tohopes | RoboCop 3 (PC) - Roland LA music - Driving @tohopes | Uploaded 8 years ago | Updated 11 minutes ago
The music of RoboCop 3, as played by the game running in DOSBox connected to a Roland CM-64 via a USB MIDI interface.
The CM-64, like the MT-32, CM-32L, and LAPC-I, is one of Roland's "Linear Arithmetic" synthesizers, which produce musical tones by combining PCM samples with synthesized waveforms. These devices, marketed to amateur musicians and players of computer games, were less expensive, less powerful relatives of Roland's D-50 Linear Arithmetic synthesizer which was used by professional musicians in the late 80s and 90s.
These videos include a photo of the LA32 synthesis chip in my CM-64 which produced the sound recorded in the videos. The date code printed on it indicates that it was produced in the 13th week of 1989.
In some of this game's music tracks, the various parts get noticeably out of sync with one another, meaning that some parts/instruments/voices play during parts of the tune when they're clearly not supposed to. This suggests that the game's music playback was more complex (and buggier) than simply streaming all parts together as a single MIDI sequence, as is done in many games.
Also interesting is that instruments are not re-set when gameplay transitions from a mission to the subsequent mission briefing, causing the music for "Media Break" scenes and cutscenes to sound different depending on which mission was just played.
RoboCop 3 uses the Roland LA synth for sound effects as well as for music, for example playing Low Timbale (a drum) from the MT-32's rhythm set when the player kills an enemy and playing Explosion (exclusive to later CM-units and LAPC cards) when a character fires a gun.
Some of the tracks use extreme channel volume and velocity controls, causing horrible distortion when played on my CM-64, so I wrote some code to intercept and reduce the channel volume values in real-time. You could probably avoid this distortion on an MT-32 by turning down the master volume (unfortunately not so on the CM-64, whose master volume control is analog as opposed to digital).
Recording all of the game's music tracks was made easier by the fact that the game engine is controlled by interpreted (uncompiled) script which can be found (and modified) in plain-text form within the ROBO.DAT file. There is a line like "#TUNE 1" that sets the music for each mission or stage of the game. Editing the "TUNE" number for a particular mission makes it easy to record each of the 10 tracks.
I took the title of each track directly from a listing within the ROBO.DAT file, and tracks are ordered in this playlist according to that listing.
This playlist (RoboCop 3 (PC) - Roland LA music):
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNXHw_ipV81jGXNH-G_0T2-TKHEMIk6uq
from RoboCop 3 (1992)
Audio: Barry Leitch
Game Developer: Digital Image Design
Game Publisher: Ocean
The music of RoboCop 3, as played by the game running in DOSBox connected to a Roland CM-64 via a USB MIDI interface.
The CM-64, like the MT-32, CM-32L, and LAPC-I, is one of Roland's "Linear Arithmetic" synthesizers, which produce musical tones by combining PCM samples with synthesized waveforms. These devices, marketed to amateur musicians and players of computer games, were less expensive, less powerful relatives of Roland's D-50 Linear Arithmetic synthesizer which was used by professional musicians in the late 80s and 90s.
These videos include a photo of the LA32 synthesis chip in my CM-64 which produced the sound recorded in the videos. The date code printed on it indicates that it was produced in the 13th week of 1989.
In some of this game's music tracks, the various parts get noticeably out of sync with one another, meaning that some parts/instruments/voices play during parts of the tune when they're clearly not supposed to. This suggests that the game's music playback was more complex (and buggier) than simply streaming all parts together as a single MIDI sequence, as is done in many games.
Also interesting is that instruments are not re-set when gameplay transitions from a mission to the subsequent mission briefing, causing the music for "Media Break" scenes and cutscenes to sound different depending on which mission was just played.
RoboCop 3 uses the Roland LA synth for sound effects as well as for music, for example playing Low Timbale (a drum) from the MT-32's rhythm set when the player kills an enemy and playing Explosion (exclusive to later CM-units and LAPC cards) when a character fires a gun.
Some of the tracks use extreme channel volume and velocity controls, causing horrible distortion when played on my CM-64, so I wrote some code to intercept and reduce the channel volume values in real-time. You could probably avoid this distortion on an MT-32 by turning down the master volume (unfortunately not so on the CM-64, whose master volume control is analog as opposed to digital).
Recording all of the game's music tracks was made easier by the fact that the game engine is controlled by interpreted (uncompiled) script which can be found (and modified) in plain-text form within the ROBO.DAT file. There is a line like "#TUNE 1" that sets the music for each mission or stage of the game. Editing the "TUNE" number for a particular mission makes it easy to record each of the 10 tracks.
I took the title of each track directly from a listing within the ROBO.DAT file, and tracks are ordered in this playlist according to that listing.
This playlist (RoboCop 3 (PC) - Roland LA music):
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNXHw_ipV81jGXNH-G_0T2-TKHEMIk6uq
from RoboCop 3 (1992)
Audio: Barry Leitch
Game Developer: Digital Image Design
Game Publisher: Ocean
