[HN Gopher] Monkey Island PC-speaker music player
___________________________________________________________________
Monkey Island PC-speaker music player
Author : ttsiodras
Score : 295 points
Date : 2021-07-27 11:08 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thanassis.space)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thanassis.space)
| ggambetta wrote:
| This brings up memories :)
|
| My mind was completely blown away by the early MOD players that
| somehow managed to play relatively high res music through the
| speaker. I have a vivid memory of playing Axel F and being in
| total disbelief!
| jug wrote:
| Yeah, I remember playing Suburbia myself, vocals and all.
| Melted my brain at the time!
| holoduke wrote:
| I am looking for an old mod player from 1990-3 Called something
| like fli player. With a full screen modus where you see 3
| circles red green and blue. Already looking for it for about 15
| years. If I could only find that player.
| drKarl wrote:
| Or Klisje para klisje
| abbeyj wrote:
| A classic: https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_m
| oduleid&qu...
|
| There's a web-based player so you can hear this MOD without
| having to download anything.
| alfonsodev wrote:
| So great and standalone, this should be added to ATMs, vending
| machines and the like :) Also could be added to your house ring
| bell ?
| rob74 wrote:
| I had it as a ringtone for a while (not the PC speaker version
| mind you)...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It can be easy sometimes, sitting where we do now in the era of
| smartphones and globe-spanning networks, to forget that teaching
| sand to think has been _hard._
|
| Videogames required a _lot_ of trickery to do what developers
| wanted them to do. And they succeeded.
|
| (As a fun parenthetical, it's enjoyable to consider that the
| studio that produced this game was LucasArts. This was one of the
| projects Lucas had his game studio create because he was gunshy
| about whether they could produce games that would enrich or
| dilute the Star Wars brand. He wanted them to do original IP
| first to verify they were, first and foremost, game creators. The
| studio's first published game was 1985, this game came out in
| 1990, and 1991 would see their first Star Wars game released).
| egypturnash wrote:
| There is also the fact that Lucas had licensed the game rights
| to Star Wars to Kenner along with the toys, in a deal that was
| very much in Kenner's favor. As long as Kenner paid them either
| 5% of their yearly profits on Star Wars toys and games or 100k,
| the deal would continue. They finally stopped paying in 1991.
|
| https://www.filfre.net/2021/02/the-second-coming-of-star-war...
| agys wrote:
| Slightly unrelated but MBR (Master Boot Record, @masterbootrec on
| Twitter) made 42 covers of classic game songs in heavy-metal
| chiptune style.
|
| Among the many fantastic pieces covered you'll also find the
| Monkey Island theme.
|
| The whole pack is available for free:
|
| http://mbrserver.com/warez.zip
|
| Please also appreciate the retro-ansi-gfx style of his
| productions!
| eloeffler wrote:
| The important question at hand here: When and how did you expose
| your nieces and nephews to Monkey Island and how did you
| introduce it to them? :D
|
| I would really like to share this experience with kids I know but
| I find it hard to find the right time and way to show it to them
| and to get them to play. Did you play it with them? Or just show
| it to them? On a computer or a phone?
|
| I'm so curious O:)
|
| Awesome project, too!
| ttsiodras wrote:
| I played the game with them, when they were very young. They
| loved every minute of it - with their uncle performing
| impromptu dramatization-translations :-)
|
| I am seriously considering playing it again with them this
| summer :-D
| eloeffler wrote:
| Cool, have fun then!
|
| I think I first played them at the age of 7 or 8.
|
| I bet the dramatization-translations must be the trick :)
| It's like an animated story book.
| kabouseng wrote:
| Monkey Island 1 and 2 is available on steam, even remastered if
| I remember correctly, to not damage their modern sensitive eyes
| that is used to high resolution graphics... Another recommended
| remaster is Full throttle...also available on steam and Xbox.
| nmg wrote:
| Big ups to full throttle, cinematic and fun, beautiful art &
| animation & voice acting, a game for kids that felt like it
| was made for grown ups - and vice versa.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Off topic somewhat: just playing through the Monkey Island
| enhanced versions on Steam. Still great stuff.
| jonplackett wrote:
| What is the device between the battery and the board?
| ttsiodras wrote:
| A USB tester - it just reports the voltage (5V) and the
| current. As you can see in the video, the current hovers around
| 10mA, spiking to 20mA when we use the speaker.
