Sega Saturn - Blast Wind with louder music is here!

[vacantplanets]

Blast Wind with louder music is finally here!

Anyone who is familiar with this game knows that the sound effects completely overwhelm the music. With the help of SamIAm's guide (https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=19673.0), I modified the music in Blast Wind so it can actually be heard! What a great soundtrack it is and now it can be played the way it should have been!

It can be found at theisozone. You'll notice that I use this same user name over there too.

Shooter fans rejoice! Does anyone here care about this game?

[BlueBMW]

I thought it was pretty cool.  I cant remember if it was that one or Metal Black that I thought was ridiculously hard...

[vacantplanets]

I thought it was pretty cool.  I cant remember if it was that one or Metal Black that I thought was ridiculously hard...

I think Blast Wind is great. It has multiple difficulty, credit, and continue options too. It's the one where you can hit switches to take different paths.

I don't think I played Metal Black for too long. That's the one where you have to collect a million of those little energy pellets and then release a giant energy beam to fight bosses Dragonball style. I was a little disappointed by that one after playing like every other Saturn shooter. One I still need to play is Batsugun. I haven't played it yet because it doesn't work with Pseudo Saturn. I heard it's pretty hard.

I saw your X avatar and thought you might be interested in this--there's a mod for X3 called "Zero Project", and it lets you play as Zero throughout the entire game. It's awesome!

[Elder]

Now that's interesting.  I'll to give this one a spin.

[NecroPhile]

If those links contain an iso/rom and not just the tunes or a patch, the ban hammer is coming for you.

[NightWolve]

Bold link decision in posting something with "theisozone" in it.

[vacantplanets]

If those links contain an iso/rom and not just the tunes or a patch, the ban hammer is coming for you.

I don't know--I figured it would be okay because it's just a link to a theisozone.com page and not directly to the file hosting site.

[NecroPhile]

An indirect link doesn't make it okay.

[PunkCryborg]

Interesting project. There's quite a few Pc Engine games that could use the same kind of treatment. Particularly St Dragon. You can hardly hear the awesome OST over the sound. Rayxanber III, Super Darius and Sapphire are also too unbalanced in my opinion

[ClodBusted]

I remember the GameSack guys wishing that Gate of Thunder had louder music.

[vacantplanets]

An indirect link doesn't make it okay.

Okay. Before I edit my post, I want to figure out what I can say. I swear I'm not testing you, but I can't have any links to theisozone.com at all? Not to the separate forum section for example? Can I at least say that it can be found there without posting any links? Can someone help me out here?

Edit: I removed the links.

[NightWolve]

If those links contain an iso/rom and not just the tunes or a patch, the ban hammer is coming for you.

I don't know--I figured it would be okay because it's just a link to a *delete*.com page and not directly to the file hosting site.

I should warn people to be careful not to click around this website as well. I clicked somewhere and I was redirected to softwareinfected.info, one of those disgusting phishing websites that employ aggressive javascript of a popup message box stuck in an infinite loop, while playing a phony loud recording that your computer has been infected!!

Chrome is unable to defeat this popup, and you're forced to shut down your browser and have to restore all your tabs again... The only solution I have at present is to add entries to your hosts files to break resolving to those websites... Here's a list so far:

74.125.228.209 microsoft.com-support.online
74.125.228.209 softwareinfected.info
74.125.228.209 errorconnection.info
74.125.228.209 www.adcash.com

So I take the IP address from www.google.com or www.microsoft.com and add entries to the "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" file. So now, if a website redirects you to "errorconnection.info", the IP address doesn't resolve to what the Internet says, your machine always first checks the hosts file, so it'll take you to Google instead and end things with an error, not found message. That's one way to stop this, or I'm sure there are extensions to check for javascript that tries this bullshit on you.

Anyway FYI.


Other than that, I didn't know SamIAm had a taste for Sega Saturn. I'm curious to know what you guys had to figure out here to get this done.

[vacantplanets]

Here's the guide that SamIAm made:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=19673.0

It's genius. I'm just jealous that I didn't think of it myself when I replaced the Saturn's Darius 2 soundtrack with the Pc Engine version, haha. Anyway, I'll add this link to my original post.

I plan on doing this with other games too. I just did Sapphire although that's not nearly as offensive as Rayxanber 3. Winds of Thunder and Gate of Thunder are probably next just because they're awesome.

I'm glad people are interested in this. I encourage everyone to follow the guide and do this with their favorite games!

Note: I also used ImgBurn's read mode, along with Daemon tools, to convert the iso/wav files to bin/cue although that might not be necessary. It depends on which emulator you use or how you burn it...

[NightWolve]

Ah OK, so Saturn discs employ the use of redbook audio tracks also, and it was a matter of ripping and "normalizing" each one. I wondered if the audio tracks were inside a data track and you needed more sophisticated hacking.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, all the redbook audio tracks in Ys IV and other PCE/TG-16 CD games are horribly very low preamp-wise... In order to produce good MP3s, I had to normalize each track I wanted for my website's MP3 music player. I would then fix some of the clips, and do it again to get the maximum preamp volume that I could!

