Rayxanber III

[soop]

So I was checking this out earlier, and my god, the noise this one makes!  How can they have listened to those kind of shrill sounds and thought "yep, this is definitely something that people will want to hear over and over again".  It's bad to the point that I don't want to play it, which is a shame, cause it starts out pretty good.

[spenoza]

I could see someone generating a patch for this title just to change that one sound effect.

[lukester]

It's absolutely disgusting, same with Sapphire. But unless a patch comes out you may as well mute it and blare some Black Sabbath over it.

[soop]

Apr 23, 2018 14:17:46 GMT spenoza said:

I could see someone generating a patch for this title just to change that one sound effect.

I might take up ROM hacking just to do this.

[Black_Tiger]

I remember someone capable considered hacking the sound effect(s) to be quieter, but I'm not sure if it was conpleted. Tom is likely the only one who would actually do it (like the Altered Beast jump button hack).

[sunteam_paul]

Tatsujin's green laser is almost as annoying.

[exmosquito]

It’s so confusing itsnt it...

Luckily there is a patched/amplified ISO of Sapphire that pretty much fixes the annoying firing sound effects by drowning it out with louder music. It wouldn’t be so bad if they gave you a slider in the settings to adjust the volume of the sfx/music :/

[Deleted]

The bgm is pure sex but this game isn't more than a fancy music CD given the mediocre levels and awful SFX. Very overrated game, the stage order is basically VOID, CAVE, CAVE WITH WATER, OVERHEAD CAVE, CAVE WITH VERT SCROLL, CAVE WITH FAUX POWERUPS, VOID, ENDING which is disappointing. The only good stage is the water one, and maybe the Ship Defense bit at the beggining which is a cool intro.

Never played the II but it seems to be better than this one.

[EmperorIng]

RayXanber II is a better game, but that's mostly because RayXanber III's default difficulty is so incredibly easy that you can breeze through it without thinking. Now, granted, RayXanber II is one of the hardest shooters of the 16-bit generation, so that might not be a point in its favor for some people.

As for the SFX, maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome. If all CD games are going to sound like shit, you just get used to it, right? It's definitely a CD-Rom System-wide issue, with tracks mixed too quietly and the SFX, coming straight from the machine, mixed too loud. I don't really think this is an issue on most HuCard games.

[lukester]

Redbook audio is streamed. Works differently from the game music we have today, so the sound levels are not always perfect

Maybe a tech expert can elaborate for me.

[spenoza]

I think there was a philosophy back then that you never wanted the sound effects to be drowned out by the music, because then you might miss important information as to what's going on in the game.

Interestingly enough, through RF on a TV with a standard issue crappy TV speaker the mix actually sounds somewhat natural. It's only when you run the audio separately through something half decent or emulate that it sounds like the balance is all wrong.

[bigusschmuck]

Can't say I have played any of the Rayxander series, but I do agree with the annoying firing effects in Sapphire. I too am curious if a tech wizard can explain the difficulty of achieving well balanced sounds and bgm in PCE/Turbo games.

[Black_Tiger]

A lot of people over the years have said that CD combos strike a different balance than Duos. I wouldn't be surpised if most of the possible setups sound at least slightly different.

[spenoza]

My original Turbo w/ CD unit system did sound better balanced, at least in my spotty memory, than my current Duo. But the Duo still sounds better balanced on a TV than it does splitting the sound off to a receiver. And emulators sound the most imbalanced of all.

[fraggore]

it is a shame that the music on some games is very low if you running backups you can use MP3gain or audacity to boost the music tracks and re burn them, and there is a load of ISO's out there already done like exmosquito was saying.