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Great idea for a thread, I absolutely love adventure game music.  Here are some of my favorites:

Primordia - Still Here

Machinarium - Mr. Handagote

Shivers Two - Lonely Place

Gabrel Knight 2 - The Hunt Club

Dreamfall - St. Petersburg

Riven - Atrus’ Theme

Zork Nemesis - Crystal Laboratory

There’s a handful for now.

Keep posting, great stuff!

     
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Phod - 21 October 2013 04:33 AM

I absolutely love adventure game music.  Here are some of my favorites:

Shivers Two - Lonely Place

Nice find Phod, I was wondering when anyone will start posting his Fav’s .. it not like I m having this thread exclusively Smile

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Telltale‘s number one music composer & sound designer, Jared Emerson-Johnson from Bone: Out from Boneville to The Wolf Among Us.

Here is some nice Bossa-Nova from the guy Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse/The Penal Zone - Street A

     
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Ken Allen the original composer of the Space Quest(s)-in-game sountrack, with his new piece of the upcoming SpaceVenture - Main Theme ,hope that is not considered an illegal act ..its just a sample .

     
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Revolution’s Beneath A Steel Sky OST is one of greatest AG’s, also scouring the net for it will reveal 10s of bands and musicians covering the tracks .. some are really more than awesome .

A very unique 7/8 pattern at:-
Beneath a Steel Sky - LINC Space (Original)
Beneath a Steel Sky - LINC Space (Enhanced)

The difference between the enhanced and the original is very remarkable but all the credits goes to the original (of course).

Anyone can download Beneath A Steel Sky the enhanced soundtrack for ScummVM Here

 

 

     
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Nice choice as always.

It’s worth noting that the original music for Beneath a Steel Sky didn’t just include the Adlib/SoundBlaster version that Advie provided here. The original game also included a version of the music for Roland MT-32/LAPC-I/CM-32L devices. You can hear that version of Linc Space here:

http://www.game-nostalgia.com/bass/beneath_a_steel_sky_music3.html

The left button next to each listed track is the SoundBlaster AWE64 (doing its best to mimic the old Adlib/SoundBlaster FM synthesis)—it generally doesn’t sound that great, and can be safely ignored. Smile The right button next to each track is what you want—that’s the Roland MT-32.

Granted, Linc Space has a bit of an intentional computer-y sound since it’s a Virtual Reality world, so that may not be the very best track to show why the music sounds better on the Roland MT-32. But if you also try some other tracks like End Theme or the stuff on previous pages (click the Previous button), you should begin to hear the benefits.

So far as I’m aware, the Roland MT-32/LAPC-I/CM-32L version is the definitive version of the music as written and arranged by the original composer. (The remastered version Advie posted was made by a fan, not the original composer.) For people who care about nitty gritty details, technically the LAPC-I or CM-32L are actually slightly better than the MT-32 when playing the game itself, because those allow for some special sound effects, but for just listening to the music, the MT-32 version should be good enough.

Anyone interested in hearing the music sounding like this when playing the game should look into the Munt emulation project. Many games from the early 1990s used the MT-32/LAPC-I/CM-32L, so it’s worth the time to set up if you care about this kind of thing.

     
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Although I agree that it sounds generally a lot better, but somehow (at least some of) the jukebox music sounds almost better to me on the original Adlib version… It may be because I always thought it was this amazing electric guitar sound it was played with, when the Roland version is clearly a piano Smile
Here’s the Adlib:

And here’s the Roland:

That guitar sound I’ve heard in use sometimes, though very rarely, and it always reminds me of BASS Grin Although, now I went listening to the soundtrack and couldn’t find it (because I was listening to the Roland version). Unless someone can tell me the Roland version has such a sound somewhere and I’m just thinking about wrong songs Tongue

But anyways, the guitar sound I meant (and thought the certain songs were meant to have) is very well in this Ottmar Liebert song: Yarrow (Snaky Desert Guitar) (hopefully that link works)

As for other pieces in BASS that are great (it has a lot), I especially love the Walkway theme and the way Belle Vue reuses it…

     

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Great Idea for a thread.

