES sounds, can someone tell me why guitar sounds sound so much different from game to game? Like, Megaman X series music Guitar sounds different from games like Battle Toads & Double Dragon (the latter in my opinion sound better but that's that Rareware magic).

 

[s_mirage]

Of course you have the Streets of Rages, Mortal Kombats, Sonics and Thunder Forces of the genny world that people ignore in favor of multiplat comparisons. That Tim Follin R&R Racing one is especially egregious. That guy was a genius on any hardware, but tended to neglect the Genny. We got him back on CD, for better or worse.

Well, we got Time Trax eventually too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbEJqUeiqLU

Edit: Oops, already posted I see.

 

[dlauv]

When it comes to SNES sounds, can someone tell me why guitar sounds sound so much different from game to game? Like, Megaman X series music Guitar sounds different from games like Battle Toads & Double Dragon (the latter in my opinion sound better but that's that Rareware magic).

The SNES was a sample machine and each game used different sample templates. Companies tended to reuse theirs.

For comparison, the Genesis featured an actual synth instrument. That's why it has more of a trademark sound.

 

[EPSYLON EAGLE]

Thanks Kreijoc, my point is, there are many that claim "Super Nes games like Super Castlevania IV and ActRaiser introducing true orchestral tracks in games"

It's not true, the 80 arcade FM based boards already fully capable of generate rich orchestrated music, and broke the paradigms Genny too, this Phelios OST from 1990 proof this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24UFv3fP63Y&list=PLD86A4DA427BEEFA6&index=2


or this Castle of Illusion theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vat2XA2l0sM&list=PL919B41A88D6D05DE&index=16

 

[Lord Error]

Cleaner title

Jesus (vtec just kicked in yo)

Man it's like the sun shines on me every time I discover new Follin's work. Just a few years ago I knew him only from C64, but then I heard his NES stuff too, and now this on Genesis, wow.

 

[dlauv]

Jesus (vtec just kicked in yo)

Man it's like the sun shines on me every time I discover new Follin's work. Just a few years ago I knew him only from C64, but then I heard his NES stuff too, and now this on Genesis, wow.

His SNES stuff is legendary.

Plok. Like, wtf.

Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade's Revenge.

And of course, Rock 'n' Roll Racing, which needs no link.

 

[etking]

The SNES had very advanced Sony hardware providing far superior technology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDGjSG-fiouXo&v=GjSG-fiouXo&feature=player_detailpage#t=2590
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlgW03yKsw4#
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OkfWy-Rqzk&index=53&list=PL21BAA7C6EDEB63A3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=J3vk5N8TyYU#t=330

 

[lazygecko]

When it comes to SNES sounds, can someone tell me why guitar sounds sound so much different from game to game? Like, Megaman X series music Guitar sounds different from games like Battle Toads & Double Dragon (the latter in my opinion sound better but that's that Rareware magic).

Battletoads & Double Dragon is more guitar-based than MMX, thus more RAM is budgeted towards guitar samples, and that's why they sound better. MMX, and most other games need to be more of a jack of all trades master of none when it comes to instrument quality. You can find a handful of SNES games that are more specailized in their instrumentation and will thus sound higher quality, but at the expense of the range of instruments/sounds available. Actraiser 2 for instance has several types of articulations for the string/brass instruments, but there's hardly any percussion used in the songs cause there is no space left for it. And the SNES version of Side Pocket has some of the best electric piano sounds on the system, but it's very sparse and minimalistic on the drums and percussion.

 

[Lord Error]

His SNES stuff is legendary.

Plok. Like, wtf.

Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade's Revenge.

And of course, Rock 'n' Roll Racing, which needs no link.

Maaan, Plok guitar sounds even better than Rock n' Roll racing. Wow.

How could one man have so much talent, and so much technical understanding for totally different hardware.

Strangely enough he wasn't as brilliant on Amiga as some other composers were.

 

[Krejlooc]

The SNES had very advanced Sony hardware providing far superior technology:

The sound hardware inside the SNES wasn't very advanced, lol

 

[Easy_D]

His SNES stuff is legendary.

Plok. Like, wtf.

Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade's Revenge.

And of course, Rock 'n' Roll Racing, which needs no link.

