Baoran wrote:

I have original big box of both leisure suit larry 3 and M1 Tank Platoon from 1989 and the Leisure suit larry 3 only lists roland mt-32, ad lib, game blaster and ibm music cards on the box and M1 Tank Platoon doesn't list any sound options on the box or the manual.
Kings Quest 5 box from 1990 lists sound blaster on the box.

Neither King's Quest 5 or Leisure Suit Larry 3 really support Sound Blaster because neither game plays back digitized samples.

Activision's "Tongue of the Fatman," 09/21/1989, also has latent (and working) Sound Blaster PCM support, beating-out Ghostbusters II by a few days. Hooray.

Nice thread! Could someone care to find the first game to support AdLib? King's Quest 4 is known to be the first but Rich Heimlich mentioned Jetfighter from Velocity and some other game i don't remember.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2018-03-23, 02:32:

Activision's "Tongue of the Fatman," 09/21/1989, also has latent (and working) Sound Blaster PCM support, beating-out Ghostbusters II by a few days. Hooray.

And another Activision title takes the lead! - "The Manhole," with its 09/05/1989-dated executable.

Hi! This is a fascinating discussion - thank you all for your insightful input! Maybe I can add some information (and hopefully not just confusion); I'm not an expert, but I have been doing some research in the past couple of days as I'm writing something about the Sound Blaster history. So I will take a look at most of the games that were mentioned here that may be the first titles using the Sound Blaster's PCM capability, and add a few myself.
For now I'll only look at games released along with or prior to the Sound Blaster card (November 1989), so all the 1990 titles - like Prince of Persia, Links, or Battletech - are out. Some of the information in this list is just what I gathered from this discussion.

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A10 Tank Killer, M1 Tank Platoon: released in 1989, but as mentioned, those first release versions don't have Sound Blaster support.

Ghostbusters II: released in 1989, but - as you said - the dormant pre-release Sound Blaster support is broken, only being fixed in 1990.

Space Quest III: released in 3/1989 with dormant pre-release Sound Blaster support. However, Wikipedia says this (without sourcing it): "Though Space Quest III was designed to utilize the Sound Blaster's ability to play digital samples, the inclusion of an incorrect audio driver left the effects unavailable to IBM PC users with the Sound Blaster card." So it's the Ghostbusters II scenario again ...? Does anyone know more about this?

Other games using the OmniMusic sound driver on DOS: Most of those I could find were released after 1989, with two exceptions:

Take Down: released in 06/1989. Using DOSBox, I get nothing but PC speaker sound. Couldn't try real hardware though.

Ocean Ranger: released in 06/1989. Again, using DOSBox, I only get PC speaker sound.

Hole-in-One Miniature Golf (Deluxe): This is a tricky one. According to Mobygames, the original game - just called Hole-in-One Miniature Golf - was released in 1988 for the Amiga and other platforms, with a DOS port following in 1989. But this first DOS version doesn't include digitized sounds and Sound Blaster support, at least they're not mentioned on the box. Apparently those sounds were added with the DOS-only re-release called Hole-in-One Miniature Golf Deluxe, featuring additional courses and said digital sounds. Mobygames says it was released in 1989 like the original, but I find that unlikely, and the game files I found were created in 1992. A possible source for this confusion might be the labels of the 5.25" disks also shown on the Mobygames page for Deluxe, which say "1989" - however, those disks clearly belong to the regular, Non-Deluxe version of the game.

Tongue of the Fatman: released in 09/1989. Dormant SB support with a few digital voice samples, at least in the 5.25" version - the 3.5" disk version was released on just a single disk to lower the cost (presumably), but to make that fit, this version omits the samples.

The Manhole (CD version): This was the first CD ROM game for the PC, it uses digitized sound effects and music, and it was released in 1989. However, it doesn't seem to use the Sound Blaster PCM feature - just CD-DA tracks. I'd say that doesn't count as "real" Sound Blaster PCM/DAC support, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
EDIT: As Cloudschatze pointed out, there also was a floppy release of The Manhole, also released in 12/1989 (with the file being created in early September, even before the Fatman game). Even without CD-DA music, it uses some digitized music samples.

I would like to add another title to the discussion: In a recent Interview (see below), Creative's Sim Wong Hoo mentioned working with Brøderbund to develop the Killer Card, the prototype card which became Sound Blaster. Brøderbund, says Sim, was supposed to add voice output to their Carmen Sandiego learning games. According to him, those games were readily available when Sound Blaster shipped in 1989. Looking at the Carmen Sandiego series on Mobygames, only one (DOS) title seems to qualify: Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? from 09/1989.
Mobygames shows several different versions of the box art and disk labels:
1) There was a DOS version with 5.25" disks and a copyright from 1989 on the box. However, it doesn't mention Sound Blaster - or any other sound card/technology - on the compatibility sticker on the cover. I found the files of a 1989 version which only gives me PC speaker sounds in DOSBox.
2) The box art for a 3.5" version of the game (as well as a dual-medium release with both disk types) looks the same again, including the 1989 date, but this time, the "compatibility" sticker lists some sound cards: AdLib, Tandy, Covox - and Sound Blaster. The disk labels say "1989/1990".
3) Finally, another 5.25" release featuring "version 1.2" of the game, according to the comments. It's the same box art again, including the 1989 date, and the compatibility sticker lists the sound cards as above. There's an additional "over 100,000 copies sold" sticker on the cover, indicating that this box was shipped quite some time after the original. The disk labels still give the 1989 date.
Watching some Let's Play videos on Youtube (including an LGR review), I couldn't hear any digitized voice samples - but the game does seem to use PCM sound effects. The videos I found don't mention the release date of the specific version they used, but looking at the title screen, it clearly says "copyright 1989/1991". The version used on LGR also shows the same box art as the "V1.2" above, including the "100,000 sales" sticker.
So ... I'm not sure, but it seems as if the original version didn't include digitized sounds, as those were added in an update at a later date for a re-release, either 1990 or 1991. Those Carmen Sandiego games got re-released a lot!

