Rehashes and Lost Magic

I suppose this is really brought on by some posts my cohort made about his Top 5 and Bottom 5 Sonic zones. It really got me to thinking about the Sonic series in general. I’m a long-time player, and have been playing since I was old enough to grasp a Mega Drive -Genesis for you US folks- controller in my mitts. My favourite zone has always been Chemical Plant, for its great visuals and brilliant design. Probably because I’ve never actually been able to get past it without Lady Luck on my side, too.

(It’s worth noting that the links below are very not-safe-for-work, due to the language involved, but is probably my favourite LetsPlay of the classic Sonic series.)

Regardless of that rather shameful fact in my life, the first three Sonic games had some of the best -and sometimes worst- design going for them. And Sega is all too aware of this fact. The trends were really set around the time of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which took the favourites from the first of the game and just improved on them, or gave them new twists. Spring Yard Zone became the Casino Night Zone, Green Hill turned into Emerald Hill, Scrap Brain to Chemical Plant, Labyrinth into Aquatic Ruin, Marble to Hill Top. Okay, so some of these weren’t exactly upgrades or exact copies, but they were certainly spiritual successors. I’ve never been a fan of the Spring Yard/Casino series (ASDFG BUMPERS), but I nearly always enjoyed their music, and the successors to Scrap Brain/Chemical Plant have usually been pretty damn good.

All truth told, one of my favourite Hill zones has always been Mushroom Hill. It’s slow, windy, has pointless gimmicks at times, but I enjoyed it the most visually, alongside its elder sibling Angel Island Zone. And that was the third incarnation of the Hill series. Close enough to be a clear successor, different enough for its own charm. It’s safe to say that I’ve honestly enjoyed the musics of all three (four including S&K) of the Mega Drive-era games, even the ones that are a little…slower. So why am I calling this Rehashes and Lost Magic, if I’ve only talked about how much I enjoyed the “rehashes”?

And this is where my complaint begins. Every successor to the zones in the Mega Drive era was a new twist, with new music, and certainly worthy of the title “remake” over “rehash”, the latter being significantly more snide and bitter. I’m all for remakes and refreshers of zones that I love, but….not like this.

I’m being vague, allow me to start with the finger-pointing. Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure, cut it the hell out. I love some of these zones, and you are just making them again, only missing all the charm. Let’s start with offender #1, Sonic Rush. Leaf Storm is…it’s an okay level, but it just screams of Angel Island Zone, with none of the charm. Also, there’s almost no “ground” of which to speak. It’s mostly rails and all suspended in the air. Like Mushroom Hill, actually. This has been a pretty annoying trend since the Advance games, which I really should refer to more at this point, but they really did get a lot of their remakes right.

And Water Palace? Water Palace is everything I could possibly hate in a level. Endless legions of water, and all the slowness and annoyances from Labyrinth, Hydrocity and Aquatic Ruin. At the same time, the music is verging on obnoxious hip-hop/rap/DnB in the background. And it sounds awful when you’re crawling through the water at 0mph. My annoyances continue with Mirage Road and Night Carnival. Mirage Road being a very close copy of the beloved Sandopolis Zone, with a few (read: a lot of) annoying gimmicks that totally ruin it for me. And Night Carnival should be obvious enough in its name, if you know the Sonic series well enough. And being a fan of the aesthetic look and gimmicky nature of the Night Zone series, this doesn’t actually fail! It’s got all the flashy bells and whistles and garish colours that make me want to take a pickaxe to my eyes. And I mean that in the most loving way possible.

“But Lu,” you say, flailing the title of this post at me in a fashion not unlike a child with a rattle “you don’t like rehashes!” And I don’t. Night Carnival is just one that tried very hard, and failed. It suffers from some of the most godawful “bottomless pit syndrome” I’ve seen in a Sonic game since – yes, the Advance series. But bottomless pits aside, I honestly enjoyed the aesthetic design and music in the Advance games. It wasn’t the hardest or most gimmicky series in the world -perhaps with an exception to Music Plant- but it was fun. The Rush series is fun sometimes. I haven’t actually completed the first game due to bottomless pits on Altitude Limit. Great name. Incidentally, Altitude Limit seems to be a shady rehash of Wing Fortress. Only not fun. It’s….a bit of a mess, actually. And to be fair, Huge Crisis is a closer comparison.

