I've recently bought Tomb Raider 1 on Steam, more for the nostalgia than anything else, to find back that feeling of when I spent countless hours playing this game when I was a kid.
After a few minutes playing, one thing that shocked me is that there is no sound ! I mean there are all the little noises, enemy noises, steps, water, but no music at all !
What happened to these awesome musics which went a long way in adding atmosphere to the game? I still remember some parts of the game of when I was a kid solely thanks to the music (T-Rex…)
Do you know a way (even a hacky one, I don't mind, I just can't play this game without the music) to put back the original music?
Best Answer
If I recall correctly, early Tomb Raider titles used "Red Book" audio for music—that is, they played tracks straight off a music CD partition on the game disc and had no built-in music code at all. The game simply triggered the CD drive and trusted that the right disc was there and that the drive's audio-out cable was hooked up to the sound card.
(A common practice in those days was to swap out the disc after the game had started so that it would play a music CD of your choice instead of the music it came with—the game couldn't tell the difference.)
If TR1 on Steam is a straight port, then the ability to play non-CD music simply isn't a part of the game engine.