AQUARIUS from the YMF262 EP by Diode Milliampere, Live in Adlib Tracker II


I saw this on reddit, the track is written for the YMF262, or OPL3 fame which was popular on SoundBlaster 2.0, 16’s and AWE’s.

You can listen to the rest of his tracks on soundcloud.

3 thoughts on “AQUARIUS from the YMF262 EP by Diode Milliampere, Live in Adlib Tracker II

  1. That’s sounds great. I always thought a lot of games from that era put a lot of work into the MT-32 sound track and didn’t really bother all that much with the OPL3 version (if they even created a separate version?). Hearing something designed specifically for it really drives the point home.

  2. In fairness to those games, this is YMF-262 OPL3. The installed base at the time still had a ton of YM3812 OPL2s (AdLib and SB 1.x) which you can’t make sound as good. And the OPL3 being back-compatible meant you got the widest user coverage composing for OPL2 as the baseline and then doing MT-32 as your high-end option. By the time OPL3 had a significant market share, games had largely moved to streamed music instead of live sequenced MIDI.

    • Oh of course – I had a Sound Blaster 1.0, so should have known better! And you’re right about continuing to target the OPL2- I don’t recall any improvement in midi quality when I moved to an SB16.

      I also seem to remember trackers becoming somewhat popular for in-game music (Terminal Reality, a whole heap of Epic Mega Games titles) before Redbook audio tookover. I never owned one but have read the Gravis Ultrasound was a popular card for trackers.

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