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They used the main CPU for doing the sound, like on the GBA, which is horribly inefficient and leads to shitty mixing quality, shitty sample rate, much lower polyphony, (and less sound channels in general goes without saying).
I don't know if more memory would help... while sound sample quality is good, the SNES could also do a lot with only 64KB, and seeing as how N64 games were 8MB and up, you'd think if they devoted like 512KB or so to that they could put out some better tunes. (And you know they could, Shadows of the Empire devoted a whole lot more)
Hell, I've heard better music out of a Genesis than in some SNES games. Try Mega Turrican, or something. But then some N64 games really had some good music like Goldeneye. Methinks developers just didn't have a handle on the N64. The N64 is like the PS2, requires a certain kind of finesse to get it to work at its maximum potential.
Some developers see these as technical limitations and try to achieve something reasonable to work around them, and attempt to make the components fit their objective as best possible, others see them as just another part of the system and try to integrate it with their goal as best possible, and try to use each component the way it was suited.
Simply put the first design a game and then try to make it fit the hardware. The second design a game from the point of view of the hardware, and the game takes shape according to what they can do with the hardware. The first group may have a more interesting concept, but the second is based on successful exploitation of the system and not by a good brainstorm session by people who know nothing about the hardware's internals, they just have this idea.
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