Games and General MIDI

From about 1994/95 on, about any game that had MIDI music at all supported General MIDI. Unlike the older Roland standard, there is a wide variety of setups that are compatible with GM:

• A wavetable daughterboard mounted on a Soundblaster 16 or compatible sound card. This is probably the most common setup. The Roland SCB-55 or SCD-15 (both are the same device and basically a Sound Canvas 55 MkII) and the Yamaha SW50XG are usually considered the best. The Terratec daughterboards were pretty good too.
• A Soundblaster compatible card with a built in wavetable device, for example the miroSOUND PCM series, the Terratec base 64 or Maestro 32/96.
• A Roland SCC-1 or RAP-10 card. The SCC-1 is a Sound Canvas 55 on a card, the RAP-10 has an additional DAC which however is not Soundblaster compatible and is supported by very few games, so you'll need a parallel SB for either.
• An external GM device hooked up to an MPU-401 interface or the Soundblaster's MIDI port.

Dune II	RTS	92		"Sound Canvas"
Beneath a Steel Sky	Adventure	93
Betrayal at Krondor	RPG			CD version has CD music
Doom	FPS
Gabriel Knight	Adventure
Return to Zork	Adventure			"Sound Canvas"
SimCity Classic	strat
Space Quest V	Adventure
SimCity 2000	strat
Arena	RPG	94
Heretic	FPS
Rise of the Triad	FPS
Ultima VIII	RPG			Speaker SFX
System Shock	FPS
SimCity Enhanced	strat
Transport Tycoon	strat
3D Lemmings		95
Caesar II	strat
Transport Tycoon Deluxe	strat
Biing!	strat
1830: Of Railroads and Robber Barons	strat
Descent	FPS
The Beast Within	Adventure
Phantasmagoria	Adventure			7 CDs!
Space Quest 6	Adventure
Warcraft II	RTS
Witchaven	RPG
Descent II	FPS	96
Duke Nukem 3D	FPS
The Settlers II	strat
Shadow Warrior	FPS	97

As an add-on, a list of the most important external GM devices by Roland:

• The SC-55 can be seen as the original Sound Canvas. They are fairly common and show up on eBay a lot, but tend to go up high.
• The SC-55mkII is an improved model with a better synth.
• The CM-300 is a SC-55 without any controls or displays except a volume knob. I have never seen one anywhere.
• The CM-500 is a CM-300 with an additional MT-32 inside. This would be the ideal gaming sound device, but I've never seen one of these either.
• The SC-7 is a slightly reduced SC-55 that can be connected to the serial port of a PC or Mac. This setup might even work with DOS games under Windows, anyway you can connect it to a MIDI port as well.
• The SC-88 has the new synth of the SC-55mkII, but additional more samples and more functionality. It, too, can be hooked up to a serial port.

Yamaha

MIDI on the computer is usually associated with Roland. But in 1995, Yamaha entered the scene with their own line of products:

• First, there was the DB50XG daughterboard. With 4MB wave ROM carrying no less than 676 voices and 21 drum kits it beat everything then on the market.
• Considering that some people were reluctant to open up their computers, Yamaha added the MU10 as an afterthought. It was a cute little external module, basically a DB50XG in a case.
• Finally came the SW60XG, a DB50XG as a standalone ISA card, since fewer and fewer sound cards had wavetable connectors. Designed for MIDI playback only, it did not use IRQ or DMA, took up only a single I/O address and could be addressed as an MPU-401 interface.

A very nice add-on was the Phat.Boy analog controller that could work not only with Yamaha modules, but also with the Roland GS synths and the AWE 32. Probably not very relevant for games, but just too nice not to mention.

Yamaha's XG standard was not widely embraced by game developers. The only game I currently know to support XG is Final Fantasy VII.

Links

• Comparison of various sound modules playing music from Sierra adventure games.