Amiga Game tunes - in midi format!

[Bloodwych]

He he, here is another classic Amiga tune, this time from Battlesquadron which really did have some impressive musical scores.

It is however in 'novelty' midi format, allowing universal access hopefully for everyone here, so get those soundfonts loaded up if you have a sblive or equivalent and blast those speakers! It's from the first level:

Battlesquadron midi (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/deanodarlo/battlesquad.mid)

Funny though, even with 32Mb worth of high quality sampled midi instruments, a dedicated modern soundcard and high frequency output, it still doesn't sound as good as the Amiga original from a decade ago. Who says progress is everything!

Anyone else with classic Amiga midis, they are hard to find! I'll post some more later on...................................

[Akira]

It's easy to know why this MIDI sucks compared to the original: you can't get the same sound out of synthesis because the Amiga used digital audio and not any kind of synthesis. Even the most advanced wavetable syntehsis won't help. You have to use a standard set of sounds so tehy all sound similar, on teh AMiag you were up to choose whatever sound you wanted.

Not that sythesis blows, trying to do digital stuff with synthesis blows :)

[Bloodwych]

You are of course right Akira – the 128 instruments required by general midi with set sounds can't compare to the Amiga's mod format which allowed any samples to be dished out through its 4-channels. I just like having a dig comparing the two since PC’s were stuck with crap, rigid midi in their games in the era when we were enjoying our Amiga mods :)

Never forget being jealous of my friends 486 PC, untill we both bought settlers - the midi music was crap on his machine compared to my Amiga rendition. And since I had a A1200 with loads of RAM, the game played better too!

Now all they do on a game is put together an MP3 :( - no fun.

However, I do have a few exceptions to the rule in my midi collection where talented musicians have put the general midi instruments to good use. Although obviously having a differing sound, the original tune has been transformed into an excellent piece but only with a quality soundfont like the 32Mb Reality and a good output card like the sblive!

Using low quality midi instruments (cheap/old cards, 4mb soundfoints) makes all midi tunes sound cheap................

[Paul]

This mid sounds better with the latest Winamp with output set to directx. Still not as good as mods, I hate midi files.

[Akira]

A lot has been lost now, regarding game music composition. What do tehy do? They license a currently fashionable, but easily forgettable pop song and slap it in the game. Pish.

FEW teams do in-house sudn development, and do it good. Factor 5 have Chris Hülsbeck in there, so they are cool. Consoles tend to make them work in a more 'oldschool' way, specially the GBA. I will post a nice MP3 of a GBA song, you'll see how good it is :)

[RCK]

the game Idirion 3D was created by http://www.shinen.de/ and who is the shinen music composer / creator ?
Pink himself ! (Manfred Linzner)... so yeah, all the soundtrack of this shoot'em up are great :cool

[RetroMan]

Hm, I recently transfered most of my self made Amiga mod-files to my PC and listen to them with the DeliTracker. I really thing Amiga sounds should belong in it´s native form. MIDI sounds are really crap :(

[Akira]

I talked a bit with Manfred about Iridion and the GAX/GHX sound engine. I thought at first that they could easily convert AHX tunes to their console counterparts, but it seems they have to recompose stuff. They pull sound of really great quality using little processor time! And Pink is still as good as he always was :) I read in an interview with Purple Motion taht he was getting onto GBA/C sound development because he liked the spirit and the way you have to compose for it. 'Just like the good old days', he said :)