Video game soundtracks can make up a huge part of a player's overall gaming experience; hearing just a couple of notes from your favourite games as a child can instantly transport you back to that world, bringing back all those feelings you thought you'd forgotten. Once they've entered your head for the first time, it's hard to forget those classic moments like Ocarina of Time's Song of Storms, or Super Mario Galaxy's Gusty Garden Galaxy, but composing music for games has always been an incredible challenge.
This especially rings true on older systems, where the technology available to composers placed some very heavy restrictions on the types of sound, amount of layers, and particularly the file space available for use. This new video (down below) from Nerdwriter1 on YouTube explores how music and sound were created on the SNES, offering a fascinating look into the tech under the hood and even some case studies. Even if you already know a great deal about sound production for games, we'd urge you to check this out.
The video takes a look at the sound chips inside the system, the programs available to composers, and provides an in-depth look into David Wise's work on Donkey Kong Country. One section reveals how the SNES could only accommodate 64KBs of audio RAM for the entire soundtrack of one game - that's only a hundredth of the available space needed to store a single three-minute song downloaded from the likes of iTunes today.
If you're interested, you can check out the video in full right here:
Do you have any memories of your favourite gaming soundtracks? Any classic SNES games with music which particularly stood out to you? Share them with us below.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 25
SF II Opening theme, Chun Li SF II theme, Super Mario World 1-1 theme were still stuck on my head.
I had believed it was Eveline Fischer that had produced Aquatic Ambience. The more you know...
It's a really good video but something is missing in it.
Some devs used the PPU of the SNES to store sounds and musics.
Basically they tricked the system to have more space.
Otherwise, excellent video.
@Shiryu Eveline composed the soundtrack for DKC3 almost on her own. The first two games are basically all Wise, though (with DKC2, probably my favorite soundtrack of all time, being literally all Wise).
I'm part of a forum and Discord server that is about ripping and researching video game music, and I can't help but notice that there are a lot of errors in this video.
the old tunes were the best
I prefer the sounds of NES, PCE and Genesis to SNES except for RPG soundtracks, I won’t take that away from it
It had a great sound chip for sure. I've been listening to Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger music at work lately.
They didn't need to store all the music and sound effects for the entire game in the 64k. Just what was currently being used.
I remember being blown away by Secret of Mana’s soundtrack when I got the game for Xmas 1994. That sound track has stuck in my head ever since, I have it on my phone to this day. I’ll always prefer the original over any orchestral or ‘real instrument’ version.
Since then, I’ve come to appreciate other SNES soundtracks too, in particular DKC, Chrono Trigger, Castlevania IV and Super Metroid. All soundtracks I have on my phone and listen to regularly.
Oh and the Starfox soundtrack. I always forget how great that soundtrack was too
@GravyThief The original Star Fox soundtrack is incredible, no other Star Fox game has music that even compares
SNES has an amazing sound chip and some developers made really wonderful music: Rare, Nintendo, Capcom, Square, Enix...
@ricklongo "Eveline composed the soundtrack for DKC3 almost on her own. The first two games are basically all Wise, though (with DKC2, probably my favorite soundtrack of all time, being literally all Wise)".
Right and I agree. It should be mentioned that the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country 3 has some pieces replaced by new others made by David Wise, but the quality of the handheld sound is not good (noisy PCM).
Honestly I was expecting something more in depth. This was kind of like a quick glance over certain aspects, alongside a few samples of SNES music. Good effort, but IMO the title can be misleading.
I listen at least one song a day from Contra III, Megaman 7, Top Gear, and YuYuHakusho Tokubetsu Hen
@NintoRich @GravyThief
Even though I loved StarFox 64, I was utterly disappointed in the soundtrack. I kept listening over and over and I just couldn't get over how inferior it was to the SNES version. And with four times the bits! I was younger.
Interesting video. NES megaman 2/3 music is awesome!
I have to admit though that I'm not a fan of donkey kong games. I don't like the way that the controls feel.
hmm...bit disappointing. I'm somewhat familiar with how old-school trackers works, and I think the video could've been explained better for what it was.
quick question i see that snes has color buttons. Im from usa and our snes had purple. wish ours was colorful like that.
@Crono1973 Yeah, you're right. Some people are so thick. It was the same as N64 4KB per texture limit, despite blown up as some major hurdle, it definitely wasn't, it didn't affect Rare, they just got on with it, used multiple textures, layers etc the way it was meant to be done, but pathetic, lazy artists and bone idle teams were too simple and lazy to do that.
@Banjos_Backpack The video mixed up a lot of games and songs, got most of the instruments at 0:51 wrong, said that the system "could only accommodate for 64 kilobytes of audio RAM" which isn't true etc.
@G-Boy Please provide sources for how the 64kb was not all that they were allowed to use. Everything I've ever read about it states that this was the case for most games.
@IAmCharizard The guy in the video said that the 64k had to hold all the music and the sound effects for an entire game, which isn't how the SPC700 works, as far as I know. I'm not an expert on this, but from what I've heard, the 64 kb only stores the song and sound effects that currently are loaded into the RAM. It's pretty obvious that you would not be able to take all of the sounds in, for example, the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack, and load them into a 64 kb RAM at the same time.
@G-Boy I see what you're saying and yes that is correct. 64kb wasn't the entirety of memory storage for the game, just the capacity of what they could use to create the sound for each level.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...