The Worst Sounding Sega Genesis Games! - Game Sack

[@GameSack]

What Genesis / Mega Drive games do you think sound the worst? How about the best?

[@PremierRomanov]

Gonna have to go with Doom for the worst on the Mega Drive. Or as it's better known, Farts of Doom.

[@Blueflag04]

The best has to go VectorMan

[@BallisticFaceGuy]

@Apharmd Battler Selective memory maybe? The sound was a constant point of contention back in the 90s.

[@JohnSmith-eq2tf]

Probably the unreleased street fighter II turbo. It was a very bad cheap bootleg. Champion was perfect dude. Not sure what you're smoking. Mortal kombat 1 sounded pretty bad at first and part 3 is auful. MkII for sega was brilliant. Aladdin had good music from the movie, Jurassic park, revenge of shinobi, streets of rage 2 and 3, dr. Robotnik's mean bean machine, x-men. I think you hate the raw arcade mono sound sega offered to be honest. I think royal.rumble sounded bad, but raw and WWF the arcade were decent sounding.

[@drunkensailor112]

Shadowrun sounds attrocious, but it's so awesome.

[@NipplesTheEnchilada2323]

Honestly, I like Sonic Spinball's music for the most part, though that Options Screen music can burn in hell for all I care.

[@SmaMan]

I remember pressing the mute button on my remote any time I was about to go to that screen. (It also played on the high scores iirc)

[@SuperLlama42]

I don't even think the Options menu is all that bad. Maybe I've just built up a tolerance for GEMS sound.

[@psysonic2308]

Sonic spinball soundtrack is by far better than sonic 4 soundtrack

[@SlySuavity]

*"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-"* -- Robotnik.

[@i.m.evilhomer5084]

Apparently, it can sound better or worse, depending on the Genesis/Mega Drive model & emulator. It still sounds screechy as all hell on something like Model 1, but at least it sounds slightly more tolerable.

[@Kafei2006]

Barney's voice: "We found a fart". Literally what he's saying XD.

[@StormsparkPegasus]

OMG he did say we found a fart.

[@slib4646]

having flashbacks to an older Sack episode where Dave plays Marble Madness and his ears literally bleed

[@M4R14NO94]

I'm surprised there wasn't a callback to that. lol

[@LordMoebius]

@@M4R14NO94 yea honestly I was watching this hoping to see that. Was probably their best gag. Wish I could remember what episode it was on so I could watch it again.

[@cambrodia3189]

@@LordMoebius Bad Music I think?

[@Nukle0n]

Bad Western Games I think

[@LordMoebius]

@@Nukle0n yea you're right, western developed games, episode 56 at 19:10min

[@SpeedyNoriega]

"Guile's Sonic boom now sounds like a polite suggestion" That was a spot on description

[@Formedras]

Not the Genesis' fault, though. The announcer and Guile have the same voice actor, and they got swapped out in Super Street Fighter II.

[@DJ_InYourFace]

"Genesis games that sound like AAAASSSS"

[@Blueflag04]

Assssssssss

[@blackphoenix77]

*ASSSSSS!!!*

[@konversion]

Very ass.

[@craigjuan5744]

Full of AAAAASSSS!!!

[@mikealb4676]

Trademark by angry video game nerd

[@mspeter97]

GEMS wasn't THAT bad when you think about it. When used correctly the results could be really nice, Comix Zone as you said is a nice exemple of how a clever dude could use GEMS to its maximum potential, the Earthworm Jim games use it and sounded great. Toy Story used it too and it sounded amazing (though that title screen music used some amazing trickery to play a MOD file).

[@SparkyMK3]

Aladdin on Genesis used GEMS as well and that had some great tunes as well (though the arrangements of the movies songs are something of a mixed bag).

[@LavaCreeperPeople]

Nah, GEMs music is mediocore at best. literally any track from sonic 2 is better than most GEMs 'music"

[@maconthesticks]

​@LavaCreeperPeople tbf sonic 2 music is better than most Genesis music, GEMS or not.

[@LavaCreeperPeople]

@@maconthesticks yeah

[@Turbulation1]

The main reason some GEMs music sounded good was because the tracks would mostly use custom FM patches that weren't on the preset list, so mainly it just reduced GEMS to being an easy way to implement music.

[@VencabotArchive]

One of the funniest post-credits skits so far. Had me laughing non-stop ever since, "But I'm a misogynist!"

[@laidback93]

It was the best! The car gag had me going!

[@rustymixer2886]

Sega CD game sack best post credit

[@smugshrug]

i love the Genesis sound chip. whether it sounds good or bad is entirely dependent on the skill of the person utilizing it. Just like any other sound chip.