The trend continues in Rush Adventure, with levels that aren’t just spiritual successors, but are referencing original levels while self-referencing the first game. What an awful cycle. Plant Kingdom is Leaf Storm is Leaf Forest is Mushroom Hill is Green Hill is-

STOP. Breaktime. YouTube video qualities are dipping.

…Maybe I’m sounding too picky. Maybe I sound too bitter, but the truth is that these levels, while trying to imitate the fun of their predecessors, fail entirely. The music frequently makes me want to drive a pickaxe -once I yanked it out of my eyes- into my ears, though Rush Adventure did thankfully make a few improvements. Just a few. The music is mostly improved, and fits the levels, though the levels themselves are uninspired and feel bland. Machine Labyrinth, for example, is a re-skinned Chemical Plant. Only with irritating gimmicks and bullshit enemies. The whole level has been re-skinned to fit a steampunk theme, which annoys me on principle, since steampunk is a desperately overdone fad these days. I guess it’s kind of like Metropolis Zone in that regard. The other major issue I have with both Rush games is that it feels like I’m rarely in control, with so many bizarre gimmicks that remind me of Labyrinth Zone. Only without the infinite loops.

Still, I feel like some magic has been lost, even when I should clearly and plainly adore these levels. Even the music takes a downturn, though I feel every time vocals are included in a Sonic OST, this is inevitable. Though here I am, listening to the Sonic 4 OST, and pulling a :/ face, just because it inspires nothing, and is generally nothing to remember. Also, I think Sega are obsessed with the word “labyrinth”. There are other words in the dictionary. Use them.

I’m getting off track again. The point I’m trying to make is that while Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles had their levels that could be considered “rehashes” or Frankenstein monsters of previous levels, they were at least fun. Most of them, that is. We all know how much “fun” water is. Even the Advance series aesthetic and sound design was pretty damn close to the Sonic spirit. It still…missed the mark on occasions, especially with its chronic “bottomless pit syndrome”. And all of Advance 3′s gameplay. With the Rush series in particular, the design just seems to be rehashed asset changes, rather than properly remade, and at points I feel like I could let go of the d-pad entirely with how much of it is on rails or little gimmicky travellator-things…. I think I just invented a word.

Though, with Sonic 4 Episode 1‘s release date looming, and its uninspiring OST in iTunes, which sounds somewhat good in 16bit, I have to say, quite sadly, that those days are long gone. They were gone when I finished playing S3&K.

I can dream, though.

May 13th, 2010 | Gorse | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Wakkawakkawakka: A Potted History of Sound in Games

Perhaps extending from my previous post is the evolution of sound in games. Like graphics, they too have come a long way in a short space of time, but in this day and age have petered out in their progress, while games graphics continue to evolve as we speak.

While it’s odd to speak about an era of games that I had little to nothing to do with, it’s essential that I do at least talk a bit about it.

And you'll enjoy it like the bitch you are.

The sound and music -or what at least passed for music- in games not some 20 years ago, before I was even born, was drastically different from the multi-channel 320bit sound we experience today. In fact, beyond the grumbling, earthy sounds of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum that barely passed for clear blips and beeps. This, naturally, was if you managed to keep your eardrums intact after the 56k modem-like hissing and screeching the loading of these games created. After that? Enjoy having Hall of the Mountain King going through your mind like somebody hiccuping it right into your cochlea.

I don't have anything witty to say here.

Some home computers such as the BBC Micro could offer a few different chirps and whirrs for your extra pennies -or hundreds of pounds, as the case could well be-, but ultimately losing the true terror that hearing “Beware, I live.” induces.

It wasn’t until the Commodore 64, one of the most iconic home computers of the age arrived, that dedicated sound chips arrived too. Now sound came in a polyphonic, tuneful form over the muddy would-be blips of the ZX Spectrum. Yet still, as evidenced in the insane and mind-boggling Thing on a Spring, music would cut out with sound effects, and dominated the scene. Later still, the Amiga series of home computers arrived. Focusing for a brief moment upon the Amiga 500, a cut to Zak McKracken and its exemplary music, for its time. However, the Amiga 500 came around in 1987, a good few years later than the better-known Commodore 64.

1982 to 1987 is a long jump, so what’s been going on in the arcades this whole time? And what about the more child-friendly consoles that started appearing in the mid 80s?