| [deleted]
| hereforphone wrote:
| I probably would have loved this game series. I couldn't play
| very long because I found the constant (tm) after words intrusive
| and definitely an impediment to immersion.
|
| I can't be the only one.
| sgt wrote:
| You are the Only One(tm).
| tommek4077 wrote:
| You fight talk like a dairy Farmer! (tm)
| adolfojp wrote:
| It was definitely a joke and it was in line with the humor of
| the game. The game broke the fourth wall all the time. One of
| the characters told you to buy the game Loom. The troll on the
| bridge was George Lucas with a troll mask on. They had a ton of
| anachronistic elements like soda vending machines in the age of
| piracy. At the end of the game Guybrush reveals that he learned
| to never pay more than 20 bucks for a video game.
| chucky wrote:
| It's a joke that probably made a lot more sense in the 90s.
| Back then people would use (tm) everywhere, in logos, whenever
| certain brands were mentioned, etc.
|
| In my opinion it fits the general humor of the game perfectly,
| but I can definitely see how it would could be annoying.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Wow, that was a joke? Did everyone but me just 'get' that, or
| was it a meme at the time (discussed regularly in forums) and
| I just wasn't in on it?
|
| But still annoying.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I was nineteen when the game came out and I got that joke.
| It's an important part of selling the broader joke that the
| world of Monkey Island is probably more of a pirate-themed
| amusement park, owned by a faceless corporation, than it is
| an actual world.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Interesting, thanks.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Of all DOS games I ever played, by far the coolest PC speaker
| music was in Star Control 2. Unfortunately (understandably) it
| was not loud enough, but it was great.
|
| MI music is great though, I speak it as a person who has LeChuck
| fanfare on a ringtone.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I was going to post the same thing about Star Control 2. I
| found a video to highlight it.
| https://youtu.be/nj8j7IGQP6E?t=188
|
| It needs to be emphasized that the game had hours of music.
| Every different race encountered, every mode of travel and even
| different planet types had different music. All through a PC
| Speaker and would run on a 286. The game was a technical marvel
| for the time.
| pierrebai wrote:
| I wonder if using RLE encoding would not have been but vastly
| simpler and more compact that the huffman encoding used. Just
| frequency + duration.
| camtarn wrote:
| The notes were already encoded as frequency and duration. The
| Huffman coding was required to get that down to an even smaller
| size.
|
| RLE might have helped for repeated notes - but I guess Huffman
| coding kinda compensates for that anyway, in the repeated notes
| will probably end up with shorter bit strings.
| ttsiodras wrote:
| > I wonder if using RLE encoding would not have been but vastly
| simpler and more compact...
|
| No, mate - it wouldn't. Don't be confused by the "printf"-dump;
| the Python script processed it into pairs of (frequency,delay).
| That is, when you see... 989 Hz @ 15209
| 989 Hz @ 15213 989 Hz @ 15218 784 Hz @ 15222
| 784 Hz @ 15226
|
| ...the data actually generated are: (989,
| 15222-15209), (784, ... -15222),
|
| Simply put: RLE can't do anything on them. The repetition has
| already been "cleaned out".
|
| I wouldn't have gone to Huffman compression if I had a simpler
| choice.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Wait, is it just me or does either of these two more recent songs
| sound a lot like the first one of those Monkey Island songs?
|
| ItaloBrothers - Stamp on the ground. 2009.
| https://youtu.be/cHcVU5cGUNE
|
| Basshunter - DotA. 2008. https://youtu.be/qTsaS1Tm-Ic
| robert-boehnke wrote:
| I don't hear it myself but you might be interested to learn
| that the DotA song derives from 2000's Daddy DJ by the band of
| the same name https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flL_2awF-QI
| codetrotter wrote:
| I love that song but never knew that the DotA song derives
| from it. Neat!
| SamBam wrote:
| What a great write-up. A huge amount of tricky concepts in a
| single project. This seems like it could be the capstone project
| for an advanced microcontrollers course.
|
| And, as someone who wants to program in more embedded systems, it
| tells me how high the cliffs are ahead of me...
| godot wrote:
| Oh man, I'm sure only people who've actually played the games
| back then can relate, but I got literal goosebumps upon hearing
| that music when I played that video. I think the fact that it's
| played from a PC speaker added that much more level of nostalgia.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| The pertinent question perhaps: How much wood could a woodchuck
| chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
|
| Hopefully the grand kids appreciate the theory/use of Huffman!
