Tag: 90s internet

#oneaday Day 473: The worst MIDI file in existence

It may sound peculiar in these days of being able to stream or download pretty much any piece of music you'd care to mention in its original format — be it legally or less-than-legally — but back in the '90s we had a lot of fun downloading MIDI files.

Some of these MIDI files we downloaded with the intention of using them somehow — primarily in Klik and Play and The Games Factory projects — but sometimes it was just for fun. And it was fun! Even with the limited synthesis capabilities of the sound cards most of us had at the time — it was very much the days of OPL FM synthesis being the norm, as wavetable cards were an extremely expensive luxury, if you could even get them at all — we used to enjoy tracking down MIDI files of songs we recognised and playing them back.

One day, my friend Edd found the worst MIDI file in existence. It is called EWOK.MID and I've been attempting to track it down for a good twenty years. Recently, I succeeded in my search and rediscovered EWOK.MID in all its glory — though I did forget to make a note of the website where I found it, so you'll have to settle for a version hosted here. (EDIT: It was here. Which appears to be buried deep in the depths of an SEO-optimised, likely AI-generated site about tech, which I suspect is built atop the remnants of a long-abandoned website that has somehow kept all its old uploads intact since 1999.)

I would like to share EWOK.MID with you now, but given that MIDI file support is no longer a given on modern machines, you'll have to settle for a recording of my computer playing it back in the name of universal compatibility.

Isn't it magnificent? Someone spent time on that. Moreover, someone thought that the time they spent on that was worth sharing with the world. And I am unironically glad that they did, because EWOK.MID has given me many, many laughs over the years.

What I find most amusing about it is that they clearly got the gist of the track from Star Wars that they're trying to ape, but then weren't quite sure how to do all the other bits. I suspect they started with the melody line first, and then attempted to play the drum parts "live" over the top of it. At that point, the sensible thing to do would be to use MIDI sequencer features such as quantizing to get the notes a bit more "in time" with one another, and get the whole thing sounding a bit more "professional". (Of course, quantizing demands that your notes are vaguely in time in the first place, so I do find myself wondering if EWOK.MID is possible to save.)

But no! Our heroic arranger decided that the work they'd done was enough. This was their magnum opus; their note-for-note recreation of a classic theme from a classic movie. So they uploaded it to the Internet one February morning in 1999, and sat back to enjoy the reactions of everyone who stumbled across it, whether deliberately or by accident.

I salute you, heroic arranger, whoever you are. You have brought me many hours of joy over the years, and I'm glad I finally rediscovered your finest work. I hope you're doing well, wherever and whoever you are.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 282: A lost art - the GameFAQs Legal section

If you've been playing video games for as long as I have, doubtless you remember how important GameFAQs once was to folks trying to beat games, before commercial games websites worked out that the SEO juice for posting one (probably AI-generated) "guide" per individual thing you have to do in a game was more potent than a thousand reviews.

One of my favourite things about the FAQs that were posted on GameFAQs was when the author decided to use the "Legal" or similar section to have a good old rant about something which obviously meant something to them. Here, for example, is the copyright section of "Kertra"'s 2003 guide to Metal Slug on NeoGeo:

This FAQ is for personal use only. Do not distribute it or use it for profitable purposes. If you want to post this FAQ on a website, contact me before doing anything and send the URL of your site. Plagiarism is a crime, just ask. I have no objection on my FAQ being posted on someone else's site but you must give credit where it is due. 

Also, please keep in mind that under no circumstances, are you allowed to make any changes to this FAQ! It must remain as it is and moreover, you are not allowed to rip off part(s) of this FAQ to put in another FAQ. No banners or advertisements are to be attached to it and it must remain in its original form (NO HTML!). Moreover, the site must be a non-commercial and non-profitable one. 

This document is protected by US Copyright Law, and the Berne Copyright Convention of 1976. I'm well aware of my rights and will not hesitate to take legal action against you if you don't follow these guidelines. If you wish to take some info from this FAQ to include in a more elaborate one, write to me first and tell me what it is all about and I'll think about it.

This is excellent stuff. I love how it gradually builds and escalates as it goes on, culminating in threats of legal action under both United States copyright law and the Berne Copyright Convention. Amusingly, they'd researched enough to know that the Berne Copyright Convention existed, but got the date wrong on it: its most recent revision appears to have been 1971, not 1976. It goes deeper, though; 1976 is actually an important date to copyright law, because there was a revamp of the United States copyright legislation that year.

