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The curious case of Masato Nakamura's music in Sonic 8-bit

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Cooljerk, Jul 25, 2024.

  1. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    Over the years, a few tidbits about the music in Sonic 1 have come to light, namely the process by which Masato Nakamura submitted music for the game. They were apparently submitted early on, in bulk, as a recorded tape, which Sega then digitized by ear and put into the game. That's fine and well understood, but this presents a few questions when you think about their role regarding the 8-bit games.

    Firstly, speaking about the 8-bit Sonic 1, it is assumed, given the similarities it has to the pre-release Sonic 1 we've seen in leaks and such, that the project had coordination with the Sega Genesis game early on, perhaps in the most early meetings, then development split and coordination was lost. This is backed up by things like the 8-bit title screen matching pre-release Sonic 1 Genesis title screen pics, or things like Labyrinth Zone's background being much closer to that of the beta, and vestigial pieces of Sonic's original role as a singer of a band still being in the ending.

    The 8-bit Sonic 1 was handled by Yuzo Koshiro's studio Ancient. Yuzo Koshiro is a musician, and he supposedly handled the 8-bit Sonic 1 soundtrack. So, presumably, he was digitizing the music of Masato Nakamura from those same tapes. There are a number of songs by Nakamura in Sonic 1 8-bit, namely Green Hill Zone, Marble Zone (unused), the Title theme, the invincibility theme, and the act-clear theme. All well and done.

    But why weren't the other songs digitized? Why were a bunch of new, original songs created for the game, when it is assumed that Masato Nakamura's music wasn't created with set zones in mind? This calls into question: How early *did* Nakamura submit tapes to Sega, and were they done all in one big batch? The way they're presented in Sonic 1 8-bit, to me, would indicate that songs were submitted not all at once, but rather in groups, and Koshiro only had access to certain songs before development of the two games stopped coordinating. This would seem to indicate that the above 5 themes would have been the first songs created for the game.

    That goes back to Koshiro's original music for the game: why does it exist? Was this a Sonic 3 scenario, where Dreams Come True came in and replaced some old music that was created prior? Is Koshiro's music entirely original, did he even create it? Marble Zone in particular is an oddity, since it's unused. If they were creating new music to fill in gaps that didn't exist, why bother translating music from the original batch of Masato music if you don't use it? It's odd wasted work considering that most of the soundtrack is new music for the 8-bit title. Going as early as 1993, these songs were contentious; Sega couldn't use the Sonic 1 theme in Spinball because it cost them money. So were they granted permission explicitly for the 8-bit games? And if so, why only select tracks, including one that was cut?

    Just a thought that came into my mind the other day, seems like the existence of Sonic 8-bit makes the way music was created for Sonic 1 a little less clear than we might assume.
     
  2. Black Squirrel

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    I would guess Yuzo Koshiro probably made a whole soundtrack (or was in the process of doing so), and then a demand was made to align it more with the Mega Drive version, hence the swapped out music (and maybe other unknown things?). That seems to have been the case with Sonic 2 as well, perhaps a key difference being that a fair bit of Sonic 1's aesthetics were nailed down before serious development began (aka the Tokyo Toy Show demo).

    We'd need a prototype build of Sonic 1 (on the Master System?) to know for sure.
     
  3. Cooljerk

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    See, but that raises other questions: If that's the case, why would they adapt Marble Zone's song, but let it go unused, and then choose not to adopt Labyrinth Zone or Scrap Brain Zone, two zones which are in the 16-bit games? If they wanted to align better with the big brother, they should have adopted those songs. Even as a kid, when I first got the game gear game, I wondered why those two zones had different music than the genesis version (even if I love the 8-bit Scrap Brain Zone theme).
     
  4. Jaxer

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    How about Sky Base Zone? It has steel girders and traffic cones like Star Light Zone, uses Koshiro's SBZ theme for acts 1 and 3 but a completely unique theme for act 2, has different color palettes for the first two acts and entirely different visuals for act 3.

    It's an inconsistent, disjointed and hastily assembled mess that raises a lot of questions about earlier visions for the game.
     
  5. Cooljerk

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    That's all been discussed before in multiple topics about the similarities between Sonic 8-bit and the early sonic prototypes. This is more specifically about the music, and what the implied timeline that those similarities between zones would mean in relation to what music did or did not make it into the game.
     
