Arkhan

when I want quick entertainment, I turn on my PCE. I fire up China Warrior and start kicking dudes in the sack and punching fireballs. Instant gratification.

Yeah,but alot of chiptunes have effects and some dynamics going on despite being chiptunes. Just because its simple shouldn't mean people go OH ITS MIDI. ITS KINDA LIKE THEM OLD .MIDS FROM AOL. GARBAGE. you can use MIDI to control really sophisticated synths and idiots like that would never know its MIDI driving all of it

LOL Someone mentioned the C64 music. Simply awesome....I still get the tunes stuck in my head to this day. Yeah the C64 music was excellent. The same tunes are in the MIDI patch for PC. No disk swaps, EGA graphics, MIDI tunes w/ MT-32. Totally solid. All of the Ultimas have really great music. Very fitting music for the different game environments. Some games the music dont fit. Ultima doesn't have that problem. But yeah the NES one, I made 4 barbarians. I figured why the hell not lets see how that turns out. Its pretty fun. I named them SMASH STUFF ALL DAY so thats what it says on the screen, lol

Use macros and repeats. If you do a straight copy paste, you're asking for a mess Hint: Insanity's entire soundtrack was done in <8kb Are you sure squirrel didn't like the file size? It makes sure the song fits w/i 2 banks of memory, (16kb). If the text file is 22kb, it doesn't mean the produced file will be anywhere near that big.

I've noticed most little kids dont give two shits about graphics. They just want to hear bleepy noises and move something around and get results. 80s games are just the ticket.

The FM Towns Trilogy is in both Japanese and English. oh, I never noticed that haha. I just played it in Japanese. I can stumble through it enough to manage. Is the english similar to Hydlide 3 on MSX, where the built in English is pretty cryptic and often hilarious to read?

I spent most of my childhood playing Ultima games. I got that Ultima collection for PC, along with Ultima Online. I played UO from 1998 until 6 months ago, lol. Anyway here's my two-cents. reconstruction.voyd.net is definitely where you want to go for updates and happy things. That site made Ultima Collection even better. 1) Play the DOS one. None of them are really better than the other. They're all a 1 hour affair. Steal a blaster, vacuum and reflect suit, who cares if its the dark ages still. You can steal the lazer still! 2) Play the DOS one w/ the EGA patch applied. I wouldn't put too much thought into this game though, as the coolest part of it is the boxart. The game itself is... yeah. What happened. 3) DOS w/ EGA + MIDI. If you want a fresh spin on the game, play Ultima Exodus on NES (Or on MSX if you can read Japanese. Same game). The NES one dragon-warriors it up in a great way. You get the distinctly Japanese flavor that their RPGs have, with all the adventure and excitement of an Ultima game. My only complaint is some of the music swaps suck. The songs are great, but I miss the original tunes. 4) DOS w/ VGA+MIDI. The VGA is so badass. Its a new breath of life for the game. You can't go wrong really. Or, again, the NES one. Again, it puts some distinct Japanese flair into the presentation of the game. This time its more Final Fantasy like. The music is excellent. I give it a thumbs up. The SMS ultima IV tries to be too much like the PC one and is kinda dopey because of it. No point in playing that one if you have access to the superior PC versions. 5) DOS w/ MIDI. The NES port was an abortion. What happened?! They tried making it as perfectly identical to the PC ones. It was a stupid idea. They should've Japan'd it up again. 6) DOS. Any other version is awful. The C64 one will make your eyes bleed. The SNES one is tolerable, but not the greatest. The game is mouse-centric. SNES doesn't do mouse-centric games at all unless its Mario Paint. 7) Use Exult engine and play it in Windows in high res! Perfection for an already perfect game. 1024x768 is awesome. You can see way more of the game at once, and it's fun. The SNES port was just bad. Soooo bad. It was like The Legend of Zelda meets alot of drug use, with Ultima VII tossed in. Yeah, you're playing the DOS one, or nothing at all. I prefer nothing at all, because the game kinda blows, alot. 9) Run away screaming. 9 didn't get much better than 8. Ultima Online was great up til the recent expansion that added Gargoyles, and revived the underworld/stygian abyss. Now the games completely broken. Completely. my gargoyle's equipment was magically augmented in a few hours and completely owned everything everyone else had. Most of which took months to earn or craft. Not too fair at all really. an honorable mention, though probably not one you will play, is Ultima IV for the MSX computer. Instead of having the Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy flair added in, this one is a great Japanese version of the traditional DOS ones. The graphics look nice and crisp, and the game play is solid. But, if you cant read Japanese, you are totally screwed. Kinda like the FM Towns one that was shown. Great stuff, but if you can't read it, you won't get too far. I chose the DOS versions over all other versions because of the patches that now exist to EGA+MIDI the games. It really improves things, especially if you are using an MT-32 for the music. You will most likely be emulating the early versions no matter which platform you pick (DOSBox is emulation too!), so you might as well pick the one that has nice graphics + music capabilities, and completely lacks disk-swapping. I think the lack of disk swapping along with the color enhancements and excellent MIDI make the DOS versions the best choice. Now I have to go play Ultima Exodus on NES some more. I had a save file with 4 barbarians going last year. I should see about finishing that.