| ttsiodras wrote:
| :-)
|
| Well, if the bird in question used an LZ77 followed by Huffman,
| he could compress all that wood/chuck stuff down to almost
| nothing. So he could chuck a lot :-D
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Isn't that in Monkey Island 2?
| ricardo81 wrote:
| It is
| preinheimer wrote:
| Even if a wood chuck could chuck wood, would a wood chuck chuck
| wood?
| Amin699 wrote:
| If you have fun fooling around with electronics - as I do - you
| probably play a lot with microcontrollers. One of the first
| things you learn, is that these tiny beasts (from the ATtiny all
| the way to the ESP32) will suffer from brown-outs if you try to
| drive too much current from them.
| code_duck wrote:
| It's rather sad that this was the music in these otherwise
| excellent 80s PC games when earlier machines such as the
| Commodore 64 or even 8 bit contemporaries like the NES and Sega
| Master System had far superior audio capabilities. PC games for
| the most part skipped a lovely era of synthesized music.
| mrob wrote:
| PC games had great music by the late 80s, it just wasn't cheap.
| Sierra On-Line is notable for supporting the Roland MT-32,
| starting with King's Quest IV in 1988.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MT-32
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| Many games supported digitized output over a DAC on the LPT
| port. I remember building one myself. There are many
| tutorials. A moderately fast 486 can output CD-Quality sample
| rates with such a thing. Covox had one in the 80s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
| motogpjimbo wrote:
| By way of compensation however, a few years later PC gamers
| could enjoy the FM synthesis of the Sound Blaster card or the
| PCM-based sounds of sound modules like the Roland Sound Canvas.
| A lot of PC game soundtracks from that era have aged very well
| and have become classics in their own right.
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| The Wing Commander 1 title theme on MT-32 is absolutely
| amazing.
| city41 wrote:
| Most PC games from this era supported the Ad Lib, Roland MT-32,
| Soundblaster, etc.
|
| Here is the game from the post running on DOS with various
| sound cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr-84mjV3CI
| code_duck wrote:
| Those do sound pretty nice. I wonder what the usage rate was
| for enhanced sound hardware. None of the systems I used up to
| the mid 90s had anything besides the PC speaker, even in the
| VGA era.
| city41 wrote:
| Not sure what the usage rate was. But the devices saw
| pretty wide support. For example the Roland was supported
| by 900 games, same with the Soundblaster
|
| Roland:
| https://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/dos/tic,1/ti,35/
|
| Soundblaster:
| https://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/dos/tic,1/ti,40/
| Razengan wrote:
| Even though it was supposed to be mostly parody, Monkey Island
| instills a sense of adventure that few other games have (like
| King's Quest).
|
| The semi-open island hopping of MI2 was specially fun. I still
| wonder if there will be an open-world game like Skyrim or Fallout
| etc. that is spread across islands instead of an endless
| landmass.
|
| Too bad LucasArts got gobbled up by the D Demon and Monkey Island
| will probably never get another revival because it cannibalizes
| Pirates of the Caribbean.
|
| Unless Ron Gilbert et al. can pull off a Thimbleweed Park with
| it.. ;)
| babyshake wrote:
| Assassin's Creed Black Flag is a bit like that, but not at all
| like MI.
| anthk wrote:
| Wind Waker (Zelda for the Game Cube) is like that.
| tallmansixfour wrote:
| Count me as simply impressed.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Original Monkey Island theme is still my favourite bit of music
| from a game ever.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I just finished transcribing it from a dumped midi file -
| https://musescore.com/user/36584999/scores/6891053 .
|
| I wouldn't mind figuring out how to get a midi to sound like
| the PC speaker. Setting a square wave synthesizer as the
| instrument doesn't do it.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Nice work! There's more going on in there than I expected!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Interestingly, the music is different based on the audio
| you select. If you listen to the PC speaker version of the
| theme, you might notice that the final note is arpeggiated,
| which isn't true for the midi version. The PC speaker
| version is also missing a note in the previous measure that
| exists in the midi.
|
| Then when the opening credits have finished and the game
| begins, there is background music for the lookout if you
| have midi audio, but silence for the PC speaker.
| maxime-esa wrote:
| And there is an amazing piano transcription from w3sp, here:
| http://www.gamemusicthemes.com/sheetmusic/personalcomputer/t.
| ..
