How did Nintendo get the SCP 700 chip?

[Ricardo Cividanes da Silva]

I am researching the story of Super Nintendo and I came across a hole in all the texts I read.
All texts say that Ken Kutaragi has created the sound chip of Super Nintendo/Super Famicom, the SPC 700. Ok.
But no text says how it happened. Kutaragi created the chip on his own and only then to Nintendo, looking for a sound system, did he arrived at Sony? Or Kutaragi sought Nintendo on his own, which, for me, makes no sense.
Does anyone know the real story?

[Austin]

Kuturagi was long at Sony well before the Super Famicom was even a thing.

 

How he came to create the chip? Who knows. Nintendo likely just contracted Sony since they were a tech giant at the time, and Ken was put on the project.

[Ricardo Cividanes da Silva]

4 minutes ago, Austin said:

Kuturagi was long at Sony well before the Super Famicom was even a thing.

 

How he came to create the chip? Who knows. Nintendo likely just contracted Sony since they were a tech giant at the time, and Ken was put on the project.

In fact, Kutaragi was already working on this chip on his own. The question is: Had Nintendo asked him or he did so deliberately and only then did Nintendo sought Sony that he was already super advanced thanks to Kutaragi?

[jeffythedragonslayer]

In secret, evidently: https://www.giantbomb.com/ken-kutaragi/3040-48015/

[Ricardo Cividanes da Silva]

I I read this article. 

It say:

" Ironically, the father of the playstation began working in secret with Nintendo when they needed a wave table sound chip for Nintendo's upcoming new 16-bit system as Sony expressed little interest in the video game industry at the time."

 

And that is the problem. Japanese companies do not work like this. Kutaragi could even do, but Nintendo is not a deal such a deal with a single person.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

10 minutes ago, Ricardo Cividanes da Silva said:

I I read this article. 

It say:

" Ironically, the father of the playstation began working in secret with Nintendo when they needed a wave table sound chip for Nintendo's upcoming new 16-bit system as Sony expressed little interest in the video game industry at the time."

 

And that is the problem. Japanese companies do not work like this. Kutaragi could even do, but Nintendo is not a deal such a deal with a single person.

You might even say it was luck left to heaven.

[WavyGravy]

Companies will allow engineers to work on side projects at times. Mega Man 2 was created in the team's spare time since Capcom wasn't interested in doing a sequel officially. 

I believe Kutaragi developed the chip in his own time and showed it to Nintendo, who wanted it. If you're Sony, and Nintendo shows up and says, "Hey, one of your engineers did this super cool thing and we want about 50 million of them," do you get mad at the engineer or do you ask if they'd like some CD-ROM drives to go with those?

Edited December 12, 2023 by WavyGravy
Bloody autocorrect

[jeffythedragonslayer]

16 minutes ago, WavyGravy said:

Companies will allow engineers to work on side projects at times.

[rant]

In 2016 I dropped out of the interview process at City State Entertainment and decided to work for myself after I was told me no side projects are allowed and that it's non-negotiable.  A friend told me that sounded "shady as hell; good decision." A year or so later, I saw the recruiter I talked to complain online about how hard it was to hire people, and knew I had made the right decision.  Really is a shame when companies try to take advantage of starry eyed young graduates who won't put their foot down.  It wasn't the first time a potential employer in the game industry tried to do that kind of thing to me either.

 

So, I thank you for giving me some god-tier ammunition of a story I can fire back the next time I encounter this controlling behavior.

[/rant]

16 minutes ago, WavyGravy said:

Mega Man 2 was created in the team's spare time since Capcom wasn't interested in doing a sequel officially.

I'm sure glad that they did!

Edited December 12, 2023 by jeffythedragonslayer

[Cris1997XX]

1 hour ago, WavyGravy said:

Companies will allow engineers to work on side projects at times. Mega Man 2 was created in the team's spare time since Capcom wasn't interested in doing a sequel officially. 

I believe Kutaragi developed the chip in his own time and showed it to Nintendo, who wanted it. If you're Sony, and Nintendo shows up and says, "Hey, one of your engineers did this super cool thing and we want about 50 million of them," do you get mad at the engineer or do you ask if they'd like some CD-ROM drives to go with those?

There's also the fact that the PS1 uses a souped up version of the SPC700, with extra RAM and three times the amount of sound channels available. But most developers clearly preferred using redbook audio 😂

[KulorXL]

3 hours ago, Cris1997XX said:

There's also the fact that the PS1 uses a souped up version of the SPC700, with extra RAM and three times the amount of sound channels available. But most developers clearly preferred using redbook audio 😂

Actually sequenced music was very common on the PS1! Pretty much all the Square games including Final Fantasy still used sequenced music, for example. Metal Gear Solid, Ape Escape, Crash Bandicoot...

