Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome (W32)

Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome

Platform:	Windows 32
Year:	1998
Developer:	Ensemble Studios
Buy:	Amazon

Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome was the expansion pack released for Age of Empires (W32). It is notable for introducing the Roman architecture into the game together with four new civilizations that make use of it. In addition a few new units and technologies were also introduced where some of them were supposed to address certain issues that had been discovered with the balance of different types of units in the initial game. The expansion pack also added four new campaigns and perhaps most notably introduced the ability to queue units from buildings.

Screenshots

The title screen.

Pre-game campaign scenario instructions.

An army on a march.

A quiet town.

Building up a camp.

Keeping the enemy out.

Music

All the music (save for Credits) in the game has been created using a Boss DSS-330 synthesizer and an E-mu ESI-32 sampler, and finally the mixing and editing was done in SoundForge. The songs were produced in CD audio quality, but there was also a separate MIDI track produced in Cakewalk which was used when the CD was unavailable and it was also used in the demo version of the game. What is unique to this title compared to other early titles in the Age of Empires series is that the MIDI soundtrack is almost the same as the CD audio soundtrack, with only the Credits song missing from the MIDI track. Also, because the game uses CD audio you can actually just put the CD into your CD player to listen to it. Just skip the first track which is the program.

All song titles have been confirmed by Stephen Rippy. Both the CD and the MIDI songs have been recorded, with the 1st track being the CD quality music and the 2nd track the MIDI songs.

Recording

VGMPF Album Art

#	Title	Composer	Arranger	Length	Size	Listen
101	Title	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	1:06	900 KB
102	Win (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	0:22	301 KB
103	Loss (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	0:52	630 KB
104	Tango Alpha Bravo	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:11	2.5 MB
105	Polyester Jammy	David Rippy	David Rippy, Stephen Rippy	2:17	1.7 MB
106	Hyman's Wrath	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	2:53	2.4 MB
107	Slow and Spacious (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	2:52	2.1 MB
108	Mean (Ain't No Hip-Hop in Tha House Mix)	David Rippy	David Rippy, Stephen Rippy	3:30	2.9 MB
109	Medieval Melody (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:06	2.4 MB
110	Sh'Washa	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:04	2.6 MB
111	Crawly	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:21	2.5 MB
112	Fretless Salsa (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	2:42	2.2 MB
113	Bigelow's Bungalow	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:02	2.4 MB
114	Credits	Stephen Rippy, Chris Rippy, Kevin McMullan	Stephen Rippy, Chris Rippy, Kevin McMullan	1:28	1.2 MB
201	Title	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	0:58	838 KB
202	Win (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	0:20	273 KB
203	Loss (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	0:53	726 KB
204	Tango Alpha Bravo	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:02	2.4 MB
205	Polyester Jammy	David Rippy	David Rippy, Stephen Rippy	2:21	1.9 MB
206	Hyman's Wrath	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	2:51	2.4 MB
207	Slow and Spacious (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	2:51	2.2 MB
208	Mean (Ain't No Hip-Hop in Tha House Mix)	David Rippy	David Rippy, Stephen Rippy	3:19	2.7 MB
209	Medieval Melody (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:07	2.5 MB
210	Sh'Washa	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:02	2.6 MB
211	Crawly	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:21	2.6 MB
212	Fretless Salsa (Mix 2)	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	2:42	2.1 MB
213	Bigelow's Bungalow	Stephen Rippy	Stephen Rippy	3:04	2.4 MB

Credits

Ripper: Litude
Recorder: Litude
Game Credits:
- Music: Stephen Rippy
- Music: David Rippy
- Sound: Chris Rippy

(Source)

Albums

Music from the Ages

1999/05/13

More Music from the Ages

2000/05/11

Ages Compilation

2000/10/30

Game Rip

Format	Download	Size
	Download	50 KB

The soundtrack is CD audio on the game disc; it was ripped using EAC. The MIDI soundtrack is located in the .\Sound folder of the installed game and was converted with dBpoweramp Music Converter. CD audio is too large to store in it's raw format, besides, the recording sounds the same as the rip and as such only MIDI files are included. The MIDI is type 1.