[@the-NightStar]

Untrue.

[@smugshrug]

@@the-NightStar not an argument

[@yittmashups]

@@smugshrug I'd argue that that's not totally true. I know there are some synth 'instrument' sounds the SNES uses that I dislike so much, which has nothing to do with the composer; the sound itself just sucks. The composer can chain together an amazing string of notes, but it's still a dinky sound. I'm guessing this is what other commenter also meant.

[@Zedek]

@@yittmashups It's FM - you can do everything you wished, technical knowledge about that required. The best digital keyboard - the legendary Yamaha DX7 II - is a "sister synthesizer" both of the YM2612 (Genesis) and the YM2812 (SoundBlaster/AdLib). The amount of awemeoness the DX7 brought into the music world shows how that is possible. I prefer the crystal-clear emulation of waveforms over crappy samples used in many SNES games that also used tons of reverb to cover that up.

[@CodyMechanix]

True.

[@bald_engineer]

Thanks for touching on the different Genesis sound "systems" used by games. Not a point many make when pointing out the bottom end of the Genesis music library.

[@bajinaji]

Totally. I seem to recall that the documentation for the underlying sound programming was only in a somewhat poor Japanese document,so most of the non Japanese developers were set a huge disadvantage - hence while even if gems was not great at making good sound,it was documented in English. Not totally sure I'm right though...

[@Slybo]

This needs a counterpart episode. "Games that managed to make the awful Genesis audio sound good." That tinny GEMS audio is like a needle to the eardrum. "TINGGGgggGGGGGgggGGGGG....."

[@brigurugi]

Okay... headphones on, new Game Sack notification and now I'm deaf.

[@Vintersemestre00]

Hey Mr. Game Sack, I just wanted to let you know that I love this channel and one of my absolute FAVORITE things about it is that you put subtitles. That is just awesome and seemingly very uncommon. Thanks so much!

[@tedmoore86]

"Who needs two ears anyways" Vincent Van Gogh

[@anniewarbucks1794]

Savage

[@Rudofaux]

OOF

[@MyPhobo]

"I agree" Evander Holyfield

[@ApemanMonkey]

Too soon.

[@thatguy3718]

"What?"- Beethoven

[@Vlaphor]

"Aww, he didn't mention Chakan in the good Genesis music section. He must've just forgotten" Sees it in the bad music section. "Grrrr"

[@Dorelaxen]

RIGHT?!?!

[@RetroGamePlayers]

That Soundtrack is awesome. Just the overworld music is so well done. It's got a industrial / NIN / KMFDM feel too it.

[@lukasperuzovic1429]

Chakan made me not want to own a Genesis

[@the-NightStar]

@@RetroGamePlayers Finally someone else who knows KMFDM. Also, I agree.

[@osurpless]

ᵗʰᵉNight★Star “KMFDM, badder than the best. Megalomaniacal, harder than the rest!”

[@MegaDriveProfile]

Unfortunately, its true. Games like this create a huge stigma behind the genesis having a crappy sound chip. As a fan its quite annoying because it couldn't be further from the truth. I think any audio chip has the potential to sound awful really and although this is cliche, its the man behind it that really counts. GEMS can actually be good like you said with Comix Zone. I suggest people check out the Rooftop track from Demolition Man, it uses GEMS and its pure awesomeness. Being a genesis fan can get tough!

[@davidaitken8503]

@Benjamin Owuye Jagun I certainly like the compositions in some of the games you mentioned, but the "instruments" if you can call them that, usually, but not always, sound worse than SNES, Turbo Grafx 16, and even most of the better NES games. But lets face it, the music isn't the main reason the audio of the Sega Genesis is so detested, it's the sound effects. Even many of the games that are commonly held up as proof positive that the Genesis has amazing audio by every Sega fanboy such as Streets of Rage 2 still have mostly shit sound effects. The music tracks that appear in both Mega Turrican and Super Turrican all sound better on SNES. There is a night and day difference in quality between Castlevania Bloodlines and Super Castlevania 4. I suppose from someone looking back on it from the year 2020, the Genesis synthesizer is quite a novelty and the SNES's audio sounds low quality compared to the crisp and clear audio of today, but it really cannot be understated what a giant leap forward the SNES's audio was following a decade of widespread synthesizers. It really was ahead of its time.

