Roland MT32 & SC55 Retro gaming

[robbo007]

Hello all,

I'm a retro gamer and have a MT32 woking on my MAC under Dosbox. Everything is cool. At present i'm playing some games like Ultima VIII that only support General Midi. My Roland MT32 seems to play GM fine but I'm not sure if it would sound better on another Roland card like the SC55?  What differences are there?

What the best combination or setup? I would need and external card as my MAC does not have ISA. Sould I buy a SC55 or maybe another Roland model?

Thanks,
Rob

[Ari]

It odd that you say your MT-32 plays GM fine, since it's not actually GM compatible. Although there are programs or sysex patches that remap the MT-32 to GM, the instruments still don't sound quite the same as their counterparts on a genuine GM module.

Earlier games (i.e. games created between 1987/8 to 1991) were usually composed on an MT-32. Some games made better usage of the MT-32's capabilities better than others: Space Quest 3, LSL3, Strike Commander (a game by Origin), Dune 2 - to name a few. An MT-32 is highly recommended with these, and on the other hand, GM modules such as the SC-55 wouldn't really be much better than OPL (adlib) and maybe even worse, since at that time, GM didn't exist, or was at it's very early beginning.
Later games were usually composed for GM (at least till MIDI was abandoned entirely for game soundtracks sometime around 1998), and MT-32 support was added as an afterthought, without putting much effort into it, so a GM card/module is highly recommended for these games. Games I'd recommend playing with an SC-55 are SQ5, KQ6, Wing Commander 3, Wing Commander Privateer and more.

Some games that were released at the seam of these two periods actually had pretty good support for both GM and MT-32. Dune 2 is one such game, and so is Strike Commander which I mentioned before.

If I were you, I'd try and get myself an SC-55mkII or an SC-88/ST/VL, or if you're under budget constraints, a simple SC-55 or any one of it's "siblings" would do well for GM games.

[robbo007]

Hiya Ari,

Plays fine I mean it plays haha But I've just noticed for example the differences in the Ulimta 8 soundtrack on the MT32 and the SC55. As U8 was written for GM the SC55 plays it soo much better. I though though it sounded great on MT32. haha

What about the other sound cards like the Roland CM-500, CM-32L etc? Are they worth using?

Has anyone done a list of games that support GM?

Thanks,
Rob

[jharris01]

Do not confuse a sound card with an external MIDI module robbo. Except for the RAP-10 and the SCC-1, the models you mention are external music equipment.

No GM list that I know of. Generally speaking games in the 80s are likely to use MT. Games from the 90s (specially those after 1994) are likely to use GM. There is a list of MT-32 games in Wikipedia. Mobygames.com can also tell you what kind of sound hardware and MIDI standards a game supports.