ROM Hack Final Fantasy VI sound restoration!

[granville]

As many of you may know, the Final Fantasy ports to the GBA were pretty decent in general, but they contained some issues. Over bright graphics, some minor slowdown, glitches, and possibly most noticeable and glaring, the music wasn't as good in terms of instrumental quality. Turns out that all of those issues were the fault of TOSE, the people behind most ports of the FF series. Now, there is a hack for FF6 Advance that restores the music quality of the SNES version. Insulting that the music was purposefully screwed up and the minimal effort went into the port...

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/657/

I've tested it myself, and i'll be damned if i can tell any noticeable difference between the GBA and SNES versions anymore. The maker of this hack also did the same thing to the Final Fantasy V Advance port as well, again restoring the SNES quality music. He's learned a lot since then and has made FF6 even more perfectly ported. Bregalad not only fixed the instruments, he went into the data itself and resequenced the songs and fixed tempo issues as well. The work is absolutely amazing and a must try for those of you who were less than impressed by the quality of music in the GBA version.

That's not all though, Bregalad also inserted a streaming orchestral version of the famous opera scene. Have a look at what he's done-



Maybe i'm being childish, but that's pretty epic right there. So if you want to try this hack, get yourself a copy of the Europe version of the FF6A rom and patch it up. Sounds amazing and well worth it to try!

 

[FAST6191]

Always nice to see improvement hacks. FF5 was always my favourite of the pre 7 series but 6 was good too.

I might have to poke around the hack as well, I could always do with learning more about GBA sound methods.

 

[injected11]

If FF6A actually ran fully playable on my Supercard Lite, I'd be pretty excited by this. Loved the SNES music, and this is my favorite RPG. I'll still randomly start whistling a few of the themes while riding to class.

 

[Daizu]

Awesome, FFVI is a great game. I never did get around to finishing it so it'll be nice to go through the latest version of it with good sound.

 

[aragon]

Actually there is a sound restoration for FF5 by the same guy. Look here.

 

[FAST6191]

Just a nice bump to say the patch was updated

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/657/ (same link as before)


1.1 (march 14th 2011) : Fixed synchronisation issues in the intro, opera and ending. The opera streams were completely remade. A few small but significant fixes in many songs. This is likely to be the final version of the patch.

 

[hakujintanuki]

There is a lot of background hissing in the video in the first post. Is this unique to the patch? Unique to the video? Simply how it sounds when GBA sounds are recorded directly and not really noticable on the GBA?

Also, he didn't pick a very good version of the Opera... nor is it timed well. I'd actually prefer the SNES so the timing would at least be right.

 

[FAST6191]

That was for the first patch, the new one should have that sorted.

 

[nibbles27]

I find the older v1.1 is superior to v2.1 as version 2.1 uses exact snes conversion
v1.1 Still retains the sounds used in the advance version and actually is a bit better quality with some instruments

For reference here is the older version:

ff6a_sound_restore_v1,1.7z
https://www.sendspace.com/file/204gwa

 

[Localhorst86]

impressive necro-bump, though.