Tons of Windows 3.x games used MIDI music. (Often, you could even rename the .MID files and substitute whatever you wanted.) For some reason the first that comes to mind is Epic's Dare to Dream.

For that matter, even Final Fantasy 7 was MIDI, though it is easy to forget. (Final Fantasy 8 was DirectMuisc, which was somewhat different and very uncommon.)

Sorry, I should've been clearer. I meant Windows 95/98 games. I just didn't think of playing games on Win 3.1 😁

Anyway, thanks for the info about FF7. Is that an outlier or are there more?

What's the state of MIDI in Win95/Win98 anyway? Don't most Windows 98 era sound cards come with software wavetable MIDI? Also, I vaguely remember DirectX having its own General MIDI software wavetable?

dosgamer wrote:

Anyway, thanks for the info about FF7. Is that an outlier or are there more?

I suppose they would generally be older games. Right now the only thing I can think of is SimCity 2000, though that is technically a Windows 3.x game. Most Maxis games used MIDI, I suppose, including 3D Pinball. SepterraCore is staring at me from my shelf (for some strange reason) and would also qualify.

What's the state of MIDI in Win95/Win98 anyway? Don't most Windows 98 era sound cards come with software wavetable MIDI?

The big selling point of the SB Live was that it was capable of loading soundfonts into system memory, if that's what you mean.

Also, I vaguely remember DirectX having its own General MIDI software wavetable?

I'm not sure what you're referring to if not DirectMusic, which, as I said, was somewhat different and not very common.

Jorpho wrote:

What's the state of MIDI in Win95/Win98 anyway? Don't most Windows 98 era sound cards come with software wavetable MIDI?

The big selling point of the SB Live was that it was capable of loading soundfonts into system memory, if that's what you mean.

Windows 9x also came with a software-only wavetable based on Roland's Sound Canvas series.

Have you ever listened to it? It still exists even on Windows 10 machines today, and you'd probably be better off with OPL3 MIDI

Age of Empires

Off the top of my head, sticking to western Win32 commercial titles: Gubble, Montezuma's Return!, Hexen II, F-22 Raptor, The Incredible Machine 3, Necrodome, Get Medieval, Simcity 2000 (and Network edition), Descent II, Team 47 Goman (ugh), Mechwarrior 2

yawetaG wrote:

Windows 9x also came with a software-only wavetable based on Roland's Sound Canvas series.

Not 95, just 98 specifically (which in turn comes with 98se, 2K and ME, but in 1998 there was a general hype backlash about W98's launch so it's mostly w95 users then anyway)

Ampera wrote:

Have you ever listened to it? It still exists even on Windows 10 machines today, and you'd probably be better off with OPL3 MIDI

If you refer to software wavetable MIDI, it's useful with DOSBox.
Select General MIDI in-game and it'll kick in if there's no other MIDI hardware.

Better than Adlib/OPL in most games.

GUS emulation sounds better, but requires additional configuration.
I wish DOSBox emulated AWE32...

86Box can emulate an AWE32

dosgamer wrote:

I'm planning a Win98SE build. Should I throw a General MIDI sound card into the mix?

I suppose a better question at this point might be what kind of hardware you were otherwise planning to use hat would somehow be incapable of using MIDI.

Well, the main problem is that I currently only have one sound card that does General MIDI (a Roland SCC-1) and that is currently in an IBM P75, so I'd have to spend at least another 100 bucks for an SCB-55 or SC-55. But upon further thought, I'm probably going to get rid of that machine altogether and put the SCC-1 in the Win98 machine and use that for all the DOS games that support General MIDI. Since those are all from the Pentium era, they should have no problem with a fast CPU (Tualatin 1.2-1.4 GHz), right? That would be ideal, then I could have one machine that plays all the MT-32 games (486-33 with LAPC-I) and a second machine that plays all the General MIDI DOS games and also all the Win98 games.

Sierra titles often have issues with higher clocks and MIDI corruption. Furthermore, QFG3 has severe scripting bugs which require slowdown tricks to alleviate.

gdjacobs wrote:

Sierra titles often have issues with higher clocks and MIDI corruption. Furthermore, QFG3 has severe scripting bugs which require slowdown tricks to alleviate.

God dammit! There's always something. I guess I'll build the Win98 system first and see if the slowdown tricks work for the problematic games. If it doesn't work out, maybe I'll try to find a daughterboard or something for the IBM.

dosgamer wrote:

Well, the main problem is that I currently only have one sound card that does General MIDI (a Roland SCC-1)

What's wrong with any old Sound Blaster? An expensive Roland card was hardly a necessity back in the day for anyone who wanted to listen to MIDI (and if it was, MIDI would have been far less common).

I also feel that I should mention ScummVM is an entirely acceptable option for QFG3.

dosgamer wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

Sierra titles often have issues with higher clocks and MIDI corruption. Furthermore, QFG3 has severe scripting bugs which require slowdown tricks to alleviate.

God dammit! There's always something. I guess I'll build the Win98 system first and see if the slowdown tricks work for the problematic games. If it doesn't work out, maybe I'll try to find a daughterboard or something for the IBM.

If it has BIOS support, you can always swap in a C3 Ezra on your motherboard.

Jorpho wrote:

What's wrong with any old Sound Blaster? An expensive Roland card was hardly a necessity back in the day for anyone who wanted to listen to MIDI (and if it was, MIDI would have been far less common).

I also feel that I should mention ScummVM is an entirely acceptable option for QFG3.

Plain OPL3? Out of the question! 😲 But seriously, using the best possible sound card adds a whole new dimension to these old games. I mean, without the LAPC-I soundtrack, Conquests of the Longbow would just be an average adventure game.

ScummVM is an option I haven't thought about yet. But I think the more recent versions wouldn't run on Win98SE?

gdjacobs wrote:

If it has BIOS support, you can always swap in a C3 Ezra on your motherboard.

Is that the one where you can switch the multiplier via software? That's an excellent idea. My board (Gigabyte GA-6VTXE) seems to support it. I'm gonna try to get my hands on one.

dosgamer wrote:

But seriously, using the best possible sound card adds a whole new dimension to these old games. I mean, without the LAPC-I soundtrack, Conquests of the Longbow would just be an average adventure game.

I understand Sierra made a lot of money back in the day selling LAPC cards. It remains that most other developers could not release their games with a MIDI soundtrack with the expectation that the end user would listen to it with nothing less.

Anyway, there has already been much discussion on this board about connecting various devices (Raspberry Pi, iPhone, Android phone, etc.) to the joystick port to serve as an external synth.

ScummVM is an option I haven't thought about yet. But I think the more recent versions wouldn't run on Win98SE?

Your ScummVM experience would be pretty much the same regardless of the platform you are using it on.