Re: Games With Mockingboard Support

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"Donald C. Lee" <coach41@pacbell.net> wrote:

>Hey All,
>
>Someone mentioned "Rescue Raiders" as one game that supported the 
>Mockingboard?  Are you sure?  I had the Phasor card around and don't 
>recall anything special coming from the game.

    Apparently it adds synthesized speech in Rescue Raiders. I vaguely
remember it was a newer revision of the game that supported it. I have
a Phasor in my IIe, never tried it with Rescue Raiders, or several of the
other titles mentioned in this thread because I had no idea they worked
with the Mockingboard.  

>BTW, I just realized that someone here asked if I had my phasor card 
>around.....I'm sorry, I never got around to checking.  It's been a busy 
>last few weeks.  I will try to check by the end of the week.  If I don't 
>get to it this week, it will be difficult the next few weeks with 
>weddings and other things galore.

    Speaking of the Phasor card, there is an excellent emulator (the only one
I know of) called "Apple in PC" by Keonwoo Kim. I have version 0.21 but
there may be newer versions floating around--unfortunately I cannot find it
online at all. I should send it up to Asimov to preserve it.
    
    It's a Windows-based emulator but actually directly emulates the AE
Phasor card. You can run the AE demo disk to listen to those 12 voice 
songs, or activate Phasor support in Ultima V (did anything other than
these two programs support the Phasor natively incidentally?). It sounds
just like the Phasor--well, a pair of Mockingboard-A cards. :)

>I was curious why there weren't more programs that supported the 
>Mockingboard especially since most of the listed games could function 
>just fine without the Mockingboard installed.  If the card was there, 
>you got the enhanced sounds.

    Probably because Mockingboard owners were in the minority. If more 
people bought the card, more games would have supported it. I can't
tell you why the Mockingboard and compatibles weren't that popular,
though I would guess they were expensive add ons.

    The PC generated sound using a 1-bit speaker just like the Apple II.
When the AdLib (FM synthesis) was first introduced back in 1987, it
wasn't very popular and extremely few games supported it, much like
the Mockingboard, but eventually it grew into the standard for music 
and sound. It's interesting to compare the Mockingboard and AdLib,
and why one suceeded as a standard and the other just another 
obscure card (much like the Second Sight, or Supersprite 16). 

Mitchell Spector