[Austin]

Yeah, it’s a lot more common than I think people realize. Same with the Saturn.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Austin

[WavyGravy]

For its time, it really is a hell of a chip, it just needs RAM, good drivers, and good samples to really shine. It's honestly not surprising that Sony didn't need to change it much for the PS1. We can get two of those things (drivers and samples)  on the SNES and those help mitigate the small memory but that'll always be an issue. Unlike Kirk's plans to shoehorn Mode 0 into everything, SNES audio drivers are definitely an area where it seems like a lot can be done with streaming, sample EQ, softsynth, etc. I think KungFuFurby has a list of drivers and the features they use, and a lot of the time stuff like the sample modulation capability isn't even available to the composers. 

[Cris1997XX]

I've heard something about keeping the sound driver inside the SNES' main RAM, while all the samples are inside the ARAM. Maybe that would help with the space limitations? I'm not sure if it would add any lag though

[jeffythedragonslayer]

15 minutes ago, Cris1997XX said:

I've heard something about keeping the sound driver inside the SNES' main RAM, while all the samples are inside the ARAM. Maybe that would help with the space limitations? I'm not sure if it would add any lag though

If you do it like that, what I think you'll end up with is the driver designed in two components so that the 5A22-side is telling the SPC-side what to do.  I think it could sound fine so long as the sound engineer does a good job.  Probably KungFuFurby would be a good person to ask if they've seen someone do that before.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

3 hours ago, Austin said:

Yeah, it’s a lot more common than I think people realize. Same with the Saturn.

Yeah, the following are all examples of sequenced music on the Saturn:

 

[WavyGravy]

Saturn's audio setup is actually really interesting. Weird and over-designed like the rest of the machine, but interesting. IIRC, it's got 32 channels that can either be used as sample channels or be chained into each other to create operators for an FM voice. So, you could do 16 2-op FM voices, 8 4-op FM voices, 10 2-op voices with 12 sample voices, 1 32-op FM voice (not sure why you'd want to, but you could) or any combination like that. Bit of an own goal that it lacks hardware decompression, though, making the extra memory compared to the PS1 less advantageous than it would seem on paper.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Just now, WavyGravy said:

Saturn's audio setup is actually really interesting. Weird and over-designed like the rest of the machine, but interesting. IIRC, it's got 32 channels that can either be used as sample channels or be chained into each other to create operators for an FM voice. So, you could do 16 2-op FM voices, 8 4-op FM voices, 10 2-op voices with 12 sample voices, 1 32-op FM voice (not sure why you'd want to, but you could) or any combination like that. Bit of an own goal that it lacks hardware decompression, though, making the extra memory compared to the PS1 less advantageous than it would seem on paper.

Audio memory both systems only have 512KB of RAM, so the lack of compression really hurts it. Though the ability to do FM Synth is probably to help make up for that. You also have the 68000 there which can in theory do some basic ADPCM decompression, but it's severely crippled by having to fight the SCSP for RAM access. There's also a pretty nice DSP in the SCSP. One homebrew dev was able to get the SCSP DSP to decode up to 8 ADPCM channels. Sega themselves had the SCSP DSP assist with ADX Decompression by giving it the task of doing the final multiplication tasks with the coefficient values to finish the decompression.

 

A few of the examples I linked do actually use the FM Synth capabilities as well. There was also this Game Maker demo someone did where they used those features to play the Space Harrier theme:

 

[Ricardo Cividanes da Silva]

As far as my research has arrived, there are two versions for this Kutaragi involvement with Nintendo:
1) Kutaragi created the SPC700 using Sony's features and technology, thinking of improving Famicom's sound. Sony's direction discovered and gave Kutaragi a tail food that even though the chip. When Nintendo sought Sony, behind a sound chip, they already had the solution practically ready and Kutaragi worked with Nintendo to bring technology to Super Famicom.

2) Nintendo sought Sony looking for a sound technology for its new video game, but heard a no Sony. Kutaragi, however, entered the conversation and offered the chip he was creating. Nintendo accepted and they developed the chip for Nintendo, with Sony's direction only being warned about it when everything was ready and Nintendo was ready to sign the contract. Sony executives were pissed off, but Ohga thought Kutaragi had taken the correct action.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

Don't think I shared this before here, but the SPC700's development feels rushed to me, because the manual only dedicates a single line to each opcode instead of a whole page like the Super FX chip does.  So, I decided to rectify that here: https://sneslab.net/wiki/SPC700_Opcode_Matrix

Edited December 14, 2023 by jeffythedragonslayer

[CMR]

delete

Edited February 15 by CMR