Laserschwert

A command line tool would be great! It would be enough to just use the next best General MIDI instrument, just to get a quick overview of the track. Does the attached file help? (this one seems to leave out the ones that are identical) mt2gm.txt

Also, since DMs aren't working for me anymore, @Serge, is there a tool to quickly convert the instrument mappings of MT-32 MIDIs to General MIDI? I only found MT2GM.exe, which won't run under modern 64-bit Windows.

Since getting side-tracked is my thing, I took a look at the latter part of the "National Archaeology" track, which is the "The Coldest Year of My Life" cue, playing as Indy talks about Sophia. And doing that, I noticed something odd: If I'm not mistaken, the AdLib soundtrack seems to play a different theme at the end of the track than the MT-32 version. Anybody know more about this? I like them both, so I'll see if I can combine them. Laserschwert · National Archaeology Ending MT32 Laserschwert · National Archaeology Ending AdLib

The problem is that soundbanks are different per track. And since those instrument mappings are hardcoded, there doesn't seem to be a way to extract them along with each track.

I don't know why I never realized that the N64 version of "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine" had a MIDI-based soundtrack. I mean, d'uh, how else would 40 minutes of music fit on a cartridge? But hold on, it's not as easy as it sounds, as the music files in N64 games don't usually follow the General MIDI format, or regular MIDI format in general. Stuff like instruments mapping (which are usually different and hardcoded for each track) and performance definitions (pitchbend, etc.) are using their own commands, and instrument samples are included with the game as soundbanks. While there are tools that make extracting the raw music files as MIDI rather straightforward, I haven't managed to assign proper instruments to the tracks. Anybody smarter than me could probably give this a try? Obviously, you'll need a ROM of the game, and I can't help you with that.

Here's a compilation of most of the logos and typography I've recreated in high-res over the years. It's always fun re-building these things or researching which fonts were used for taglines or subtitles.

Oh right, haven't posted it here yet. I've added this to the project: For this I've used scans of both the FM Towns box and CD cover. With a bit of machine learning magic I've trained the smaller (but textless) image against the larger one, thus upscaling the smaller one to a similar level-of-detail. That and some manual touch-up and clean-up.

Wait, why did I never realize that there are two versions of this painting?? And the first one looks final enough to be used. Did they just realize they needed a narrower aspect ratio? Why repaint it, though, instead of cropping it?

As a huge Uncharted fan, my first thought (and most likely the one of many, many others) playing those games was "imagine an Indiana Jones game like this". But then again, for Indy you would at least have to get rid of all the shooting, because that's not Indiana Jones. He's more like the guy with an empty revolver. And when losing long-range combat like that, it only makes sense to lose the long-range perspective as well. Close combat warrants a close-up perspective, so the first-person view is indeed a better fit. Granted, I wouldn't have minded a third-person game at all, but then again, Uncharted did it so well (the controls, the procedural animations, character detail), it would have been disappointing to see a franchise that's so dear to my heart (Indy, in this case) not reaching the same heights.

I like Troy Baker's performance here, although voice-wise I would have preferred A.J. LoCascio. But I guess Baker's motion capture experience (and his physicality fitting Indy better than LoCascio) played a role here. Also, having Gordy Haab doing the soundtrack (with the London Symphony Orchestra, no less) is fucking amazing! No one does Williams like him - just check out his Star Wars Battlefront and Jedi soundtracks.

Say what you want about LRG releases, but the microwaveable hamster turned out absolutely perfect!

Should work now.

The only thing I've done is starting work on the end credits, but most of it is still very rough: Laserschwert · EndCreditsTest

The three on the left. If you've got anything, I'll happily take clean 600dpi scans!

The thing is, I wanted to get the intro and end credits out of the way first, as those contain basically the original arrangement of the Raider's March. And since it's so well known, those take the most work, just to make them sound like we are used to. The rest of the soundtrack allows for much more freedom in interpreting them, so it's a lot easier to not make them sound "wrong". I think besides the Atlantis Presentation track I am really looking forward to doing The Coldest Year of My Life, which is basically the Marion/Leia/Han Solo & The Princess theme of this game.

