Spirits are high at camp Gruso, following the arrival of a legendary piece of gaming and synthesizer history: a Roland MT-32. If you’re familiar with the MT-32, then you’re already nodding knowingly. If not, I’ll bring you up to speed with some edited excerpts from Wikipedia.
The Roland MT-32 Multi-Timbre Sound Module is a MIDI synthesizer module first released in 1987 by Roland Corporation. Along with its compatible modules, it established an early de-facto standard in computer music.
Despite its original purpose as a companion to other professional MIDI equipment, the MT-32 became a de-facto standard for PC computer game publishers. Sierra On-Line, a leading PC game publisher of the time, took an interest in the sound-design of its PC games. Sierra secured a distribution deal to sell the MT-32 in the US, and invested heavily in giving its game titles (at the time) state-of-the-art sound by hiring professional composers to write in-game music. King’s Quest IV, released in 1988, was the first Sierra title with a complete musical soundtrack scored on the MT-32.
Although the MT-32′s high price prevented it from dominating the end-user market of gamers, other PC publishers quickly followed Sierra’s lead, expanding the role of music in their own game titles. The MT-32 remained the gold-standard for musical composition well into the early 1990s, when the game-industry began to shift toward the General MIDI label.
See also: List of MT-32-compatible computer games
Back in the day, when I was playing Sierra adventure games like Space Quest, Police Quest and Kings Quest on an old IBM XT clone, I had no idea this thing existed. Sure, it was listed in the sound options during setup, but along with the Sound Blaster and Ad Lib selections it was just some mystery thing that had nothing to do with me. All I had was the internal speaker. That horrendous single channel squawker was my aural gateway to gaming immersion, and I knew no better.
Here’s what Space Quest 3 sounded like when I played it: http://www.defacto2….SQ3-Speaker.mp3
And here’s what it sounds like through an MT-32: http://www.yvan256.n…le_-_LAPC-1.mp3
Ignorance truly was bliss. Still, I wouldn’t swap those old days of bleepy soundtracks for anything. One game that managed to make something out of nothing was Xenon 2. Through some very clever trickery they made a single channel bleep sound like multi-channel audio, and to this day the PC speaker version of that theme remains my favourite one.
Back to the present day, and I was very happy to discover that DOSBox has full support for the Roland MT-32 – even via a USB MIDI adapter, in Windows 7. I’m a sucker for the painful ways of old though, and am currently building an actual DOS box from an old PIII. It’s a toss up between Win95 and FreeDOS for the OS… I think Grim Fandango will probably make that decision for me.
Just a final note, if you own a GP2X you must check out Hooka’s port of FreeSCI for your Sierra fix. It’s superb. You can also play Sierra classics in your browser at sarien.net.
(Originally posted here July 2009)
