>>43172130>DS limitations forcing them to keep the music "videogamey" (i.e. good) so it's not just ear rape.I think you're on the right track, but not drawing the right conclusion. Consider the following tracks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAygbOuT2rQThey have two pulse channels (which have only 3 different instruments they can use), a single wave channel with only 3 volume settings (not counting silence) and a shoddy white noise generator, and they went "hey let's emulate a japanese block". They succeeded - using only two pulse channels so that they could free up the wave channel for a shakuhachi and the noise channel for sound effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haOA0A6nJ84Listen to the guitar in this track. You'll notice that, every time the chord changes, you can hear somebody sliding their fingers across a guitar. This happens at natural points in the track, and this isn't the only track it happens in either (for example, it also happens in the credits theme). They went out of their way to implement an unappealing sample just to make the guitar sound a tiny bit more intimate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKjnlySgqOkListen to this fucking track. You don't need me to tell you why this is significant when talking about limitations. DS Pokemon games use glorified MIDIs, and they went "nah fuck that" and made this anyway.
Modern Pokemon games don't do this. There's no achievement in emulating a shakuhachi, fingers sliding across a guitar, or having an obscenely high audio quality because there's no limitations holding composers back, no pre-established standards for them to try and prove themselves better than. In lots of cases, this can be freeing, but in other cases, this can lead to complacency - with no standard to try and beat, it's hard to distinguish "good" and "great".
I once heard that limitations breed creativity, and I think this is the sort of phenomenon they're trying to describe.
