KZfaq: Where you can play a game from beginning to end on or even before the day of release, but 30 seconds of music from a 30 year old game will get you taken down. Heaven forbid you increase interest in something even the publishers have abandoned.

Im 41, My sister had a SMS, my Cousin had a Mega Drive an I had a Super Nes. I loved playing on all three. I never noticed there was a difference in sound between the megadrive and Snes until the age of youtube. Back then, I dont really think it mattered. I never really moved on after the 16 bit era. I still play them now and get excited for 16 bit games I never had a chance to play. Mickey Mouse and castle of Illusion, followed by Alien 3s music always stand out for me.

I'm 43 and still listen to Genesis music.

That's why I started a channel just for Mega Drive / Genesis music, plan to list them all. Love them all! The music has as much character as the game characters! So many fond memories as a kid

I took an FM class in college. It was incredibly complicated and difficult, but also very fun tweaking wave forms to get them just so

I'm one of those SNES sound people but I've grown to love some of what the Genesis/MD has to offer. It really comes down to the individual composer for me, like you said.

When you have a composer like Yuzo Koshiro giving a show in Paris with hundreds of people from MD game music only, it meand it was a success. Some games sounds terrible, but now with trackers, there are guys giving music we could have never imagined back in the day.

Well, when it sucks, it sucks less on the SNES But when it shines, it shines brighter on the MD

The music can only be as good as the artist behind it, the megadrive itself makes incredible music in the right hands.

as a techno music junkie since the 90s i agree. the genesis sound was where it was at.

I love the way the megadrive sounds. I still listen to the soundtracks for sonic 3; and thunder force 3;

Bonus level music from the game Cool Spot on a Genesis is a masterpiece I listen to this day

Sonic 1 Starlight Zone is such a great track, one of my favourite gaming songs of all time. I think i prefer the Sega Mega drive music, they knocked out some bangers back in the day! The whole Streets Of Rage soundtrack and Sonic 3 & Knuckles are some of the best ever made.

Lets be technical, the soundchip of the Megadrive is a restricted Yamaha DX7 FM synth with only 6 or 7 voice of polyphony depend if you using the 1 channel 8 bit sampling dac for drum or sound effect, now the snes sound chip is a sampler limited to 64kb of memory for the sample itself and the sequencer data, so even if it's more like an Amiga Paula with 8 track of polyphony it's still very limited and only top notch sound designer and programmer can make it sound like a regular high end sampler, both have quality and limitation but in right hand you can have very high quality soundtrack .

Poor programmers/composers using GEMS hurt the Genesis.

I love a lot of the tunes on Genesis games. Gunstar Heroes, Rolling Thunder 2&3, Sonic 1,,2,,3, & Knuckles, MUSHA, SOR 1&2, Shinobi games, TF IV, just to name a few. Sega CD took it to a higher level. Love it all.

Loved the Genesis sound! Just got my Mega Synthesis in! Can't wait to start making my own sega sounding tunes.

I love hearing the PSG sound waves in Mega Drive music.. Reminds me of the Master System inside.

That revenge of Shinobi song is amazing

The megadrive is my all time favourite console i love the sound the second you hear it you know exactly what system it is

Sega had a sound that's iconic, and works for some games, but overall yes, others sounded better. Did this hurt the system? No. I was a teenager during this area and almost nobody compared the sounds when choosing a system.

The headphone port possibly promoted the Genesis/MegaDrive due to putting Stereo option obviously right there in the front. Most TV's didn't have stereo so hooking up stereo speakers was tempting for any music/audio lovers.

Streets of Rage 1 and 2 made me proud to be a Genesis owner.

Jewelmaster is the game I use to prove that FM Synthesis, that 1st song rocks so freaking hard

I look at it like this; the MegaDrive/Genesis could never produce a soundtrack as beautiful as Donkey Kong Country. But the SNES could never have produced something with the energy as Streets of Rage 2. It all depended who was behind the wheels. Tech and Talent had to match.