Ah, good point, it was a misunderstanding. You've basically posted a "before" version and I assumed it was a quote from his post. But scrolling up, I see that he only included a thumbnail. The "generative upscale" invented and changed a lot of stuff, hence my assumption, that the source simply wasn't good enough.

Aaaand, done. I've added alternate color versions of all the Monkey Island 2 posters to the project:

Oh, I didn't even notice it on the comic, nice catch! I've used it for my upscaled FoA background as well:

Of course.

Well, that's not extra detail, that's just making stuff up. That's pretty pointless if you are trying to preserve existing art. Edit: To be fair, better sources than the one you've used (for all four covers, no less) can be found via Google in a matter of minutes. Removing the smaller text is a breeze with Photoshop's generative fill (I left the logos in for now), and upscaling it with ESRGAN is a couple of clicks. Using one of those generative "upscalers", which change the image completely, is pretty useless in my opinion, since it doesn't leave much of the actual artwork.

The MM artworks I haven't seen before either, but the Eidolon art was basically used on all the releases (still looking for good scans of a few of them):

Three amazing contributions, courtesy of Ken Macklin himself: These are scanned from 35mm slides he made prior to sending them off to Lucasfilm, and while the resolution is very high, the quality isn't the best. Still, the Eidolon scan will work as a great source for a complete version of the art. The Maniac Mansion artworks are so weird, though, especially since Ken stated these were commissioned by Lucasfilm AFTER he had already done the MM key artwork. Why further art uses these strange characters is unclear. Also in the works: Based on the original oil painting Steve showed in his recent interview with Daniel, I've decided to create a more muted version of his MI2 artwork, trying to emulate the softer look of the original. This still needs some work, especially in the now brighter dark areas, where some of my touch-ups became more apparent.

It's a newer clean-up, but it's not finished yet - especially not upscaled to poster size.

Moving over from off-topicking my own Sam & Max soundtrack thread, here's the dedicated thread to my remastering project of the Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis soundtrack. To be fair, with several unfinished projects in the works, I can't guarantee anything, though. As stated in that other thread, in my opinion, all remasters or re-arrangements of this soundtrack (even the most recent ones, sorry!) fell flat in a big way. Using fancy virtual instruments isn't all there is to it, if you can't even get the performance of the most essential part of any Indy soundtrack right: the brass. Especially the trumpets playing the A and B themes of the Raiders's March (which, as you die-hard fans might know, is the actual name of the Indiana Jones theme). Originally composed by John Williams as two options for the main theme, the B theme turned into the bridge of the track, since Spielberg liked both enough to be used. So, to make sure that I could actually do better, I tried my hands on the playable introduction of the game, which opens to the Indiana Jones logo with the A theme, followed by some sneaky underscore while you rummage the Barnett College's attic in search of some unknown artifact. As Indy gets knocked down and comes crashing through the ceiling of another floor, our unconscious hero gets a rest while the B theme accompanies a few more on-screen credits. This back and forth between suspenseful underscore and jump-scare transitions to different versions of the B theme culminates in Indy finding the horned Atlantean statue to a rousing crescendo that fades out while Indy leaves the college's main building to deliver the artifact to his mysterious accent-wielding client in his on-campus office. Was I actually successful in turning the MT-32 beeps and boops into something properly orchestral? You decide: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (fan soundtrack) by Clint Bajakian, Peter McConnell, Michael Z. Land A bit of tech-talk: For this I didn't use any of the pre-arranged MIDIs that were released over the years, instead I started with clean rips of all the iMUSE snippets of this game (courtesy of @Serge), which I've combined and arranged from scratch. The introduction already consisted of 11 different cues I needed to combine, and VGMRip's AdLib rip of the music (and some Let's Plays on YouTube) provided a great template. As far as software and virtual instruments go, I'm using Reaper as my DAW and mainly East West's Hollywood Orchestra series, Project Sam's LA Scoring Strings and VSL's Fanfare Trumpets, with a few additional instruments here and there. Anyway, with the main theme out of the way, my plan is to tackle the end credits suite next, as it lets me get my hands on several different themes from the game in one go (plus another go at the Raider's March, yay!).