[@dallas2314]

The reason why the voice samples for Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers were changed on the Sega Genesis is because the arcade version also changed the voices. SSF2 was the first version of Street Fighter 2 released for the CPS2 board so all the audio was remade for the new sound chip. Guile's voice (also the voice of the new announcer) is pretty weak, but it's something I've gotten used to over time. While the audio in this port is definitely not good, the SNES version of SSF2 also sounds far worse compared to the earlier SF2 games released on that platform. Both 16-Bit consoles got excellent ports of SSF2, but both had pretty bad sound. SSF2 on the Sega Genesis was actually the game that got me serious about Street Fighter 2. I first played it on January 28th, 2018 and got hooked. I mostly played the SF2 games in single player and occasionally with button-mashing friends since I was unaware of any online multiplayer options. Finally on February 28th, 2019 (exactly 13 months after first playing SSF2 on my Genesis) I discovered FightCade and began playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo online. I play 2-3 hours every day and I've improved quite rapidly. I main Old Guile (SSF2 version of Guile available in Super Turbo) and I've already gone to some local tournaments and compete every Monday night on online tournaments. I thank SSF2 on the Sega Genesis for getting me into competitive Super Turbo. As someone who didn't grow up back when Street Fighter 2 was released (I'm currently 18 years old), I have this port to thank for turning my retro gaming passion into something amazing.

[@LeoDoesAllThis]

Yeah, I’ve heard that some other people say that the SNES version has better character voice samples than the Genesis’, but they are also poor, compared to the original arcade version. I’ve always been thinking that the creators of the Genesis version might be using a mix of QSound and GEMS, but I do wonder what sound chip did they use for the SNES version.

[@hyazza4104]

Guile: hey Ryu Ryu: yes ? Guile: Sonic boom 🥂

[@jessragan6714]

Ru-Paul!

[@GoldenSirius]

Hilarious LMAO

[@CaptainCoolzCT-]

"Sonic Boom! Sonic Boom! Sonic Boom! Sonic Boom! Sonic Boom!"

[@ninetendopesaitama2107]

Ryu : what? i couldnt understand your weak voice.

[@ericjohnson6634]

Why is this not the top comment?

[@diebesgrab]

I’m just gonna say it, I actually like how X-Men sounds on Genesis. Maybe it’s because it was one of very few video games I grew up with, but to my ears, the scratchy instruments actually suit the rough metal vibe a lot of the music has.

[@CheesyNoodlez]

Same

[@chinossynthesizer705]

Fm synthesis turns scratchy because the modulators are high, which just happens when programming certain sounds are using certain algorithms.

[@rafaelantonio6765]

i like it too sounds different a mettalic tone

[@atari-staffroom]

Joe slapping his face to the "tunes" of X-Men needs to be immortalised as a meme.

[@robertparker6280]

I second this!!!

[@SlyHikari03]

Yes

[@ilikecurry2345]

"Does this count as annoying?"

[@ilikecurry2345]

I grew up partially with Sonic Spinball by merit of it being on the Sonic Mega Collection. Imagine my surprise when Joe, as he's apparently called, put it on the list!! And color me even more surprised when I found out that the Osomatsu saga as a whole predates the Osomatsu-San anime that took the world by storm in 2017 or so, with a 1988 game called Osomatsu-Kun, and presumably a manga and anime before it.

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

My problem with most Genesis games isnt the sound just the sound FX are WAY too loud. Vector Man 2 and DecapAttack are the worst for this

[@Dreddtube]

The cheek percussion part was 100% accurate. Seriously, I could not distinguish the music from it After the first time.

[@josephdelacruz6830]

Thanks for this episode. Honestly, as an audio engineer myself, I really enjoy the parts of the episodes where you talk about nerdy audio stuff, and to have this whole episode like that was a treat! This has become one of my repeat Game Sack episodes along with Let's Make a KZbin Show and the Video Game Memories ones. Thanks, Joe!

[@adamgr6988]

I loved that transition of fuzzy '90s Batman footage to razor sharp pixels. Thanks for all the attention to detail Joe, it doesn't go unnoticed.

[@SmaMan]

Ohh but Sonic Eraser *was* released on "Sega Game Toshokan." Sure, a random japan-only early 1990s download service, but still one that someone took a listen to and said, "Yeah, that's good enough for people to pay a subscription for."

[@TheRealJPhillips]

Gotta do one for the SNES too sir. There were some muffled, muddy, reverbed, overly compressed pieces of sht on there man

[@avideogamemaster]

Chessmaster

[@solarflare9078]

Captain Commando

[@jasonhubbard6775]

I remember the Marble Madness music in the skit for "Piss Poor Ports." It was comic genius.