|
| (check out his performance on youtube - not only the intro,
| but also the complete Woodtick theme, Jojo from MI2, etc.)
| geephroh wrote:
| If you really want to geek out on the music, the Super Marcato
| Brothers podcast has done episodes on MI2 - MI4.[1]
|
| (And fwiw, my brother plays marimba and other percussion in
| MI4. To this day, one of the weirdest gigs he's ever had.)
|
| 1. http://www.supermarcatobros.com/podcast/tag/monkey+island
| [deleted]
| the_af wrote:
| The Last Ninja (C64 version) holds that title in my heart. If
| you like it, do check out the rock remixes by a band called the
| Fastloaders (a live performance also features Ben Daglish, the
| original composer of some of the tracks. RIP, sadly).
| [deleted]
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Last Ninja's music was super cool also! ...had completely
| forgotten about that game - going to check out the
| Fastloaders asap :)
| jug wrote:
| Lovely cover here, recommended by Ron Gilbert himself:
| https://youtu.be/qUMKy2Jk3Oo
| detritus wrote:
| I have it as a default ohrwurm, with ot regularly popping into
| mind as a background theme for hours on end, but I don't mind -
| it's better than the other wurms...
|
| My young daughter will grow up with a vague knowledge of it as
| it - along with the theme to Monty Python's flying Circus - are
| the two tunes I hum to her to get her to sleep.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Oddly this sounds more like a 40% pulse wave than a 50% square
| wave. I assume the original was played on a 50% square wave.
|
| EDIT: Upon reading the original code: int
| volume = 60; periodMicros = 1000000/((long)freq);
| onMicros = periodMicros * volume/100; offMicros =
| periodMicros * (100-volume)/100;
|
| volume doesn't control the volume, but the duty cycle (timbre and
| harmonic content) of the waveform. And it looks like I guessed
| the 40% (audibly equivalent to 60%) duty cycle exactly!
| sgt wrote:
| You've got a good ear!
| rosstex wrote:
| Is there a website for experimenting with waves and duty cycles
| and observing how the sound changes?
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| https://webaudiodemos.appspot.com/oscilloscope/index.html
| seems okay but it only supports one note.
| lashkari wrote:
| Heads up: I opened this link in a new tab and it
| immediately started playing a very loud, constant tone.
|
| If you're wearing headphones or have your speakers turned
| up, be careful!
| ttsiodras wrote:
| Spot on! I planned initially to control the volume with a
| potentiometer - but abandoned the plan when I got to the
| "sounds good enough" :-)
| SamBam wrote:
| Can you tell me what you're hearing? I don't recall the
| original music well enough, but this one sounds slightly muddy
| -- would a 50% square waves sounds crisper?
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I used to make chiptune (and still do to some extent). Pulse
| waves (periodically alternating high and low sound pressures)
| are a type of waveform, and the width or duty cycle of the
| waveform (the percent of the time the sound pressure is high
| rather than low) controls the harmonic spectrum and perceived
| timbre. I could identify by listening that it was greater
| than 25% but less than 50% by listening by ear, and hone in
| on a guess by comparing to FamiTracker's emulated VRC6 (which
| can output duty cycles between 6.25% and 50% in steps of
| 6.25%).
|
| I don't know what you mean by "muddy", but I did notice the
| speaker (perhaps mic too) has a crappy frequency response,
| and the bass notes are quiet and difficult to identify the
| pitch of.
| jeffalyanak wrote:
| Just to add a datapoint, I've been making chip music for
| nearly 15 years and being able to accurately hear
| pulsewidth, waveform (assuming a simple, fundamental
| chiptune waveform like square, saw, triangle) is actually
| relatively common with a bit of experience.
|
| When I got started I was awed by it in others I talked to
| on IRC, but it wasn't too long before I was familiar with
| it, too. It's also pretty easy for me--and I'd bet for
| nyanpasu64 as well--to identify the actual PSG or platform
| used and even to get a good idea of what sort of
| sequencing/programming is involved to get any particular
| sound I hear.
|
| For me it's pretty specialized, though. I absolutely can't
| do that with traditional music production. I wouldn't be
| able to tell you too much about music I heard produced with
| modern tools.
| tobr wrote:
| Describing timbre in text is difficult, but I wouldn't say a
| symmetric square wave is "crisper". Maybe more hollow, tooty,
| clarinet-like. Asymmetric pulses first sound richer but less
| clear, brighter, more nasal, then as you get to more extreme
| settings it starts to sound thin and fragile.
