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Nearly irate over this Kotaku article about Super Mario World music arrangements

Nali

Nali

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,654
Dropping the source samples in directly ignores that there would've been a lot of tweaking done to get the lower quality versions sounding good within the SNES's limited memory budget, with the songs adjusted and mixed specifically for those versions. These aren't "Restored" versions because we don't know what Kondo would've done differently if he'd had access to high fidelity audio.
 
OP
OP
b3llydrum

b3llydrum

Member
Feb 21, 2018
4,147
Cubas said:
"You'd rather watch some shirtless guy on the loop sing some shitty song using the only chords he knows (G major, which to him stands for God) instead of an incredible reorchestration performed by world class musicians of top-quality popular music. Top 40 bad. Original music good."

I don't think he was saying "Top 40, Bad Original music good". A busker performing an original song in his shitty guitar is more interesting to him than the orchestra playing a Top 40 song because the busker's piece was made with his shitty setup in mind, while the Top 40 pop song was never intended to be played by a world-class orchestra.

It's the same thing with these Mario remasters. It's not that they don't sound super clear or perfect or anything, it's that they were never intended to sound like this. The fact that this was going to be heavily compressed to fit a SNES cartridge was always in the mind of the composers and that's the medium they perfected the songs for. It sounds a bit soulless when they are this clear in the same way an orchestra playing a Top 40 song - as technically impressive as it might be - is a bit soulless.
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Yeah. That makes sense when you put it like that. I don't think I got that at all from the article, but I think I can make that work in my mind.

It's why none of the original songs were drenched in reverb or given stereo effects. They were built with clarity in mind for consumption on the SNES hardware - when you put it on a stage and shine a ton of light on it, especially when you drape it in modern effects that weren't part of the original composition (reverb), it dates itself and is obviously out of place.
 
awake4ages

awake4ages

Neoā€¢Geo Saver
Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,067
b3llydrum said:
You know, first a ball. Second a ball.
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ConVito

ConVito

Member
Oct 16, 2018
3,093
Personally I think the article makes some good points. The reverb really does change things much more than a simple "remastered" version should, and some of the sounds themselves are just flat out different (like the strings at the beginning of the swimming theme, which sound far more numerous now).

They're the same issues I had with another relatively recent remaster of the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack, which changed some of the sounds to the point where the feel of the original was almost entirely lost. (Though Ice Cave Chant is still a banger even in the new version.)
 
OP
OP
b3llydrum

b3llydrum

Member
Feb 21, 2018
4,147
DogFace! said:
So these tracks are basically what the keyboards Kondo used sounded like, if you were in the room with him. It would all sound like these nintendo leaks. He never intended these to be actual songs you could listen to, so he downsized and reprogrammed the stuff to fit on 64kb of sound memory. I think?
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Nali said:
Dropping the source samples in directly ignores that there would've been a lot of tweaking done to get the lower quality versions sounding good within the SNES's limited memory budget, with the songs adjusted and mixed specifically for those versions. These aren't "Restored" versions because we don't know what Kondo would've done differently if he'd had access to high fidelity audio.
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I believe soā€”I agree that plopping the samples in straight off the keyboard would not be congruent with what Kondo would have done were he composing for, say, a modern Mario.

I guess that's the misguided artistic intent of the people who reconstructed the tracks, to make it as close to the original synth hardware as possible, rather than as close to the original composition as possible. Once you start guessing, you stray from the "soul" of it.
 
Dad

Dad

Member
Oct 25, 2017
525
These "restored" tracks are pretty cool, but I always find it weird when people frame them as the way the composer intended for them to sound. Like, I'd assume most people were making music with the limits of the system fully in mind. Not just creating tunes and then having them get ground up by the SNES' sound chip
 
Flon

Flon

Is Here to Kill Chaos
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,120
They're not really "restored" as much as the sequence data of the original ROM (which can be extracted) being played on a Roland D550 with assumed instruments from its library.
 
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trashbandit

trashbandit

Member
Dec 19, 2019
3,910
..So you're angry that a writer a Kotaku didn't like something? Angry to the point where you needed a thread to vent?
 
neon/drifter

neon/drifter

Shit Shoe Wasp Smasher
Member
Apr 3, 2018
4,062
lmao at the amount of people not reading the post. Also, the thesaurus smoking a cigarette line had me rolling. Good post OP.

