Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Genesis Soundtrack (2016)

Is it bad that I think Jun Senoue on Sonic 4 did better music than on Superstars? Like I literally don't know what the hell Jun was cooking when he made the boss themes for that game, especially Fang's theme.
Haven't listened to the Superstars OST. Will get to it soon.
 
Is it bad that I think Jun Senoue on Sonic 4 did better music than on Superstars? Like I literally don't know what the hell Jun was cooking when he made the boss themes for that game, especially Fang's theme.
Finished listening to the Superstars OST...
The instrumentation doesn't even sound bad to me, it's just the fact Jun keeps using the same VSTs and samples for every song and you can tell right away which ones were made by him and which ones weren't. But I feel like people overexaggerate it. A lot of his songs are still pretty good. He just needs to stop using the same exact synths and drums in every song. Stop using the Sonic 1/2 snare all the time! ... But yeah Fang's theme is mid. Composition-wise I just found it kind of boring. Same with the boss theme he composed.
Even if I like most of his songs here quite a bit, the other composers carry the soundtrack.

BTW, somewhat unrelated, but I'm at school, and they literally just played Endless Possibility in the hallway during the passing period. They've played Sonic music before, and they are beyond based for that. They've played Back In Time like 5 times. One time they put Believe In Myself ver 1.
Another time they also played the Super Mario Land World 2 theme.
Edit 04/12/24: I think they just played Crush 40... and it's not even a Sonic song. It's "Is It You." TBH, never heard any Crush 40 music outside of the Sonic ones, but I really should.
They played Believe in Myself ver 1 again bro! I need to know who's playing these songs. Two Sonic related songs in one day (One isn't from Sonic but it's Crush 40 so idk).
 
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Finished listening to the Superstars OST...
The instrumentation doesn't even sound bad to me, it's just the fact Jun keeps using the same VSTs and samples for every song and you can tell right away which ones were made by him and which ones weren't. But I feel like people overexaggerate it. A lot of his songs are still pretty good. He just needs to stop using the same exact synths and drums in every song. Stop using the Sonic 1/2 snare all the time! ... But yeah Fang's theme is mid. Composition-wise I just found it kind of boring. Same with the boss theme he composed.
Even if I like most of his songs here quite a bit, the other composers carry the soundtrack.

BTW, somewhat unrelated, but I'm school, and they literally just played Endless Possibility in the hallway during the passing period. They've played Sonic music before, and they are beyond based for that. They've played Back In Time like 5 times. One time they put Believe In Myself ver 1.
Another time they also played the Super Mario Land World 2 theme.
My problem is that Jun uses a poor synthesized soundfont for creating Genesis-esque music and it just comes off as him not actually trying because of how dull, artificial and unGenesis the instruments sound, and the usage of the Sonic 1 & 2 drumkit just doesn't work and sounds like he's trying really hard to make the music sound Genesis. The melodies themselves are fine if not good in most of them, it's just the soundfont that sort of hurts them. Even the other composers managed to make more Genesis sounding instrumentation tracks with Tails' Frozen Base in Superstars and it sounds pretty good, it actually sounds closer to something from a Genesis game like Super Fantasy Zone. In terms of stuff I like from him in the game, I was honestly shocked to find out Sky Temple was composed by him because it sounds really good despite the drumkit, the instruments sound good and the melody is catchy and lively.

Also yeah, pretty based of your school to play Sonic music.
 
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My problem is that Jun uses a poor synthesized soundfont for creating Genesis-esque music and it just comes off as him not actually trying because of how dull, artificial and unGenesis the instruments sound, and the usage of the Sonic 1 & 2 drumkit just doesn't work and sounds like he's trying really hard to make the music sound Genesis. The melodies themselves are fine if not good in most of them, it's just the soundfont that sort of hurts them. Even the other composers managed to make more Genesis sounding instrumentation tracks with Tails' Frozen Base in Superstars and it sounds pretty good, it actually sounds closer to something from a Genesis game like Super Fantasy Zone. In terms of stuff I like from him in the game, I was honestly shocked to find out Sky Temple was composed by him because it sounds really good despite the drumkit, the instruments sound good and the melody is catchy and lively.