[@BrettCharlesBass]

I think most of us were playing these games on old crappy TV hand me downs when we were young, so we probably didn’t notice so much 🤣

[@danmakuman]

FM synthesis was, along with PSG, some of the most important ways to produce audio for Arcade machines and PCs back then, specially in Japan. Basically every developer used those Yamaha sound chips to create sound, the Genesis uses an FM chip (along with a PSG one) because Sega knew that was the best way to go and everybody used it in their country (And even 1 game for the NES/Famicom used an FM chip called "Lagrange Point"), even themselves. From games like TMNT, Street Fighter 2, Snow Bros. etc all those games use the same family of sound chips as the Genesis (with some differences). It depends of the programmer or/and the musician to create great music and sound, but you need to understand that it is a synthesizer, creates synthetic sounds, not realistic ones (sometimes it does tho) so you can't expect stuff it can't produce, just like the NES, it barely sound like an instrument but still pretty cool in the right hands,

[@k-leb4671]

Whoa, I had no idea there were any NES games with FM synthesis.

[@bangerbangerbro]

This has been said so many times it's unreal. It's not particularly relevant to this video either.

[@SlyHikari03]

Yup.

[@solarflare9078]

Elliott Savva And yet there’s still many idiots that don’t know this

[@ToxicBrainSludge]

the actual problem is that fm synthesis is easy to take it into that metallic, abrasive sounding area, because it's basically using math to multiply one soundwave by another and that can quickly produce lots of inharmonic, atonal, or dissonant sounds. the issue isn't that synthesizers don't make realistic sounds, or that anyone playing a sega genesis expected it to. the issue is with the nature of fm synthesis specifically and how it takes a lot of knowledge, including math stuff, to get nice sounds out of it. and apparently people didn't know how to do that and nobody thought to go get some manuals or guides on how to do it. even crazier still, the first commercially available and common fm synths like the DX7 came with plenty of decent sounding presets, already included. so you didn't really HAVE to know how to program them, you could just use those sounds, which many people did. but for some reason, sega, in their lack of foresight, didn't provide a system with presets for developers to use, which would have ensured that most games on their console would have sounded 100x better than many of them ended up sounding. bottom line, sega themselves dropped the ball here. still, it's also kind of weird that the developer(s) of gems, DID make a system WITH presets, which tons of people then ended up using, and included a bunch of terrible ones! it seems like the developers of GEMs themselves didn't even understand FM synthesis. it seems like they had no business making GEMS in the first place.

[@BlookiesFookies]

I'm now interested in the "Worst Sounding SNES Games"

[@LobotomyDC]

All of them.

[@RetroTuna]

its annoying when people say the Megadrive had crap sound GEMS has a lot to answer for.

[@RetroTuna]

@ben owen yep or have been playing them @games crapy console, the Megadrive sound chip is awesome in the right hands.

[@solarflare9078]

Tell me about it. Literally every SNES fanboy in this comment section misunderstands this video and think it's supposed to be slander to the Mega Drive that they can support, and he clearly says it isn't. Some even go to the point of saying stuff like Monster World IV, Phantasy Star IV, Super Monaco GP, and Mortal Kombat 1 sucks. It annoys me to death.

[@RetroTuna]

@@solarflare9078 It's the way it is these days with the internet fanboys are going out of there way to bad mouth everything they can, keyboard warrior's are a scourge of the modern day.

[@bischoffdev]

Had to listen to the Rocket Knight Adventures soundtrack after this episode in order to recover.

[@SkullDraizer]

I wish the pacman part never ended.

[@Yuzoboy]

Even though some of these games had bad sound, they are engrained into our childhoods and end up giving us good feelings of nostalgia. Powerful memories.

[@scm64entertainment44]

SNES does the same to our childhoods. They have good music. And good Mode 7 effects

[@animalmother8037]

Still love x-men on sega lol. Even with its crazy stage music. Especially the drums in the 1st stage or the mouth drum you visually demonstrated. ROFLMAO!

[@SuperKokuJin916]

What?! No GREENDOG?!!! I guess you can only take so much trauma per episode. Eternal Champions was the only GEMS audio that was actually amazing to me. It still has some of my favorite 16-bit tunes. Now, World Heroes on the Genesis was a HUGE stinker. As a huge fan of the original Neo-Geo game, and after a few delays, I was glad to finally play it on my Genesis...but that didn't last long. The sound effects were either down sampled or missing entirely. The music was WAY worse with that twangy GEMS sound. The developer didn't include each stage's song and even reused what they had in other stages!! By this time it's sequel hit the arcade and SNES so I didn't look back. Just horrible!

[@Invidente7]

Now do genesis games with the BEST sound!

[@allhailthelegs]

You know he will haha

[@musicvideoenhancer]

Yes, and episode about Streets of Rage 1 and 2 only, great idea!

