You might think an obscure $2000 professional DSP card from 1999 is a bit of an odd choice for a DOS soundtrack, and you'd be right. However, some months ago I saw an Ebay listing where someone claimed to be selling the card because they they found out it didn't work for retro gaming, and being an owner of such a card, obviously I had to try and make it happen.

Now, this is not a General MIDI card, so manual configuration is required. That in itself isn't much of an issue, but the OASYS PCI is also notorious for eating DSP cycles for breakfast, making real time playback of a whole bunch of tracks pretty much a nightmare scenario. Long story short, I had to cut down on FX and restrict myself to only the most basic synth engines on offer, but it just about worked. Just be mindful that I'm basically giving each track a fraction of the resources they could have if I just recorded them separately, and don't assume this is representative of the sound quality of the card as a whole.

So here goes, my attempt at making Monkey Island work on the Korg OASYS PCI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2R6DjeSKM0

This was created with Cubase VST/32 on the same Power Mac G4 which hosts the OASYS, but in theory it would be possible to take the MIDI straight out of a DOS machine. Using a DAW just made my life a bit easier for mixing and whatnot.

Finally, here's a list of synth engines and voices used, for anyone interested:

Panpipes: Flute (physical model), 3 voices
Xylophone: Cobalt 2 (PCM), 2 voices
Electric Organ: Z1 Organ (physical model), 3 voices
Marimba: VPM (FM) 4op, 3 voices
Acou Bass: VPM (FM) 2op, 1 voice
Rythm: Krypton 2e (PCM), 3 voices

For a total of 15 voices of polyphony and 6-way timbrality.

This was really just for my own enjoyment, but if anyone else finds it interesting, all the better! I may or may not record other songs, we'll see. It'd at least be interesting to make an individually tracked version with higher quality instruments for comparison.

Edit: I'll be happy to provide the original recording too, just as soon as I figure out a sensible place to upload it. And if someone seriously wants the actual OASYS Multi and Programs, sure, I'll just have to organise them a bit.