Considering the series has been dormant for so long, it’s fair to ask the question “Is Senxin Aleste really an Aleste game”?

First test: does it have that jingle?

Most of Creative's AWE32 cards do use a real Yamaha OPL3 chip for FM synthesis, which can produce two-or-four operator voices. The latter of those can approach the quality of the voices in their DX7-family line of musical instruments. Even the older OPL2 chip that is limited to two-operator voices can sound great when programmed well (not that I'd call it realistic-sounding).

The other synth chip on the AWE32 is the Ensoniq EMU8000. That one does sample-based synthesis as you describe above.

Just wanted to note that Creative misappropriated the term wavetable synthesis when they marketed this and other sample-based synthesis cards of theirs, and the misnomer spread widely to the products of other companies and persists to this day.

Great card, got one in my 440BX retro rig! Plus an AWE64 Gold and a PnP SB16 with a real OPL3 FM chip. That's just a bit of what's kicking around here...

The spinny thing is the head drum. The divots are electromagnetic heads, usually four for video in a HiFi deck. Be careful when cleaning them as they are fragile. Avoid using any kind of material that may snag in their narrow gap. I like to use a strip of white paper wetted with isopropanol, holding it against the drum and turning it with the other hand. Repeat that till the paper comes away clean.

That's one busy substitute teacher!

And as they do it they say,

'swarm

The article's a good read. It's not about the first game from 1987.

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Half-price drink's for happy hour at Apostrophe's!

Kudos to the artist, this is delightful! And today I learned LEGO Batman has a more relaxed posture than 1989 Batman.

Working as a Field Service Technician can sometimes mean being alone for hours on the road in between bouts of installation/service/training/etc.

$ echo "$((2#01010010)) $((2#01100101)) $((2#01100100)) $((2#01110010)) $((2#01110101)) $((2#01101101))"

82 101 100 114 117 109

Reads 'Redrum' in ASCII. A reference to The Shining, I suppose. If there's a joke it's lost on me, sorry. Was kinda fun spending 10min decoding that, though :)