[@Richard.Linder]

Yeah. Just what I was thinking.

[@madmax2069]

@@musicvideoenhancer there's far more than just 2 games on genesis that sounds great

[@md-1988]

Is a good idea, I'd actually like to know because I'm someone who personally finds Genesis in general sounds ugly

[@newspooiechannel]

6:43 You know, Stan Bush of 'Transformers: The Movie' fame did a lot of those "I Love What You Do For Me!" commercials for Toyota. I wonder if that is his voice used for the clip.

[@MrWolfTickets]

6:54 I think the Genesis' sound chips just started smoking really young.

[@WillKeaton]

There's something unique about the way the Genesis sounds. It's dirty, it's gritty, and that gives it a sound that sets it apart from other consoles.

[@rlnook7306]

Love these late uploads. Always good when watching random videos on KZbin to see something good come.

[@entretienrgt514]

Hey Randy

[@Boogie_the_cat]

One small correction: GEMS actually stands for: Grunting Effervescent farting robot Mucous Simulator It was actually primarily designed to train nurses with, so they could quickly learn to identify what a severe lung infection sounded like, phlegm and all. It was a pretty successful simulation, and when the clinical trials were over, Recreational BrainFart just bought the sound driver and told Sega they programmed it. A bold strategy, but it "worked". Batman Returns on Mega Drive was just a shitty game in every aspect. I was so pissed when i rented it, because i had wanted to rent the first Batman, but when the new game came out, the store got rid of the old game. Cheap deaths, bad design, bad sound and music. My brother had Batman Returns on the Lynx, and that game managed to be even shittier, mainly due to absurd difficulty due to having only 4 damn levels.

[@thomaspleacher2735]

When Genesis games sound good, they sound flippin' amazing. But when they sound bad it is hell.

[@CarbonRollerCaco]

High risk, high reward.

[@TV0R11]

Castlevania Bloodlines has amazing music on genesis, its also amazing what they did to make the music for Toy Story to work on Genesis.

[@ElectronerpProductions]

There's a really interesting video by one of the developers about how the music worked.

[@pingusupremacy6006]

This comment section is in the memory of all great sounding genesis games : SOR games All Thunder Force games Sonic 1, 2 and 3 Batman by sunsoft Vectorman Mortal kombat games Flashback The two earth worm jim games Phantasy star IV Shining force games Shinobi II and III Golden axe I, II and III Colums III(yes) Dr Robotnik mean bean machine Road rash I, II and III Bloodlines Contra hard corps Gunstar heroes And I'm certainely missing a lot of them

[@Prizrak-hv6qk]

I'll add some: Gaunlet IV Panorama Cotton Midnight Resistance Gaires Gleylancer Eliminate Down Elemental Master Troubleshooter (Battlemania) 1 & 2 (...hell, just insert every Japanese shmup here). Alisia Dragoon Socket Tiny Toons Rocket Knight Adventures Castle and World of Illusion Ristar Strider Forgotten Worlds Magical Troll (Tarututo) Beyond Oasis Flink Mega Turrican Crusader of Centy Luckily, in most cases, the quality of Genesis sound corresponded to the overall quality of the game, so there aren't many good games ruined by bad sound and almost all of the Genesis must-plays have good sound.

[@retrosoul8770]

@@Prizrak-hv6qk That is definitely true, grateful that the masterpiece games are not ruined by bad sound! Adding more! (many obscure but excellent JP exclusives!) Dragon Slayer 1&2 (Field + many others) Master of Monsters (Intro + others) Devilish (everything) Langrisser II (1 is good too but II is outstanding, The Last Battle, Knights Errand) Gauntlet IV Monster World IV (Finale) Ys3 (Seal of Time) Superman (Round 4 and 5) Dragon Ball Z Buyu Retsuden Steel Empire Mega Turrican Twinkle Tale (Stage 2) Bio Hazard Battle (as you said, basically every JP shooter) Shura No Mon Devil Hunter Yohko ATP Tour Champ Tennis Herzog Zwei Rolling Thunder 2 & 3 Ranger X (Jungle) TMNT Hyperstone Heist Time Trax (Track 5) With all of our picks together, we've got quite the set! And many ppl say only Sonic and Streets of Rage sound good...a cringe worthy myth

[@drewsebastino2889]

No one's mentioned Comix Zone after listing 70 games?

[@retrosoul8770]

@@drewsebastino2889 that just goes to show how many great soundtracks are out there man. Forgot that one. Speaking of western scores, Adventures of Batman&R was outstanding too.