Absolutely love soundtracks, when done right.

Here’s another one from Zork Nemesis….easily one of the most atmospheric games of all time, in my humble opinion.

and the Raven theme….despite the mixed reviews, one can’t deny the quality of the ost.


Anyway Enjoy

 

     
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UPtimist - 24 October 2013 05:06 AM

Although I agree that it sounds generally a lot better, but somehow (at least some of) the jukebox music sounds almost better to me on the original Adlib version… It may be because I always thought it was this amazing electric guitar sound it was played with, when the Roland version is clearly a piano Smile

“As Cool As You,” the jukebox song from BASS that you linked, is arranged as a jazz piano trio (consisting of piano, bass, and drums). This is a standard lounge jazz format, so I’m fairly confident these are the instruments the song was meant to have. I checked my copy of the game tonight and the MT-32 version uses the following instruments for that song:

AcouPiano3 (acoustic piano)
Acou Bass2 (acoustic bass)
Drums
Melodic Tom (a.k.a. tom-tom, which is just a special drum that plays on its own MIDI channel, so don’t worry, the song is still a trio, not a quartet! Wink )

I’m not sure how to double-check what instruments the Adlib version uses, but I’m guessing that what sounded like an electric guitar to you is actually meant to be a piano or jazz organ with sustain pedal, like Advie mentions below. If so, the fact that it doesn’t quite sound like one is probably just because the FM synthesis of the Adlib isn’t that great at making realistic instruments. But I agree that the Adlib version does have a neat sound of its own and I’m glad it was also included in this thread along with the MT-32.

UPtimist - 24 October 2013 05:06 AM

And here’s the Roland:

Actually, that isn’t a Roland MT-32, assuming that’s what you meant by “Roland” in the context of our conversation. It sounds to me like a General MIDI-compatible wavetable synth, perhaps a Roland Sound Canvas or something similar. This kind of synth is a little newer than the MT-32 and thus was not supported when BASS was originally released. My CD-ROM copy of the game supports only Adlib/SoundBlaster, Adlib Gold, and Roland MT-32/LAPC-I/CM-32L.

The ScummVM version of BASS adds a General MIDI conversion of the music as an option. And there are at least two sets of BASS General MIDI files floating around the Internet: one set recorded (and presumably converted) by a Russian fan called “captain Nemo,” the other set dumped from the ScummVM version by team member “Lavosspawn”. So those might be where such General MIDI versions come from.

The actual MT-32 version of “As Cool As You” won’t be nearly as nice as the version you linked, since pianos weren’t a strong suit of the MT-32. Still, for completeness’ sake, you can hear the Roland MT-32 version on the Game Nostalgia page I mentioned. It’s called “Jukebox 2,” and just as before, you should click the rightmost button in order to hear the Roland MT-32, with the left button being SoundBlaster AWE64. Sorry I don’t have a more convenient link: the Internet has failed me by shamefully neglecting to make the original MT-32 score more widely available.

Oh well. At least the Internet gave us the floppy version intro as played on a CM-32L (basically the same as the MT-32 version but with sound effects like the helicopter whirring). Good job, Internet! Yum

     
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That is a very interesting conversation you have here UPtimist, and Caliburn , I am waiting for your post to be reposted to see what you research came up to.

Caliburn I am glad you cleared up this remastered issue for me, as I am certainly sure now hat I had claimed false or at least misleading info about the remastered edition when this is just an enhanced (fan work) track(s) remake, and has nothing to do with the remastered version of BASS .

UPtimist I am not sure if that should really sound like guitar? , its more like an organ with some sustain pedal .

     
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No way this thread can go on without mentioning Tchaikovsky’s (Swan Lake) adaptation by George Alistair Sanger (aka as The Fat Man for his leading for Team Fat ‘band’) for LOOM™ .

George Sanger also known for his signature at many video games Soundtracks specially AGs such Maniac Mansion(for Nintendo) ,The 7th guest, The 11th Hour but his masterpiece will ever be LOOM™ - The Overture

The whole OST is Available Here for free download.

