Sunday, October 31, 2010

Rehearing the old times

I must confess to having a great soft spot for old video game soundtracks.  I've still got a selection of old MIDI files from games including: Ultima Underworld 1 & 2, Doom 1 & 2, Hexen 1 & 2, Descent 1 & 2, Warcraft 1 & 2... Hey, what's with all these old sequels?!? 

The problem with old MIDI soundtracks is that they sound horribly dated when you compare them to the wonderful orchestrated pieces of game music we get from modern titles. There's no denying that MIDI files sound hideous, and every year makes them sound even worse. Unfortunately my lack of knowledge and skill when it comes to music creation and mastering means that I lack the necessary skills to turn these files into modern sounding masterpieces.  I don't even know where to begin, nor do I have any idea as to what software I could use to do so.

So today, while listening to this terrible quality music made palatable purely by nostalgia, I decided to search to see if anyone had recreated/updated some of these tracks with modern technology.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a link to a website featuring redone versions of the old midi files from Doom, Heretic and Hexen.

These might not be to everyone's tastes, but for me, these recordings breathed new life into old melodies that I've listened to on many occasions.
Posted by AmstradHero at 12:54 PM
Labels: , ,

4 comments:

  1. WeeMadAndoOctober 31, 2010 at 4:48 PM

    http://doom.ocremix.org/main.html - a great remix series of the Doom soundtrack. Worth the download for the Hangarmageddon remix alone.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AmstradHeroOctober 31, 2010 at 4:54 PM

    For that I've been going with the work from the "Classic Doom" project - which brought the first episode of the original Doom into the Doom 3 engine.
    http://doom3.filefront.com/file/Classic_DOOM_3_Original_Mod_Soundtrack;52796
    It might only be the first episode, but it still had e1m1 and e1m8, which are probably my two favourite tracks from the game.

    ReplyDelete
  3. karachoNovember 2, 2010 at 2:04 AM

    i know its unrelated to that posting of you, but: hey i just tried out your module "fate of a city" for NWN2, its fun! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. AmstradHeroNovember 3, 2010 at 11:26 PM

    Thanks karacho! I'm always happy to hear that someone has enjoyed one of my mods!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)