Music
Welcome to the wonderful world of game music! From the beeping and screeching of PC speaker to catchy AdLib tunes, SoundBlaster arias, and truly orchestral music that pushes 32-bit soundcards and beyond to the limit, music has always been a big part of gaming experience. Until the SoundBlaster and subsequent 8-bit soundcards and higher, music capabilities of the PC seriously lagged behind other computers, most notably the console systems. When PC gamers had to put up with monotonous bleeps in the 1980s, their Commodore 64, Amiga, and NES counterparts were enjoying a wide range of catchy tunes. Therefore, a lot of sample music on this site are from non-PC versions.
To listen to sample game music on this site, you need only three programs (which is quite amazing, given that there are over 180 music formats across all platforms). These are broken down by format (which you can tell by looking at 3-character filename extension) as follows:
- For Commodore 64 and Amiga-only music (.ZIP): DeliPlayer (lacks browser plug-in support)
Important Note: DeliPlayer tunes have a variety of filename extensions, but they have all been compressed in ZIP format. DeliPlayer can open these files directly, so there is no need to use WinZip first :) We have named these special files "[game name]-tunes.zip" to distinguish them from actual game files.
- For Commodore 64 music (.SID): SidPlay /W, Windows version of SIDPLAY2. If you have a Macintosh, use SidPlay for Mac.
- For Amiga and PC music (.MDZ, .ITZ, and .S3Z): ModPlug to listen directly to tunes on this site without downloading, otherwise use DeliPlayer
- For PC AdLib music (.D00, .HSC, .RAW, .SA2, and .SCI among others): AdPlug, a plug-in module for WinAmp
That's it-- you are good to go :) Incidentally, most of the music on this site are in MIDI format (.MID extension), which is already supported by Windows, so you won't need to install anything. Just choose "Open file from this location" option to listen to the tune directly if the MIDI player doesn't automatically show up (it should automatically play the tune in Internet Explorer 5.5 and above once you left-click on the tune).
If you want to explore further into the realm of game music, we recommend the following sites:
- Video Game Music Archive - quite possibly the largest archive of game music on the Internet, with over 8,000 tunes in MIDI format
- Game Music Homepage - another good MIDI archive
- Twisted - small, but excellent MP3 archive
- Quest Studios - the official source for music from classic Sierra games
- Adlib Music Archive - Undoubtedly the best archive of Adlib music on the Internet
- ExoticA - amazing Amiga site with a huge archive of Amiga (and C64) music files, players and editors
- The Best Game Music In The World... Ever! - pretentious name notwithstanding, a huge archive of Amiga game music
- High Voltage Sid Collection - a must visit for fans of Commodore 64 game music, with over 11,000 tunes and growing
- Atari Music Pleasuredome - everything you'd want to know about Atari ST music. Unfortunately neither DeliPlayer nor WinAmp plays the format, so you have to download additional players which can be found on the site
- ANX Game Audio Player - one of the best programs for "ripping" music and sounds from games
Note: This page will contain a list of all game music files on this site. The feature is not done yet, though, so please be patient :)