I've realized that my relationship with this system is unlike any other. It's not even the library--I wish the SEGA Genesis had its own equivalent of Super Mario World, Earthbound, the last few Super Fire Pro Wrestling games, etc. It's the hardware itself. It's that gritty feeling, and the personal nostalgia tied to it. The way the early Madden (and Bill Walsh) games sound, Castlevania Bloodlines...so much of the connection I feel is from the sound hardware.

When the yamaha synth was used as an instrument within its own right, it really could sing. I find myself leaning towards it much more these days as it has its own unique quality to the soound. The wavetable synth of the snes and later pc games just sounds a bit cheap and cheesy these days with the low quality sampled sounds, but it was remarkable back in the day. I've got a pretty decent wavetable card in my PC but a lot of the time I still prefer the OPL synth.

Man there is so many that the Genesis had that were great. RoadRash 3, Crue Ball, and my favorite on the platform: Steel Empire. That game literally had the sheet music for the title track on the start screen.

Love the sound of Mega Drive. It was perfect for heavy metal styled soundtracks. Too me, SNES often had too much reverb and sounded muffled in comparison, due to the heavy compression. Though western developers, was often terrible at using the sound on Mega Drive. But those Japanese games, especially the shmups, amazing tracks.

Incredible episode! I used to debate this with a dear old roommate of mine. He showed me that there was great music on the Sega Genesis, but I had always had the impression it was subpar. This is yet another great video to add to the timeless debate, nice one Mel!

I was delighted to hear the theme from Star Light Zone. I genuinely think the slower, PAL version of the theme is nicer. Of course, that could just be what sounds 'right' to my ear.

Personal favorites : Alissia Dragons, Wiz'n'Liz, Shining force II and Earthworm Jim 2. Ristar has such iconic musics as well.

Love the Genesis! You can't mistake the sound from that system! I remember getting ours for Christmas, coming from the Master System, firing the Genesis up for the first time, hearing Altered Beast, and Madden, being blown away!!!

I'm surprised there's nothing from Road Rash 3 on here. That game has an amazing soundtrack.

So the Mega Drive’s music blew me away as a kid - I used to sit there for hours listening to Revenge of Shinobi’s sound test, Streets of Rage 1, Splatterhouse 2…and hands down the best OST for the system has to be Sonic 3. Hydrocity Zone Act 2 has such a complex arrangement, it boggles the mind. So for the people that saying that sound didn’t matter when you were kids - it did. I noticed how (this is my edit here!) DIFFERENT Mortal Kombat sounded on Mega Drive compared to SNES, I remember listening to Donkey Kong Country and being actually floored by it. The big question is did it hurt the Mega Drive? I don’t think so, just based on the demographic playing the console. It was more arcade and sports esque, so the music was naturally more punchy. The SNES felt…epic. There were huge adventures that you could save on the cartridge. The Mega Drive was a totally different experience…and unfortunately this approach in their game development really hurt the Saturn, especially when up against Metal Gear Solid, FF7, Castlevania SOTN - gaming evolved and sadly they were too late when the Dreamcast had this massive array of original IP’s and genres. But SEGA have always been the arcade developer. Their type of games were much snappier and enjoyed in quicker bursts whereas Nintendo had much bigger games. It was brilliant to have both systems. Here are a few games I would also recommend regarding their soundtrack on Mega Drive (Genesis ha!): Talmit’s Adventure (or Marvel Land), Streets of Rage 3 (played out of the speakers is insanity), Beyond Oasis, Puggsy, Soleil (or Crusader of Centy), Castlevania: Bloodlines, Quackshot, Ecco: Tides of Time and…James Pond II! I’m sure there’s more but my least favourite out of the games I had funny enough was Talespin, Sonic Spinball was REALLY bad and Marble Madness was just utterly atrocious. Great video as usual dude! Always look forward to a new video from you! 👍✌️ EDIT: EA I think purely used GEMS thinking about it, was just listening to Rolo the Elephant then (remember that?!) and Road Rash and there’s such an ear piercing twang to them!

