INTRODUCTION

 

On the following pages I will present the results of a research assignment on the topic “Digital Sound and Music in Computer Games” that I conducted from October to December 2000 as part of the ongoing DFG project “Neue Medien im Alltag” at the Department of Anglistik/Amerikanistik at the TU Chemnitz under kind supervision from Prof. Dr. Evelyne Keitel, Dr. Randi Gunzenhäuser and Gunter Süß.

Due to my strong background in computer sciences and the nature of computers as such, quite a few technical issues will pop up that might not be of immediate interest to some people. Though I have tried not to dive into those matters too deeply, the casual reader may excuse my occasional non-compliance with this intent.

Have fun,
Jörg Weske


RESOURCES

 

Unless otherwise noted, downloadable examples of music and sounds are presented in MPEG audio Layer-3 format, commonly referred to as MP3. Where applicable and beneficial, variable bitrate compression was applied, which may not be supported by certain MP3 players. On Windows PCs, I strongly recommend using WinAMP for playback of music files.

Thanks to the recent interest in classic video games, emulators for almost all popular game consoles were programmed by enthusiasts from all over the world. Where possible, I have included downloadable versions of such emulators on this page. However, in order to play games with these programs, a ROM image (i.e. the program contents of a game cartridge) of the game is required. For legal reasons I cannot provide such files, nor link to them.

Finally, a list of additional references that were used to create this work.


UPDATES

 

October, 2015

Fixed a few links.

June, 2011

As the original URL of these pages (http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/hypertexte/gamesound/) seems to have gone away for good, I re-uploaded the content to this new location. In the process, I fixed a few missing links (sorry — some are still broken), encoded all the samples to MP3 format and embedded an inline player to listen to the audio samples.

Please do keep in mind that all information presented on the following pages is dated December 2000.

 

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