     
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Advie - 24 October 2013 02:58 PM

That is a very interesting conversation you have here UPtimist, and Caliburn , I am waiting for your post to be reposted to see what you research came up to.

OK, I re-edited my comment above with the result of my instrument research. (And I’ve moved some comments about the Remastered version of BASS down here so I don’t mess up the chronology of the thread.)

Advie - 24 October 2013 02:58 PM

Caliburn I am glad you cleared up this remastered issue for me, as I am certainly sure now hat I had claimed false or at least misleading info about the remastered edition when this is just an enhanced (fan work) track(s) and has nothing to do with the remastered version of BASS.

The enhanced track of Linc Space is by a fan named James Woodcock, whose work re-imagining some other classic game music has become a little bit infamous, heh heh. Tongue To be fair, his re-imagining of Linc Space and of BASS music in general doesn’t seem nearly as problematic as some of his other stuff. BASS doesn’t do anything very exotic instrument-wise with the MT-32, thus it’s easier to mimic, and thus it doesn’t matter as much that Mr. Woodcock appears to have used the ScummVM GM conversion as his sole starting point.

There are still questionable bits, of course, like the much, much subtler tinkling Warm Bell that is heard 23 seconds into the original MT-32 “Hobbins’ Theme” (mislabeled as “Storage Room” here) vs. the loud, clanging Tubular Bells of Woodcock’s version, but these differences ultimately trace back to the GM conversion.

As for Revolution’s 2009 release Beneath a Steel Sky Remastered for iPhone, I don’t own that release so I don’t know anything about it, except what the Internet can tell me.

The original music composer for BASS is Dave Cummins. For the Remastered iPhone version, according to the credits, a new composer named Matthew Slater was brought on to write a little bit of additional music for the Remastered game (example here). But that only tells us about the brand new music, not about the updating of the original music.

I don’t know who updated Dave Cummins’ music for the remastered iPhone version. It’s possible that Matthew Slater did (though he doesn’t mention it in his blog entry), or that a Revolution employee did. Or, yes, it’s even possible that Revolution may have used James Woodcock’s fan-made version (especially since he has a relationship with the ScummVM team and they helped out with the remastered version). If anyone owns the iPhone release, they can compare and find out. I haven’t heard that version’s music myself, so I’ve no idea.

I don’t want to bog this thread down in BASS music minutiae, so I’ll stop here and we can move on to other soundtracks. Smile

Advie - 24 October 2013 10:16 PM

No way this thread can go on without mentioning Tchaikovsky’s (Swan Lake) adaptation by George Alistair Sanger (aka as The Fat Man for his leading for Team Fat ‘band’) for LOOM™ .

I’m sorry to say I still haven’t played Loom. It’s one of my “backlog of shame” games. The 7th Guest is probably my favorite of The Fat Man’s soundtracks (or perhaps Wing Commander with Dave Govett). Still, you can’t go wrong with Tchaikovsky. Innocent

     
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WOW! Great Research Caliburn , what is GM converter/conversion anyway ?

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Kan R. Gao of FreeBird who’s behind To The Moon had also created a remarkable OST for the game , Kan is working on a new story/game ‘about a boy who meets a bird with a broken wing’ titled A Bird Story that was supposed to be launched in the middle of this year but you can listen to its OST at this link A Bird Story - OST

To the Moon Trailer Theme(feat. Laura Shigihara)

To the Moon Trailer Theme(Instrumental)

..anyone can buy full To the Moon OST from
Here and 50 percent of OST profits go to charities concerning autism .

     
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Advie - 25 October 2013 08:46 PM

WOW! Great Research Caliburn , what is GM converter/conversion anyway ?

Thanks. A General MIDI (GM) conversion is when you take MIDI data created for a non-GM device like the Roland MT-32 and you adjust the instruments and the volume to fit the General MIDI standard which is used by later devices, such as the Roland Sound Canvas or the Microsoft GS Wavetable Software Synthesizer that comes bundled with Windows.