A face only a mother could love.

Over in Camp Arcade, we have the likes of Gauntlet and its lisping narrator, and the aforementioned Sinistar. Both games exhibited superior graphics and sound to their home computer likenesses, but this was largely due to an arcade unit being completely dedicated to its one task, and on the subject of largely? It was a lot larger.

Camp Console proves to be more interesting and perhaps easier for me to talk about. I was never into arcades much, and due to being so young, missed out on almost all of them. However, through nothing but endless browsing of Wikipedia, I know a fair deal about the consoles of old. Starting with the Atari 2600.

do-do-do-dododo-dun!

By this point, the poor old 2600 is starting to show its age, but for a thing so old, it still did audio a little bit better better than its home computer counterparts. Eventually though, it was conquered by the now-ubiquitous NES, which boasted superior music, clearer pictures, and a games library that would eventually make any other console or computer shake in its little circuitboard pants. If not for the sheer size and selection of games, then for its iconic characters and tunes that chirp in the minds of children and adults everywhere, even today.

Moving on a few years, to the early 90s, we can finally get into my own era, where things become a little clearer, and a little less difficult to write.

Sonic the Hedgehog. I am a self-confessed oldbie fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, and I think for me, that music was everything goodabout my childhood, and potentially more iconic to me than Super Mario Bros. The era of 16-bit music was when I really grew up, and the perfectly blended synthetic instruments and rings make me feel like I’m five years old again every time I hear them.

Your 6-year-old self wishes you were this awesome.

"I feel like I could... like I could... 'Take on the world!'"

The early 90s was really where the beginning ended. Soon after, true voice acting became possible in computer games. The ‘home computers’ such as the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum were finally coming to an end, and the now ubiquitous, often brandless Personal Computer, or PC came to play. Still, the sound was imperfect, grainy, and bitty. There was progress, nonetheless.

In fact, that’s what most of the 90s was about – progress. Lots of small, iterative moments of progress that are, in the majority, too small to document here. If I did document every little advance and change, this would change from (at this line) an ~800 word article into a 3000 word essay.

When was that massive change, though? When did we go from 16-bit chiptunes to full streaming audio? I don’t know. You tell me. Though Tempest 2K is arguably the weakest of the three examples, all these games were released within a few years of each other. One of these three consoles went on to be the most successful and popular. That was the PS1, Sony’s brainchild and the reason why they’re associated with inexplicably expensive consoles to today’s youth, instead of inexplicably overpriced TVs.

I dare you to find better voice acting.

The PS1 began to carry titles that were ordinarily on other consoles. Popularised by clever marketing and a games library that was almost on the level of our beloved Nintendo, the sound quality only aided its conquest, and perhaps heralded the beginning of the end of the advancement of sound in games. In a short ten years, sound had gone from grumbling chirps and droning tones to fully voiced games, with multi-channel music. Games had licensed music, such as WipEout playing The Prodigy’s Firestarter.

THROUGH THE FIRE AND THE FLAMES WE CARRY OOOOONNN

That was in 1999. So, eleven years later, have there been any advancements in sound that even compare? I would dare you to name one game that has shown any great, revolutionary and significant advancements in sound quality within the last 10 years. We have greater capacity for sound, thus greater quality sound, and a larger quantity of it than before, yes. There are entire games revolving around sound itself. But the technology itself? Compare it to the PS1, and there’s no major revolutions since then.

Possibly the best soundscape you'll ever hear.

So where does this leave us? There are no forseeable advancements in audio technology within the next decade, what can we do?

Simple. By having the same quality sound we get from our CD, mp3, and archaic minidiscs, we have opened up a door to a world of experimentation so large, so infinite, that from here, we go wherever we want in audio. We have all the instruments of the world, all the guitars of metal, and we still have the nostalgic blips of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. We can do what we want, and create soundscapes more diverse than ever capable before. We can create epic, orchestral music. We can evoke so many emotions and immerse our players in worlds by the flavour of the sound alone. Even handheld consoles boast impressive sound these days.

I’m not saying that chiptunes are obsolete. Even they have their place in indie games, retro-style games, and in quirky, fun music. As well as all this, they continue to live on. But how we create our music and sound has never been more diverse, nor has it ever been so essential than it is today.

But they’ll never beat the thrill of getting through Jetpac.

January 20th, 2010 | Gorse | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments »