[RGamer2009]

So, on a whim I decided to boot up my copy of Sonic 3D Blast on my PC. It wasn't a new copy however.



It was this one. The original 1997 release. I figured it was far too old for Win 7 to run it so I booted up my XP Virtual Machine.

The game installed fine and began running, but I noticed something I remembered very well: The music in-game wasn't working. The intro cutscene plays properly and has music, but the music in-game would never work. I know this isn't an oddity I had with just the Virtual Machine. It also did this when I tried booting this up on computers years ago. I figured it was my disc or the old program.

After sucessfully running the game, I wondered if the game would even boot at all on a Win 7. So I decided to try it for shits and giggles. IT WORKED. This 1997 game installed on Win 7 just fine with no 32-bit errors! Amazing! The game went 640x480 and proceeded to play the intro cutscene fine.

And then the magic happened. THE IN-GAME MUSIC ACTUALLY WORKS.

Wait, What?! The music wouldn't play on an XP or Win 95/98 system but will on Win 7?! WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?

Does anyone else have a clue why this would happen?

[GerbilSoft]

Sonic 3D uses CD audio. It's entirely possible that the VM doesn't support CD audio, and you may have been missing the audio cable on the Win9x machine.

Check the disc drive - there should be three cables: a 4-pin Molex for power, a 40-pin IDE for data, and a small 4-pin audio cable going to either a sound card or a connector on the system board.

This post has been edited by GerbilSoft: 07 September 2014 - 10:19 PM

[RGamer2009]

I no longer have the original computers to test this on, but I remember that I was able to get audio out of other games like Age of Empires II and Roller Coaster Tycoon just fine, meaning the CD audio shouldn't have been the problem. The VM audio issue could be very true, though I'm not sure how to test that.

[Tets]

Gerbil is referring specifically to red book CD audio, as in separate audio tracks on the disc. I can't speak for Age of Empires II but I know for a fact that Rollercoaster Tycoon did not make use of red book CD audio. I'm all but certain this is what's tripping up your VM.

[Chibisteven]

I have the expert software one and it crashes before it displays anything. I wonder if there's any difference between the two that causes this?

This post has been edited by Chibisteven: 08 September 2014 - 07:30 PM

[Flygon]

Tets, on 08 September 2014 - 08:24 AM, said:

Gerbil is referring specifically to red book CD audio, as in separate audio tracks on the disc. I can't speak for Age of Empires II but I know for a fact that Rollercoaster Tycoon did not make use of red book CD audio. I'm all but certain this is what's tripping up your VM.

Age of Empires II used CD audio, and has worked perfectly for me, ditto the first Age of Empires. And I've had this sort of problem with some of Sega's PC ports myself (specifically, Garfield Caught in the Act either not playing the music at all, or playing it then forgetting to loop it). Buggered if I know the cause though, bar shoddy/outdated playback drivers for the CD player.

This post has been edited by Flygon: 10 September 2014 - 03:22 AM