System 11 Soundcard

Does anyone else love the fact that System 11 games have the same sound card as the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis? The Mega Drive was a huge part of my childhood (I know, I'm quite young for this forum), and hearing all the same... midi instruments on games like Pinbot is really nostalgic for me.

I think some early DMDs like T2 have the same soundcard too, but can't remember. Anyone with more technical know-how want to shed some light on it?

Espy said:

Does anyone else love the fact that System 11 games have the same sound card as the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis? The Mega Drive was a huge part of my childhood (I know, I'm quite young for this forum), and hearing all the same... midi instruments on games like Pinbot is really nostalgic for me.

I think some early DMDs like T2 have the same soundcard too, but can't remember. Anyone with more technical know-how want to shed some light on it?

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The same card as the Genesis you say? So the awesome music on EATPM, Transporter & Mousin' Around is Genesis-quality? Wow!

I certainly remember hearing that they only used this sound card on the earliest DMD games. The Party Zone used both for some reason, probably a transitional period; The Getaway used the new Fliptronics music system.

I had no idea. I like this facts ^^

Captain B. Zarre said:

The same card as the Genesis you say? So the awesome music on EATPM, Transporter & Mousin' Around is Genesis-quality? Wow!

I certainly remember hearing that they only used this sound card on the earliest DMD games. The Party Zone used both for some reason, probably a transitional period; The Getaway used the new Fliptronics music system.

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EATPM is one of the ones where it is the most obvious. The bass at the start is exactly the same as the bass in many Mega Drive games.

I noticed this myself, have never had it verified. Though I do remember someone mentioning it on the forum a while back, too...

*edit* This is what the Mega Drive used for sound, trying to find System 11 specs to verify my theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_SN76489

They sound similar but are not the same. The System 11's used a Yamaha YM2151 chip whereas the Sega Master used a TI SN76489. The reason they sound so similar is both chips are FM synthesizer chips.

Hope this helps.

Timelord ...

Music wise, System 11 pins used the Yamaha YM2151 chip. This is not exactly the same as the Sega Genesis / Megadrive chip (the Yamaha YM2612) but is awfully close. Those mini-DX-synths-on-a-chips were awfully popular in any late 80s computer or arcade systems.

The TI chip you reference was also in the Genesis. It was a leftover from the 8 bit Sega Master System and included in part for compatibility. It was used in Genesis games as I understand it for more primitive 8-bit-style sound FX. The music and DAC (samples) would all be through the YM2612.

soundwave106 said:

Music wise, System 11 pins used the Yamaha YM2151 chip. This is not exactly the same as the Sega Genesis / Megadrive chip (the Yamaha YM2612) but is awfully close. Those mini-DX-synths-on-a-chips were awfully popular in any late 80s computer or arcade systems.

The TI chip you reference was also in the Genesis. It was a leftover from the 8 bit Sega Master System and included in part for compatibility. It was used in Genesis games as I understand it for more primitive 8-bit-style sound FX. The music and DAC (samples) would all be through the YM2612.

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So they're basically from the same family. That makes a lot of sense. Glad to see what I was hearing validated!

Espy said:

So they're basically from the same family. That makes a lot of sense. Glad to see what I was hearing validated!

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Yes that chip itself is similar. The system 11 chip set also included a 68B09E CPU, a MC1408 DAC (Digital/Analog Converter), and a 55536 CVSD speech chip as well as preamp chips and ROMs. There were several variants of System 11 sound cards depending on which table one is speaking about.

I really don't know the other chips on the Sega systems, so I cannot determine whether they are the same in those respects.

Timelord ...

Well all I know is that a lot of the synth instruments on these machines are identical to the Mega Drive equivalent. I assumed there was some shared technology there.

I just provided all the chip details because you said were looking for the specs.

Timelord ...

Timelord said:

I just provided all the chip details because you said were looking for the specs.

Timelord ...

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Oh... sorry if my reply sounded annoyed, I didn't mean it that way.

No you didn't sound annoyed, just explaining, is all.

It's also interesting to note that not all Sega Master systems included the Yamaha chip. My older one did not, so I had to modify it to play the better sounds.
Like this guy did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxVID4I3_Qc


Timelord ...

I really love FM synthesis as well. Quite harsh and cold, but very lively and expressive.

While there´s a ton of pinball with fantastic DCM soundtracks, there´s something about the rough, intense nature of FM sounds that I will always associate with "arcade".

soundwave106 said:

Music wise, System 11 pins used the Yamaha YM2151 chip. This is not exactly the same as the Sega Genesis / Megadrive chip (the Yamaha YM2612) but is awfully close. Those mini-DX-synths-on-a-chips were awfully popular in any late 80s computer or arcade systems.

