If anyone's interested in what songs the Doom music was referencing, here's a good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y3RWlDz_AA
If anyone's interested in what songs the Doom music was referencing, here's a good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y3RWlDz_AA
It's amazing how much better all these sound to me in OPL2.
When CD-ROM soundtracks because the norm it really ruined a lot of game music for me, because all that chip music perhaps inspired by guitar and orchestral music just ended up being replaced with actual guitar and orchestral music, and then games just ended up sounding like movies and it's like what even is the point?
From my side I remember painstakingly transposing Led Zeppelin into an 8 bit tracker when I was a kid and being thrilled at how much more exciting the 3-channel square wave interpration sounded, and pretty much from that point on my guitar just became something to noodle out a riff prior to inputting to the computer.
When it was actual guitar and orchestral music it was one thing, but when it was "much better but still not quite there" midi renderings of orchestras and guitars, that could be a bit uncanny valley. And even when it wasn't, stuff that was really written for a 2 op FM idea of an orchestra, often sounded a bit thin on a real orchestra.
TBH I never really got the point of those "video game score played by a real orchestra" things, although to be fair most of them seemed to be for games from the console world so as a PC gamer I didn't have any attachment to the original tunes in the first place.
For me I really felt things turn between Dune 2 and Command & Conquer when Frank Klepacki got to put full-blown lyrics and guitars into the soundtrack. I did listen to a bit of industrial music at the time so I still enjoyed it for what it was, but it never felt as magical as dedicated OPL3 scores like Stéphane Picq's Dune... and when Trent Reznor was pulled in to do the score for Quake I was just like, okay, that's it, game music is over now. I think Epic kept it on life support by still using demoscene composers like Siren (Alexander Brandon) and MCA (Michiel van den Bos) who both went on to do Deus Ex, but since then seems like chip musicians and tracker composers are mostly doing niche indie games.
It's always a blast when you play a AAA these days and hear something that still has a bit of that old vibe - one tune I always remember is Sam Hulick's Uncharted Worlds, which is the galaxy map song from Mass Effect. I think you could probably build it on OPL, SID, even AY chip and have it still sound great.
I like Trent Reznor, but the quake soundtrack is... Not good.
It was the most popular game of a generation. Games that popular don't really need to have good music, it gets heard so much that people grow attached to it no matter how weak it is... But the Quake soundtrack failed even at that.
So it's no wonder game music composing didn't die!
Huh? Those are the original MIDI versions of the music, which is how Bobby Prince composed them on a Roland SC-55. There is no more authentic sound.
I doubt anyone in 1993 thought the OPL2 version of the music sounded better. General MIDI was mind-blowing in comparison.
Presumably most midi game composers checked that their music didn't sound like trash on the AdLib sound card most users would actually have? Good music that's actually written for AdLib can be extremely good, check out Stephane Picq (who sadly also died recently).
The TFX intro is some genius level AdLib programming. All other versions sound pretty weak in comparison.
https://youtu.be/YhQl_waHXoQ
It sounded great on my Gravis Ultrasound with custom midi samples.
(it was also a pain when the Sound Blaster compatibility was needed, dma 1 irq 5).
In 1993 I thought the OPL2 version sounded better and still do now.
But my broader point was that comparing this old game music to "real" guitar music kinda takes away from what it actually was for a lot of people listening to it - something different to and unique from mainstream rock/metal. It always made me a bit sad when these guys did interviews and talked about listening to ordinary rock bands, it kinda broke the spell that games were a special little place for people who were into computer-based art for its own sake.
OP is right. A waveform generator chip is a much more "real" musical instrument than a glorified sampler.