goodnames by radornkeldam at 9:50 AM EST on January 12, 2008
Hi.
I'm not a very active user as you can see, mainly because I can't find much in which I can contribute, even if I want to. Anyway, there's something I'd like to suggest.
But first, thank you hcs and everyone else, rippers, taggers and whatnot for making this. I enjoy this stuff a lot!
Now, I'm a very concerned and exhaustive person about almost everything, and if there's something that makes me really uneasy is uncertainty. There's one little thing I'd like to ask of you rippers for documenting your rips. It's as simple as adding a line to the "readme" files with information about the rom used, like "GoodN64 <version number here> recognized the rom used as <goodname here>". It can be GoodTools or whatever other rom auditing tool, but the important bits are the name of the tool, the version of the tool and/or it's database (if they are not tied toghether) and, of course, the identifier.
The reason for this is that, in some cases, even music can vary among regions and revisions of the same game, and just refering it by the title can be ambiguous. This poses a problem of uneasiness of mind for some (me at least), but of course I understand yo can't really require a ripper to take care of every rom needed to be "COMPLETE" when you find games that show these variances between releases. This solution gives users a more precise knowledge of what they have in their hands, opens the possibility of someone deciding to take care of the "missing" stuff, and it doesn't charges rippers with extra work (only a little scan will do)
I live in Spain, which is PAL zone, and, for example, some songs in the USF rip for Wave Race 64 have different arrangements than the local release (they sound different either on hardware or emulated). I personally like the local version more, but I can't really demand for it to be ripped just because of that, but I'd feel better with a better documentation with that extra bit of information, also gives a clear explanation to the "why the hell does this sound different to my game?" when sound emulation is out of the question, and helps you complete the soundtrack by other means (like emulating the game and dumping the sound direcly or recording from hardware) until someone or oneself is able/determined to rip the missing stuff.
For already existing sets, whenever the author is not up to the job of repacking the release, a simple public list would do.
I tend to write in excess... hope you don't mind. I also hope people like the idea and adopt it.
I think the Wave Race 64 set on the site is from the Japanese Rumble Pak Support Version that contained additional arragngements, that's why it sounds different.
Though there are still some real regional variations, like for example "Fire Temple" in Ocarina of Time (differs in PAL releases in US v1.2), or "Staff Roll" in Castlevania (got extended in the PAL release, is included on the Original Soundtrack).
by radornkeldam at 10:51 AM EST on January 12, 2008
yeah, I know the wave race set is the japan-only shindou edition, but even the original release has a different arrangement for at least one track (one of the two heavy-metal songs in the game), and the japanese soundtrack CD, that has both the originals and shindou versions, don't have the song from the PAL version (I don't know what version contains the USA release, whether it is the same as the JAP or PAL release or a different one).
And anyway, afterward discussion about variances in games is not enough, and yet it's easier if you know beforehand what you are dealing with, which also helps searching other sources of information. You can search specialiced sites if you know the name of what you are searching for, like consulting a wikipedia article about a game which possibly documents those diferences, but you can't search for "this sounds like X and I think that there's another version that sound like Y" and have a search engine tell you what version of the game you have in your hands. Also, many people, even the rippers themselves, are not necessarily aware of all of them. Also, most (maybe?) of the people involved in this kind of stuff are from the USA or "tuned" to the USA releases and don't need to be aware about differences outside of that, specially PAL, which following the prevalent release scheme of the big worldwide publishers, is the last step.
So, to keep it simple, yet concise, and free rippers and taggers from extra work, which they may or may not be able or willing to do, I think my proposal is the best solution.
"Additional arrangements" would be nice if it were true. It's more like they just removed the old ones completely and replaced them. Which sucks, as I like the old ones more!
However I didn't realise the PAL version of Wave Race had yet more different tracks. Would you be able to make / find recordings of those at all? I live in the UK, and I don't remember hearing any tracks in the game that aren't on the official CD (which as you say, has both the Shindou and Classic 1996 tracks.) I suppose I could find a PAL ROM of Wave Race...
Anyway, I like your idea.
by radornkeldam at 11:46 AM EST on January 16, 2008
Hi, I'll try to take a bit of time and record some of those different versions (or at least the version that is different from what we have on the available USF sets). Another song that I just remembered is the BomberMan 64 "Advertise", the song for the title sequence. I was quite shocked when I heard it in the USF because it is shorter than what I hear in the PAL release, and I'm not refering to it being faster compared to PAL. What I mean is that the PAL release has a different arrangement that has a couple of "phrases" more, which may have been done to compensate for a possibly slower motion, but anyways is a different arrangement and, to me, sounds better.
Hope to make those recordings soon, but I can't at the present time, you can probably check them on an emulator anyway.