Absolutely awful arcade game music

[Durandal]

The Acrobat Mission soundtrack for the arcades

Honey, I accidentally mistook the floppy drive for the guitar sample again
What IS that background noise?
Is this Speed Paintball?
What the fuck is going on anymore?

Like some of these songs are alright in terms of composition, but the instrumentation is absolute dogshit. Compare them to the superior SNES versions:
Stage 1
ST1 Boss
ST3
Compared to the crappy original, it's amazing how much this rocks

[Eaglet]

Are you sure? Those vibrattos almost sound like quarter-steps or something.

That's a very valid point I think

Vibrato sounds off to me as well. Definitely goes at least a quarter tone both above and below the base tone, which screws up the harmony some during said vibrato

The vibrato is actually only a half-step up and back (harmonically correct) but it's very fast which can screw up the perception in combination with the sound i guess.
And only on 1 note (first of second bar).

Chromatic slides i would never call dissonant, hehe.

[Immryr]

i think sally is pretty great too. certainly nothing dissonant about it, not that there's anything wrong with dissonance.

[FinalBaton]

not that there's anything wrong with dissonance.

Oh, no doubt. I listen to, and enjoy, plenty of rock and metal (and a bit of electronic/industrial) bands who cleverly use dissonances as a core part of their sound.

Yet, I find the lead instrument in Sally very non-enjoyable/a bit annoying. But as I've said on previous page, I still find the song pretty slick and I like it.

[null1024]

Rezon

That has to be one of the top three worst of all time. The first stage BGM loops maybe every 7 seconds, & Stage 5's is rock bottom. Perikles said it sounds like a broken medical monitor. Yeah, that's right.

Stage 2's theme is about four seconds long.
what the fuck

Maybe it was time constraints?
The sound quality is about on par with a music birthday card though, so I'm suspecting that they wanted streamed background music and didn't have the ROM space.
From a quick google search, the hardware seems to be able to address a max of 1MB ROM for PCM data. http://vgmrips.net/wiki/Seta_X1-010
but with a full 1MB ROM, at 8bits, 11025hz, you get a whole minute and 35 seconds of audio, which is drastically longer than the whole soundtrack

[trap15]

I don't understand the issue with Sally. It's one of the best songs on the soundtrack just behind Vertigo

[M.Knight]

I just remembered that even NAOTO had a bad track in his repertoire.
G-Stream G2020 / DeltaZeal Stage 1 Boss
I know that the original board had some tight limitations and that as a result all the tracks in the game have a rather short duration before they loop, but most of them are pretty catchy and well made anyway.
Well, except for this one.

Compared to the crappy original, it's amazing how much this rocks

Damn, it really is night and day! Funny how bad instruments can easily ruin a composition.

Maybe it was time constraints?

I think it's either that or technical limitations, but the latter hypothesis seems to be invalid according to your search results.

[FinalBaton]

Obscura, you better buy me a nice bottle of beer if we ever meet I'm the only one who backed you on this, haha

[gameoverDude]

Rezon

That has to be one of the top three worst of all time. The first stage BGM loops maybe every 7 seconds, & Stage 5's is rock bottom. Perikles said it sounds like a broken medical monitor. Yeah, that's right.

Stage 2's theme is about four seconds long.
what the fuck

Maybe it was time constraints?
The sound quality is about on par with a music birthday card though, so I'm suspecting that they wanted streamed background music and didn't have the ROM space.
From a quick google search, the hardware seems to be able to address a max of 1MB ROM for PCM data. http://vgmrips.net/wiki/Seta_X1-010
but with a full 1MB ROM, at 8bits, 11025hz, you get a whole minute and 35 seconds of audio, which is drastically longer than the whole soundtrack

1 MB ROM, that's it? Maybe that's why Twin Eagle's BGM is such a short loop (22-23 seconds in a stage, 35 for the jet fighter battle).
Daioh uses X1-010 as well, while it still has some good BGM of a decent length. Sho, the BGM composer, seems to have gone with wavetable rather than PCM (a good choice, if the PCM samples burn up 1 MB like that).

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Acrobat Mission SNES

I never knew it had a SNES port. Is it better regarded than the arcade version is? It looks pretty well made. The soundtrack is definitely WAY better.

I don't understand the issue with Sally. It's one of the best songs on the soundtrack just behind Vertigo

Yeah, Vertigo, Vertex, Flotage and Sally are all great. I'm not crazy about the "grittier" sound in Stage 2 or the boss/TLB themes though, but DFK BL's soundtrack has some good tunes.

[copy-paster]

1942. I like the game itself, but that *beeping* music!

The arranged version of it was pretty rad.

So ludicrous I had to put it on my iPod.

x10000

[Obscura]

Yeah, Vertigo, Vertex, Flotage and Sally are all great. I'm not crazy about the "grittier" sound in Stage 2 or the boss/TLB themes though, but DFK BL's soundtrack has some good tunes.

Only song on that OST I like is Presentiment (which is *really* great), but Sally is just the absolute nadir.

[Despatche]

Arbalester and Meta Fox, obviously. I know people like to meme about Meta Fox, but seriously.

Saint Dragon is pretty messed up. There are choice songs like the title screen loop and stage 2 theme... and that's about it, the rest are annoying 10/20 second loops.

Blandia is a game to be slotted in with Rezon. There's a story behind these games, I'm sure, but I can't imagine what it is. Right after these, that developer did War of Aero and Mad Shark, which have some decent tunes.

Violent Storm should not be anywhere near this thread.

There's a big difference between "this is terrible" and "I don't like it". Please keep your special snowflake opinion about Halley's Comet or Daifukkatsu Black Label (for fuck's sake) or Nostradamus or whatever out of here, thanks. All it does is lead to pointless bickering over personal favorites instead of talking about busted old arcade games.

The Acrobat Mission soundtrack for the arcades

Stage 1 and the ending song were ruined in the SNES versions; actually, the ruined ending song ended up unused anyway. The composition of a few songs was improved; the arcade instruments aren't really worth disrespecting.

[qmish]

i like PCE music of Saint Dragon's themes more for some reason despite less instruments.

They sound darker imho

[BrianC]

Blandia looks like a sequel to Gladiator, which also has terrible music. One of the "tunes" in Blandia is a remix of a "tune" in Gladiator. Both versions are terrible.

[Despatche]

i like PCE music of Saint Dragon's themes more for some reason despite less instruments.

They sound darker imho

I like what the programmer did with the stage 1 theme. It's got this lounge-y feeling to it, it's nice.

[LEGENOARYNINLIA]

Golden Axe The Duel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSKsx6v4Wuw