This is a 'small' (relative to effort, not size) patch that fixes a pretty obvious oversight in Mortal Kombat Trilogy. For the bulk of tracks ripped from MK3, Midway apparently
wanted to use high-quality music which was encoded at 48khz; failing to realize that CD technology was only capable of 44.1khz redbook audio. The result is that at least half of
the music in Trilogy is played at (approximately) 0.992x their original speed, leading to tracks that can sound artificially sluggish.
This patch, thusly, fixes that by re-syncing the redbook audio tracks from Trilogy back to their equivalents as heard in the (U)MK3 music CDs. There are also some tracks which had some
minor or major corruption in the Redump sets sourced, so creative liberties have been taken in correcting those as well. Some of them are minor skips, but two of the tracks needed to be
outright replaced by rips from the MS-DOS port of MK3.
Requires a Delta Patcher. Apply to a merged Redump of Mortal Kombat Trilogy (USA) 1.1; this can be created either through CDmage or MAME's CHDman.
Link to patch:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NEmmkUL8-ZzDD6A7X1sH-RKPJynJ46Xw
TL;DR: Use a merged Redump-synced copy of Mortal
Kombat Trilogy 1.1 (or Rev 1). Merge using either
CDMage or MAME's CHDMan.
Delta Patcher is required.
__________________________________________________
Prelude:
FOR FOUR GENERATIONS, MORTAL KOMBAT WAS
RULED BY OUTWORLD'S CREATOR AND CHIEF OF COMMAND
MIDWAY GAMES. HOWEVER DUE TO THEIR NEGLIGENCE
THE MONUMENT THAT SPELLED A 'TRILOGY' TO ONE
OF GAMING'S BIGGEST FRANCHISES* WOULD BE SCARRED
BY A FATAL FLAW-ONE THAT HAD GONE UNNOTICED
BY EARTHREALM FOR TWENTY-FOUR YEARS.
THE EARTH WAS ON A SLOW DECLINE TOWARDS ITS
DESTRUCTION WHEN A NEW GENERATION OF WARRIORS
WERE VICTORIOUS IN DEFENDING ITS REALM.
BUT MANY OF THEM WERE DISINTERESTED IN SUCH
A TEDIOUS PROCESS. ALL BUT ONE OFFERED THEMSELVES
AS TRIBUTE TO CORRECT OUTWORLD'S MOST HEINOUS
OVERSIGHT.
___________________________________________________
This is a 'small' (relative to effort, not size) patch
that fixes a pretty obvious oversight in Mortal Kombat Trilogy.
For the bulk of tracks ripped from MK3, Midway apparently
wanted to use high-quality music which was encoded at 48khz;
failing to realize that CD technology was only capable of
44.1khz redbook audio. The result is that at least half of
the music in Trilogy is played at (approximately)
0.992x their original speed, leading to tracks that can sound
artificially sluggish.
This patch, thusly, fixes that by re-syncing the redbook audio
tracks from Trilogy back to their equivalents as heard in the
(U)MK3 music CDs. There are also some tracks which had some
minor or major corruption in the Redump sets I sourced, so
I've taken the liberty of correcting those as well. Some of
them are minor skips, but two of the tracks needed to be
outright replaced by rips from the MS-DOS port of MK3.
The actual work mostly comprises of about a day's worth of
discovering the 'quirks' of properly replacing redbook audio
in PS1 images; the actual resampling took less than an hour.
As stated, only the tracks sourced from (Ultimate) Mortal Kombat 3
were sampled at the unusual higher-than-CD rate, so the MK2 tracks
have been essentially untouched, save for one track with pretty
bad corrupted audio. I can only assume Midway was just using studio
masters of the original tracks, and since MK3 and its expansion
were newer, they were likewise higher quality. Why they forgot
to take into account the limitations of CD audio when MK3 and
Ultimate had already been ported to PC/PS1 and Saturn (respectively)
just fine... is beyond me.
This has been built against the 1.1 revision of MK Trilogy for
PS1, as I thought it would at least be slightly less broken than
the game normally is. While this is specifically for PlayStation,
it should be fairly easy to port the CD tracks to the
PC and Saturn ports as well. If I have the time and patience to
look into it, maybe I'll get to those one of these days.
Credits:
The Cutting Room Floor - For noting the existence of the mishandled
audio in the first place. Can be found at
https://tcrf.net/Mortal_Kombat_Trilogy_(PlayStation)#Music
Also, Wikipedia has this information too, apparently; but uncredited.
Dan Forden - For the various CD soundtrack releases to source from.
Midway - For making such a broken, but still incredibly fun game.
And for making me do this in the first place.
COVID-19 - For locking me up in my house long enough for me to be
so bored as to do my first ROM hack, which technically is just
a music replacement so it isn't even that substantial.
Emm - For being there when I needed her.
~<3
That One Seong
Game ID: SLUS-00330
File Name: Mortal Kombat Trilogy (USA) (Rev 1).bin
File/ROM SHA-1: B1F8CF90914B65632BBB7F5494A51B9A494837A2
File/ROM CRC32: 2B32E271