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/vr/ - Retro Games

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5561804 No.5561804 [Reply] [Original]

Never played Streets Of Rage before, time to make it up. Figured I'd play them on Genesis. Got through 1 and 2, loved the gameplay, loved the music.. I knew that the OST is something special because of how it blended both complexity and funkiness with that shitty-gritty Genesis sound. But it was Streets Of Rage 3 OST that struck me the most. I've been digging in games for years and decades but this is like the only fucking game in existence (at least retrogaming existence) that is so self-conscious about its artistry and not being a "background music in kids' game". I know it's not everyone's cup of coffee because it's dirty and raw as fuck and sometimes outright scary with its dissonant aggression but goddamn I'm really amazed by it. This could easily be released on something like Warp Records in 1994 and be regarded as an essential and influential electronic album, if it wasn't a "background music for kids' game". If you make a soundtrack on an simple 5 channel Yamaha chip, in an era where a lots of records made back then nowadays sound cheaply dated - well then excuse me mr. Yuzo Koshiro but you deserve a thread on /vr/.

To prove my point that the OST can be regarded as fresh 25 years after its release: Yuzo did a Streets Of Rage set on a Red Bull Music Festival and it fucking blows my mind how some passages are up to todays' EDM/IDM standards. See it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW03QgubN0M

tl;dr SOR3 OST is groundbreaking 10/10
inb4 some of the parts were automated/randomly generated

Full OST here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRrf-WxRsgs

>> No.5561834

>>5561804
It's really not far off from some stuff that was played in smaller clubs at the time. Not mainstream, not everyone's cup of tea, but it works for me.

>> No.5561848

>>5561804
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW03QgubN0M
Sorry to say, but the audience is pathetic. Everyone's clinging to their phones.

>> No.5561886

>>5561804
It's so great and so far ahead of its time it's not funny.

>> No.5562001

>>5561886
It wasn't that far off, it's more popular in Europe, (especially the Netherlands and Belgium)

>> No.5562035

>>5562001
Game was released in March 1994 making most of the OST being done probably somewhere in the 2nd half of 1993. There are many tracks that combine hardcore techno, acid, trance, gabber and even some hints of ambient dub and some postmodern classical and spectralism (mainly in computer-generated passages). I'd say it definitely is ahead of its time even with Autechre record coming out the same year

>> No.5562314

>>5561804
Regardless of what people think of the music, SOR franchise as games were so damn good that it is a travesty that they died out in the 90's rather than stick with us this whole time as one of the biggest long running franchises still going. We are only getting a fourth after all these years of the franchise being dead. Best beat 'em up games to this day still.

>> No.5562380

>>5562035
Sure, but early 90's a lot of those were big underground (except for trance)

>> No.5562420

>>5561804
I love Genesis noisecore. SOR3 isn't tuneful, is baffling to those used to the catchy 1+2 osts, and flipflops from outright noise to chill atmosphere a lot. Given 2's bridge stage was my favourite track it's like that, but a whole ost. Just oppressive music you wanna hear while punching shit. It works.

Adventures of Batman and Robin/Red Zone are what euro demoscene coders/Jesper Kyd did with the hardware and have pretty unique atmospheric EDM sounds. Really impressive given the hardware.

Alien Soldier/Gunstar Heroes show Genesis music is best when LOUD/NOISY AS FUCK, and Kazuo Hanzawa creates a driving, heroic sound that's pretty uniquely his. Alien Soldier especially gets very experimental technoey. I love some of the screaming boss tracks.

Bio-Hazard Battle is an oddity in game aesthetic and in music, with a very droning, drumheavy, alien sound to match fucked up alien insects destroying Earth. Love that final stage track for its peaceful unnervingness.

Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 (though 32X it only uses the Genesis soundchip) is a good continuation of SoR3's sound, though uses a lot of voice samples and slips into SoR2's catchiness at times. Certainly a different sound for a shmup.

Thunderforce IV is more metal than electronic but it's still coming out of this soundchip and still an honorable mention. Same with Contra Hard Corps. Both show robot farts make great guitars.

>> No.5562714

>>5562420
>Adventures of Batman and Robin/Red Zone are what euro demoscene coders/Jesper Kyd did with the hardware and have pretty unique atmospheric EDM sounds. Really impressive given the hardware.

Check out Scorcher, it uses the Saturn chip, only cd audio track is the ending song (which admittedly is pretty good on its own).

