This is something I've been wondering about ever since hearing about it in maybe 1 or 2 translated Japanese interviews (getting info on what audio work on the SNES was like seems incredibly sparse compared to the wealth of anecdotes available for other systems) and was hoping people here could maybe clear things up.
Basically, what I heard was that if you wanted custom samples for your game Nintendo required you to mail over the samples to them, let them convert the samples to the appropriate format, and then wait for them to mail the processed assets back to you, and that this was very frustrating not just due to the wait but also due to them not always doing a great job with the results.
Is this true and if so, why? The best reason I could think up is that this was a consequence of Nintendo locking down the SNES so hard after the rampant bootleg industry for the NES, so they wanted to make unlicensed development as difficult as possible.
I can imagine this would have killed any semblance of an iterative workflow. You'd basically have one shot at getting it all right, have to plan out everything rigorously and then simply hope for the best.
Basically, what I heard was that if you wanted custom samples for your game Nintendo required you to mail over the samples to them, let them convert the samples to the appropriate format, and then wait for them to mail the processed assets back to you, and that this was very frustrating not just due to the wait but also due to them not always doing a great job with the results.
Is this true and if so, why? The best reason I could think up is that this was a consequence of Nintendo locking down the SNES so hard after the rampant bootleg industry for the NES, so they wanted to make unlicensed development as difficult as possible.
I can imagine this would have killed any semblance of an iterative workflow. You'd basically have one shot at getting it all right, have to plan out everything rigorously and then simply hope for the best.