[@pedroguilherme9811]

25:20 - "Ordeeeeeer!" I did not know John Berkow was in the game.

[@ilikecurry2345]

OBEEEEEEEEEEM

[@ztoxtube]

The best-sounding version of Super Off-Road was on the NES, courtesy of David Wise.

[@T3KNUG3T5]

idk. The follin versions pretty good

[@Avrelivs_Gold]

24:05 that Faery Tale Adventure theme is actually good. you hear it for hours and it starts to grow on you, organ music for a big adventure, clear fantasy sound that you won't find anymore, because everything is epic and orchestral.

[@pengwin_]

i actually like the way Ecco The Dolphin sounds, more so than the CD version which is just ambient dolphin sounds. Man, the genesis had some real bad sound sometimes, CastleVania: Bloodlines was like a miracle.

[@jc_dogen]

except the sound effects...

[@avideogamemaster]

Ecco the Dolphin sounds great and it fits the premise of the game too

[@costby1105]

Really it is more how people with talent were able to use the tools, as stated in the video even the gems sound driver could sound great given the right talent. Most Game boy games sounded pretty bad but given the right talent you got soundtracks like the three Zelda GB games.

[@willthomas2310]

Castlevania: Bloodlines wasn't made by the Gems sound engine, tho

[@robsmors]

Joe, judging by your Marble Madness gameplay footage I believe you don't realise you can speed up by holding the A button, IIRC. Makes bumping the black ball off the edge and making platform jumps way easier!

[@kingdavid7516]

"You play the piano, right?" Uhh, yeah, I own a keyboard, correct. 13:44

[@emmettturner9452]

It was composed for the NES version. Sucked there too, of course

[@thaddeusmcgrath]

22:16 When mother plays the keyboard and she needs a drum line.

[@tangreen7267]

You should have mentioned Beavis and Butthead for Genesis as an excellent example of poor Genny music. Upon starting it up, a PC - only gamer friend of mine asked if the " sound card " in my Genesis was broken !

[@TonyLikeGames2]

During the Marble Madness segment, I was expecting the clip of Dave’s ears bleeding because of the horrible music.

[@redacted2275]

16:37 I wonder if someone has already come up with a hybrid version of "Marble Madness" with Tengen's audio and EA's graphics and controls.

[@HHog]

Someone who's skilled at ROM hacking should make a hack of the EA Marble Madness to give it the Tengen soundtrack so you can have the best of both worlds.

[@dantefloressq]

That's actually a great idea. Is it even possible though?

[@HHog]

@@dantefloressq There are people who managed to turn Sonic 1 into a fishing game. I think the sky's the limit as long ad the skill is there :v

[@leoleonvids]

It is important to note that Sonic 1 has been disassembled and that the hacking scene for it has been around about 2 decades by this point, thus there is lots of documentation, tools and skilled people in it. I don't doubt it'd be possible to put in the Tengen music in the EA version, but size limits would probably be annoying, plus both Tengen and EA used their own custom drivers for the most part (not sure if the Tengen ver used their driver or GEMS, but I know the EA version used the EA driver according to SMSPower at least,) and to port music from one to the other the drivers would have to be reverse engineered if they haven't been already, which is... eugh It's times like these where I wish all Genesis/MD games were either SMPS or GEMS.

[@BB-te8tc]

Chakan had some fantastic hub world music though. It really sold me on the game's atmosphere. GEMS seems to work alright for ambient-ish tracks I think.

[@carlosaugustodinizgarcia3526]

The beta version of Street Fighter II for Genesis (named Street Fighter II' turbo,but based in Champion edition) had clearer audio samples.

[@GameTropics_pr]

Man I think I have never heard anyone say Super Street fighter 2 sounds are Awful. I totaly agree.

[@bildo1977]

Ultimate Qix was a port of an arcade game called Volfied. The "music" was the same in that game as well.

[@DavidJohnson-td5ic]

This comment is five years late, but how in the hell did Road Rash (all of them) not make this list?! It boggles my mind that so many people like EA's Road Rash series. EA produced some awful sounding games on the Genesis. Road Rash's "music" is mind-numbing and the sound effects are the scratchy mess that feature in many of the games in this video. EA couldn't even be bothered to add sound effects for the motorcycles... in a motorcycle game! Maybe that was for the best.

[@ozzydio7233]

I miss the days, where you could tell the platform a game was on, just by listening to the music.

[@georged7627]

Streets of rage 1 music and Shinobi 3 the final confrontation stage music called Solitary are some of my favourite 🙏🏽when Game sack brings out a vid I usually watch at least 3 or 4 of them

[@dimmufan88]

I feel like this episode of game sack made Dave proud 😂

[@NYCJoeBlack]

dimmufan88 - What happened to David?