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Yeah, I love this about that era of games. It was before wavetable synthesis (I think that's the right term) so everything was genuinely composed rather than sampled. All the music from High Speed right up to TZ (I think that was the last machine before they started using DCS?) feels like it has a lot more character and charm than anything after it.

Fun fact relating to that particular music: One of the main composers during that era was Brian Schmidt, who worked on Black Knight 2000, Banzai Run, the original Simpsons machine as well as a bunch of later Data East/Sega machines. Coincidentally, he also did the music for Crue Ball (Motley Crue-themed pinball) on Mega Drive/Genesis. You can hear the similarities between this and this pretty easily.
He also did Desert Strike for MD as well.

The music for Rollergames is equally as good, but that was done by Dan Forden (who went on to do the sound for Mortal Kombat, which you'd be able to hear similarities with many WMS pins of the same era).

That reminds me--are there any pinball machines with live-recorded original music? If Super Mario games can have in-game music done by a 50-piece orchestra and Sonic music done by Tokyo Philharmonic, then surely pinball can do with at least live musicians.

Zombie Aladdin said:

That reminds me--are there any pinball machines with live-recorded original music? If Super Mario games can have in-game music done by a 50-piece orchestra and Sonic music done by Tokyo Philharmonic, then surely pinball can do with at least live musicians.

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With DCS this did begin happening

https://web.archive.org/web/20030625233114/http://pinballhq.com/willy/willy3.htm

This is partially off topic but did anyone else notice the similar sound effects between Black Hole and Metroid II on GameBoy?

Zombie Aladdin said:

That reminds me--are there any pinball machines with live-recorded original music? If Super Mario games can have in-game music done by a 50-piece orchestra and Sonic music done by Tokyo Philharmonic, then surely pinball can do with at least live musicians.

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DCS enabled live music to be recorded. Go to YouTube and search for "Judge Dredd Pinball Promo Video" to see the guitar riffs being captured.

Oh yeah, that makes sense. You can't have Daft Punk in TRON: Legacy otherwise, not to mention the tables themed on pop music.

I was thinking specifically of orchestrated pieces, or at least orchestral instruments. It is currently exceedingly hard to replicate brass instruments too well, for instance, and in a majority of video games with large enough budgets, they will bring in a brass band if they need such a piece. The Pinball Arcade is one of the few places where I can hear the background music of non-licensed games, as anywhere else, it's largely too loud to hear much of it, and I've been bugged by how MIDI-dependent even major releases like Medieval Madness were even though they could have done orchestral pieces.

Good to know that the WMS composers have plenty of real musical background though.

By the way, one reason I asked this is because I collect video game music, and frankly, it's weird to me that there's been nothing even close to stuff like "Melty Monster," "Moon Princess," or "Checker Knights" in pinball, even though it's a close brother to video games.

Zombie Aladdin said:

The Pinball Arcade is one of the few places where I can hear the background music of non-licensed games, as anywhere else, it's largely too loud to hear much of it, and I've been bugged by how MIDI-dependent even major releases like Medieval Madness were even though they could have done orchestral pieces.

Good to know that the WMS composers have plenty of real musical background though.

By the way, one reason I asked this is because I collect video game music, and frankly, it's weird to me that there's been nothing even close to stuff like "Melty Monster," "Moon Princess," or "Checker Knights" in pinball, even though it's a close brother to video games.

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Well, technically they couldn't have done orchestral pieces. Difference is, the SNES had an instrument bank that allowed devs to compose with those directly (which is why many of these orchestral pieces sounded similar... they drew most sounds from the same building block). It also had variable ROM sizes, which is why you saw some games were 16mbit, and other high-budget/big name ones (I think there was at least one SF game that was quite big) went up to 32 (and possibly more). That data wouldn't have just been used for graphics, speech would've taken up a hefty amount of that, too.

The difference between that and the platform WMS used is that WMS never had these sound banks to draw from, they could only use what they included in the ROM itself plus whatever gains they made by using DCS (which was only a compression algorhythm, meaning they could fit more stuff in there... it'd still be mono, and still output at the same quality) and with synthesis.

Why couldn't they just add more ROMs? Expense. That would require a new board design, something I doubt Williams would pony up for, unless it included other benefits.

Compare the size of the Medieval ROM to that of a SNES game known for high quality sounds. I think that if you took the graphics out of the picture and included the SNES sound bank, MM would be much smaller.