Space Quest III (1989) Intro - Mac Plus and Roland MT-32

This black and white port of 'Space Quest III' from Sierra was released in 1989. By most account, a Macintosh Plus wasn't the best machine to run it due to the sluggishness of the gameplay, though officially, it was supported as indicated on the box.
The system requirements indicate all you need is 1 Mb RAM for the b&w version and 2 Mb RAM for the color one. A "MIDI" module is supported provided it is a Roland MT-32 or a CM-32L or a CM-64. This replaces the music and all sound effects. Otherwise, you can use the default Macintosh 4-tone synth (which still sounds good, but nothing like a Roland).
Presented here is the intro to the game. I've sped up 8x the loading of the game since nothing at all happens, except the MIDI message that shows up on the screen of my physical MT-32.
Gear used:
-Macintosh Plus (platinum) with 4Mb of RAM equipped with BlueSCSI and FloppyEMU
-A Roland MT-32
-a Pocket Mac MIDI adapter that link my Mac's modem port to my Roland MT-32's MIDI IN port.
The video signal comes straight from 4 wires from inside the Macintosh Plus, into a RGB2HDMI device that I self-assembled by using the info in this project: github.com/hog...

[@Macilatthefront]

I had no idea that the Mac versions of Sierra games supported the MT-32. Very cool!

[@larrylaffer3246]

The fact that this is in B&W and looks this good is insanely impressive.

[@1BitFeverDreams]

It's what I had between 1986 and 1991 for computer gaming! You better believe I milked its gaming possibilities as much as I could before switching to a 386SX/25!

[@stefanwacht4670]

I finished Leisure Suit Larry 2 on Hercules, so the b&w-graphics wouldn´t have stopped me...

[@1BitFeverDreams]

Is that back in the day or recently??

[@stefanwacht4670]

@@1BitFeverDreams I assume it was in 1993... XD

[@mmasias]

Around that time i finished QfG2 in lovely Hercules Mono ❤

[@tropicalretro]

Awesome! I want a midi solution for my plus/Classic so bad… I lost an auction for a SC-7 the other day…

[@1BitFeverDreams]

If all else fails, you can check out the mt-32pi project but you have to source your own Pi3 or Pi3 or pi zero 2. They're starting to become available again through rpilocator. Then you can buy or add the mt-32pi hat. It can emulate both the mt32 or the sound canvas through sound font files

[@tropicalretro]

@@1BitFeverDreams I'll definitely check that out! Thanx!

[@LooongNose]

Nice sounds great.

[@Macdim1980]

Great!

[@EricsEdgeVideos]

The music is pretty good!

[@1BitFeverDreams]

Composed by supertramp drummer Bob Siebenberg!

[@Leeki85]

I really don't understand why Macintosh had only 1-bit color mode. Using monochromatic CRT was a good choice, since they had superior sharpness for productivity, but why not add 2-bit mode with 4 shades of gray, or even better 4-bit mode with 16 shades of gray. Such modes would not only be great for games, but also would improve productivity.

[@1BitFeverDreams]

I get what you mean, but they were already struggling to keep the price of the Mac 128 down and failing partially, leading to lukewarm results in the market. Giving it 2-bit at the start would have pushed it out completely. I do own a 4-bit grayscale Mac which came out much later in 1992, the powerbook 180.

[@Leeki85]

@@1BitFeverDreams Just compare it to competition. IBM PC released EGA cards in late 1984 that could display 640x350 in 16-colors (from 64 color palette). Atari ST could display 16-colors (from 512) in 320x200 , 4-colors in 640x200 and 2-colors at 640x400. Amiga released in 1985 was totally next-gen compared to other computers of that time. Original Mac was the worst 68000 based computer on the market and it wasn't even the most affordable one. Anyway it should still be possible for Macintosh to have 256x384 2-bit grayscale mode and 256x192 4-bit grayscale mode. They have same RAM and bandwidth requirements as 512x384 1-bit mode. I think Macintosh lacked low-res modes on purpose, but in general this alone could've been a reason why Macs never become mainstream computers. It took 1998 hardware for 640x480 to become standard and no longer hi-res on PCs and early 2000's with 6th generation on consoles. Apple in general was forcing new things a bit too early. Lack of low-res support, removing floppy drives before USB-sticks become affordable enough. Even forcing early iPhones to always use mobile data, which really forced people to jailbreak their devices to fix such things.

[@mega408]

I never knew this existed