[@dimmufan88]

@@NYCJoeBlack busy life I suppose

[@NYCJoeBlack]

dimmufan88 - Maybe...

[@mattgbarkley]

GEMS! Now I understand why my Genesis suddenly started sounding like shit after years of terrific music. Very informative from another SEGA fan boy. Thanks!

[@ilikecurry2345]

Then Ristar came out to a very good soundtrack.

[@mattgbarkley]

@The #6 Runaway Guys Fan TRUE! There are dozens of Genesis soundtracks that totally kick ass post GEMS. Ristar Rocks! I always consider it SEGA's version of Yoshis Island on SNES.

[@Adamtendo_player_1]

@@ilikecurry2345very good soundtrack but those voices are terrible.

[@joeyvlo]

22:15 this delighted me to no end.

[@autumnmissepic8498]

what do you mean, sonic spinball is- ohhh yeah the options menu

[@sparkydeltorro]

i watched this episode wearing headphones :(

[@MrFairhill]

Me too.

[@sabin1981]

I feel your pain, brother. I did the same :(

[@collie4856]

me too ouch

[@Jesse__H]

It was the right way to do it, I think. Sorry, did you say something?

[@thebonefish]

For that genuine Genesis Model One experience of course!

[@LouisTheSEGANerd]

It's a shame that Deflemask didn't exist back in the early 90's because that software makes it really easy to make decent sounding MegaDrive music (and other consoles :-P) that works on real hardware...

[@starstarstar4643]

That marble madness game sounds like a horror movie 🥴😆

[@Alianger]

Additional shades of brown: Doki Doki Penguin Land MD Fantasia Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land Tintin in Tibet Todd's Adventures in Slime World WarpSpeed NewZealand Story Math Blaster: Episode 1 (decent voice samples though) Feng Kuang Tao Hua Yuan Zhong Guo Xiang Qi

[@DemomanX614]

Come on, Xmen isnt that bad. Like the magneto screen music is really good

[@16BitJay]

I still rock out to the Shi'ar Empire stage theme, and used to make Cyclops dance to it.

[@nikitawineberger8973]

12:00 if I remember correctly, Andy Brock was mentioned in SNES and PC versions, but not on Genesis.

[@mikedrop4421]

This was awesome. I definitely want a "Best soundtracks" video now. Maybe an idea for a series where you cover soundtracks and/sound for other consoles? You don't have to make the videos all 30min long either. Thanks for this video either way.

[@rgerber]

Oh hell yeah. Just expect Donkey Kong to be somewhere there but I would be very interested

[@MarcosTorreshb]

Regarding Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition and Super Street Fighter 2, it's not about the quality of the samples. I extracted the samples from the ROM and they sound right. I cannot say the quality is awesome. I think the problem is the sound driver of the game itself. It's really awful.

[@konversion]

Joe, please let Dave know that we miss him and hope he's doing well... or at least I do. He should come back for a cameo at some point.

[@Lost_n_Found_1]

Aaron Sander did a few weeks ago

[@_zoinks2554]

Dave's new boyfriend is the jealous type.

[@ryeb]

He was in an episode a few weeks back. Joe’s doing a fine job with the show though!

[@konversion]

Oh shit, was he? How the hell did I miss that? Guess I gotta watch that then 😄

[@the-NightStar]

@@Utubesuxmycock James Rolfe has far better things to do than associate with this chucklefuck.

[@WillieManga]

Ironically, Fantasia for the same system. I say ironically becasuse MUSIC IS SUPPOSED TO BE THEIR STRONG SUITS!

[@wonderingmonitor1996]

next I'll play X-men on the Genny, Joe will be playing the music in my mind 😂 thanks Joe!

[@recklesflam1ngo968]

Its often the americans that produce potato tracks, the japanese on the other hand. (Streets of rage, Musha, master of monsters, thunder force 4 for example)

[@Copec]

We need a MD+Version of EA Marble Madness with good the soundtrack.

[@elbitxo5945]

specially because the arcade game on MAME needs trackball, the MegaDrive version has the best gameplay for d-pads. Romhacking listen to us!

[@Carlixyz]

Please some homebrew hacker listen this!

[@sabin1981]

sadly this is only for the music, nothing can ever fix the diabolically bad sound effects in most MD titles :(

[@thesupervideogamenerdmore3171]

In my opinion, Sonic Spinball has divisive music. It has bangers like Toxic Caves and Lava Powerhouse (I think that's the name), but it also has Boss Theme and Showdown.

