DX-Ball (W32)

DX Ball

Platform: Windows 32 Year: 1996 Developer: Michael P. Welch Online: Download

For another games inspired by Arkanoid, see Arkanoid.

DX-Ball is a free Arkanoid-inspired game created by Michael P. Welch.

Later it was released some add-ons and standalone games looking like its predecessor - DX-Ball 2, Rival Ball and Super DX-Ball.

Although it's very old Windows game (one of the first Windows 32 games), it's still forwardly compatible even with Windows 10 and other 64-bit versions and still works not bad.

Music

The game use MDS files for music. Only 2 of them (Ackerlight and Ethno Papa) are used standartly; other plays if you press F5 during the gameplay, but never plays independently. Ethno Papa is for title, and Ackerlight is for highscore.

The MIDI Decoder, only-known program for playing standalone MDS, doesn't give proper sounding, so the files were converted to MIDI and then recorded.

The recordings are placed in the order used in the game. All of them loop.

Recording

This recording is incomplete.

#	Title	Composer	Arranger	Length	Listen
01	Ethno Papa (Ethno_pa)	Roland Corporation	Roland Corporation	3:24
02	Freebee (Freebee)	Jeff R. Bosset	Jeff R. Bosset
03	Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Part I (Brain)	Emerson, Lake and Palmer	Unknown
04	Flight of the Bumblebee (12flight)	Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov	Romeo Music International	2:42
05	Overture from The Marriage of Figaro (Gmfigaro)	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	MTA
06	Ackerlight (Acker-gs)	Frédéric Hahn	Howard Wootan, Mike Doyle	3:43

Credits

• Ripper: M1911 (main), binarymaster (conversion to MIDI)
• Recorder: M1911
• Game Credits:
  • Not credited composer: Roland credited as Roland Corporation
  • Not credited composer: Jeff Bosset credited as Jeff R. Bosset
  • Not credited composer: Emerson, Lake and Palmer
  • Not credited composer: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
  • Not credited arranger: Romeo Music International credited as Romeo Music Intl.
  • Not credited composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • Not credited arranger: Anonymous credited as MTA
  • Not credited composer: Frédéric Hahn
  • Not credited arranger: Howard Wootan
  • Not credited arranger: Michael Doyle credited as Mike Doyle

(Source: the Internet, game lacks credits.)

The authors of this game didn't wrote this music for the game. They just found the MIDI versions of the music (written from 1993 to 1994 for Roland GS and General MIDI) and converted in to MDS. The authors even didn't change the names of the files.

E.g., the Ethno Papa can be listed here. Just search for the names "Freebee.mid", "Brain.mid", "12flight.mid", "Gmfigaro.mid" and "Acker-gs.mid".

Game Rip

Format	Download
	Download (Info)

The game use MDS (MIDI streaming) files for music, placed in the root folder of the game. It's not MDS files of the CDs, as it seems to be, it's audio. Also MDS files were converted to MIDI using MIDIPLEX and included in the rip.

Since the game use WAV sounds, they are also included in the rip.

Audio Devices

The game uses DirectX 2 API or compatible.

Releases

World Title: DX-Ball Platform: Windows 32 Released: 1996-??-?? Publisher: Unknown

Links

• blitwise.com/Scorched_Reality/index.html - Official page.
• mobygames.com/game/windows/dx-ball - Moby Games.