Comment by klodolph | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klodolph | Hacker News Reader

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You should compare the audio too, not just the graphics. Hard to compare the audio in this video.

Broadly speaking, the GBA is more capable graphically, has a better CPU, more RAM, a simpler interface to the cartridge, and the best GBA games are going to look pretty good compared to SNES games.

However, the SNES has a dedicated programmable DSP for audio, which can play eight sample tracks simultaneously. The GBA just gives you a DAC and the CPU and you do everything there. You could of course try to make up for that by relying more on PCM tracks and leaning on the larger ROM sizes, but that will only take you so far.

Here’s a track from the FFV port to GBA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSUWIxn0Ihw

Here’s the original version for SNES (edit: link fixed):

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

To my ears, the SNES one is the clear winner and it shows off the capabilities of the DSP—less aliasing noise (that weird crunchy sound you hear on the GBA version), and also has some basic effects (like a little bit of echo).

The GBA is more capable graphically, true, but has a poor screen with a lower resolution (240×160 vs 256×224 for the super nes). Because of that, a few ports had to rework the sprites to fit the gba screen better. also had to modify the color palette. Animations may also have less frames.

For example, Donkey Kong Country, top is from Super Nes, bottom is from GBA. Both enlarged x4.

https://abload.de/img/dkcsnesgba4xcdjn2.png

256×224 is the resolution that the SNES renders at, but the full area was not considered usable. The exact usable area depends on the TV, but game developers would often restrict themselves to a “safe area”. With the GBA, the entire 240×160 viewing area is usable.

You're referring to differences in individual TV overscan settings. For that reason, developers were told to not use a particular area around the outside of the screen for important information. However, by the 90s, most recent TV models were accurate in their overscan settings and a lot of games included HUD info right on the edge of the screen. Developers could be fairly certain that MOST users would see all or nearly all of the 256x224 output area. Certainly far more than 160 vertical pixels. So it's not really a surprise that ports to the GBA sometimes had to work around the limited resolution.

> You're referring to differences in individual TV overscan settings.

I’m not referring to differences in overscan settings—I’m just talking about the fact that overscan exists. It’s a setting, but it’s generally not user-configurable on consumer TVs.

Even with TVs that have more accurate overscan, the TVs still have overscan, so you cannot use the entire area. The HUD goes right to the edge of the screen, but the 256×224 area continues past this. My feelings are that it is up to your judgment exactly what the safe area is, but taken for granted that it is smaller than the full picture.

Newer games and systems were still affected by this—the Nintendo 64, Xbox, PlayStation 2, etc. You could not reasonably put your HUD all the way to the edge of the framebuffer on any of these systems. Overscan only died (sort of) with the arrival of LCDs and HDMI.

> Certainly far more than 160 vertical pixels.

Yes, that would be absurd.

The "active display area" of a CRT is 224 vertical pixels - all of those pixels are intended for display. The actual number of scanlines is 240. The top 8 and bottom 8 rows of pixels are not intended for display. This is the overscan area. 90s era CRTs were generally very accurate in their overscan calibration. Although there might have been a very small range of error, generally, the intended 224 scanlines were being displayed.

I might be wrong, but it seems you are under the impression that a percent of the active display area was used for overscan. That would only occur if the TV was not calibrated correctly. That's the reason hardware manufacturers instructed developers to not put important content too close to the edge of the screen. However, developers absolutely would have assumed most TVs were displaying the active display area accurately, which is why in the 90s most games had HUDs extending to the edge of the active display.

But this is all really beside the point, because if you watch the posted video, you can see countless examples of how GBA developers had to account for the massively reduced vertical resolution. Look at the Super Mario World example - the GBA version is massively zoomed in, greatly reducing the amount of the screen that is visible.

Your second link isn't the original SNES version, it's a remix designed to sound better. Here's the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dghlAQDQneU

I still agree that the SNES version sounds much better than the GBA version, but people shouldn't think the SNES version sounded like that remix.

Huh, you’re right. I thought something was off about the video when I listened to it. Although the version I linked calls itself a remix in the description, it sounds like someone just played a MIDI version with new samples. I’m not sure I’d even call that a remix.

It is, in an older sense, "remixed", much as some older music was remixed by taking the original sub-tracks and re-combining them in a different way with different audio levels and balance and similar. It certainly doesn't qualify in the modern usage of "novel music inspired by the original".

Maybe "remaster" is the better term here?

Apparently the "OSV" in the track title means "Original Sound Version". TIL!

After reading your comment I had to check out the situation in the case of Donkey Kong Country, since that series has some of the most impressive SNES soundtracks in my opinion. While they did an impressive job, there is still a distinct difference between the two systems.

GBA: https://youtu.be/UlTgFb0qbxQ

SNES: https://youtu.be/_4EjGXRDOH0

edit: They added some interesting didgeridoo-like sound effects to "Forest Frenzy" though

Picked out a particular song to make the comparison easier: Gang-Plank Galleon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlTgFb0qbxQ&t=2191s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4EjGXRDOH0&t=3663s

Pretty stark difference, IMO. GBA version sounds shrill, all the note envelopes seem messed up, the variations in emphasis & phrasing in the SNES version are gone, etc. SNES version is also in stereo.

Odd, the SNES music is clearly more sophisticated but I'm pretty sure I prefer the GBA track. I don't like the sound of the SNES instruments.

But then I've also never cared for the DKC soundtrack.

You might like 'Kong in Concert', which is a series of arrangements using the DKCountry soundtrack. I was hooked on it back when it came out, apparently 17 years ago. Way to make me feel old.

https://dkcproject.ocremix.org

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