The exhortation to not attach banners or ads to the FAQ and the stern NO HTML! appears to have not been legally enforced by poor old Kertra, mind, as GameFAQs is now owned by Gamespot, and I suspect if I turned off my adblockers to look at it, there would be at least one banner ad somewhere, and the site now automatically HTML-ises all FAQs rather than hotlinking directly to the text files.

Let's see if we can find some more of these. Here's a good one, from DingoJellybean's Final Fantasy VII FAQ of 2001: (As a bonus, check out this archive link for DingoJellybean's old GeoCities site, featuring some delightful early 21st century HTML jank and an early example of a blog.)

NOTE: From now on 1/10 Final Fantasy 7 messages regarding how to beat the game will be answered. If you ask me a question already on the walkthrough, your email will be submarily deleted. Use Crtl+F to search what you are looking for. Even if you beg me to read the email I will most definitely delete the message. Too many stupid questions already in the walkthrough has been asked of me. I got over 700 emails regarding this game alone, I will delete those with the subject Final Fantasy 7 on it. If you do subject a title something else, but you ask a Final Fantasy question on the message, your email will be permanently blocked, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I updated this FAQ massively, in hopes that questions will be answered in the FAQ. I've included everything to make sure dumb emails won't come to me again. If I'm in a good mood, I'll answer your email, but when I see another FF7 question that puts me out on a bad mood. If you want to talk that's fine, but I know what is in my FAQ and what is not. I will read your message occasionally and decide what to and what not to reply, and if you flame me or criticize me negatively I will send a flame right back at you and block your email address so that you can never contact me again unless you create a new email account and behave. This is also quite possibly the LAST time I will ever update the FAQ. If enough requests comes in(which I doubt) the FAQ will be updated if you are specific in which areas needs to be updated. Also take a look at Mr.Prolific's million dollar worth FF7 FAQ, its great and has massive information only Kao Megura can provide.

Now that's a quality rant. Okay, it's not a "copyright" or "legal" section, but this is another prolific subgenre of GameFAQs rants: people who wrote an FAQ getting absolutely apoplectically furious that anyone emailed them about their FAQ, when more often than not they put their email address in the FAQ.

I'm a particular fan of the threat to "submarily delete" [sic, obviously] your email and the tonal whiplash that is "if you flame me or criticize me negatively I will send a flame right back at you and block your email address so that you can never contact me again unless you create a new email account and behave". Magnificent stuff.

Let's see if we can't find another good one. Oh, this one is nice, not for being mad (which it isn't), but for actually being remarkably pleasant. I would place good odds on this one, from a Sonic the Hedgehog FAQ written in 2003, being by a girl, just because of the sheer lack of overtly aggressive posing:

If you are going to use this guide on your site, the least you can do is ask permission first by e-mailing me at <REDACTED BY PETE>. Make the note short and sweet. If you're e-mailing me about anything, whether it's related to this guide or another one or what, put what you're talking about in the subject line of your message. I need to be able to differentiate the spam from the important stuff. I really can't keep people from stealing guides, I mean, it's going to happen, what can I do? But you know. Whatever. Just ask before you do it. Most people can do it with little or no problems.

If you use my guide on your site, you may HTML-ize the text or change the way it's set up on the page, but don't change a single letter. All words must remain the same - don't alter anything whatsoever. I would like to see screenshots added to some of my guides though. I always thought that would look super-sweet.

"Snow_Dragon", as the author calls themselves, also gives a shoutout to their Dad in the credits section for "moving the big computer into my room". Sweet.

It's weird to say, but I miss this. All this represents a long-gone era of the Internet, replaced, as with so many things, by social media. There are still folks out there writing FAQs on GameFAQs — and God bless 'em, as I'd still always rather go to GameFAQs than a clickbait guide on a commercial website, even if GameFAQs is part of Gamespot now — but the earnestness, the passion, the inexplicable fury of those little personal asides in late '90s/early '00s GameFAQs submissions is just one of many things that I don't feel like we really see any more.

Oh well. At least all those lovely examples of the art form in its prime still exist. Here's hoping GameFAQs is around until the very end of the Web.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.