Monkey Island with various sound cards

Back in the good old days of MS-DOS computer games, there where I wide range of soundcards available.

This video documents various soundcards, specifically the introduction score of "The Secret of Monkey Island". Please note that this video is generated using DOSBox emulator and the sound is very accurate. There is one final sound card, but it can't be emulated, the Roland MT-32. I would need to buy a real one, but they are hard to hunt down.

It features:

- PC Speaker
- Tandy / PC Jr
- Gameblaster / CMS (Creative Music System)
- Adlib / Soundblaster
- CD Audio

I chose this game because it is very popluar and chances are you have played this game. Very likely you have played it with PC speaker or Soundblaster audio. This video gives you the chance to listen to the other versions.

The video has been uploaded in 1440 x 1080 with corrected aspect ratio. Old MS-Dos games such as this where displayed on monitors that had non square pixels. On a modern LCD monitor this does look stretched (most you tube recordings of MS-Dos games are stretched).

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Monkey
• Island
• with
• various
• sound
• cards
• titles
• and
• captions
• credits

[OhNoNotMyPenis]

im having a hard time getting the sound to work on this game, how did you do it?

[Mau1wurf1977]

@OhNoNotMyPenis Start the game with MONKEY.EXE and it will load with the default audio device (usually PC speaker or Adlib). Type MONKEY X and will show a list of other options. E.g. Monkey G with launch the game in Game Blaster mode.

[Mau1wurf1977]

Yea nostalgia is such an interesting thing. Although the Roland version sounds better in objective terms, it's only the Adlib version that bring back these nostalgic memories :D

[someperson42]

I've heard far worse from the PC speaker -- they actually did an awesome job with that version of the music considering the limitations they had to deal with.

Your Gameblaster emulation is not even close to the real thing -- the real version sounds far better.

My crappy Soundblaster clone (Aztech Labs Sound Galaxy Washington 16) sounds just like the Adlib version.

[Mau1wurf1977]

@someperson42

Yup, check out this video:

Game Blaster Game Music

Here I used a SB 1.5 with CMS chips and it does indeed sound "fuller". The Prince of Persia recording is DOSBox though, back then I couldn't get it working on the PC :D

[Mau1wurf1977]

Yes!

There is new project underway! It used "The Secret of Monkey Island SE" which you can buy from steam. This will allow you to play the game in DOS or ScummVM with improved music AND digital speech! I tried it and it's fantastic...

It's called the CD Talkie Edition Project and you can find it by googling it.

[sikthehedgehog]

@theshawz PC speaker had a square wave, not a sine wave.

[grossetoby]

@jotarun :D

[jotarun]

@grossetoby me2!

[PikachuColoredPichu1]

Huh, didn't know it had different variations depending on the card it's got.

[grossetoby]

CD Audio is the best 5:17 !! the one i grew up with :)

[theshawz]

this is hands down the best thing I've ever seen done with just a sine wave from the PC speaker

[nickantibarney]

@dsaerno the gamegear has the same sound chip as the tandy, the sn77496. other systems with that chip include other sega consoles (upto and including the genesis), sega and aruse arcade games, some konami games, the tecmo arcade game "star force", the coleco vision, the bbc micro, the creati vision, and the ti 99/4a (as ti ms 7200).

[dittyobrien]

I had This for the Commodore Amiga 500 years ago and I honestly think it sounded far better than any of the pc souncards minus the cd version of course