Gaiares, Strider, Altered Beast, Super Monica GP, and Castle of illusion are among my top Genesis music.

Not if developers know how to work the system toward its strengths. Some of the most famous game music actually come from the megadrive. Streets of rage and sonic etc.

The Megadrive soundchip was amazing. One soundtrack seldom heard (due to the game not officially being released), is the Tim Follin music to 'Time Trax'. It's absolutely jaw dropping, and really shows what the Megadrive could do soundwise. It's on KZfaq for anyone interested!

Sonic, Golden Axe and SOR series, Gunstar Heroes and Thunder Force, just to name a few, have amazing sound effects and music. I have a Playlist that I listen to from time to time while I'm working to ensure I'll always remember them.

This video needed more Techno Soft. The music from Devil's Crush and Hezog Zwei will melt your speakers.

Monster World IV is an example of a Genesis game that could do similar instrumentation of the SNES. On the GEMS side, the X Men 2 OST was a beast. I liked SNES sound and all, but sometimes it sounded too filtered.

In the right hands with good sound drivers, definitely not. Beyond commercial games, just listening to what some youtube channels do (Savaged Regime, John Tay, ChiptunedRaijin, etc.) demonstrates what it was capable of.

Here to see it before it's gone again. 😂

I am pretty sure the Genesis gave me my music influence...Jamming to this synth wave video gem of a music journey. This guy...🤘 Great sound and video quality. A GEM, I tell ya!

Thank you for including Shining Force 2 although I do like Shining Force One a little bit better I do love the music for two xD

There’s something about the sounds of the genesis, something so nostalgic especially with the early titles. I had the genesis the year it dropped, its hard to explain how amazing it was to have. The first 2 years of the genesis was a special time in gaming imo.

I LOVE that tone! I think that that kind of sound, that FM tone, was its peak point. In fact, today we even have hardware synths which are based on Genesis/Mega Drive's internal soundchip! (one of them has been recently reviewed by Mark of CGR)

Man, that Gauntlet IV music is amazing. I'm puzzled i've never heard it mentioned before.

The Genesis had the headphone jack and I used it with my personal headphones to listen to the great soundtracks of games like revenge of Shinobi and truxton. I even had those cheap Sega branded tiny speaker system 🤣. "Power Up!"

6:35 "...it usually sounded quite nice" *cut to an extremely grating and tinny western soundtrack* I tend to like the Genesis sound chip but this was a hilarious transition.

As always a stellar video and well produced. I am sad I am at the end 1991 atm and Warsong was not showcased, nor the sequel. Oh well it was a good spread.

The sound makes the genesis really distinct but in a lot of cases it makes its games soundtracks an extremely mixed bag

I'm definitely in the FM synth crowd.

Thunder force 3 & 4 alongside anything Yuzo Koshiro have some of the best ost in video gane history. The gem sound driver really gave it a bad name to this day 😢

I loved the difference in sounds between the SEGA and SNES. I was the audio Switzerland in the Console War.

It's curious how Street Fighter II: Special Championship Edition sounded better than Super Street Fighter II. They took the Cammy track from the arcade game and turned it into... that.

Best Sega Channel 👍👍👍

BATMAN 91 by Sunsoft embodied the Elfman and Prince dynamic perfectly

For me the Mega-Drive has the best game sound tracks of the 16-bit days, hard hitting with energy and passion, Love The Mega-Drive sound, great video mate 👍👍

Thanks for solving that mystery for me! I had a SNES and a Genesis and I had thought the sound was much worse on my Genesis. When I learned it had a good synth chip in it I was confused. Turns out I just didn't have any of the right games. Some of those Genesis games sound awesome.

Alien 3 on the Genesis / Megadrive has the best sound track of ANY game. Masterpiece.

Hitoshi Sakimoto was still composing with Terpsichorean in an updated form for the then-ancient YM-2151 for mid-90s Raizing arcade shooters and getting even more incredible results from it than he managed with Masaharu Iwata on the Gensis. FM and PCM have their own distinct sound styles and one isn't necessarily 'better' than the other, just more suited to what you want to accomplish. For every game lumbered with the GEMS driver there was a SNES one that couldn't replicate the distinctive clear sound of FM to save its life.