>> No.5562758

We knew this music was ahead of its time when it came out. SOR3 was almost too far ahead and the style is more abstract. I think most preferred SOR2. But just think of the absolute insanity of programming those FM chips to do this...It is way more than you'd expect on a house techno CD back then.

>> No.5562836

>>5562314
Bring them back then.

>> No.5563257

>>5562420
absolutely based post
thank you anon

>> No.5563338

SoR3's OST is an incoherent mess. Can hardly even claim Koshiro composed it since it was mostly automated.

The only track that ressembles actual music would be the one from stage 7-A

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

>> No.5563362

>>5563338
You think "automated" is a process where Koshiro pushed a button and Genesis outputted a randomly generated track, eh?

>> No.5563374

>>5563338
t. ameripleb
also SoR3 DID get composed by Motohiro Kawashima and Yuzo

>> No.5563404

I agree that Streets of Rage 3 soundtrack is pretty underrated, but people who praise it usually refer to Motohiro Kawashima's tracks. Koshiro developed a composition system for this game, like a random note generator, and it sounds like a mess most of the time.

>> No.5563463

>>5561804
it's absolute trash. only cock sucking edgelord special snowflake contrarians like fringe shit.
SOF3's OST is generally considered as shit.

>> No.5563484

>>5562420
Jesper Kyd is fucking trash. Piss off eurofaggot.

>> No.5563570

>>5563463
>cock sucking edgelord special snowflake contrarians
So basically the entirety of /vr/ likes it.

>> No.5563574

>>5561804
Best soundtrack on the Genesis.

>>5562420
Top-tier taste.

>> No.5563584
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5563584

>>5563463

Zoomer detected.

>> No.5563625

>>5563463
this post shows both a) japan's superiority over USA b) that SOR3 OST was so ahead of its time people still sperg out about it

>> No.5563683

>>5563463
Zoom Zoom

>> No.5563689

>>5563625
>superiority
Music like that was played in clubs in the US at the time, just not in mainstream clubs

>> No.5564841
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5564841

>>5562420
I've checked Adventures Of Batman And Robin and holy fucking cow. I'd NEVER check that game out because I'm not a fan of Batman nor any comic books for that matter. And I'd be damned because it's pretty great.

People who say 'durr genesis got shitty sound chip' literally don't know jack about synths. Good grief we got some nerds who knew a lot and programmed some beautiful soundfonts. I think YM2612 is the most underrated and underused and misunderstood piece of hardware of all /vr/ time.

>> No.5564915

>>5561804
>well then excuse me mr. Yuzo Koshiro but you deserve a thread on /vr/
Hate to burst your bubble but the best memorable tracks on SoR3 weren't credited to Koshiro but to the other composer guy.

>> No.5565234

>>5564841
While there's some really good stuff on the Mega Drive, on average the FM chip get's really abused by (mostly) American composers

>> No.5565247

>>5565234
I recall hearing Sega gave really crappy documentation with their english dev kits, resuting in a lot of developers using a lot of crappy tools that gave the samey sound you get from early american games

>> No.5565327

>>5565247
Most of 'em relied on GEMS soundfont which was pretty lame and generic and flat.

>> No.5565385

>>5565327
>>5564841

FM Synth patches are not soundfonts.

>SoundFont is a brand name that collectively refers to a file format and associated technology that uses sample-based synthesis to play MIDI files. It was first used on the Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card for its General MIDI support.

>> No.5565693

>>5565234
>>5565327
Nothing wrong with GEMS, it's just that most Americans were bad at music. It's no real loss since American games were mostly shit anyway.

>> No.5566787

>>5565385
I was short of a good name for this. I thought soundfont is literally the set of sounds in specific scale that you program before you start composing. I tried to say that GEMS is like a default "soundfont" like some default presets that came with your synthesizer, even though you could make your own from the scratch. I didn't knew that patches can apply here but it's FM synthesis so I guess I was wrong.

>> No.5567031

>>5566787
You're definitely not alone in using the term that way, I'm just autistic about it. 'Patch' is really the catch all term for a particular synth sound (as early synths required literally 'patching' a sound together with cables), applicable to analog and digital synthesis, or a single set of sampled sounds. Using 'soundfont' to describe synthesized sounds is fundamentally incorrect, whereas using that term to describe a sampled sound (like an instrument patch in a SNES soundtrack for instance) isn't totally 'wrong'; but is akin to saying 'Kleenex' instead of 'tissue.'