This is Fake?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I had a memorex/telex 7045 (286 @ 20mhz) and I can tell you for a FACT that most of the Access software games did in fact sound like this on standard PC Speaker. I had and played both Mean Streets and Worldclass Leaderboard. First time I heard those birds and the very clear speech on Worldclass Leaderboard was quite the treat back then. Within about a year or so I did eventually buy an Adlib and then an SB Pro. But I did have both of those games and they did in fact play as you hear in that video through my 286 speaker. To be fair, my 286 did have a sizable speaker right in the front of the case though so it wasn't a small piezo buzzer.

[+DZ-Jay]

I'm 99% sure this is some fake sound, but perhaps my memory is not serving me well? Any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

I was wondering if the newest of PCs running dos were capable of doing good speaker sound. I know there was a windows driver that allowed the PC speaker to play wav file, but it took 100% of the resources of the computer and still sounded kind of shitty.

 

I'm calling BS, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

 

I don't know about those specific games in that video, but I do know that it was definitely possible to play sampled sounds on a PC speaker via PCM, or Pulse Code Modulation. In the same way you played samples on the C=64's SID by abusing the volume register: You modulate a pulse wave so fast that you can reproduce samples.

 

I recall having a MOD Tracker written in TurboPascal, which played all sorts of music with sampled instruments on the PC speaker, back in the very early 1990s.

 

-dZ.

[mr_me]

I'm 99% sure this is some fake sound, but perhaps my memory is not serving me well? Any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

I was wondering if the newest of PCs running dos were capable of doing good speaker sound. I know there was a windows driver that allowed the PC speaker to play wav file, but it took 100% of the resources of the computer and still sounded kind of shitty.

 

I'm calling BS, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

I can say that the music in Crime Wave (10:23) is real PC speaker music but it only plays at the opening, not during the story or during gameplay. As far as I know this game did not support any sound cards. It also has decent sound effects during the game.

 

The same with Links (11:00), the music is PC speaker but only play during the opening. The sound effects, birds, ducks, and speech "you hit the tree jim" are pc speaker. Links does support adlib and sound blaster and you can notice the difference. It also lists ibm speech adapter and m-sound?.

 

Both these games came out about 1990. Sound cards and vga graphics were still expensive options at the time. The 386sx-16 was new and affordable, comparable to buying a 286. Some people were buying XT compatibles to save money but I don't think they wouldn't have been able to play the latest games.

[82-T/A]

There were a bunch of games that did this. The Three Stoogest game also did something similar on the Nintendo... I think it was the first speech game on the NES which shocked a lot of people... and of course, it did it on the PC Speaker as well.

 

I never really had any games that used wave modulation on the PC speaker. But one game that I had growing up which really worked the PC speaker (all with beeps and boops) was "Sentinel Worlds - Future Magic I"

 

It comes "pretty close" to doing what your video shows on the PC speaker.