| endymi0n wrote:
| I just love how good us humans can get at nichy distinction
| topics if we just keep at the task long enough (and start
| early).
|
| We once had a film crew in our school trying to get some shots
| of us at the computer. I overheard them having big problems
| getting the CRT flicker free on camera and trying to find out
| the refresh rate.
|
| I was maybe 12 at the time and just told them point blank it's
| 60Hz. They asked me how I knew and I just told them I could see
| it from the feel of the flicker. Was a good guess as well since
| it was one of the standard VESA frame rates.
|
| The cameraman came back to that kid 3 minutes later, showing me
| the shutter set to exactly 59.7 Hz with a still very surprised
| face.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| (Meta)
|
| If you can, try to make the video louder. I really had to crank
| up the volume to listen to it. (Probably use a combination of
| normalize and compress in Audacity.)
|
| Cool hack!
| ttsiodras wrote:
| Mostly, my mistake was I had the phone too far away - notice in
| the video that when I get it close, it sounds just fine.
|
| Live and learn :-)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I think the speaker is too big and / or the circuit doesn't
| have an amplifier, so that would be an improvement; the USB
| power supply should have enough juice left over to crank up the
| volume.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Building little audio gizmos is fun. I recommend using
| replacement smartphone speakers (eg for the iPhone SE 2020) if
| size is an issue, because a bare chassis without an enclosure
| sounds like crap due to acoustic short-circuit.
|
| Another option is LCD TV speakers, those already have an
| enclosure but are a bit larger.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Ah, clever, like this? https://www.ebay.com/itm/372798620272
| ($6)
|
| So then how do you attach/enclose this tiny speaker?
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| This looks like the speaker that goes into your ear, but I
| meant the one at the bottom of your phone that activates when
| you switch to "speaker phone". They usually have the keyword
| "buzzer" in the title of sites that sell them to distinguish
| them from the earpiece.
|
| This is what I mean: https://www.mmobiel.com/loud-speaker-
| for-iphone-8-plus-serie...
|
| Some have just two contacts you can easily solder speaker
| cables to, just avoid the ones with complicated connectors.
| You don't need to enclose it to get good sound, it already
| has an enclosure. I often choose plush toys with a simple MP3
| SD player (1EUR on Aliexpress, eg
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32657798948.html) and some
| triggering mechanism.
| darkwater wrote:
| This reminds me of how I was used to this music while playing MI
| on my PS/2 and how I was blown away the day I installed an adlib-
| compatible soundcard (the cheapest I could find with my 11yo
| money) and the first game I tried was Monkey Island.
|
| It's one of those memories that will stay with me forever.
| xattt wrote:
| I've been wondering for a while. What tools were used to compose
| PC beeper music? Was there some sort of DAW or toolkit, or was
| the music all hard coded as a text file?
| singlow wrote:
| I don't know of any toolkits used by the pc speaker games. I
| did enjoy some videos on YouTube from the 8-bit Guy recently
| that had some good info though:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_3d1x2VPxk
| phire wrote:
| Based on interviews, Lucas Arts were using common MIDI tools
| and composition software.
|
| The real magic happens in their music driver, which takes the
| sound effects, multi-track MIDI music, along with track
| priority infomation and dynamically down-mixes it to however
| many tracks the current audio device has. Just one in the case
| of the PC speaker.
|
| I assume they would have had a setup that allowed them to
| quickly hear what the track sounded like on all their target
| audio devices.
| k__ wrote:
| I read, back in the days, "trackers" were used for electronic
| music composition. But I don't know if that was the case for
| game music.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Star Control 2 famously used music composed in MOD trackers,
| they even had part of the UI show a waveform of the music
| during dialog with the aliens.
|
| It was seeing a bunch of .MOD files on the floppy that first
| prompted me to download a mod tracker back in the BBS days.
| camtarn wrote:
| Haha, yeah - many years later, finding the .IT files in the
| original Unreal Tournament and downloading a tracker was
| what got me into composing music on the PC. It was
| wonderful having the music available in such a reverse-
| engineerable format.
| Sharlin wrote:
| A lot of game music was also composed with trackers,
| including some big titles like the original _Unreal_ and
| others using its engine such as _Deus Ex_. But tracker music
| is all about arranging digital samples on a multi-track
| timeline, requiring an audio output that can play digitized
| multi-channel sound in the first place...
