Blue streaks, speeds by
I like Sonic The Hedgehog.

I also like the synthesizer that's most associated with this Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Styled Sonic The Hedgehog doing the spooky dance, a synth known as the YM2612! Come with me, let me take you on a brief journey into a world before CD audio, a world of 9 channel sound.
A world of BLAST PROCESSING.
A brief history lesson!
Way back when before the Sega Genesis (Or Mega Drive for my friends across the sea) released, the video game console market was more or less dominated by various types of musical synthesizers, however, most of them at the time hadn't more than a few c hannels and a plain "Beepy" tone to the games that came with the console. This all changed, however, when the Sega Genesis came out in 1988 (A whole two years before the SNES!)It was one of the first of the 4th generation consoles, with that, sparked what many have said the console wars. Being the first console to boast real, 16 bit action, they didn't want to just look the part, they wanted to sound it, too.
This is why they settled on this little plastic thing.

This is a Yamaha 2612 (AKA YM2612 (Also ALSO known as the OPN2 chip)), this bad boy can generate a whopping 6 simultaneous tones, that means it's multitimbral! This meant that not only did you see vastly superior graphics to the competition, you also got to hear some "radical" tracks, too!
(I'm so sorry Mobile users...)
Green Hill Zone
Game: Sonic The Hedgehog
Developed by: Sonic Team
Year: 1991
Note: No need for an introduction, I'm sure everyone and their dog has heard this track in some form.
City - McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure
Game: McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure
Developed by: Treasure
Year: 1993
Note: You would think this would be some sort of title to pass up, I mean, it's McDonalds??? But it's also made by Treasure, who went on to make a TON of banger games like Gunstar Heroes, Ikaruga, and even Wario World. I'd give this game a whirl, with your preferred method of obtaining it.
Theme of Seven Force
Game: Gunstar Heroes
Developed by: Treasure
Year: 1993
Note: I can't not put this here, how could I not? It's also one of my friend's favorites.
Reincarnated Soul
Game: Castlevania Bloodlines
Developed by: Konami
Year: 1994
Note: Not much of a Castlevania person, consider this an honorable mention, just because the years increase, doesn't necessarily indicate an increase in quality, that said, this is a really good track.
As you can see, the YM2612 synthesizer has a lot of variation. All things primordially start with stanky twang cyanobacteria, and then evolve into various species of twang. The two Treasure developed titles have a distinct crunch and clarity, while the one from Konami has a "clanky" soundfont. Of course, we can't forget Sonic The Hedgehog and its signature percussive hits.
Nerd Stuff
Hydrocity Zone Act 1 - Oscilloscope Deconstruction
Take a look at this video for me. Tell me what you see?
Pretty nifty. Let me explain.
The YM2612 has 9 channels to produce each instrument, this is all it has, and all it has under it's disposal. However, some channels are instead assigned jobs. This means channel 6 (In this video, the channels go form 0, but let's ignore that) is the "DAC", which is basically a nerdy way of saying "the part that can play the audio samples", this means drums, percussion, and voice samples.
Channels 1-5 are your regular old channels. Musicians would have to program instruments, each instrument had an algorithm assigned to it, which is how you can get some instruments that sound like trumpets, but some that sound like "twangy" low bass.

The rest are what are known as PSG channels. They're much more primitive compared to the rest of the channels. The first three channels can play what are known as square waves, a type of wave that, well, it looks like a square. You can hear it particularly in the PSG here, the particular "Beepy" that the older consoles had, but came not from limitation, but form intention. The 4th was the "Noise", wave, an 8 bit sort of crunch that was particularly useful for hats and cymbals. The Genesis had only so much room, and only one DAC channel, so why bother making samples when you could use PSG-4 for it instead?

All thanks to the versatility of the YM2612, there's so much variation to how many of the gameso n the system can sound. Knowing a proficient amount of assembly for the Z80 processor, one can program "drivers" for their games.
Wait, you serious? Drivers?
Yep, before we all had to install our audio drivers, game developers on the Genesis were cracking open the hardware to make their own way to interface their own ways of making music.Sonic 1, 2, and 3 alone have their own drivers, each one has their own quality of DAC, due to how they may compress the sound effects played through it to fit on the cart, and man, does that "Seeegaaa" jingle take up space.
And then there's Traveler's Tales.
Title Screen - Toy Story AKA Strange Things by Randy Newman
Ok.
The writer in front of you takes a deep breath...
What, the actual hell is going on here.
... Okay.
This... Track, uses some sort of custom driver that breaks the entire convention of what I just described above about all the channels. What it is, in the simplest of terms, is basically a .mod file driver. You heard me right, John Burton, a man who's gone on to do a lot of other technical wonders in Traveler's Tales, the developers behind this game, and many others, wrote an audio driver that could play songs that were normally reserved for the Commodore Amiga, so essentially, he wrote a god damn midi player. All of it is piped through the DAC, which means it's technically all playing in Mono...
And they only do this for the title screen, too. This is the only time that this magical marvel of technology is used.
And it's in a licensed Toy Story game, no less. Everything else is ran through a driver known as GEMS! I gotta say, personally, that I adore this. And it makes sense, too. This is the title screen, as good as it is, it needs something like this to leverage it:

... Oh, speaking of GEMS
GEMS.
The Berenstain Bears Camping Adventure - Title Screen
Modular synths is hard, so is programming instruments for the YM2612, and so is writing a driver for your game.
Say hello to the Genesis Editor for Music and Sound effects!

The fact of the matter is, many developers either didn't have the resoruces, or they wanted to simply throw something out quick. The tool came bundled with some nifty hardware, a dev-kit essentially, that you plugged from your computer to the Genesis itself, to play the music you create, previewing it in real-time! This came with a whole standard soundfont of various instruments you could use as a base for your soundtracks. The fortunate thing is, this tool allowed many composers to get off the ground and create their own music.
The unfortunate part was, this lead to a time where many games sounded quite... Lazy... Don't get me wrong, there were certainly some soundtracks that totally stood out, but it would not be uncommon where, unfortunately, composers would use the default instruments, and it would result in a samey kind of energy in a handful of titles.
This video below goes into great detail about how GEMS could be used to make music, and much better detail on the impact it had as a whole.
I freaking LOVE the 16 bit era
I could continue to rattle on and on about the ym2612, but I don't think I can say it was the absolute best chip out there, take the ym2608, for example. That alone outshines the 2612 in many departments. The 2612 was made specifically for the Genesis, it was made to be affordable for a home console such as the Genesis, that's, at least, what I can gather from my reading.My point is, I just love the 16 bit era in general, not just the sound or sights of a single console, hell, my love extends to many of the later consoles, such as the PS1, N64, etc. I just almost wish we never advanced to the ultra-realism we have now. I almost wish that computers nowadays stayed themed like the vaguely-brown bricks, but, you know, with a modern flair.
That's some nostalgia tinted glasses right there.
Alright, that's about it. I'm hungry, gonna go make me some sandwiches.
...
Oh, uh, you might want these.
You are handed a slip of paper
