Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favorite game of all time, I was already kinda upset that they replaced the music, but now the remixes sounding bad is more salt on the wound. They shouldn't have let Jun Senoue handle these remixes.
I'm disappointed but 100% unsurprised to see Senoue flub these proto track arrangements. So often when people sing his praises for his work in the classic games, he's being credited for stuff he didn't do. But man, he really did a shit job with these. No excuses.
Because I have no care for me health... Just checked the "Knuckles code" in Sonic 2. Level select worked! So yes. The Sonic 2 level select is in Origins. Just no options screen... I didn't know this because. I didn't know. Never played the mobile re-releases, only ever the standard 90s ports.
Predictably I caved and listened, mostly because I didn't want to believe they could be as bad as people were saying. 1993 Carnival Night 2 would have been one of the game's greatest jams - what happened with this 2022 rearrangement? Jun Senoue is a great composer, but I get the feeling he needed to work in conjunction with a proper Sound Programmer to get the best out of his tracks on the Mega Drive hardware. Leaving him to his own devices has given us flat, basic versions of tracks that the 1993 Sound Team already did a much better job of interpreting, and that's managed to actually upset me in a way that even the removal of the original release tracks didn't. Possibly because, like many others, I'd assumed they'd at least be using the rediscovered versions as a basis, or reference. Spoiler And yet the "unused theme" sounds pretty much identical to the proto version - so it definitely seems like they were aware of it, and there was a conscious decision to redo them in this flatter, more basic manner. I just don't get it. Also, compositionally the new Super theme is nice, but the instrumentation veers toward Sonic 4 territory, especially with those Sonic 1/2 drums. A proper YM2612 version with instrumentation similar to the Sonic & Knuckles invincibility theme could be great IMO - I'd love to hear someone put one together one day! I'm still excited to play the new remake and see what Stealth and the team at Headcannon have added, but this will turn replaying these few stages into somewhat of a bittersweet experience.
I am legitimately stunned at how bad Carnival Night sounds. It doesn't just sound like a bad job, it literally sounds like it was made by someone who didn't know what they were doing at all. Like some notes sound straight up out of tune, other elements glitched and warbled. It doesn't sound like it was made with any love or enjoyment.
Noah Copeland did a much better comparison video here: https://twitter.com/NoahNCopeland/status/1539289867615711234?s=20&t=Ut3vLNL6Amy9y9SigVDPMA I love Sonic Stadium but those videos goin around Twitter are obnoxiously misleading.
So someone in a discord server pointing something interesting out to me. These tracks match the Sonic & Knuckles collection almost verbatim, they have the same melody differences, key changes, etc. They DON'T match the prototype tracks, which are significantly more fleshed out than these. And they all sound like actual genesis tracks, unlike the new Super theme which sounds like it came from Sonic 4. In addition, the Ice Cap Zone tracks are very very close to how they sound in the prototype. They have almost identical instruments, save for a few small differences. I also listened to some of the prototype tracks, like Angel Island Act 2 and Lava Reef Act 1, and they have a very similar style - softer instruments, and slightly different tempos. Is it possible that these tracks are actually older versions of the prototype tracks, and it was these versions that were used in the Sonic & Knuckles collection? If this is the case, the only track that was actually made by Jun Senoue was the Super theme, which checks out because it doesn't sound anything like the others.
That being the case...why? The November tracks are readily available for reference on YouTube, why take the lesser versions?
A general theory I'm seeing the spoilered part is that Spoiler The New Blue Spheres was entirely handled by the Headcannon team so the unused theme went untouched because it was submitted that way to Sega, whereas Jun went through the zone themes in the main game accordingly. Tellingly, it seems it's almost entirely the zone themes Jun had a hand in, everything else not so much.