  6. Jaxer

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    Didn't mean to derail the topic, as I think that the zone's music is inseparable from its other elements.

    Are we sure that the SBZ theme playing in acts 1 and 3 was intended? Could it not have been a simple mistake?
     
  7. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    I didn't mean to imply you were derailing, just that such similarities had been noted already. There's a bunch of stuff in Sonic 1 8-bit that leads to the belief that it reflects the early sonic 1 proto more than the final, like how the ending very closely matches the storyboard pics from sonic mania/generations, much more than the genesis game ending.

    I don't think anything about Sonic 1 8-bit is set in stone. It's a weird game, like where exactly did Jungle Zone come from? Bridge Zone, I personally believe was originally marble zone and the water was originally pink lava, but that still makes Jungle Zone come out of nowhere. Every other zone -- including the special stage -- seems like it came from an existing Sonic 1 MD zone, except jungle zone.
     
  8. Jaxer

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    I'll be completely honest, I do not see this correlation. Not only is Bridge Zone set entirely outside, it shares zero gameplay elements with Marble Zone aside from collapsing platforms.

    Besides, unused sprites for Batbrain appear in the game's files, located alongside GHZ assets. To me, that's implication of 8-bit Marble Zone being scrapped altogether, as the sprites would've been among Bridge assets had that zone been what remains of it.
     
  9. Cooljerk

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    I went over this years ago on a topic on this very board, presenting lots of examples of how stuff like bridge zone was similar to marble zone. But that's not really the point of this topic.
     
  10. Palas

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    The fact that the game has its own set of unused songs, and it's quite a large set too, raises even more questions. You can sort of imagine where most would fit in the final game's structure (Be Careful!, Marble Zone, Dash! Jump! Spin! Attack!), but others do make it seem like the game went through some kind of revision at some point after the initial briefing (Where the hell would Let's Have a Break be?). I can imagine SEGA being adamant about the first impression of the game being congruent across 8-bit and 16-bit but mostly leaving each team to its own devices outside of that though.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2024
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  11. jbr

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    Out of interest, what's the source for this? It seems like such an odd way to digitise the music when you've already gone to the effort of sequencing it. MIDI was well in existence by 1991, so I can't help wondering if this has been misremembered/misexplained/simplified and that the process also involved handing over MIDI.
     
  12. LF222

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    Its not that odd, isnt that also how 3d blast was done, given we have jun tapes and not raw jun midis, its like 3k was the same too, since the pc/proto versions clearly have big differences, even the origins midpoints. suggesting maybe some by ear shenanigans
     
  13. DefinitiveDubs

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    The answer is probably the most simple: Sonic 1 8-bit was going to be a more straightforward conversion, but it was eventually decided to make it more distinct from the 16-bit game. That's why Sonic CD is what it is, after all. It was going to be a straight port and it just diverged from there.

    Sega wanted to sell Sonic across every one of their platforms. At the same time, they needed to give people an incentive to buy the new sexy platformer on their new sexy system, and not just be happy with Sonic on their MS.
     
  14. Black Squirrel

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    There is a possibility that Yuzo Koshiro never heard the original demo tapes, and that his only reference was the Sonic 1 Mega Drive ROM as it stood at the time. If it was a build earlier than ours, it could be that neither Labyrinth or Scrap Brain had music (the stages are the least complete in our prototype after all).

    Marble Zone's a bit of an oddity though. I'd probably fall back on the older theory, that an 8-bit version was planned (as in, distinct from Bridge and Jungle), but was cut for whatever reason. Maybe Bridge and Jungle were brought in because they use less ROM space. Unless they don't.


    But I guess this doesn't entirely add up because the Scrap Brain in Sonic 1 8-bit doesn't match Clock Ork in our (later) prototype. Dunno, bit weird.
     
  15. Mr. Cornholio

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    Echoed before me by Palas, but I'm wondering if it's a case where Yuzo wanted to do his own completely original soundtrack for the game (hence the extra tracks on the Early Collection Box), but then Sega had reviewed a late build of the game and asked that Masato Nakamura's Green Hill and jingles be used for consistency sake.