No one did awesome fake electric guitars on the SNES quite like Follin

 

[pulsemyne]

Maaan, Plok guitar sounds even better than Rock n' Roll racing. Wow.

How could one man have so much talent, and so much technical understanding for totally different hardware.

Strangely enough he wasn't as brilliant on Amiga as some other composers were.

As impressive as that is the work he did with the sinclair 48k's beeper (cannot call it a sound chip really) was utterly shocking. Considering the beeper was just an on and off sound (basically beep or no beep) he managed to drag some awesome stuff out of it. Pure machine code excellance. Like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz46pCROkjM
Also his work on both the C64 and Amiga versions of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts is just crazy brilliant.

 

[etking]

The sound hardware inside the SNES wasn't very advanced, lol

Compared to the primitive Genesis audio output it was a next generation soundchip on a completely different technology level.

 

[Krejlooc]

Compared to the primitive Genesis audio output it was a next generation soundchip on a completely different technology level.

how do you compare FM synthesis to sample based playback?

No, comparatively, the FM Synth in the genesis was pretty much middle of the road FM hardware of the time, while the SNES sound chip is low end hardware.

I suggest you read the thread, because what you are trying to say has been shot to hell and back already many times in the last 20 pages.

 

[EPSYLON EAGLE]

This very very underrated soundtrack from Nightmare Circus its pure eargasm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuczecCMGxo&index=8&list=PLirSddeMOYZ7KEPwzqrXh1X_TAOS0a-eP

 

[dogen]

The SNES had very advanced Sony hardware providing far superior technology:




[/QUOTE] Ehh, who cares which is m...l]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vVNoYKKryI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7bVc2KUedo

Anyway, I recently discovered the awesomeness of lethal enforcers I & II. At least, the music is pretty awesome, idk about the games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3FSdzO4YpI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ0Lj2NF6tc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8gh2zCEGYM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogdoEoZRVeA

The instruments sound just like hard corps.

As impressive as that is the work he did with the sinclair 48k's beeper (cannot call it a sound chip really) was utterly shocking. Considering the beeper was just an on and off sound (basically beep or no beep) he managed to drag some awesome stuff out of it. Pure machine code excellance. Like this

Also his work on both the C64 and Amiga versions of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts is just crazy brilliant.

Have you heard this pc speaker one?

https://youtu.be/yHXx3orN35Y?t=397

 

[lazygecko]

Maaan, Plok guitar sounds even better than Rock n' Roll racing. Wow.

How could one man have so much talent, and so much technical understanding for totally different hardware.

Strangely enough he wasn't as brilliant on Amiga as some other composers were.

The guitar sound in itself isn't really that special. It's just a simple plucky noise for the attack, followed by a basic square-ish waveform after.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/follinguitar.mp3

More than half of what makes a good guitar sound lies in the performance and how it is being played. Follin was just better and more detail-oriented than most when it came to sequencing his riffs and melodies, making good use of portamendos, glissandos, vibratos, etc. And these are all fairly technology-agnostic tricks which has little to do with tapping into some mythical hidden power of a sound chip (you can just as easily tell when he's aiming for a lead guitar sound in his NES soundtracks, for instance) For the Plok guitar he sometimes also did these flammy successive double notes to accentuate the attack and essentially fake a stronger pluck.

As for the Amiga, Follin just didn't like it as much because he wasn't afforded as many channels nor as much memory for ingame music (no sound chip with its own dedicated RAM) for samples compared to the SNES. Amiga version of Gauntlet 3 is one of my favorite works by him though and is vastly underappreciated (much like Equinox on the SNES, which is more or less its spiritual sequel music-wise).

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Made a smart post in this thread? Wanna dump some more knowledge? Hit up this thread, we're needing it over here.

 

[dogen]

[URL=" a smart post in this thread? Wanna dump some more knowledge? Hit up this thread, we're needing it over here.[/URL]

Saw that thread and I don't like the idea much. I don't really see the point(everyone's still gonna have the same favorites and only a few will "win"), and there's too much good music to narrow it down like that.

 

[Krejlooc]

Saw that thread and I don't like the idea much. I don't really see the point(everyone's still gonna have the same favorites and only a few will "win"), and there's too much good music to narrow it down like that.

In the end, the most familiar games will win, anyways. It becomes a "what games were most popular" contest, IMO. You can't expect people voting to have an encyclopedic knowledge of 16-bit video game music, even the most informed.

