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"The Decisive Battle" is missing its vibraslapclap (which sounds like a hand clap). Tested on both SNESAmp (SNESAPU) and foobar 2000 GEP. The vibraslap doesn't play ingame on ZNES or Higan, either.

If it doesn't play in Higan, do you have a recording from hardware that demonstrates what it's actually supposed to sound like?

This video claims to be a hardware recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52CN6raI2JA#t=7m10s

None of its percussion sounds seem like a vibraslap to me, though. Maybe OP could reference a specific timing to point it out?

I'm surprised none of you remember the slap. That video was likely not taken on an SNES given that the slap isn't heard, although I think the slap was programmed to swap out for SFX (you only hear it when nothing at all is going on). Moreover, I think "The Decisive Battle" is the only song which uses it. The CD rips are apparently hard to find these days on the 'net... all the rips pretty much everywhere are from SPCs, as evidenced by the absence of the slap. Blue Laguna hosted the CD rips for years, but they're gone now.

But hey, any of you who still have the SNES game can go fight Welk and hear the goodness.

Edit: I think you're right... I confused the instrument names. I guess it was called a clap, in that it made a clapping sound. I remember it very clearly though. The clap happens about a third of the way through the song, between the first stall and the organ melody.

Here's another, if that one's no good to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCmH_sNHAs#t=3m00s

I'm don't know what sound you're looking for here, or why you don't accept that first video as having been played on a real SNES. Is the sound present in this second version?

Why don't you record video of your own SNES to demonstrate? (I no longer own the cart, but I don't recall anything different from what we seem to have already.)


Are you sure this isn't something exclusive to whatever CD recording you're referring to?

I own the official CDs, and they sound 100% identical to a modern SPC player or SNES emulator. Old SPC players and old SNES emulators played some sounds wrongly, though.

There is absolutely no vibraslap instrument in FF6, and I do not think Uematsu ever used this instrument (although I might be wrong). He at least did not use it before Final Fantasy VIII. I suspect this whole thing is a pure invention by the OP's imagination.

I also converted all instruments songs and sound effects from FF6's SNES ROM into MIDI in order to re-insert them in the GBA version. If there was anything fancy about them, I'd probably already know by then.

I am not even sure about which "Decisive battle" you're talking about. Is it the regular boss theme, the "imortant boss" theme, or one of the last bosses theme ? (I do not think you refer to the latter since those are usually called "Dancing Mad", but who knowns).

It's the regular boss theme, and there's a clapping sound. Two of them, accompanying the hard drum sound. I know it's there because it was the most distinctive part of the song. I distinctly remember hearing them on real SNES playing on CRT TV in the 1990s. I never owned the game, but I did borrow it for a very lengthy period way back when.

The oldest fan MIDI renditions also feature the clap.
http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff6/midis/bossbattl.mid

And that first video looks like it was taken from Retroarch.

Bregalad you should listen to the CDs again.

I'm not sure what the MIDI demonstrates. People made lots of unusual choices for instruments with those, especially back in the mid 90s when they were likely to be played on Windows 95's OPL3 set.

I think probably what you want to do is hack the SPC to replace the snare sound with a clap sound that you like?

Nah, would like to have playback of the clap as it was on the SNES. Please cease your trolling. I'm making a reasonable request.

The only thing I hear to sound like a vibraslap is at 0:11 and 0:16 on this video.

I got the name of the instrument wrong. It's a clap, not a vibraslap. The videos are unreliable because they are made with emulation. If they were actual CD rips, then the clap would be heard at 0:17 and 0:19. It's easy to tell when it's a CD rip with Square's SNES OSTs because Uematsu ran the songs through a low-pass filter that makes the sound seem distant, grainy, and poor (which is why they aren't relied on anymore).

I'm not trolling. I suggested that because I honestly think it's the only way for you to hear the sound as you remember. I've made alternate versions of video game music in the past. I find it a fun activity.

You don't have any recorded demonstration of what it should sound like, and you've claimed that you can't find that recording anywhere. You've also rejected 2 hardware SNES recordings so far as being fake because they don't sound the way you remember, and/or you've invented some strange idea that the sound only happens in certain gameplay conditions?

Step 1 for you should be to demonstrate that it exists. Find a recording. Find a SNES and make a recording. Even just finding a second person who remembers the same thing would be a start. Until then the only solution I can possibly offer is accepting that your memory might be false, which happens. To this day I think Every Breath You Take by The Police has slightly different lyrics than it actually does, and the memory feels as real as anything to me.

I'm sure that it's not a false memory because I notice the lack of energy between the experience on the console vs the experience on the emulator. The energy is higher on the console because the clap heightens the "get up and go" of the song. I looked at the SPC in Super Jukebox and I think what's happening is channel 6 is failing to swap the crash cymbal at voice 36 for the clap. Not sure why that is, though it might well have nothing to do with the emulation... it could be a bad dump.

If I could prove the clap is in the sample set, then maybe that would be persuasive, but I know it's not easy to rip the samples from the ROM itself, let alone play them back with the correct tuning. The clap does feature in FFV (town theme "Harvest") and the two games largely used the same instrument set... probably not persuasive though.

I'll find someone else who has the CDs (and the game) and confirm from them.

In this GBA version, there's something that sounds kind of like a clap at 4:37, is that the part of the song you're referring to? I know you're talking about the original version of the game, but was wondering if it could be found in a more official alternate source. Whats funny is that I couldn't hear it when the song looped, but it's kind of hard to tell with all the sound effects going and I didn't put a lot of time into trying.
https://youtu.be/-dfhGueE-KA?t=4m33s

I don't trust SPC files much. I'm sure a lot of them have been re-dumped, but I remember a lot of (by now, really old) ones I had were often missing notes or had something screwed up at the beginning. It's just in the nature of it being a memory state dump rather than a code rip. I wouldn't rule out any SPC being bad, but those video recordings should be definitive.

I guess there's one other possibility.. there are different revisions of the game for bugfixes and such. Though I think the chances of them having made subtle changes the music are extremely remote, it's pretty much unthinkable and absurd, but I figured I'd mention it anyways. It's been 15+ years since I've played this game on cart, unfortunately (don't have it anymore).

I used Snessor95 to rip the sounds from the SNES ROM. There is indeed a snare sample in ROM, which is probably what I remember as the clap. It's very close to the clap sample in FFV SNES, which I was also able to extract.

Update: went over the SNESMusic.org SPC of "The Decisive Battle". Converted it to ROM with SPC2ROM and then looked at the samples with Snessor95. The sample in question isn't in the SPC at all (I set the search threshold to 50 bytes to make sure). But, it doesn't feature in any other songs either. I am positive it's supposed to play in "The Decisive Battle".