[@SCU3A_S7EVE]

0:37 - Sounds like Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen are walking to the ring.

[@Aragorn7884]

LOL. A reference for the obscure minority.

[@Doc_Valparaiso]

Dean Malenko also used it as his solo entrance.

[@drunkensailor112]

@@Aragorn7884 dude everyone knows the four horsemen.

[@mutalix]

@J Dee Carter Damn thats harsh.

[@LXDarkSniper]

I strongly disagree on Xmen. Shi'ar Empire was one of the best tunes on Sega. If Clone Wars made this list then there would've been problems lol

[@Dehler55]

Totally agree. I was looking for someone to say this

[@Kocktail1]

"But I'm a mysogenist". This one killed me.

[@HayTatsuko]

Are you sayin' that Spinball sounded like a Sonic colonic? Seriously though, great episode. I know how good the Genny can sound and these games definitely ain't it.

[@cloudair4154]

i HIGHLY disagree with sonic spinball being on this list.. the sound on that game is great imo

[@the-NightStar]

Same. Sonic Spinball is great and sounds great.

[@super_pretendo]

Yeeeeep. Been the base of a whole lot of excellent remixes and mashups as a result.

[@Choralone422]

Sega GEMS - One huge reason why I was glad I bought a SNES instead of a Genesis back in those days. Plus the SNES audio chip was superior to the mostly FM sound in the Genesis anyway. In the early 90's the Genesis was like a PC outfitted with an Adlib sound card and the SNES was like a PC with a 16bit Sound Blaster card or an Amiga. :)

[@GameSack]

Depends on your definition of "superior". I find that a ton of SNES games have absolutely no character when it comes to the audio.

[@radioactivechimp]

The scariest halloween video I’ve seen so far

[@pagb666]

Let's not forget the fart orchestra from the 32X Doom

[@DankPeezy]

I see a "The BEST sounding Genesis games" episode in our near future. Lol

[@rgerber]

Dude, the ending skit about Pacman is absolutely legendary!!! Nobody commented on this 🤭😂🤣

[@colddripgaming]

Started listening to this with a headache, I immediately regret all my life choices

[@gimo80]

Fantasia. Not only is it quite frankly unplayable due to its lag input but the music, in all its irony, is so unbelievably awful it’s beyond description. Just farts and basically no real composition whatsoever. One of my least favourite games.

[@SEGAClownboss]

I never really minded the Mega Drive's sound chip and I'm still baffled by this popular opinion that it always had a bad sound. I thought it was right for the period. Guys, do you remember the 90s? Grunge music, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Sonic Youth? Noise was everywhere in music all the time, and the Mega Drive took that sound and ran with it.

[@colingznetworkplus4618]

Exactly, I didn’t mind Sonic Spinball’s soundtrack, but here we are

[@motherbrain86]

@Benjamin Jagun its not the gems software thats bad all the time for me its the people who use it

[@CarbonRollerCaco]

@@motherbrain86 GEMS was designed to allow sound designers to be quick and dirty. But it's still not easy to be good with, and indeed even harder than with other sound fonts.

[@CarbonRollerCaco]

Pop music even then was more than grunge and techno. The Genesis was more of an ace in a few things than a king-of-all-trades like the SNES in terms of sound.

[@Epsilonsama]

Come on, Sonic Spinball while pure GEMS was actually good. Some tracks are a bit too grainy sure but most of the tracks were rocking. But if you dont like the GEMS version, SEGA released a CD with select tracks of the game with the original DEMO tracks in full Red Book Audio.

[@mikedx42]

So glad you're still at this Joe. Love you

[@Wallyworld30]

Super Off Road was a superb game. The Arcade version had a massive truck steering wheel to steer your tiny truck! 3 of those giant wheels were somehow squeezed onto the standup arcade machine.

[@aldebarangoldsaint]

Best Musics: Streets of Rage 1 / Revenge of Shinobi !!!

[@Wolfdragon92584]

I totally agree. Those are my go-to soundtracks for Genesis.

[@Wolfdragon92584]

@ben owen Oh boy, we've got an elitist over here!!!

[@stevethefishdotnet]

Here in Japan, the Megadrive name for the Qix game is "Volfied." I've no idea why.

[@Nestalgba92023]

Because Qix inspired arcade games in Japan are mostly turned into pornography ones so…but it just my theory.

[@6runge]

This Joe is one of my favorite nerds ever =D Never ever stop doing Game sack bro or else! Love ya Joe

[@TheMultiGunMan]

Excellent job! I like watching the "Best Of" and "Worst Of" videos for all the consoles. You did great!