From Video Game Music Preservation Foundation Wiki

Zone 66 Platform: DOS Year: 1993 Developer: Renaissance Buy: Amazon

Zone 66 is a top-down futuristic dog-fighting shooter. You play the role of a pilot whose home town is bombed, leaving your wife and child dead. Upon learning who the culprit is, you hop into your jet and wage war on the terrorists who killed your family. The game is a relatively straight-forward shooter. You choose from numerous ships and weapons which combination will be suitable in each level. As you defeat the terrorist bases, new parts of the story are revealed.





Screenshots

Zone 66's title screen and main menu. The image every player remembers from the opening. Well that's gonna leave a mark. The first four episodes of the game. The first episode takes place in a jungle. Using my special zooming speed in the frozen land of Ice Wind.





Music

Since Zone 66 was made by a demoscene company, the music had a particularly strong focus. The same developers who made the game were also responsible for making several music trackers. Rather than simply force music designed to play on the Sound Blaster through other devices, a much higher fidelity soundtrack was composed for the UltraSound version, some songs were even completely remade.

Recording

Those tracks that begin with a 1 are recordings of the Gravis UltraSound soundtrack, those beginning with a 2 are recordings of the Creative Sound Blaster soundtrack.





There are issues with the timing of this recording.

Credits

Ripper: Malvineous

Malvineous Recorder: Malvineous

Malvineous Game Credits: Muzik By: Kenny Chow credited as C.C. Catch Sound Effects: Charles Scheffold credited as Daredevil



(Source)

Game Rip

Format Conversion Download Download (Info)





Zone 66 uses CDFM format for music. However, the CDFM Tracker was never released to the public, and the format was never properly documented, so the recording was made during actual game play. The rip includes both the game's original compressed files and the decompressed files as well as a conversion to S3M to make the music more accessible.

The music exists in three different versions for the UltraSound, Sound Blaster, and AdLib. This is true for all but two of the songs, Foreign Shores and War Plains. These two don't feature PCM audio, so the AdLib and Sound Blaster versions share the same file.

Audio Devices

Music Sound

(Sources: 1, 2)

Some devices are auto-detected, but others require a special command line parameter. The game's help documentation explains how to get each device working. While the documentation requires you to differentiate between true Sound Blasters and imitations, it will probably be compatible with really good knock-offs including the Pro AudioSpectrum, which the game's documentation says can work. Since the AdLib and Sound Blaster cards use the same FM synthesis chips, the music should be the same on both, the only difference is that you won't get sound effects with the AdLib setting.