It's nice that Sam made a complete guide for this. I used Audacity as well. Gets the job done!

[NecroPhile]

Okay. Before I edit my post, I want to figure out what I can say. I swear I'm not testing you, but I can't have any links to theisozone.com at all? Not to the separate forum section for example? Can I at least say that it can be found there without posting any links? Can someone help me out here?

Don't link to sites like isozone at all.  Their sole purpose is to distribute roms and isos, and Aaron doesn't want PCEFX associated with such sites.

It's really not that hard to use Google.  The intended page is literally the first result when searching for "blast wind sega saturn corrected music".

[vacantplanets]

Okay. Before I edit my post, I want to figure out what I can say. I swear I'm not testing you, but I can't have any links to theisozone.com at all? Not to the separate forum section for example? Can I at least say that it can be found there without posting any links? Can someone help me out here?

Don't link to sites like isozone at all.  Their sole purpose is to distribute roms and isos, and Aaron doesn't want PCEFX associated with such sites.

It's really not that hard to use Google.  The intended page is literally the first result when searching for "blast wind sega saturn corrected music".

Okay. I removed the links.

It's a shame that this exact method can't be used with HuCards. I wonder if someone will eventually find a way to increase the volume of the music in those games.

I just tried this with the Gradius and the Salamander Deluxe Packs for Saturn and it wasn't able to extract all of the audio files. Possibly because there are multiple games--it's put together differently? Must be inside the data track like NightWolve said. Sophisticated hacking doesn't sound easy. 

[NightWolve]

Yeah, some music for PCE/TG-16 games would be coded in PSG, so it's in the data track. The other possibility is ADPCM, but that's mostly used for voice-acting, not music.

[o.pwuaioc]

Thanks for this! I haven't tested it out yet, but I can't wait to fire up the Saturn and do so!

[tknjin]

Okay. Before I edit my post, I want to figure out what I can say. I swear I'm not testing you, but I can't have any links to theisozone.com at all? Not to the separate forum section for example? Can I at least say that it can be found there without posting any links? Can someone help me out here?

Don't link to sites like isozone at all.  Their sole purpose is to distribute roms and isos, and Aaron doesn't want PCEFX associated with such sites.

It's really not that hard to use Google.  The intended page is literally the first result when searching for "blast wind sega saturn corrected music".

Okay. I removed the links.

It's a shame that this exact method can't be used with HuCards. I wonder if someone will eventually find a way to increase the volume of the music in those games.

I just tried this with the Gradius and the Salamander Deluxe Packs for Saturn and it wasn't able to extract all of the audio files. Possibly because there are multiple games--it's put together differently? Must be inside the data track like NightWolve said. Sophisticated hacking doesn't sound easy. 

I remember there was a user here on the forums who has been making hu cards along with the chips n stuff for some of the games.  I can't remember his name right now, however, it was pretty impressive to see that he was able to do such a thing.  He was french if I can recall...or some kind of european.

[Opethian]

I like the OST to this game. good Technosoft. Liked the branching paths concept too.
thanks

[vacantplanets]

Hey everyone I just uploaded Sapphire, Lords Of Thunder, Gate of Thunder, Rayxanber III, and Rondo of Blood. 

Maybe I should make a new thread in PCE CD forum for these? I'm sure not everybody comes in here. 

Thanks for this! I haven't tested it out yet, but I can't wait to fire up the Saturn and do so!

Let me know how it sounds guys! It's touchy for something like Blast Wind that was made very unbalanced. I'm sure the others will be fine because they don't even really need it in the first place--except Rayxanber III because of those damn sound effects. I'll turn that one up more too if I have to.

Oh and thanks for letting me keep my account, NecroPhile. 

[SamIAm]

Cool!

Terraforming is another game that benefits a lot from this, IMO. The blue homing weapon is extremely and gratingly loud otherwise.

Careful about Rondo of Blood - I amped that one myself once, but I tend to prefer the original levels because of that PSG music that plays before boss fights. If you amp the CD tracks, then that becomes really quiet.

[vacantplanets]

Cool!

Terraforming is another game that benefits a lot from this, IMO. The blue homing weapon is extremely and gratingly loud otherwise.

Careful about Rondo of Blood - I amped that one myself once, but I tend to prefer the original levels because of that PSG music that plays before boss fights. If you amp the CD tracks, then that becomes really quiet.

Yeah, the Terraforming weapon sound is horrible. But is it as bad as Rayxanber 3?  I dare someone to compare them!

Hmm, I think I know which Rondo track you're talking about--and you know what? I won't mind missing that noise at all! I never realized that was PSG, but now it makes sense. That track has to be the worst piece of audio coming from that game. It's the perfect one to get turned down!