While playing basketball in high school, watching
basketball on Television, in video games, live or even listening on the radio,
I would often dream that I could be the guy on the court, the star. Often I
would visualize my self as the person on the TV screen or sometimes the coach.
I achieved this by simply squinting my eyes; even then I think I fooled my
self. I would even call the game as the announcer. While doing play by play, I
would often add sound effects to make the audio match the visual that was in my
mind. I wanted to be apart of it in some capacity. I loved the game.
Unfortunately my dream to be a NBA star was shot down by my 5’11 build. But
luckily I can still live my dream vicariously through one of the outlets
previously mentioned, video games. The video game I am going to be discussing
is the Sega Sports/2K series NBA 2K.
Since the game made its debut in
October 17, 1999 on the Sega Dreamcast it has continue to get better in both in
graphics and sound. 2K were one of the first basketball games to use 3D
graphics with full color and sound effects. The Dreamcast sound feature was the
best around at the time. The Dreamcast was equipped with a Yamaha
AICA Sound Processor with a 32-Bit ARM7 RISC CPU
operating at 45 MHz, 64 channel PCM/ADPCM
sampler (4:1 compression), XG MIDI support and 128 step DSP. The Dreamcast has
16 MB 64-bit 100 MHz main
RAM, with this power the 2K series was rich in sound design.
The series features live play by play done actually by
television personality in that role. In the beginning stages it was done by
local radio voices. Now it is done by the likes of the best in their field like
Clark Kellogg, Steve Kerr, Bill Walton and Hanna Storm. The sound effects
themselves are Foley work or actually recordings from an actual game. The player’s
actual voices are recorded for use in post game interviews. Though in the
beginning stages all sound were not evident like small things like the
squeaking of the shoes and velocity of impact. In some version there were sync
issues. This was mostly in part due to limitations. Limitations were due to
size of the disc (DVD), type of processors and lack of technology. Now bring
the game up the date, the sound design is beautiful. The environment is interactive
while the convolution reverb is right on for each arena. The voiceover work is
clear, concise and is exactly what one would expect while at a live basketball
event or watching it on TV but heighten for the consumer’s entertainment, And
for that I am grateful. The gaming experience is just great for the basketball
enthusiast. Especially some one who had dreams like me.
The music in the earlier version was syntheses sound
produced through midi or royalty free music. The music in the game lacking but
not really missed due to the good gameplay. Now fast forward to today. I didn’t
realize how much I missed the music aspect of it. The soundtrack now is litter
with Grammy Award winners like Eminem, Jay z and Daft Punk. The clarity,
spatial aspect and numbers of sound files uses really enrich the gameplay. The
Newest versions of the series can be found on systems such as Xbox 360, Xbox
One, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. Now the games are presented on Blu-Ray
dick and no longer DVD so the size of project can be larger making more room
for the sound design and it shows, Paired with the powerful sound card found in
the 7the generation systems the possibilities are endless and continue to get
better yearly.
No comments:
Post a Comment