Also yeah, pretty based of your school to play Sonic music.
Yeah, that's a problem I have too. It feels like he's trying so hard to make his music sound like its from the Genesis, yet most of the time refuses to use Genesis-accurate FM instruments and just uses these weird synths. Like, did you see the unused version of the Main Menu theme that used those VST synths exclusively? The final version that uses mostly YM2612-like instruments sounds way better. But even then, it doesn't really fit with the rest of the OST because everyone else is doing fancy new stuff and Jun over here is making a 15 second loop with YM2612 synths. Sky Temple though, barely sounds like he's trying to make it sound "Genesis," aside from the drums.
While I like the Sonic 1/2 drums, they shouldn't be used in literally every song. Sonic 3 has way more variety in the samples.
 
Finished listening to the Superstars OST...
The instrumentation doesn't even sound bad to me, it's just the fact Jun keeps using the same VSTs and samples for every song and you can tell right away which ones were made by him and which ones weren't. But I feel like people overexaggerate it. A lot of his songs are still pretty good. He just needs to stop using the same exact synths and drums in every song. Stop using the Sonic 1/2 snare all the time! ... But yeah Fang's theme is mid. Composition-wise I just found it kind of boring. Same with the boss theme he composed.
Even if I like most of his songs here quite a bit, the other composers carry the soundtrack.

BTW, somewhat unrelated, but I'm at school, and they literally just played Endless Possibility in the hallway during the passing period. They've played Sonic music before, and they are beyond based for that. They've played Back In Time like 5 times. One time they put Believe In Myself ver 1.
Another time they also played the Super Mario Land World 2 theme.
Edit 04/12/24: I think they just played Crush 40... and it's not even a Sonic song. It's "Is It You." TBH, never heard any Crush 40 music outside of the Sonic ones, but I really should.
They played Believe in Myself ver 1 again bro! I need to know who's playing these songs. Two Sonic related songs in one day (One isn't from Sonic but it's Crush 40 so idk).
Ok, I'm just gonna edit this anytime the school plays Sonic music (and VGM in general) in the hallways. Why? Idk, because I feel it.
Please play His World. But that one has like one swear... just get a censored version or something idk.
 
My problem is that Jun uses a poor synthesized soundfont for creating Genesis-esque music and it just comes off as him not actually trying because of how dull, artificial and unGenesis the instruments sound, and the usage of the Sonic 1 & 2 drumkit just doesn't work and sounds like he's trying really hard to make the music sound Genesis. The melodies themselves are fine if not good in most of them, it's just the soundfont that sort of hurts them. Even the other composers managed to make more Genesis sounding instrumentation tracks with Tails' Frozen Base in Superstars and it sounds pretty good, it actually sounds closer to something from a Genesis game like Super Fantasy Zone. In terms of stuff I like from him in the game, I was honestly shocked to find out Sky Temple was composed by him because it sounds really good despite the drumkit, the instruments sound good and the melody is catchy and lively.

Also yeah, pretty based of your school to play Sonic music.
So, from what I've heard, Sky Temple Zone might actually have been composed by Jun but arranged by Rintaro Soma. Not 100% sure if that's true, but it would explain why the instrumentation is better than a lot of the Jun songs lol.
 
So, from what I've heard, Sky Temple Zone might actually have been composed by Jun but arranged by Rintaro Soma. Not 100% sure if that's true, but it would explain why the instrumentation is better than a lot of the Jun songs lol.
To be fair I couldn't tell if it was 100% him since I haven't seen anything that concrete except from people in YouTube comments going "OMG JUN ACTUALLY MADE A BANGER WITH HIS SHITTY SOUND FONT" and considering it's the only track that gives off Jun vibes harder than most of the other composer's tracks like Tee Lopes' and sounds similar to the Golden Capital Zone tracks, I'd just took it for granted. Perhaps they both worked together for that track?
 
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