No way, the YM2612 is bangin'!

I really like you video essays on these topics! Ultimately SNES' ROM-based oscillator structure was better for imitative or realistic sounds, but lacked the dynamic range--the highs and lows--that the Genesis' FM-based sound could really nail, especially Rev-1 Genesis! SNES sound is like listening to real music coming from the next room over, whereas Genesis is more simplified FM sound but it's got immediate presence. FM is notoriously difficult for sound design; I have a room full of synths and only one is FM because it produces great pseudo-acoustic sounds (bass guitar, bells, electric piano, various crystalline sounds, etc.) but programming it is an academic exercise in adjusting ratios between sine waves and how these react over the note range and with envelopes. Programming a traditional "subtractive" synth is like forming a sculpture out of clay where you can quickly 'rough-out' a vision and make fine adjustments until it's what you want, whereas FM feels more like building a multi-hinged structure, going back-and-forth between each piece individually and hoping they all still mesh together after each tweak...and working with nothing more than a tiny pocket knife! Yamaha--the ones who really got behind and licensed FM tech--also design terrible user interfaces...I can't help but feel FM would've turned out better if someone else with better ideas about user interface would've taken the reins instead. The synth manufacturer Korg, for example, recently released an FM synth called the OpSix that takes the drudgery out of FM programming by letting you select multiple operators while you tweak their parameters, honestly it's a game-changer! Still, FM was an affordable, groundbreaking tech in the mid-80's that scaled well to various applications and easily did stuff that would've taken too many resources using prior synthesis. The old classic analog synths that people spend $$$$($ ?!) on these days were being sold for a few hundred dollars second-hand when the Yamaha DX7 blew up the scene in the mid-80's due to being a flexible, good-sounding, relatively-affordable replacement for electric pianos and even acoustic stuff like accordions and harmonicas in the studio. It was hot-**** and featured all over 80's and even 90's chart-toppers. The tech has merit, even if the Genesis used a simplified 4-operator structure instead of the DX7's 6-operators. In particular, Sega did a fantastic job designing the Sonic games to the strengths of the Genesis' processing power and FM sounds...before considering the music, just think of the sound FX themselves--grabbing rings, tallying up your total score, hitting bumpers, revving up--none of these sounds would've been nearly as bright or resonant--effective--on the SNES. And then there's tunes like Chemical Zone! I know that's a lot to read, but this is a fascinating topic for some of us!

The answer varies. Some games that are split between the two sound better on Genesis, IE the arrangements in Hyperstone Heist are WAY tighter than Turtles in Time which honestly comes off a bit warbly. In a beat em up, that tightness helps. On another hand, BattleToads/Double Dragon isn’t bad on Genesis, but the sound on SNES has a LOT more… body, I guess? Dem guitar samples doe

Valis III, Target Earth, Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition, Rolling Thunder III, these were some great examples of the Genesis sound chip excelling.

Problem with SNES sample based audio was the cartridge size limitation which would result in some very ugly low quality muffled samples. They would also use one sample and pitch shift to make many notes from the same sample resulting in out of tune music. You would also often encounter a lot of clipping in samples too. Amiga did sample based music much better. There are definitely a lot of games shown here that could benefit from remastered soundtracks in FM.

I was a SNES kid back then but there was no denying the Genesis could have great OST’s in its games. Streets of Rage really opened my mind on that Sega sound. As I got older I have a much larger appreciation for the console and its games. Glad I learned about the model revisions that impacted the audio quality and sound drivers to understand why some games sounded amazing while other Ms sound like crap.

