HN loves the DX7.
The sound chip YM2612 is also what elevated video game audio when it was still in its' infancy to something more akin to "real" sounding instruments.
Historically it's been very influential since the 80s so it's no wonder it's struck a chord with people now in their 30s, 40s and older.
When the DX7 came out in 1983, people were wowed by the decent piano sound, for example, which was something analog synths never did well. There were lots of sounds like that - bells, xylophone etc.
Then sample based keyboards started to get more affordable, and RAM and ROM got cheaper.
Eventually in 1988 came the Korg M1. Megabytes of samples in ROM let it do a perfect piano sound, along with a horde of other great sounds, natural and unnatural. The M1 became the best-selling synth in history and the world's fascination with FM finally faded.
"They get really bland after a while. And when we get into what I call the DX Sound Hunt, it drives me up the wall. Someone in the studio will say, ‘Okay! Let’s have a bell sound.’ Then we start going through the 128 sounds on our DX —we have the Sycologic MX1 expander board— and playing every one, including the whistle, the train, and the bombs. If we find something we like, it has probably turned up on 50 records that have been made over the past few years..." [0]
I was wondering whether the Korg M1 was really what turned the tide against the digital synth revolution that the DX7 kicked off, and whether it really was the first of its kind. I looked up Yamaha's synth chronology[1], and it really seems like Yamaha didn't produce anything between 1983-1990 that wasn't an FM synth. I'm actually very surprised. My internal chronology was off. I had thought Yamaha had started making PCM-based synths before that!
[0] https://meganlavengood.com/the-yamaha-dx7-in-synthesizer-his... [1] https://usa.yamaha.com/products/contents/music_production/sy...
Presets on the M1, D-50, Wavestation, JV-1080, etc all got used to death. A lot of the PCM samples were recycled from popular samples on older synths, dating back to systems like the Fairlight or Synclavier. Everyone had samples of the Jupiter, Moog, Synclavier, Fairlight, DX7, TB-303 and TR-808/909.
The Yamaha FM module was actually my first hardware purchsae, and I thought I would love it a lot more—it’s pretty limited.
Still, I grew up in the 90s, and this kind of MIDI music in games was ubiquitous, and instantly recognisable to anyone in my generation. Even though it didn't last long. It had a huge impact.
FM was only a short slice of MIDI music in games. A lot of that was Genesis / Mega Drive.