Laserschwert

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!).

I continue working on new versions of the DIG posters on and off, but especially the main art is really difficult to upscale, since it's so detailed, and I don't want to lose too much of that. The advertisement art is coming along nicely, though.

Updated to a slightly longer version, now including the "searching around" music, followed by the Raider's March B theme, once Indy falls down. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zwM7HDfSuhbfLCUms06cyegtqke6M8MH/view?usp=sharing And an image to go along with it. Edit: Should I just start a new thread, even if this moves along only slowly?

Great interview, as always! Do I need to flee the country? He's coming for me!

Wow, thanks a lot! I'll check it out in the next few days. As for MT-32 instruments, luckily they are properly documented, so figuring out the right one is just a matter of looking up the patch number. I don't need to exactly match GM instruments anyway, as I am working with my virtual instruments. And I usually pick whatever makes most sense in each case. There are some weird cases, though, where the AdLib tracks actually offer more content. At least with a quick comparison between the Roland and AdLib End Credits (ripped via ScummRev), I noticed that the short string marcatos during the Raider's March are only present in the AdLib version. So, I guess to get the most out of the files, I'll have to compare both versions to see if anything can be added from the AdLib tracks.

Not yet worthy of its own thread, I toyed with the idea of remastering (some tracks of) the Fate of Atlantis soundtrack (yay, more projects before finishing others!). I know, there are several re-arrangements already out there, and no offense to the people involved, but they are all not really good (not the relatively straightforward MIDI-to-audio conversions, those are perfectly fine for what they are). Sure, some of them use nice (and probably expensive) sample libraries, but to me, it sounds like they don't really care how to use them properly. I am not a professional musician or composer, but even I notice when there's not much care put into stuff like instrument articulations. And with especially the brass being THE crucial instrument in John Williams' compositions for Indy (hell, ESPECIALLY the main theme!!), you would think that they'd put extra care into AT LEAST the lead trumpets playing the Raider's March. That, plus drowning everything in reverb that sounds like the whole thing was recorded in a church, I'd say there are at least some reasons to give it another go. For now, I've only started on the opening theme, to at least get that sound down: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xLcCnrbfF_LYMCZKSEcTcRuyEkLBDzF2/view?usp=sharing Speaking of which, does anybody here have a REALLY complete rip of the FoA MIDIs? The Highland-ones are pre-arranged, and not ideal in some situations (at least, I think the transitions between the different parts of the opening could be synced up better). VGMRips has a complete rip of the Adlib soundtrack, with all the different iMUSE bits as separate tracks, and that's exactly what I'm looking for, only with the MT-32 tracks. Then again, ripping the MT-32 tracks with ScummRevisited gives me tracks with completely wrong instrument mappings, and no tempo markers at all. Stan's Previously Used Soundtracks seems to use different MIDIs, which would be interesting to look at. @Rum Rogers @s-island

I've added 5 color variations of the Fate of Atlantis map to the project.

As long as you credit "LucasArts Posters" and add the link poster.mixnmojo.com below each image, I'm fine.

Not even war can stop Daniel from delivering the goods. Great stuff, as always!

The poster.mixnmojo.com URL is giving an "unsecure connection" error right now. Any chance to fix it? Edit: And it's back. Thanks!

Well, that's a lot of material! I haven't thought about using Displate as an image source. I hate them with a passion, as they allow countless sellers selling my posters there, as long as I can't prove I own the copyright (which I obviously can't). It's just weird that they don't need to prove that THEY own the copyright to sell them. Ah well, at least now I don't mind taking images off of their site for the project. The Rebel Assault one is a great version of the full art, so I might give that a shot. Heritage Auctions is always a good source, and my TIE Fighter poster is already based on one of their auction photos. By now I've got my hands on the original rendering for it though, so sooner or later I'll update that anyway.

So they released only one game before being in trouble again?

Has anybody here tried to rip the music from the three LoMI chapters? I know there are a few rips on YouTube, but ideally I'd like to have them not-recompressed. Since I don’t have the game (nor do I want to), I hoped someone here has done it.

I've finally added the new Outlaws poster to the thread. Unfortunately, I don't know who painted the artwork. Any idea? Edit: Kevin Schmitt, one of the designers on the game, suggests it was painted by (lead artist) Adam Schnitzer.

Actually, you can also buy it on Qobuz, and not just stream it. Even in lossless, which the other platforms don't support (I think?)

About that, almost done:

Well, you can see the playlist here: But I haven't had time to inspect it closer.

And there it is: This is releasing tomorrow, and can be pre-ordered, for example, here: https://www.qobuz.com/nz-en/album/return-to-monkey-island-michael-land-peter-mcconnell-clint-bajakian/yner99r4v2o2b It's been condensed down to roughly 70 minutes, which is rather good for a single-CD release, but I wonder what was left off for that. But either way, the first actual official soundtrack release for a Monkey Island game!!! (well, ignoring the SE soundtracks on the retail DVD)

The cover even says "Original floppy version on CD-ROM" 😉 null There are fan-made patches for most LucasArts games that patched the German subs into "better" versions of the games, so I guess it was just one of those versions. https://www.la-patches.de/patches.php

Thanks for the offer! I already have a few scans for SWOTL, but none of them are really clean. If you manage to make a good quality scan, I'll happily take it. My current best quality version of the artwork is the one featured on The Adventure cover, which I've already started cleaning up, but the box might provide some more detail for some parts: And the logo is pretty much done as well: "Their Finest Hour" is more problematic, as the quality of the art on the boxes is really bad. I got a photo of the original painting hanging at Larry Holland's place, but he stopped replying to my mails, so I guess he's not interested in supporting the poster project. The logo is done, though (with high-res assets - minus the Swastika):

By the way, I'm pretty sure there was no German version of "Fate of Atlantis" with English voice. The talkie version was never released in Germany. Can somebody back this up? Anyway, it's a separate case that would require another color in your chart 😉

These are great. I should really start working on those international logos and add them to the poster project.

Regarding the code wheel, anybody got clean 600dpi (at least) scans of each wheel?

Quicker than expected, I've added the new Last Crusade poster to the main post (in 6 different flavors).