POLL:Which arcade companies had the best sound chips?

[Digi.k]

namco and konami for me

I don't usually like IREM's music but I love the stuff on Image Fight

[Tatsujin]

for me, capcom also had one of the oddest sounds back in CPS-1 times! didn't sound that bad back then, but lissen to it now, no sanks!
they always were the graphic beast!

[geise]

I voted Sega and Other.  The other is for the Konami GX hardware.  All of Konami's PCB's had great sound around the late 80's through the 90's, but their GX board had amazing sound.  Metamorphic Force is by far my favorite Konami game for sound/music.  For Sega I love the game Quartet.  That music is just amazing. 

Sega and Data East was almost a tie for me.  Data East had some great sounding games.  Boogie Wings comes to mind.

[TR0N]

SNK>Konami>Capcom  :-"

[Tatsujin]

SNK>Konami

 

[ToiletKid]

Listening to some late 80's and early 90's Namco games blows me away. You hear the soundtrack quality (both the sound and songs themselves) to Ordyne, Legend of Valkyrie, Dragon Sabre? Almost sounds CD quality (in fact, it has more personality). Other companies around the same time seem to have a tinnier sound..like Sega Genesis type.

[nodtveidt]

I voted SNK and Capcom, but with Capcom, that only applies to when they started using QSound chips.

[rag-time4]

namco and konami for me

I don't usually like IREM's music but I love the stuff on Image Fight

I'm with Digi here... I love the sound quality / instrumentation of the arcade Image Fight.

I loved the vocal effects in 1984's Kung Fu Master, as well as the quality of the music. In general Irem's sound effects and particularly the instruments are very rich and sharp sounding to me.

I also voted for Capcom, mostly because of the voices and sound quality of Street Fighter 1. I really think that the amount of voices was outstanding for 1987 and really made the game stand out. I'm not talking only about the post-fight voice clips, but also the vocal effects heard during basic punches and kicks, which were totally removed from the Street Fighter 2 games.