Judge Dredd | Mega Drive Longplay Playthrough [60 fps] 

The GEMS soundfont is being used in this game, like pretty much the entire western made library, the music is ear grating, almost ear piercing. Compare that to what Japan games used, and the sound on this thing is a travesty. I have heard far better on the Genesis, and this game is not it. But hey, you do you, if you like music that grates on the ears, by all means enjoy.

​@@Bloodreign1 I disagree. The songs doesn't sound noisy at all (example of ear piercing music: Dark Castle). It's pretty much a matter of taste. Heavenly Heaven sounds awesome to me in this version and the other songs sounds fine.

@@paoloretrogamer Once you hear how much smoother Japanese games usually tend to sound on the Genesis, then you start to see how little effort went into the sound of western made software on the console. Western developers could've done like Japanese developers, and make their own software sound drivers, but instead stuck with the ear killing GEMS soundfont. Once you hear something composed by, or using Hitoshi Sakimoto's sound drivers, you can never go back to the GEMS soundfont and hear it the same way again. I can also give you another shining example of how bad that GEMS soundfont was, Chakan. That game will absolutely destroy your ears.

@@inceptional Listen to the Thunder Force IV OST, then go back and listen to this games OST, tell me that the Genesis couldn't have done better with sound than this game. As for the SNES soundscape, in the right hands it was bliss, in some examples, like Plok, it can be phenomenal. But when a piss poor developer tended to create a game, and get someone not talented enough, even that sound chip can be ruined by bad music.

Thankyou! I re-used the technique in the SEGA Genesis game 'Body Count' (I did the background graphics for that game as well). I re-used all the sewer graphics (with some alteration) in the Incredible Hulk game as well. The 50% stipple worked a lot better back in period when the only displays around were CRTs. The pixels would blend into each other horizontally giving a perfect translucent effect.

(For context, I did most of the background graphics. I'm "BLIZZARD" in the credits) The game had to be released at the same time as the movie. The art department on the movie were really paranoid about releasing any concept art to us. The bits I got given were purposely colour photocopied multiple times so that they were degraded so much as to be unprintable in a magazine (which I guess is what they were worried about). After I did a few of the tilesets without any visual input from the movie (we only had an early draft of the script to go from), I was granted two visits to the film shoot at Shepperton Studios. When I got there, the only set that was intact that I hadn't yet started a tileset for, was the Hall of Justice set which is why the background graphics in those levels matches the film closely. To save money and studio space, the Halls of Justice set used to be the Janus Labs set. They filmed all the Janus Labs scenes, broke the Janus Labs set down and re-painted and rebuilt it to be the Halls of Justice set. On my visits to the film shoot I managed to get a bit more reference for the game. Things like the shuttle craft seen in the Justice One level being based on the shuttle in the film, the colour of the ABC Warbots matching the film version, that sort of thing. But yeah generally it was a bizarre situation of being tasked with making a video game based on a movie that you haven't seen yet. Luckily for 2000AD fans, most of the dev team on this game were already Judge Dredd fans so we added the extra levels in case we never got reference from the film studio in time.

@AnthonyRosbottom Cool thanks for all that insight 👍

That wasn't our fault. The movie studio were really tight with providing art reference for the film. The only reference we could get was the Halls of Justice set when I was allowed to visit the film shoot at Shepperton Studios. That's when I saw what the character looked like and could go back to the studio and describe him to the character artists. Like I said in an earlier comment, the game was contractually forced to be released at the same time as the movie. You can imagine it's hard to develop an accurate game based on a movie that is being created at the same time. :)

@@AnthonyRosbottom The more I learn about the woes of licensed games, the more I wonder how everybody manages to put things together in time. It's all fascinating! I've got a question There's way more game after the fight against Rico, where the movie's story ends. Was there a lot more planned for the film than ended up being shot, or was everything after the Rico fight your own adlib on stuff from the comics?

@@FusionArmorX Hi. The film script ends after the Rico fight. A lot of the game team were 2000AD fans so to make the game a decent length, we added locations and characters from the comics.

Lol I couldn't beat it