adlib megamix

Star Control 2. (digital/MOD)

Turrican II. (digital/MOD)

Dune 2 (FM, some stuff in there that's a tad underrated music-wise)

Shadowcaster (FM music) - the first level has one of the best pieces of music I've heard in any game ever... funny how all the other tunes in this game completely sucked in comparison.

and I like most of the game tracks Robert Prince has been involved with.

rfnagel wrote:

Gemini000 wrote:

Or if you want to hear something technically impressive, Earthsiege uses a combination of synth AND digitized sounds for its music, with its setup program's tune really stealing the show.

Man! There ya go again, Gemini000... MAKING/FORCING me to go digging through all of this mess of CDROMs/floppies so's I can hear the Earthsiege tune 🤣! 😀

I thought Battledrome was better at that, though its sampled percussion is VERY SoundCanvasy

leileilol wrote:

Yes, and Sb16 is adlib compatible.

What SB16 do you have? Hope it's not the later ViBRA budget variants

Unless it's a Vibra 16S 😉

(Or indeed any of the randomly numbered SB16 models carrying the real Yamaha 4-OP chip)

Did sierra ever make a bad game? Don't anwser that I don't want my image of them to be tarnished, I mean all the music in their games are epic!

dosquest wrote:

Did sierra ever make a bad game? Don't anwser that I don't want my image of them to be tarnished, I mean all the music in their games are epic!

That's because they also distributed the Roland MT-32 so they gave their games incredible music so they would sell more of them. You haven't truly experienced a Sierra game until you've played it with an MT-32 attached to your system.

The music from the diskette version of Mortal Kombat turned out really good. It makes OPL shine.

Descent

Ah yes, Descent has a different opening music in FM, which, I like better than the GM/Wavetable version.

Other games I find the FM version to my liking are Double Dragon 3 opening theme and Prince of Persia opening music.

Even after trying very hard to like the MT-32/ GM / GS versions of these games because they're "higher level wavetable" sounds, I still like the FM versions of the said games.

But I do not know if I would still have liked these if I had listened to the wavetable sounds first.

Malik wrote:

But I do not know if I would still have liked these if I had listened to the wavetable sounds first.

For me, that's the reason why I've always disliked FM synth so much.

I'm a bit spoiled... having bought a WaveBlaster (1) when they first hit the store shelves, that is almost *ALL* that I had ever heard in the games that supported a P3x0 GM MIDI device. While everyone else that I knew was :clunkity_clunkity_clunkity: with FM synth <grin>, I was rocking along with my WB1 (including with Duke Nukem 3D) 😀

Throughout the decades, I've had several (additional extra) PCs that didn't have a wavetable device installed (WB1, or an AWE32; where I could load in a SoundFont and shell to DOS from W9x), and was forced to hear nothing but FM synth if I wished to play a game on them... I usually ended up completely turning off the music while playing the games on the PCs in question (which, as a musician, is total blasphemy <grin>).

And Sound Blaster version of GODS by Bitmap Brothers. It is even different than the Adlib version.

(The SB version has digitized voices - no, not the "Into... The Wonderful" speech, but actual singing - sorry I have forgotten what you call that part in a music, in the opening music.)

GODS is quite unique on the PC. It uses FM and digital samples for the intro music. I don't know many (any) other games that do this.

Most Epic Megagames have good music:
- Epic Pinball (especially the Super Android Table)
- One Must Fall 2097
- Jazz Jackrabbit
The music also really used somekind of a special stereo effect which I only heard in their games.

Further there is a lot of good and unique music for DOS games, but it is really a matter of taste wether you like it or not. I found the menutune of Retaliator awesome.

edit:

Oh yes, for I forget Skyroads had awesome music too. ^^

Procyon wrote:

- Epic Pinball (especially the Super Android Table)
- One Must Fall 2097

I'm thinking that the original poster was prolly refering to OPL FM synth music, but those two indeed ROCK! 😀

Procyon wrote:

The music also really used somekind of a special stereo effect which I only heard in their games.

I forget offhand now, but those games use Epic's own Tracker sound engine that provides some really pleasing surround-sound effects 😀 I forget the name of the engine though.

I'm still here.

I always though that Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage had excellent music. I think its MOD or some variation though, not purely FM?

DonutKing wrote:

I always though that Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage had excellent music. I think its MOD or some variation though, not purely FM?

Yep yep, Tracker MOD format.

OPL FM that I liked when I was a kid

688 Attack Sub (you can even play the song seperately --> calls.exe)
Budokan Title
Crackdown has some nice tunes
Cycles Title
First Samurai Title
Kings of the Beach Title
Monkey Island Title
Populous Title
Risky Woods
Ski or Die has some wild tunes
Times of Lore Title + some of the intro screens
Toddlers has 5 in-game tunes that are nice
Viking Child (pretty long title song)
Weird Dreams Title

Romance of the Three Kingdoms II opening title music is quite nice.

Though Origin Systems' music are great with MT-32, their FM counterparts are equally impressive. Wing Commander has catchy tunes even in FM, and the sound effects using only FM sounds are well matched. Ultima VI's "Stones" and the intro and story tunes also come to mind.

For me: Monkey Island 2 and Fate of Atlantis. Amazing FM music and also takes me back to the good old days.

Wing Commander 2 also had amazing FM music.

And finally Space Quest 4 on a PAS16. Stereo OPL3 music FTW.