I think Comix Zone was one of my favorite sounding Genesis games. While the voice samples did have some scratch, they were clearer than Street Fighter's and the very famous take on the classic "Sega" opening.

first of all, great work on making the video. i read about the problems you had in completing this video due to the music triggering copyright claims. your effort is worth the wait. as a fan of EDM and synth pop, i LOVE the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis)! i had the Version 1 SMD with the audio jack and volume slider, and i would hook up my SMD to my boombox so i can hear the music and sound from the games even louder. my favourite games were Bare Knuckle (Streets Of Rage) I, II and III, and i even made a mix tape by recording the songs from the games using my boombox. great video again. keep up the excellent work SLX!

Sometimes you don’t even hear the snes music because it is so quiet and dull

It’s not as if the SNES had a flawlessly superior sound chip. The sound samples, sfx and music data couldn’t exceed 64 KB, which drastically limited sample quality and made much of the music sound muffled. Yes, the SNES made it less technically intensive to make OK sounding games but it had a definitive quality ceiling, whereas the MD/Gen required more effort, but had the potential to sound much better in the right hands. Several titles sounded much stronger on the MD/Gen, for example Earthworm Jim. Unfortunately, I don’t think music and audio had as much subjective importance at the time, so many studios didn’t put nearly the required effort into music and sfx.

Yeah I also think that sound generally hurt the Sega Genesis, but the sound of the NES, SMS, Game Boy were also synth and still had excellent music so the Genesis too, among the games that sound so good like Sonic and Streets of Rage there are among others the Lion King, Midnight Resistance, Jewel Master, Dragon Slayer The Legend of Heroes 1 & 2, Master of Monsters, Sparkster, Dangerous Seed, Socket, Exile...

Whirlwind from Shinobi III will always give me goosebumps. One of my most favorite stages and music ever.

I love genesis sound. It's nostalgic.

Arrangement and good patch/synth programming mean so much for the Genesis since you could get away with samples/reverb as a "crutch" on the SNES. FM is not the most intuitive so it takes a special breed to really master it IMO. Something I also noticed that is on some soundtracks I love is those Genesis games used both their default FM chip and the one meant for Master System compatible games in combination. It usually fleshed out the sound just that bit more and made things really pop. To get really nerdy about it I think it's because the SN chip could help with delay channels and also provide more harmonic content since they were square waves, in essence 8 melodic channels at your disposal and 2 for percussion Great picks on this video. Devilish is also a soundtrack for Gen that blew me away

It was always a give or take but I usually leaned towards the Genesis. I liked the synthesizer music the Genesis produced a bit more vs the compressed orchestral sound from the SNES. Games like fatal fury and Captain America and the avengers proved they could shred the SNES when needed. Then you get games like spiderman x-men and SNES tears the genesis up. It really just depends on how well it’s handled and who is composing.

I think it's really important to always keep in mind that the Genesis is 1980s tech and not 1990s but even still - the sound hardware was definitely a place where they should've put in some more resources. It really isn't all that much better than the Mark III FM module. At the very least, even if you like FM Synth for the musical instruments, it would've been very helpful if there were some sample channels for sound effects. (That's what usually gets me in GEMS games - usually the music is not great, but the sound effects were grating.)

It really made the Genesis sound dated in comparison to the SNES, but in the Genesis's defense, it was designed to be an "arcade at home" system, so going with that Yamaha chip made sense.

I was a SNES fan through and through back then but still enjoyed Megadrive sound. Even now I'm working my way through the library and am often impressed. Thurder Force blew me away.

I always thought sound and music was something the Genesis had going for it over the SNES. It was so bright, visceral and gritty. You can do anything with FM with enough skill and imagination. SNES was nice too but was all low bitrate sample based, and sounded like it had a low pass filter on everything. Every system had games that sounded terrible, it’s not the hardwares fault.

Both consoles had the appropriate sound hardware for their respective games. The atmospheric and orchestral tracks for those epic Snes Adventure and RPG games. Genesis had awesome synth for its immense arcade library.