 

[Journey]

Put another way, the Genesis has realistic synth sound (because it is actually synth).

SNES is playing MIDI, which is recordings of instruments played at different pitches. It's a pale imitation of real instruments. By contrast, the Genesis is an actual instrument.

So the SNES tried to faithfully record real soundtracks and played it back for its games, while the Genesis produced MIDI synth sounds in real-time? You do understand that it doesn't make it necessarily better for the Genesis.

Using your example:

SNES = Highly compressed picture of the Monalisa
Genesis = Someone trying to replicate Monalisa using real instruments.

Depending on the artists and taste, you could end up with something nice that may not even look like the Monalisa, but something akin of Picasso, but with the SNES, even if not sampled to the highest quality, you can end up with something that's pretty faithful to the original.

Perfect example of the above:

Genesis
SNES
Orchestra

 

[Krejlooc]

So the SNES tried to faithfully record real soundtracks and played it back for its games, while the Genesis produced MIDI synth sounds in real-time? You do understand that it doesn't make it necessarily better for the Genesis.

The Genesis didn't produce midi at all. It produced FM Synthesis. Analog music - frequency modulation, not digital.

Using your example:

SNES = Highly compressed picture of the Monalisa
Genesis = Someone trying to replicate Monalisa using real instruments.

Depending on the artists and taste, you could end up with something nice that may not even look like the Monalisa, but something akin of Picasso, but with the SNES, even if not sampled to the highest quality, you can end up with something that's pretty faithful to the original.

Perfect example of the above:

Genesis
SNES
Orchestra

There are objective measures where the Genesis wins out, however. The final output audio sample rate, for example. Your post is merely saying "can't account for taste," but that's not what people argue when thye talk about whether or not one sounds "real" or not. "Realness" in this sense is a technical quality.

 

[Lord Error]

The guitar sound in itself isn't really that special. It's just a simple plucky noise for the attack, followed by a basic square-ish waveform after.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/follinguitar.mp3

More than half of what makes a good guitar sound lies in the performance and how it is being played. Follin was just better and more detail-oriented than most when it came to sequencing his riffs and melodies, making good use of portamendos, glissandos, vibratos, etc. And these are all fairly technology-agnostic tricks which has little to do with tapping into some mythical hidden power of a sound chip (you can just as easily tell when he's aiming for a lead guitar sound in his NES soundtracks, for instance) For the Plok guitar he sometimes also did these flammy successive double notes to accentuate the attack and essentially fake a stronger pluck.

Yeah, I meant the overall melody just sounded like an even more convincing guitar playing. I didn't mean to say something like that it was a single guitar sample that was better, no.

As for the Amiga, Follin just didn't like it as much because he wasn't afforded as many channels nor as much memory for ingame music (no sound chip with its own dedicated RAM) for samples compared to the SNES. Amiga version of Gauntlet 3 is one of my favorite works by him though and is vastly underappreciated (much like Equinox on the SNES, which is more or less its spiritual sequel music-wise).

I don't know... From everything I've heard of his Amiga stuff, it didn't really flow all that well, and that grandiose virtuosity that marked some his best works on other machines was no where to be seen. Maybe in the games that he was tasked to make the music for he was not allowed much room to work with, but you certainly could have very large (in memory footprint) tunes in Amiga games, and especially for title songs you had some games that utilized CPU+ sound chip to create 8 or even 12 channels music with 14bit output, that sometimes sounded incredible.

As impressive as that is the work he did with the sinclair 48k's beeper (cannot call it a sound chip really) was utterly shocking. Considering the beeper was just an on and off sound (basically beep or no beep) he managed to drag some awesome stuff out of it. Pure machine code excellance. Like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz46pCROkjM

Wow, I knew from the stories that something like this was possible on a Spectrum beeper, but I've never heard it before. Talk about making something out of practically nothing.

 

[Journey]

SNES replication of Monalisa:

Genesis Monalisa:

 

[BluePigGanon]

Of course the SNES sound is better; I always loved the bassy tones it could generate, and let's not speak of what Genesis voice samples sounded like all too often. That being said, something about the Genesis sound is very nostalgic to me. It just has a edgy, buzzy, classically "gamey" tone to it that takes me back.