Amiga vs ST

[Harrison]

Although didn't Jarre use ST's to control MIDI? Therefore not actually using the STs built in audio capabilities.

Did you know that the Captain Blood music is stored in standard ST sound files as created by a sound sampler? I accessed the game disks on an Acorn Archimedes at the time and loaded the samples into a sound sampler and played back the music. Sounded great, and played from the Acorn it was in Stereo! Which is odd when you consider the STFM at the time only has 3 channel mono.

[Mac-Falcon]

There are many games for the ST that allowed music output via midi. So if you had a midi keyboard you got a soundtrack with "real" instruments. Protector (Deffender Clone) had that and also most Sierra adventure games (Leisure Suit Larry 3, etc.). This was amazing! Also Amberstar (Dungeon Master style rpg) had the same gfx on ST and Amiga and I personally think it was a bit faster on the ST.

[Harrison]

I did know a couple of ST games supported MIDI output, but do you know how many actually supported that? I can't imagine there were a huge number due to the limited number of games players who actually had any MIDI instruments, but it is cool just the same. I suppose it was one way to improve the quite dire built in audio chip the ST had!

I'm actually wondering if the games that could output MIDI were because they were PC game ports, and most PC games at the time used MIDI wave tables on their soundcards to generate in game music. Sierra games for example did this on the PC, so it was a very cheap thing to port over to the ST. Limited by having to have MIDI equipment connected of course. Whereas the Amiga's far superior built in audio capabilities could create some great 4 channel stereo audio tracks all by itself.

I will have to run the ST and Amiga versions of Amberstar next to each other to check that out. I think being quite an early game they probably were lazy and did a direct ST to Amiga port, so didn't take advantage of any of the Amiga's custom chips.