Yeah. The SNES audio is technically more advanced/superior and what Yuzo Koshiro, Nobuo Uematsu, Nintendo and Konami audio guys did with it was amazing. However, I find that most SNES soundtracks fall into the "50 shades of muffled horn" pattern that I really didn't enjoy. Sometimes, it’s so muffled and low bit rate that it sounds just as synthetic as any synth stuff. Most of my favorite Genesis soundtracks are typically louder, more bassy and raw sounding. I remember my first time seeing and hearing a Genesis game. It was Altered Beast. It was an audio shock in addition to the visual one. The epic sounding stereo synth music, combined with great (for that time) effects and voice samples was better than anything I’ve heard at home before, representing a huge jump over anything on the NES and even an FM synth equipped MSX2 (which I grew up with). Genesis audio hardware was a great choice for a 1988 console. As you’ve said, it was the home version of what was used by most arcade boards and something that most Japanese developers were very used to working with. But yeah… by the time stuff like DKC, Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger rolled out, the advantages of SNES’ newer architecture were impossible to dismiss even for (by then) a die-hard Genesis fan like me. The decreasing flow of Japanese-developed Genesis games, combined with all of Sega of America’s crappy, dark and dithered “Western audience” games with poorly done GEMS audio, certainly didn’t help matters. Still, these days, I go back and listen to way more Genesis soundtracks than I do SNES'.

Great video. I had both the SNES and Genesis when I was growing up and I loved the music on both systems for the reasons you stated: the orchestral scores on the SNES vs the "crunchy", base-ey, techno/electronic sounds on the Genesis. A master composer could make both types of hardware sing. Yuzo Koshiro is the best example where he created masterful dance tunes for the Streets of Rage games and sweeping orchestral melodies for the Actraiser As for GEMS, I only became aware of it a few years ago. I also wondered for the longest time why the sound seemed to have gotten worse after 1992 or so. Tazmania was the first game that I remember as having "crappy" sound so I looked up the sound design credits for the game, saw some names then looked up those names and came across GEMS and that has *finally* explained everything, It was possible to do good music and sound with GEMS. Tommy Tallarico used it in the games he worked on (Earthworm Jim, Cool Spot, etc) and those games have some pretty good sound and music. What happened with the other games that used GEMS was that its ease of use caused sound designers to become lazy and they simply used the default sound files instead of putting in any work and creating any new ones.

Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun has an unreal soundtrack on the Genesis!

I think I'm right in saying that GEMS is basically an editor, isn't it? And it allows music to be dynamically altered depending on what's happening in the game. It's still the FM chip that's being used to generate the sounds, so GEMS isn't really to blame for poor audio. The problem is that FM synthesis is pretty difficult to get your chops round, and some devs didn't manage it.

The Genesis' Yamaha FM chip sounded incredible when used by the right people. I honestly think it could sound better than the SNES' heavily-compressed samples at times; for example, I prefer the OSTs of Castlevania Bloodlines and Contra Hard Corps to Super Castlevania 4 and Contra 3, respectively. Of course the Genesis could (and often did) sound tinny and grating, but I think that was a result of developers who weren't adept at FM synthesis. Not everyone could bust out killer soundtracks like Yuzo Koshiro

Awesome video dude! I've been thinking about this since the console wars back in the day! I agree with everything you said. I am a Genesis die hard by the way. The Genesis was capable of having some amazing sound, but compared to Super Nintendo, a lot of times it couldn't compete. But in the right hands, the soundtracks on it could be some of the best ever. The Genesis sound had a grittiness to it that the Super Nintendo just couldn't replicate with its softer sound. Stand outs to me are Streets of Rage 2 and Rocket Knight Adventures. There are more, but those come to mind first. Then there are true ear bleeders like the first Xmen game. I liked that game, but what in the hell were they thinking? Thanks again for the video man. Truly great stuff!

No 16bit console could match the Mega Drive for percussion and bass. Perfection.

Eternal champion and comix zone sounded great.

Great episode but there is one thing you didn't mention. Yes the Mega Drive used FM Synthesis through the Yamaha 2612 (Mega Drive) and the Yamaha 3438 (I think it was in the Mega Drive 2), but a lot of games also relied on Programmable Sound Generators (PSG) the same as the Master System for audio playback, making it so it uses 6 synth channels or 5 with PCM playback and the 4 channels from the PSG. Some games you mentioned in this used PSG such as Streets of Rage and the Sonic titles. Look, i know your main focus was on the synthesiser but PSG was also used on top of that to produce music for a lot of games.