| nitrogen wrote:
| Scream Tracker 3 did have an Adlib output mode, and there
| were a few .s3m files out there that used Adlib FM
| instruments instead of sampled instruments.
| rob74 wrote:
| BTW, if you want to compare the Monkey Island title music for all
| platforms the game was ported to (and some it wasn't ported to,
| looking at you C64), take a look at this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DydmYhaL7zw
|
| For me, the Amiga version brings back the fondest memories - 4
| channels of glorious 8-bit sampled sound! Unfortunately two of
| those channels were hardwired to the left speaker and two to the
| right speaker, so listening with headphones is not so great, but
| still...
| blt wrote:
| One of the most bizarre design decisions of the home computer
| era.
| ant6n wrote:
| It's amazing how the PC speaker version has a Melody, but also
| chords and accompaniment, even though only one frequency can be
| played at a time. There's so much going on it sounds
| impossible.
|
| I really wanna know how this was done, presumably by offsetting
| all the various sounds. Maybe very short notes jumping around,
| perhaps the raggae style off-beats help.
|
| There's a big documentary on Monkey island on YouTube,
| unfortunately it doesn't go much into the music.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You can play sampled audio out of a PC speaker. All it
| requires is simulating a 1-bit DAC to control the switching
| directly.
| duskwuff wrote:
| The PC speaker version is really clever. It's arranged in a
| way that suggests to the listener that multiple voices are
| present, but they can only hear the most prominent one that's
| active at any given time. The arpeggiated chords (marimba on
| other arrangements) help with this; in other cases, a
| background note is offset slightly to make it "peek" around
| the edges of the lead.
| shahar2k wrote:
| audio dithering?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's amazing how the PC speaker version has a Melody, but
| also chords and accompaniment, even though only one frequency
| can be played at a time.
|
| The PC speaker doesn't play a single frequency, it toggles
| between "on" and "off". There's techniqueels to drive so that
| it looks to be next level of softwarr like it is playing a
| single frequency, or like it has, e.g., an 8-bit position
| setting, or...a number of other things. But even those super-
| basic things are illusions over toggling at appropriate
| times, not the native function of the speaker
| Cybotron5000 wrote:
| Here's a great article by Kenneth McAlpine:
| https://www.gamejournal.it/the-sound-of-1-bit-technical-
| cons... ...An interview with Michael Land and Clint Bajakian:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0EqG6RYn9Y ...an article
| about iMuse (used from M.I.2 I think):
| https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/LucasArts-
| Secret-... Hope that helps! (this site is amazing btw... :)
| Sharlin wrote:
| There even used to be a driver for Win 3.x that allowed
| playing digitized sound via the PC speaker as if it was a
| real soundcard. It was (unsurprisingly) very CPU intensive so
| not useful for games.
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| Check out the title theme from Maniac Mansion. Someone at
| Lucasfilm Games knew what they were doing with the PC
| Speaker.
|
| They had great musicians. The dynamic iMuse music in Monkey
| Island 2 and Tie Fighter (only in the DOS/MIDI version) was
| incredible.
| belorn wrote:
| I kind of prefer this other video by LGR on the subject of
| monkey island title music through different PC music devices.
| It does not have the commodore 64 as it only cover PC, it more
| devices and illustrate how different the same song is on same
| platform with different hardware.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a324ykKV-7Y
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, that really shows how much effort they (had to) put
| into supporting the variety of PC sound cards - although by
| the 90s most (affordable) cards were (or claimed to be)
| "AdLib/SoundBlaster-compatible". But I still like the video I
| posted better - I mean, there were (and partly still are)
| other systems out there than the PC, let's not forget that!
| And I originally played Monkey Island on the Amiga, so that
| version has a special place in my heart...
| eumoria wrote:
| Monkey Island on the MT-32 is amazing. I believe it was
| composed on that device but it's such an awesome sound.
| jedberg wrote:
| For a time when stereo was new for recorded music, the Beatles
| and the Doors both like to really play with that ability. They
| would put some tracks on just one ear, so that only the people
| with the latest stereo equipment could truly enjoy the work as
| intended.
| cmiller1 wrote:
| Additionally since this game as well as many others from the
| era can be configured to output MIDI data you can buy new midi
| hardware and continue to hear how we've developed this kind of
| sampling! https://twitter.com/GyoJc/status/1304638489313644546
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