The Dig does not have MIDI AFAIR

Both were CD-only releases and therefore didn't need and don't have a MIDI soundtrack.

Yup.

Check out Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle for some of the last MIDI adventures from Lucas.

Just as a matter of interest.

The audio tracks (music) are actually stored in a special "container" format on the CD (they are not genuine CD audio tracks).
I know that, for the Dig, there is a utility that enables you to extract the audio (music) from these "container" files but, it is my understanding this utility can also extract audio tracks from other Lucasarts games.

Lucasarts even released a separate soundtrack audio CD for The Dig, which is something I read somewhere about 4 years after the game was released.
Since I liked the soundtrack so much, I tried to obtain one of these CD's but, it was already out of print.
In the early 2000's, the entire soundtrack audio CD and another fan made game soundtrack were available for download in mp3 format. It even included some nice CD covers that one could print out.

jesolo wrote:

Just as a matter of interest. […]
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Just as a matter of interest.

The audio tracks (music) are actually stored in a special "container" format on the CD (they are not genuine CD audio tracks).
I know that, for the Dig, there is a utility that enables you to extract the audio (music) from these "container" files but, it is my understanding this utility can also extract audio tracks from other Lucasarts games.

Lucasarts even released a separate soundtrack audio CD for The Dig, which is something I read somewhere about 4 years after the game was released.
Since I liked the soundtrack so much, I tried to obtain one of these CD's but, it was already out of print.
In the early 2000's, the entire soundtrack audio CD and another fan made game soundtrack were available for download in mp3 format. It even included some nice CD covers that one could print out.

Never played the game but I heard that the music score was superb, so I though I'd give it a try with some of my MIDI synths, oh well it was the end of an era for midi fans and something good for those who hated it.

moved to DOS

vmunix wrote:

Never played the game but I heard that the music score was superb, so I though I'd give it a try with some of my MIDI synths, oh well it was the end of an era for midi fans and something good for those who hated it.

I can highly recommend the game.
Personally, I consider it to be one of the best adventure games I've played.
In conjunction with the soundtrack, it made for a very good gaming experience.

It's available on Steam, GOG.com and copies are also still for sale on sites like eBay.

I've always wanted to play The Dig after playing the demo in the 90s, but never had the chance to. Started a few days ago, so far it's fantastic!

It's one of the few games I played more than once (or of the even fewer gsmes that I played more than twice 😉)
ScummVM works great with it!!! (I played it once back when it was released, once via ScummVM on a Windows PC and once on an iPhone with ScummVM ...)

I also played the game a couple of times over the years.
The puzzles are not too difficult.

The only criticism I have of the game is that it is still in low resolution (320x200).
Considering that the game was released in 1995, I think the gaming experience would have been much better if all the scenes and backgrounds were in hi resolution (640x480).

But, the game took very long to develop and I think that development started on the older graphics engine before the days of hi resolution games.

Really enjoyed the first part of so, but later it gets a bit boring and some frustrating puzzles. The resolution is an issue as you can't really tell sometimes what the game is trying to tell you 😀

I won't say more because I don't want to spoil anything...

I will try to get a hard copy, hopefully big box. What other games do you guys recommend from 91-94 with GM support that are not from lucasArts in this case, now I'm more into Adventures or RPG, last one I tried was Realms of Arkania III but had repetitive redbook audio ad-nausea-um .

Talking about redbook audio, do you remember X-Wing collector series for windows 95 which had upgraded graphics but the music was the original score of the movies etc. which was neat but was not iMUSE , is there anyway to retrofit iMUSE into the newer series, I think it's pretty much the same game but with better graphics and a windows interface. I think you get the idea.

Sierra, especially the later VGA graphics, have good GM. But you also want a MT-32 for slightly older ones. Later games from Legend Entertainment and pretty much everyone else. It's all about the release year. So yea, if you have a MT-32 as well you can play a whole lot more games.

E.g. SQ3 is MT-32, whereas SQ4 supports MT-32 as well as GM.

vmunix wrote:

Talking about redbook audio, do you remember X-Wing collector series for windows 95 which had upgraded graphics but the music was the original score of the movies etc. which was neat but was not iMUSE , is there anyway to retrofit iMUSE into the newer series, I think it's pretty much the same game but with better graphics and a windows interface. I think you get the idea.

As I recall, there was a collector's CD ROM which just stored the original recordings in a wave format on the CD (albeit, at a very low quality, which made the music playback sound very poor).
Then there was also the one you're referring to, which had the music on the CD ROM as red book audio.
I guess it's possible what you mentioned but, this will probably require some code changes (which is completely outside my area of expertise).

philscomputerlab wrote:

Sierra, especially the later VGA graphics, have good GM. But you also want a MT-32 for slightly older ones. Later games from Legend Entertainment and pretty much everyone else. It's all about the release year. So yea, if you have a MT-32 as well you can play a whole lot more games.

E.g. SQ3 is MT-32, whereas SQ4 supports MT-32 as well as GM.

I would say that most games developed from 1992 onwards (up to the point where MIDI was no longer popular), had music that were written General MIDI in mind.
Games before that, and that supported it, had music for the MT-32 (or CM-32L).
Space Quest 4 (and other SCI1.0 titles) was kind of a "hybrid".
The original game only supported the MT-32 but, patches were released afterwards to map the music to also support General MIDI.

jesolo wrote:

As I recall, there was a collector's CD ROM which just stored the original recordings in a wave format on the CD (albeit, at a v […]
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vmunix wrote:

Talking about redbook audio, do you remember X-Wing collector series for windows 95 which had upgraded graphics but the music was the original score of the movies etc. which was neat but was not iMUSE , is there anyway to retrofit iMUSE into the newer series, I think it's pretty much the same game but with better graphics and a windows interface. I think you get the idea.

As I recall, there was a collector's CD ROM which just stored the original recordings in a wave format on the CD (albeit, at a very low quality, which made the music playback sound very poor).
Then there was also the one you're referring to, which had the music on the CD ROM as red book audio.
I guess it's possible what you mentioned but, this will probably require some code changes (which is completely outside my area of expertise).

Yeah I just googled it and many of these discussions pop up, apparently you can't have both, it's either upgraded graphics and poor incidental music, or top sound score but early 90's graphics.
Totally Games...... 😒

For posterity, neither The Dig or Full Throttle had MIDI or Redbook soundtracks. They were lo-fi digital recordings in the game resources. Full Throttle's score (besides Chitlins, Whiskey, and Skirt and the Gone Jackals stuff) was recorded with a Sound Canvas, though. One could replicate it decently in MIDI with a Sound Canvas if you took the time.