This is an awesome video and I really love the way you analyze this topic and cite examples with each idea you cover. In my own opinion regarding music on the platform, I feel it's really down to the compositions on an individual level. There are plenty of games that sound better on either platform that doesn't really matter if it was originally composed as FM synth or not, because it's just down to the overall effort to make it jam right. I'm sure some devs were more apt than others in different areas, but I think the bad soundtracks are just because the effort wasn't as strong as it should have been regardless of platform (but especially here). I think overall, Sega kinda de-emphasized the importance of sound (as evidenced by how they integrated the sound into the CPU and the constant changing of op-amps). Luckily for us, there were devs who took the sound seriously for their individual games and we got some great music, but Sega wanted to get the games out there overall IMHO. Their own flagship titles were a little different, but they also wanted to get the 3rd party devs to crank stuff out so they could flaunt how many licensed games there were (evidenced by the ads where Genesis touted either 500+ or 700+ titles and how they let EA kinda bully them just to make sure they were also cranking out software). I would say that sound wasn't really a huge factor in many consumers opinions at the time tho. The SegaCD would try and capitalize on Q-Sound on a few titles, but the sound in games in general was largely disregarded as anything affecting the gameplay experience with many people. A lot of people felt videogame music wasn't really a big deal so long as it existed in some form, and it wasn't uncommon to put on your own music and play a game muted (or with just sound effects if the options allowed) back then. I personally love VGM and even have many soundtracks on vinyl in my personal collection, but in my circles at the time of it's life the sound was probably really most people's least influential factor. Again - excellent video and thank you for explaining many differences in the production of these games, which definitely helps understand why some decisions were made and how people received them. As always, keep up the great work!!

To me the Megadrive / Genesis sounds perfectly fine in the hands of a skilled composer. FM synthesis was the absolute king in the 80’s as it was also dominant in the charts. It’s a pretty versitile technology in the world of synthesis. Massive pop hits from Madonna, Kenny Loggins, etc all used the DX7 which is the bigger brother of the YM2612 chip. The Megadrive and the work from Yuzo Koshiro and Matt Furniss and many 80’s pop hits got me interrested in FM synths. To me the SNES sounds a bit flat and compressed, whereas the Megadrive/Genesis sounds more dynamic to me with more pronaunched bass sounds. The YM2612 can pretty much do a good version of Kenny Loggings Danger Zone bass sound out of the box. On the SNES the music of the Donkey Kong Country games stands out to me a strength of that platform, mainly because of it’s bespoke sound design compared to a lot of other games on that platform. A lot of SNES games use the same samples, which can have a similar experience to hearing a GEMS based track. Both platforms have good and bad examples, it’s how well the hardware is used by a developer. Back in the day systems had their own character based on their hardware specs, personally I favor the Megadrive/Genesis sound over the SNES.

As a Sega head I used to get so jealous of the SNES port soundtrack

I had/have both systems. Some of the music on the Genesis, at times, was rough. However, it had some great soundtracks and it's still my go to system.

Two words: Mega Turrican. One of the greatest chip tunes of all time. Also, many of the SNES tracks (while musically complex) sounded a bit like an ice cream truck, while the Genesis had that otherworldly edge. And don’t forget, Yamaha’s DX7, the 90s keyboard that was used in everything from pop to soundtracks, was also running on FM synthesis. The SNES was vanilla MIDI. Like you said, it was all in the hands of the programmer.

Enjoyed the video, as always. Great work. 👍 I'm surprised that you didn't include Cool Spot for both 16-bit consoles.

I loved the music on both systems. But I really feel the sound effects were the bigger difference than the music. So many fart sounds on Genesis. Great video as always!!

Great video! Thanks for taking the time!

I appreciated both consoles , i am 50 years old and still listening megadrive musics of my heart