***

Looks like that weird Fatman game takes the crown - or did I miss something?
EDIT: As Cloudschatze said, The Manhole's disk version was made even earlier (but released later). So I'd say it's a tie 😀

***

Links:
The Wikipedia article about Space Quest III: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Quest_III
Minigolf Deluxe on Mobygames: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/hole-in-on … ure-golf-deluxe
The Sim interview: https://custompc.raspberrypi.org/articles/the … d-blaster-story
The LGR video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ln64lo9l5g
Carmen Sandiego on Mobygames: https://www.mobygames.com/game/where-in-time- … carmen-sandiego

carlostex wrote on 2018-03-29, 12:51:

Nice thread! Could someone care to find the first game to support AdLib? King's Quest 4 is known to be the first but Rich Heimlich mentioned Jetfighter from Velocity and some other game i don't remember.

I also watched the Rich Heimlich interview on Youtube. As you said, he mentions a "jet fighting" game from Velocity as well as another company, which to me sounds like "Taito". I could be wrong about that.

The jet fighting game from Velocity could only be JetFighter: The Adventure, released in 1988 according to Mobygames. But after watching several Youtube videos of this game, all I could hear was PC speaker sound. Maybe Velocity experimented with the idea of AdLib support but didn't go for it because synthesizing jet fighter sounds with an FM card is quite hard, as Heimlich mentions himself?

Taito did release a bunch of arcade-to-DOS ports at that time: Renegade was released in 1988, but according to the Youtube videos I watched, it only used PC speaker sound effects with no music. Bubble Bobble for DOS is mentioned as being released in 1988 on several pages, and it does use AdLib - but the game's EXE file was created in 1989.

So I guess unless we find an earlier example, King's Quest IV is the first AdLib game.

Waltzking wrote on 2020-10-21, 19:39:

Looks like that weird Fatman game takes the crown - or did I miss something?

Err, the post right above yours, as relates to the floppy release of The Manhole.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2020-10-21, 19:57:

Waltzking wrote on 2020-10-21, 19:39:

Looks like that weird Fatman game takes the crown - or did I miss something?

Err, the post right above yours, as relates to the floppy release of The Manhole.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you meant the CD version, as I didn't know there was a floppy release of that game. But Mobygames also says there was - how could I miss that?
Apparently it was released in 12/1989, but if we go by the executable's date, I guess it deserves the crown (if it really works with a Sound Blaster card) 😀

I can only find around 15-20 games based on available sources that used the Sound Blaster DAC from 1989 to end of 1991 (the only thing sound wise that differentiates it from an Adlib). I thought it would be hundred + games given Creatives marketing back then.

Games were not cranked out as fast as they are nowadays.

There were also other things such as speech programs, educational programs, etc. that would have taken advantage of a DAC.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-08-10, 19:38:

Games were not cranked out as fast as they are nowadays.

There were also other things such as speech programs, educational programs, etc. that would have taken advantage of a DAC.

Looking through Mobygames, the total number of retail Dos games released from 1989,1990 and 1991 was a massive 1902 games (this is excluding educational software, shareware games, PD freeware and compilations). The real number is even bigger than this as Mobygames' disclaimer says a large number of retail Dos games are still missing and not catalogued.
It's interesting that all other systems, the only computer/console that comes anywhere close from 1989-1991 is the C64 with 1421 retail games. Pretty staggering that the PC which was incredibly expensive and not even a games machine back then had more retail games released than any other console/computer available from 89-91.

I'm more surprised now how rare it was that games supported the SB DAC, even if only 10% of games released from 1989-91 supported it that would be nearly 200 games.

So how about first games with sampled music and specifically drum samples combined with FM music?

Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp (1990) seems to be the first case of the former, with some jingles used as well as bgm which frequently skips or cuts out. Followed by Fascination, Black Gold and Paragliding in 1991.

4D Sports Tennis (1990) is the earliest example I've found of the latter. Followed by 4D Sports Boxing and Cadaver in 1991.

The speech in Tongue of fatman , with it being the first game to support soundblaster dac in 1989, is pretty good. Even better than a lot of dac speech samples you hear in Amiga games.

Took a while to get it working. You select adlib, no mention of soundblaster and also had to slow down PC to 386dx40 level speed. If you computer is slightly faster there is no indication the speech won't work as the game continues to play fine with adlib sound .