I was thinking about something the other day. So, until games started to be released on CDs, and even for a while afterwards, game music was almost exclusively "instrumental" only - not really instrumental, but in other words, no vocals. Lots of games used speech samples in-game, but even that was very limited, due to the limited storage capacity of cartridges - as well as the limitations of the sound hardware of those systems. So, I was wondering, were there ever any 16-bit cartridge-based games that used voice samples for music, as opposed to character speech? What I mean is, were there any games that used vocals in concert with music, as non-videogame music usually does? I'm not aware of any that did, but it doesn't seem impossible. I'm mainly interested in console games, but arcade games could be interesting too. Some GBA games did this, although GBA carts were a bit higher capacity than most 16-bit systems. So, what do you think?
On CD system like PC Engine there were many but I suppose you meant cartridge only? The most famous example of lyrics in a song on cartrdige based 16 bit system is probably the opening in Tales of Phantasia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3SA9LuqQgA
Yeah, I meant cartridge only. That's interesting, I wasn't aware that the intro to that game had lyrics. Thanks for sharing that!
Another example would be Arina stage theme song in Waku Waku 7 on Neo Geo: http://youtu.be/WTthukc5j7M?t=11m40s Not 16 bit but still a cartridge system, on N64 the vocal songs in Goemon games are crazy cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuSkxWVoDX4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKQbqyMDOLQ And of course the Great Mighty Poo song lol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdd4rBlsj2o
Sonic 3 has some "Woo" and "Come on" type samples in its music, that's about all I can think of... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBTAGVnfXAw
The sound/music in Beatmania for Wonderswan is by far the best of the entire library. Of course it was also the biggest cartrdige ever used for WS (16MB): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVcwad2th_M
Tommy Talarico is well known for having been one of the firsts (if not the first) to create BGM using samples on Mega Drive and Super NES. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=bvXX4J_b7Ek#t=485 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm7Yuq8GWV4 Gōketsuji Ichizoku Matrimelee on Neo-Geo http://tcrf.net/Matrimelee_(Neo_Geo) I think Tales of Phantasia uses the same technic (streaming) since parts of the intro miss lyrics when I launch this game on a PAL SNES with an old adaptater. Talking about voices in 16bits games, Mega-lo-mania has probably the most impressive sample speaches I ever heard in a Mega Drive game. For an unknown reason, the French version sounds better thant the English one. (I couldn't find a link on Youtube). Atari ST and Amiga have lots of music with sample speaches but I'm not sure OP wants to include computer games in this thread.
I was actually thinking about Earthworm Jim, but I don't think shrieking and wailing really counts as singing. You're right about EWJ2, though. I hadn't thought about that.
There are loads of games. Power Instinct on the SNES has loads of voice samples in the music as do many other SNES games. There's the famous one of Baby T-Rex which had loads of singing in the beta but it was reduced for the final game. The Japanese Goemon on the N64 has a fully singing intro that was removed from the western release although that's not 16bit.
I want to say Cannon Fodder, but I'm pretty sure the cartridge versions never got the digitized singing. On the Amiga on the other hand you got this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiYuq6Ac3a0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsMRe_QenvU Sega Genesis was pretty capable too. And. This. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKsUAywSyEg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG1H_88Vmh0
Another superb example is the intro of Cannon Fodder for Game Boy Color, yep, a 8-Bit portable console managing a sort of vocal intro:
