Sierra Music Support - Creative Music System / Game Blaster

[Cloudschatze]

Work-in-progress...



Creative Labs' demonstration tunes:
♫ "Game Blaster Demo Tune"
♫ "Main Demo from SONGDSK1"
♫ "Army March" from SONGDSK1"
♫ "Sealed With A Kiss" from SONGDSK2"
♫ "Voices"

Jim Leonard, aka "Trixter" graciously provided me with the CMS software (from which most of the above recordings were made), and I've been told to pass it on. Download here.

Origin's Times of Lore:
♫ "Times of Lore - Title Screen"
♫ "Times of Lore - Introductory Dialogue, Part 1"
♫ "Times of Lore - Introductory Dialogue, Part 2"
♫ "Times of Lore - Introductory Dialogue, Part 3"
♫ "Times of Lore - Introductory Dialogue, Part 4"
♫ "Times of Lore - Introductory Dialogue, Part 5"
♫ "Times of Lore - Introductory Dialogue, Part 6"
♫ "Times of Lore - Introductory Dialogue, Part 7"

Lucasarts' The Secret of Monkey Island:
♫ "Title screen and introductory sequence"

Colonel's Bequest:
♫ "The Entertainer"
♫ "Fifi's Victrola Theme #2"
♫ "Billiards Room Victrola Theme #2"
♫ "Billiards Room Victrola Theme #3"

Leisure Suit Larry I VGA:
♫ "Larry" Theme"
♫ "Some sort of "educational" television show..."
♫ "Visualize Whirled-Peas"

Space Quest I VGA:
♫ "Space Quest I Introduction and Opening Sequence"
♫ "Land-skimmer"
♫ "Blues Bros3k"
♫ "ZZ-Top3k"
♫ "Who's That Girl3k?"
♫ "Interstellar Salesman"

Silpheed:
♫ "Title screen and introductory sequence"
♫ "Level 1"
♫ "Game-over Credits"

[Ari]

Ah, what a great way to start the week, Cloud.

Thanks for the Demos.

[jharris01]

Man these brings memories. Do you have mp3's from Codename:Iceman?

[NewRisingSUn]

Thanks, Eric. If you need help recording further Sierra tunes from any device: I've got a program that plays any Sierra sound resource using any sound driver that ships with the game.

Also, regarding the Game Blaster: I wonder if it might be worthwhile to write a WinAmp plugin for those .CMS-format music files. There's only a handful of them in existence, so it would be of rather limited use, but it sort of bugs me to have even a single file format for which there's no modern player

[BlueMax]

I love what you're doing here!

[Cloudschatze]

Man these brings memories. Do you have mp3's from Codename:Iceman?

I can't bring myself to record any of the (mostly terrible) CMS playback from Iceman. I've added some recordings from Colonel's Bequest though, if you want to hear what decent CMS playback sounds like.

I also added a recording of that exceptional "Voices" tune from the SoundBlaster tradeshow demo.

[jharris01]

It makes sense to provide samples that show the card in the best light possible. Good job btw.

I played that game with my (long defunct) Game Blaster. Back then I was still a kid, opinion non formed, so it sounded fine for me. You know how nostalgia works

[Caliburn]

Thanks, Cloud.  Aside from comparing the sound characteristics of the devices themselves, I've discovered some cool demo songs thanks to your samples (like those amazing Adlib Gold ones posted quite some time back).

In this case, I like Voices and Sealed with a Kiss, but the other demo tunes are kind of embarrassing.  "Game Blaster Demo Tune" was better when John Williams wrote it for the London Symphony Orchestra circa 1977 (ahem).  "Main Demo" is actually pretty good for the intro (the first 18 seconds), but then devolves into a cheesy folk melody that makes me think of songs like Camptown Races and Oh, Susanna, which wouldn't be so bad I guess if said melody weren't played (at 43 seconds in) on a totally inappropriate instrument that I can only describe as a sci-fi B-movie version of an old fashioned phone ringing.  Then it all speeds up (mercifully, to get it over with faster?) at 1:43.  "March" is passable, but nothing special, and the arcade game laser blast-sounding things in the intro feel out of place based on the rest of the song.  Creative Labs weren't doing themselves any favors trying to sell the card based on demo tunes like these first three, in my opinion.

As for the in-game recordings, I haven't heard them all (besides the ones I'm about to mention, I only listened to the SMI intro and SQ1 intro).  I will say that's the most anemic version of the Silpheed intro I've heard, though I haven't heard some things that could be worse like the IBM Music Feature.  At least the Victrola Themes from Colonel's Bequest survive the conversion, if unspectacularly, with their dignity intact.  (Times of Lore sounded OK, too, but I don't have a point of reference for that one.  What this and the Victrola Themes have in common is that they both go for a big wash of electronic sound.)  Are there others like these Victrola Themes I should listen to, in order to hear the device at something closer to its potential?

The kazoo picture is even funnier after the audio samples.  But hey, at least it is a shiny, metal kazoo and not a cheap, plastic one.  Unless it's plastic painted to look like metal, which could also be appropriate...

Voices and Sealed with a Kiss, though, persuade me that one could write decent stuff for this device, even if it's inferior to the Adlib.

-Luke

[jharris01]

I think the song selection is good but without trying to hide the obvious: The songs definitely sound inferior to our developed taste. It makes me realize how much things changed.

I am torn between the reality of the card's sound quality and my nostalgic remembrances. It's easy to forget this card came before the very first sound cards. It wasn't even called a sound card at that time! (For me it was called music card. At least what I remember. I could be wrong.)

On the other hand I clearly remember the demo tunes and couple of the sierra recordings. I actually played Silpheed, Iceman, Quest for Glory 1 and 2 back to back using the Game Blaster as the default music card. It heavily shades my opinion of the card.