The Roland MT-32 uses a different ID number for its default instruments than the General MIDI standard does for its instruments, so you try to find equivalent instruments for the conversion. Here’s an example of how you might convert the instruments of “As Cool As You” from MT-32 to General MIDI:

Roland MT-32                 General MIDI
------------                 ------------
  
AcouPiano3     --->      Acoustic Grand Piano
 65 
Acou Bass2     --->     32 Acoustic Bass
113 
Melodic Tom    --->    117 Melodic Tom 

That’s a simple one to convert, but it gets much harder sometimes because the MT-32 can create custom instruments beyond even the ones you see on its default instrument chart and often there isn’t a good General MIDI equivalent for those custom sounds.

A good conversion also means adjusting the volume of each instrument so that it is well-balanced for the new device, otherwise you run into problems like I mentioned above where the Tubular Bell is way too loud in James Woodcock’s fan version of Hobbins’ Theme. As far as I can tell, he created his version based on the GM-converted MIDI files dumped by the ScummVM team, which didn’t have the volume of that bell adjusted properly, at least not for the Yamaha Tyros keyboard that Mr. Woodcock uses for playback.

What makes conversion even harder is that even though all General MIDI devices use the same instrument ID numbers, the instruments themselves don’t necessarily sound the same in terms of either tone quality or base volume, so you can never make a conversion that sounds identical on all General MIDI devices.

A General MIDI conversion can be done manually or you can write code to chose the most likely equivalent instrument and/or adjust volume levels, but like any translation, it ultimately requires good judgment to make it sound as similar as possible.

Anyway, I doubt most people on Adventure Gamers are interested in this technical stuff, so let’s just listen and enjoy some more music. Smile

     
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Caliburn - 26 October 2013 02:22 PM

A General MIDI conversion can be done manually or you can write code to chose the most likely equivalent instrument and/or adjust volume levels, but like any translation, it ultimately requires good judgment to make it sound as similar as possible.

Anyway, I doubt most people on Adventure Gamers are interested in this technical stuff, so let’s just listen and enjoy some more music. Smile

Heyyy I am interested ,lol .. I am a Musician but I am surely not familiar with Adlib or MT and all that (in the concern of the audio programs I use) .. but that last paragraph I know about it quite well, actually the main concept of the midi tracks you get all the notes and times sig ....etc , on those tracks, then you start to choose your own instruments (from any midi bank library)  to fill in or to represent these notes/tracks. but its a messy thing as not all instruments fit in (unless they were assigned to what they represent and your job will be just a little easier) ,for many reasons such as the differences of their sound texture; velocity , sustain ,attack, threshold ..etc !

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Harvester contained various scenes of violence and gore; implied sexual intercourse, masturbation and S&M; murder; suicide; child abuse; profanity; cannibalism; prostitution; pedophilia; molestation, arson, theft, serial killing; geronticide, vandalism, sexually transmitted diseases; and stereotypes of homosexuals, Native Americans, Italians, and others.

The game was banned from stores in Germany. It was considered for release in Australia, but the local distributor for the game backed out, believing it would probably be banned there, as well. The game was released in United Kingdom, albeit with numerous scenes removed from the game

The intro of Harvester reveals that the music is created by “Zorch! Productions” but that doesn’t solve the mystery because it’s impossible to find out any information about “Zorch!”..

Zorch is Hamilton Altstatt and when he was asked (at one interview) why he never revealed his name at the game credits he said:

“At the time I was the audio director at Disney Interactive, and I thought it would be best just to use my company name rather than my actual name because of the violent association of Harvester”.

what is Zorch Productions and what had become of it? he said:

“That was my original audio production company name; I changed it to Greatwaves Digital Media when it turned out someone had already registered that URL (can you believe it?)”

Harvester acknowledged to be the most violet adventure game of all the time tho its outstanding commercial failure ..

Harvester - Hoples  hopeless was written that way within the game music folder
Harvester - Anxiety

if interested to read full interview sadly it at Harvester FB page so if you are you don’t have an account I would copy it and paste here if anyone asked for it

Zorch / Hamilton Altstatt   Interview

     
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Lost Horizon - Follow Me This beautiful song featured at the Hong Kong bar in the start of the game When Fenton Paddock enters the Hou Hai Nightclub .

Edit Confusedorry for the wrong link posted earlier

     

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