I'm not sure what I can say about Origins' prototype tracks which hasn't already been expressed, but my goodness why the fuck did Jun make the prototype Carnival Night Zone tracks sound so unbearably dull and muffled?! The Carnival Night Zone tracks in the Sonic 3 prototype have a distinctly cleaner and sharper sound*, not to mention they sound better fleshed out in general, whereas the Origins' versions sound like a low effort port of the Sonic & Knuckles Collection MIDIs along with half-arsed, muddy instrument selections. Origins' IceCap Zone tracks actually sound the best of the prototype Zone music bunch, and that's because they received the least changes. I'm not a fan of how prototype Launch Base Zone sounds in Origins either, and as noted by someone else prior, Act 2 sounds particularly jarring with serious volume balancing issues between various audio channels. They would have been better off just using all of the prototype tracks from the Sonic 3 prototype and left them untouched, as opposed to whatever this mixed bag of inconsistency is supposed to be. The Sonic & Knuckles Collection MIDIs should not be used as a base to work from, not when the superior Sonic 3 prototype variants exist. What's also jarring is that new Super Form track in Sonic 3 & Knuckles using Sonic 1 / 2 percussion, very out of place and unfitting. *And to be clear here, yes I do mean both emulated and recorded from actual hardware, in both instances the Sonic 3 prototype tracks for Carnival Night Zone sound far crisper and better refined than Jun's butchering.
Yeah. I'm really, really not trying to throw shade or stir the pot at them here. But between that issue and having to disclaim that the audio may sound off due to using the PS5's internal video capture, maybe it would have been best to not make the comparisons since it's pretty much set the tone of the discussion on a bad foot. Not that folk can't still pick apart what we're getting and like or not like it, folk here have discussed legitimate changes and concerns with the Origins versions. That said having these crispy, emulated interpretations of the tracks fade out to what we're hearing was not the right call for the general audience that will just want to know what's different.
Jesus christ this fucking sucks. I've never been so mad about being right before. I'm not buying this now because half the reason I was interested was to get it on Switch, where obviously modding isn't possible, so... yeah.
I could definitely tell Sonic Stadium used an emulator. @Boxer Hockey The Genesis can sound a little underwater if you're used to unfiltered emulation but on the other hand an unfiltered emulator can sound like there's a broken pre-emphasis filter (a.k.a. too much terrible) if you're used to the Genesis' more bassy sound. Sticking both side by side leads to misleading and confusing comparisons. People need to use the low pass filter option if their emulator of choice offers it when trying to compare tracks to real hardware.
In spite of musical grievances, I am quite impressed with much of this (...of what you listed in the spoiler tag). I wasn't anticipating they'd include any of that although I'd tried to remain hopeful and now, really happy to see they included all of that.
Question--we know Jun Senoue composed some stuff for Sonic 3, but do we know for certain he arranged those tracks too? Maybe he was just NEVER good at Genesis music.
Spoiler: A detail nobody would give a shit but: The New Blue Spheres are using Sonic 1/2 spring SFX instead using the one from Sonic 3.
I mean, wasn't it clarified that Jun based these arrangements of his Demo tapes rather than, say, the November prototype? Which might partly explain why the tracks came out the way they are.
While true, this comparison takes the song that actually sounds better than the prototype, while not showing the ones that sound worse based on instrumentation alone. Nothing about this recording changes the problems people are pointing out with the Mix. I still stand by my statements that Jun is a talented composer, even one of the best in the franchise, nor do I think these tracks are Sonic 4 level bad (and I'll further say I really like many of his S4E2 songs and found their instrumentation to be solid)... However, it's clear he's created worse versions of at least 4 of the 6 songs and....
I know Tee Lopes was busy working on the TMNT game but man I wish SEGA could have commissioned him entirely new replacement tracks for S3 instead of this mess we have now.
At this point I'm pretty fully convinced that the work Jun did on the Sonic 3D's tracks which he did originally compose were not implemented into Mega Drive instrumentation by him, but by someone else. If this is true, I think that was a big mistake. The Sonic 3 prototype's tracks are already in Mega Drive format / specifications and provide a better base to work from if you're going to attempt refining them.
