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| 1bit games with music | |
| Posted by: CharlieFrown on 2026-01-15 01:02:42 Hi, Been curious about this topic. Do you know any b&w games that include music during gameplay? Do not include titles that feature music in title screen/intro ("Airborne"). I know there is quite nice music in Tetris, but those russian melodies tend to stop in middle of gameplay, giving you utter silence. There is music in Lemmings too, but generates a heavy CPU load on 8 mhz Mac, so it's unplayable. | |
| Posted by: ymk on 2026-01-15 08:08:05 ZeroGravity Jewelbox (030+) Cogito (030+) SimFarm (020+) Prince of Persia (rare use in gameplay) | |
| Posted by: adespoton on 2026-01-15 08:18:39 Apache Strike - it loops a single tune, but even al these years later, the tune is burned into my memory. Beyond Dark Castle has music at certain points in the gameplay, but not all the time. Cairo Shootout? I can't remember, but I vaguely recall it does. Dungeon of Doom might? | |
| Posted by: obsolete on 2026-01-15 08:19:06 Glider up to at least version 4 is playable with music on a 68000 in b&w. It will bog down a bit when there are a multiple sprites on the screen, but it's playable. | |
| Posted by: VMSZealot on 2026-01-15 09:58:49 Lemmings music bogs it down? Are you sure? I played Lemmings to death on my 8MHz Mac SE, and I remember thinking it far superior to my PC - because of the sharp graphics and the music. I mean, the PC graphics were colourful, sure, but 320x200 is below woeful as resolutions go. I'll have to pull my SE out and verify this claim! I'm sure I'll find other games with music when I do. I'm pretty sure that Fate of Atlantis has music too. | |
| Posted by: adespoton on 2026-01-15 10:18:31 I'd love it if others would update https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wg45xflCn8MAPvE0H4un7OmbavRNW5qlSHbeZg39Q9A/ - and adding a column for "background music" would be perfectly fine 🙂 | |
| Posted by: jkheiser on 2026-02-13 10:03:22 The original Mac had great sound, but at great cost: using all four voices of the original sound driver devoured half of the cycles on a 68K. Folklore.org: Sound By Monday
folklore.org
You can see the toll incurred by increasing the number of voices in Space Quest II’s prologue. A spaceship approaches a docking station, the music swells with the addition of another voice channel, and the frame rate drops considerably. When the music stops, the animation smoothens. A lot of games eschewed background music for this reason. | |
| Posted by: VMSZealot on 2026-02-13 12:59:25 So, I've done a quick test on my Mac SE (no upgrades bar 4MB RAM). Lemmings runs well with music on it. | |
| Posted by: adespoton on 2026-02-13 13:36:51 Dark Castle is famous for the hoops that were jumped through to get smooth audio running on it; Beyond Dark Castle takes better advantage of the channels and yet runs at full speed on a Mac Plus. My experience is that Sierra software, written for an engine optimized for PCs and not Macs, had a horrible play experience on all Macs, for all Sierra games. The KQII/KQIII/SQII era was particularly bad. | |
| Posted by: VMSZealot on 2026-02-13 14:05:12 So much about those early sierra games was vile. I’ve prettied them up some using ResEdit so that I could enjoy them without wanting to gouge my eyes out - but I’m not sure that I should upload my tweaked versions to the garden. It wouldn’t be authentic. If you’re interested, PM me and I’ll bung you the patched versions. | |
Posted by: adespoton on 2026-02-13 15:50:51So much about those early sierra games was vile. I’ve prettied them up some using ResEdit so that I could enjoy them without wanting to gouge my eyes out - but I’m not sure that I should upload my tweaked versions to the garden. It wouldn’t be authentic. If you’re interested, PM me and I’ll bung you the patched versions.I use ScummVM to play the re-mastered versions. Even with the cheat books, I felt scammed out of my money every time I tried to play one of them on my Mac. My friend had an Amiga, and the playing experience was night and day. | |
Posted by: jjuran on 2026-02-14 02:33:04Dark Castle is famous for the hoops that were jumped through to get smooth audio running on it; Beyond Dark Castle takes better advantage of the channels and yet runs at full speed on a Mac Plus. Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle write directly to the sound buffer, so the Sound Driver's four-tone channels don't apply. | |
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