Also, listening to the tracks for the first time and WOW, it's like PS1 quality audio and it's fantastic. Really cool stuff.
 
Niosai

Niosai

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,925
Yeah, the big issue here is that some of the samples were cut and had reverb and such removed. Remaking songs using the original samples is relatively trivial (I've done things like this before)

Remaking songs using samples modified to sound like clean versions of what Kondo used with precise reverb and cutting? A nightmare scenario that I'm sure could be done with hard work and dedication, but I wouldn't want to do it.
 
MaverickHunterAsh

MaverickHunterAsh

Good Vibes Gaming
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
1,396
Los Angeles, CA.
Yikes, yeah, that's a really poor article full of bad takes. And because I did read your full post, OP, I get that you're not actually irate...

...But if I'm being honest, as a huge fan of VGM + its history and culture, the article kind of did make me mildly irate. :P
 
Dekuman

Dekuman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
19,026
the restored sounds like what Mario World may have sounded like during the 32bit era with redbook audio or something. It's not better aurally because there's a certain charm to the bittier originals.

I think the problem isn't with the people doing the restoring but the narrative, whether implicit or explicit by the people signal boosting this project , that the restored versions are better or definitive. It doesn;t look like the people behind it are claiming that.

I like the restored versions btw, but it's not my preferred soundtrack if i'm playing SMW, i would want the original.
 
SageShinigami

SageShinigami

Member
Oct 27, 2017
30,474
There's few things I dislike more than people going "I never engage in this, but I just happened to choose the worst example possible, and boy am I mad about it."
 
Chettlar

Chettlar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,604
Lol I knew as soon as OP said they knew it wasn't a big deal it just got their goat, that instantly a lot of people would get on their case about how it wasn't that serious.

Never change, era.
 
finalflame

finalflame

Product Management
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,538
Chettlar said:
Lol I knew as soon as OP said they knew it wasn't a big deal it just got their goat, that instantly a lot of people would get on their case about how it wasn't that serious.

Never change, era.
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"It's not a big deal"
>> proceeds to act like it's a huge deal

yah people rightfully got on this person's case
 
cvxfreak

cvxfreak

DINO CRISIS SUX
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
945
Tokyo
Title edited for clarity. Please try to at least be specific about what you're talking about in the title!
 
SteveWinwood

SteveWinwood

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,682
USA USA USA
taking ten minutes to type up some stuff about an article that mildly rubbed you the wrong way is not taking anything too seriously or acting like its a huge deal

this is why we get low effort threads
 
samred

samred

Amico fun conversationalist
Member
Nov 4, 2017
2,586
Seattle, WA
tooting Ars' horn here: I think Kyle Orland did a nice job speaking to devotees of the song-reconstruction scene and talking about different aesthetic approaches. some groups err much harder on trying to simulate the SNES's total tonal/effect/sound profile.

arstechnica.com

Super High-Fidelity Mario: The quest to find original gaming audio samples

Investigation of original, uncompressed samples leads to CD-quality restorations.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

To some extent, I agree w/ this Kotaku author, even if they need to calm the heck down. I prefer how these songs sound out of an SNES. But I'm also glad these remakes are out there, because they demonstrate how good Koji Kondo was at translating sample audio to SNES hardware. It's a fascinating comparison option.
 
GamerJM

GamerJM

Member
Nov 8, 2017
15,638
I largely agree with the take tbh, but also I think how it actually sounds is less important than what was accomplished. I'd never want to listen to these versions of the tracks in lieu of the originals but I think it's cool they can exist at all.
 
OP
OP
b3llydrum

b3llydrum

Member
Feb 21, 2018
4,147
GamerJM said:
I largely agree with the take tbh, but also I think how it actually sounds is less important than what was accomplished. I'd never want to listen to these versions of the tracks in lieu of the originals but I think it's cool they can exist at all.
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YES I agree. I don't think they necessarily sound "better", especially since I have so much familiarity and nostalgia for the original SNES versions.

That's exactly why I felt like the article was so pointless in its harsh critique, as if it's a needledrop review or something.
 
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