![]() ![]() I can’t promise that posts will be any more frequent in coming months on here but I should have a new “tour” of the collection coming up over the holidays for those curious about how many games, gaming systems and related ephemera it’s possible to pack into one small loft conversion. This unadulterated version doesn’t have all the text/logos obscuring it and was slightly cropped on all sides for the final box art. To go along with the letter there was a print of the illustration which is identical to the one ultimately used on the cover as far as I can see. The team behind the NES port in Japan clearly felt differently keeping the single figure of the Avatar which was used on just about all of the other ports. He cites his reason for the change being that Japanese tend to be group oriented so they introduced a party on the cover while trying to maintain the same atmosphere. This is a letter from Fumitaka Sase of the Fujitsu FM Towns department to Robert Garriott asking for permission to use an alternative cover for the FM Towns port of the game. I’m back just in time for Xmas with another Origin relic dating from January 1992. Ultima 3 works in the same way, except all the notes are on the one channel meaning you can only pick the one instrument (at least without more advanced equipment to process the MIDI). It’s certainly a nice extra to have included in the game for those ST owners who had the extra hardware. No doubt there is a suitable combination that will work in all cases but I tried restarting with my new settings and it sounded a little off to my ears:-Ī little more experimentation is definitely required but I ran out of time. The snag is that those same instruments will then be used on every other piece of music. The music is split into 6 channels giving me 6 instruments to choose for the various parts. The notes are simply being switched on and off. There doesn’t appear to be any subtlety in the instructions, in terms of volume and the like. A whole lot better than the original beeps anyway. There is certainly room for improvement but that sounded reasonable to my ears at least. I let the title screen cycle through tracks while changing instruments. This means I have to fiddle around on the SC-155 picking instruments myself. Several years layer, general MIDI was introduced with a standard set of instruments but at this time every device would simply do its own thing. This is because, while the game is outputting MIDI instructions, it doesn’t send any more than just the notes so it all defaults to the grand piano. You’ll no doubt have noticed that the music is being played entirely on piano. On starting the game, this is what I got:. While fairly ancient, this synth is still more modern than what was available at the time. To the best of my knowledge, Ultima 3 and 4 were the only Origin games to support MIDI on the ST.įor the purposes of trying them out, I’ve connected up my SC-155 to the ST’s MIDI out. If you had that sort of money, you probably had an Amiga or PC by then. I can’t imagine many gamers took advantage of this given that the MT-32 would have cost far more than the ST itself. Sierra included MT-32 support for some of their games and were the main proponents. MIDI didn’t see a whole lot of use in ST games in truth. Watch enough 80’s Top Of The Pops and you will see the occasional ST driving synths. The built-in MIDI support of the ST was a unique feature, leading to the machine being used for years in music production. It’s not horrible but it lags way behind the Amiga which would come out mere months later. The built-in Yamaha sound chip on the Atari ST is in effect the same as on the ZX Spectrum 128 or Amstrad CPC, i.e. Apologies as ever for the usual quality of the video on here as I’m still just pointing my phone at the screen. What is somewhat less well known is that the earliest two Ultima games to support music had built-in MIDI support from the beginning on the Atari ST. This is something I’ve been wanting to try out for ages.įirst off, a quick look at Ultima 4 running without MIDI. I’m sure all Ultima fans are aware of the fan patches that add MIDI support to some of the early DOS Ultimas. ![]() I’ve started a new job which currently means many hours of commuting every day and when I’ve not been doing that, I’ve had my hands full getting my house ready to sell. That’s now on the market so in the hopefully brief lull before I have to worry about moving, I might manage a post or two. I had (and still have) plans for numerous things to write about on here this year but real life has been taking precedent for the last few months. ![]()
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