I got a 2600 for 2.50$ Japanese NES multicart for 1$ Sega+CD for 10$ a broken NES and a bunch of games for 20$ (The NES just needed pins fixed up)

Hehehe. Making NES games is a pain in the ass because the PPU is wacko. I want games like this on the 7800. Someone make one so I can actually buy a 7800 There just werent any games like this on the 7800, and as far as arcade ports were concerned, the 2600, NES, SMS and C64 we had were already fine. and then we got a genesis, and turbo grafx, so yeah....the 7800 was like "uh, why?"

I think most of the Amiga music is complete crap given the release date of some of the games in question. Especially crap like menace where they used cheesy sampled guitars. R Type and Ghouls and Ghosts were butchered compared to the arcade or other home counterparts (PC Engine). So many games were just complete crap music wise. There are some exceptions, like Shadow of the Beast...... but the majority of it is just bleh, especially when you compare it to other possibilities. PC Engine's PSG is still probably the best non-FM soundchip. 6 channels, 32 byte waves, stereo panning. Then you add on the CD hardware, and all the CD games have *amazing* tunes. Beats out the Amiga to me. MSX's FM capabilities were excellent too. The PCE and MSX had audio that fit the game better. Alot of Amiga games, the music doesn't really mesh well with the SFX, and it just sounds off. Some examples: (FM goodness)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YV_hPTT8PQ (Arguably better than the arcade one sound wise) ( Sapphire. Its epic. Real guitars! No corny farty sampled bull) The Amiga stuff is nice for demos, songs on their own, and RPGs, but actiony games, eh.... no. Show me a good example to prove me wrong. I've been looking myself and can't find anything other than garbage. How? Are you doing it by hand or did you find a convertor program that actually works decently? 3MLE works good. You can just yank out the stuff and put it right into the Squirrel template. Though you have to be cafeful. That 3MLE was designed for Mabinogi, and that features a few non standard MML commands in regards to octave shifts. If you're having trouble bug me on IRC or email me what you're doing.

How is that a dilemma? Its a dilemma because I said it is. I played it with music, and then there was no music? What a dilemma! I can't figure out where the music went. Other versions have music, where did my music go!? OH CAN SOMEONE HELP ME SOLVE THIS DILEMMA? OTHERS EXPERIENCE IT TOO WHAT DO WE DO. Oh wait, we solved it. That dilemma of wondering where the music went and why it went away. Yeah, we solved it. and it was all because of you helpful people that aren't tools.

I feel good knowing that others were musicless too, and now we have solved the dilemma!

This would be one of my least favorites if it wasnt made for 6 year old little girls. lol As father of two girls that like the game, often, I get a free pass on posting it as the my most hated. AX Oh, If i had to sit and listen to that crap while little kids played it, I would hate it too hah I played it a few times since i have a copy (Got from my aunt who was a little kid when it came out) Its bad. Really bad. Pointless unless you are a little kid

Astroblast, Solaris, Star Raiders

This would be one of my least favorites if it wasnt made for 6 year old little girls. lol

I want to know what games make you people want to drop kick the 2600 down a flight of steps. Mine is Great Escape. I can't stand that game.

The limitation is to the width of the object (per row), not the height. In Laser Blast the lasers are vertical, not horizontal and only a few pixel wide each row. also, laser blast is a terrible, boring game, so who cares what that game does,

Ah, yeah the SNES and Amiga both use sample based synthesis, and thankfully Paula (Amiga) was never in a synth because that chip sucks. Its 4 channel sampled, with hard L/R panning. Total crap. I don't know why everyones all ooo-ahhh over that nonsense.

Yeah I own it. Its OK, though the first one is still my favorite.

yeah its kinda retarded. I just remember playing it and having music, and then one day it didnt. Me being like 8 at the time, I just assumed the "music battery" ran out, lol.

well son of a bitch, thank you, lol. Ahhh good tunes. any other games like that?

Was there an Atari 2600 Moon Patrol w/ music? I seem to remember it when I was younger, but I look now and don't see it?

Its worthless. Maybe 5$. Ill give you 10, send it over. in all seriousness, how much are they asking for it?

No they dont...the only case that this is true that I can think of is FM chips like in the MSX, Genesis, etc... Similar, or the same FM chips were used in Yamaha synths. The NES, Master system, PC Engine, MSX w/o FM, Coleco, Atari, and all of that, they have their own sound chips that aren't in synths and are all very unique.... the C64 too, but it is the most sophisticated synth chip of the era, and has been built into an actual synth. The leads and bass of the SID are standard analog synth caliber stuff. Moogs and Rolands can bust those sounds out no problem. They're unique to the retrogaming area, but commonplace in the land of synths. Some of these chips were developed before MIDI was a standard, and came into being about the same time, making it basically impossible for them to be using MIDI. I generate MIDI files and convert them to MML (Music Macro Language) for PC Engine music. I use MIDI every day with my musical equipment. MIDI can even be used to control lighting.