    It makes more sense when you think about it. Green Hill and Nakamura's work for that had been marketed the most for the Genesis release. I think Sega just wanted a unified image for that initial impression/first level across both releases of the game so people had something they could relate to, regardless of what system they played the game on. Plus, I imagine Nakamura's work cost a pretty penny. Maybe they wanted to squeeze a bit more out of the work he did for Sonic?

    It also helps that past the beginning of the game nearly none of Nakamura's tracks really pop up again in places I would expect or for events that would make sense. The Chaos Emerald jingle is weirdly Yuzo's own work instead of borrowing again from the Genesis release. The prototype we have has the boss music in place and yet Yuzo again has his own work here. I see these as areas or experiences that Sega was less concerned about having a 'unified image' across releases. Everyone is going to see that first level and hear it. You want that to be the face of your new mascot character!

    The only issue with this idea is that I dunno where Marble Zone fits into the picture. Even if it did become Bridge Zone, it seems weird Nakamura's track was considered while Labyrinth has it's own track. Scrap Brain looking more like Scrap Brain instead of Clock Ork is a bit odd too. I'm not sure what references he could've been sent.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2024
  16. Chimes

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    Alright, big warning here. I'm pulling stuff out of my ass here.
    Masato Nakamura interview by Sonic Central (May 18, 2005)

    Here's what I believe happened.
    Back in the olden days before computers directly had PCM sound chips (and before that was standardized, too), it was common for computers to have MIDI ports to use them with sound modules, samplers, or synthesizers directly. Unless you were directly making a video game for a platform, you didn't actually use your computer's sound chip. You used something that supported MIDI.

    When Jungle was first getting its footing during the early to mid 1990s, they were created by using samplers and computers. But unless they were for the Amiga (that has its own little rabbit hole) these often didn't use their computer's sound chip: rather, using a sequencer like Cubase, you hooked your rig to your Atari ST to which your Atari would send commands to your module of choice. The details of this can get really messy, but the real important deets is sequencing was a established norm for Atari users.

    I believe Nakamura had a Atari ST, which he hooked up to his samplers and synthesizers. He sequenced Sonic 1 and 2's OSTs using a specific set of restrictions so as to allow for an easier conversion for Sega's sound designers. These were fed by MIDI to his synthesizers, of which thanks to rigorous reverse engineering and research we know to be of the SY77 - SY99 series. The resulting demo tracks were then given to Sega's sound designers. I assume Nakamura and Sega's sound designers both coordinated on how to arrange the music for the Mega Drive.

    If anyone can point out holes in this, let me know. I'm just spitballing here.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2024
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  17. Black Squirrel

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    While the music might have been made on a MIDI-capable synthesizer, it doesn't mean the tunes were saved to floppy disk (or whatever) and given to Sega. The sequence might have been recorded on cassette.

    I say this because that seems to have been the case with Sonic 3D. Jun Senoue made a demo tape, and someone turned it into Mega Drive music (at least I would assume that was the case, else why make a tape).


    It depends how close the demo tracks in that Sonic 1 and 2 album are to their in-game counterparts I guess. Does it look like a beat-for-beat match or are there signs it was recreated by ear?
     
  18. Palas

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    Koshiro is active on Twitter and seems approachable enough to maybe answer why Sonic 1 8-bit is the way it is. Maybe it could be asked?
     
  19. sonicthesnot

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    I had an email exchange with one of the sound programmers around 2009-2010 (I think it was Jimita?)

    He told me that he would get a cassette, listen to is several times, and then transcribe the track onto paper. I very distinctly remember him telling me that. Afterwards, it would be programmed into the game.

    I really wonder what Genesis sound programming looked like in 1991. The music and sound effects were ultimately coded in assembly. I don't know if there was software that abstracted this and made it easier to directly input the music, or if the sound engineers were really hand-coding each individual note.

    It's probably why there are so few unique "measures" of music in Sonic 1/2, with lots of 4-bar phrases looping 2x in each track, basslines re-used, repeating drum patterns, etc. Definitely saves a ton of programming time.

    So Nakamura's tracks were definitely recreated for the game.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2024
  20. Jaxer

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    Also, what's with the credits theme?

    It starts off with a completely original riff, then transitions into Green Hill as if it's gonna turn into a medley, but then it never does and just goes back to the main riff.