Duke Nukem 3D with Yamaha DB50XG on 1996 PC

Duke Nukem 3D, developed by 3D Realms, released on January 29th, 1996

This is a video to demonstrate the difference it made if you had a decent Midi device in your system. The PC uses a NEC XR385, which is a remake of the DB60XG, which is the basically identical followup model to the DB50XG by Yamaha.

Note that the whole video was captured from authentic 1996 (very early 1997) hardware, no emulation, no DOSBox. The Duke3D version is a 100% unmodified DOS version with the ingame resolution set to 1024x768. In the first half of the video, I just let the demo mode play and there seem to be some slowdowns. The second half is actual gameplay.

Most people just remember the main theme from Duke3D, which goes to show that the rest of the soundtrack was often quite unspectacular and ledd memorable.

Detailed System Specs:
intel Pentium P55C 200MMX@233MHz
256MB 60ns 72pin EDO RAM
Asus P55T2P4 Rev 3.10 Mainboard
Miro Highscore 3D with 3DFX Voodoo1 and 6MB RAM
Matrox Mystique with 4MB RAM
Creative SoundBlaster AWE32 with Yamaha DB50XG compatible Wavetable Board

As usual, send me requests of specific games you'd like to see and I'll get to it if I can get my hands on the game.

The buzzing noise in the video is caused by the low output quality of the SB AWE32, so there's not a whole lot I can do about it, but I'll try to reduce it as far as possible.

Youtube didn't seem to like the H.264 codec I used, so I had to recompress and reupload the video using DivX. I'm still looking for the best codec and encoding settings.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Duke
• Nukem
• 3D
• Duke3D
• SBAWE32
• AWE
• 32
• SoundBlaster
• Yamaha
• DB50XG
• DB60XG
• NEC
• XR385
• DOS
• MS-DOS
• 1996
• General
• MIDI

[SpiralPegasus]

What does Duke say when he shoots what looks a bit like the Doom guy? (3:45)

[mystftg]

@SpiralPegasus "Hmm, that's one doomed space marine"

[hodenriss]

oddly the game stutters heavily with midi playback over the db50xg daughterboard or external sc55. weather it's in doxbox or native dos, doesn't matter.

[mystftg]

@hodenriss Oddly enough, the stuttering seems to only appear during demo playback. When I load a game at 2:15 there aren't any slowdowns from that point forward.

[fleetwoodsucks]

any chance of stalker? The soundtrack on the first level

also episod2 level 7, the lunar reactor. Alienz.mid. is fantastic. can you do that too?

[mystftg]

@fleetwoodsucks Yes I'll make some recordings of these levels. I acquired some more MIDI devices for comparison, should be interesting.

[thiagotecnico]

ANXIOUSLY WAITING FOR 2011 DUKE NUKEM!!

[clammaster4]

@Arcadeprehacked it was fun but not the best

[dciguy01]

Can you upload ISLE OF THE DEAD?

[dciguy01]

@thiagotecnico I no sooner got the game and then sold it off a week later after I platinumed it. One of the biggest disappointments in gaming history.

[Arcadeprehacked]

@thiagotecnico

IT SUCKS, 12 FUCKING YEARS GONE TO WASTE

[DooderMcAltair]

I wish I had an old system with a nice Soundblaster in it to play this. All the source ports make the audio sound way more crackly than it's supposed to.

[Dant2142]

@ojideagu If you look closer at the specs, you can see he had a MMX 200 that he OC'd to 233. You're right about the 256MB of RAM though.

[ojideagu]

@JohnFortman I did have sound cards like this though in 1995. You could get them for quite cheap if you looked around. I got a card that sounded as good as the Awe32's Midi for £60, and an Ultrasound Ace daughter board for £80.

[ojideagu]

@JohnFortman That PC would be insanely powerful for 1996, infact you couldn't buy a 233mhz MMX Pentium until mid 1997. Almost nobody would be able to afford 256Mb ram in 1996!!! This is more a MONSTER in 1997.

[JohnFortman]

Well, I see you got a decent machine even for it's time. I imagine if you had it back in 1996, wow that would be awesone, your games would be flying.