Is there any way to change the startup music that loads when the Sims 2 shortcut is run, prior to the Neighborhood loading? I get sick of hearing the sucky Apartment Life theme song every time I fir up the Sims 2 but it's an annoyance I guess.

Additionally, is there a shortcut command line parameter to stop the Sims2 splashscreen such as "sims2.exe -nointro"?

I also noticed that despite my custom music selections that the music tends to rotate between Maxis created tunes and the MP3's I've dumped into the sound categories for Buy, Build, Nhood, etc. Weird behavior but I guess it's just another annoyance.

I wonder if Sims3 suffers from the same annoyances...

Hopefully I posted this in the right cubicle.

Correction: the Apartment Life theme isn't playing; it's some slow sappy, sucky piano music that starts as soon as I hit escape after I see the EA insignia with the voice "soo-soo". This crappy music continues until I have selected a neighborhood and that neighborhood has finished loading. My current annoyance is that damn piano rubbish. Wish I could roll up that score of music and cram it up the composer's arse.

Well, I guess that's a big "No" to changing the EA Maxis startup melodies prior to a neighborhood being selected by the user. Ah well, at least some folks here explained where/how I am to navigate these waters.

So.. might as well remove this thread. Thx, tho.

Cheers!

I turn my speakers off when the game is loading, or I'm in build mode, the music drives me mental!

The piano music is from seasons. If you don't like it or get tired of hearing it, go to your options panel (the button that has "..." on it. Under the audio tab there should be a listing of all the songs in the game, whether they are neigborhood songs or build/buy mode songs. When you select a song, there should be a circle that appears to the left of the song name. Clicking it will disable the song. Additionally, you can preview the song by clicking the "play" icon to the right of the selected song. I hope this makes sense.

To add onto TatianaEstelle's post, putting on iTunes or whatever you regularly use for music when you mute the game is a good way to just nuke in-game sound if you don't like it whilst not getting bored.

Unfortunately this does not work as the music I'm referring to is not listed under any audio categories. The music I'm referring to is the music which starts up after the EA insignia displays and the Sims 2 main menu and neighborhood(s) are loading. When the neighborhood is loaded then the "nhood" music begins playing. As far as I can tell none of the audio options prevent this piano and harp rubbish from playing on initial game startup but prior to the neighborhood being loaded. I think it is hardcoded. Unless you know of a way to alter or silence this somehow?

While this is extreme necromancy there are probably a few gamers out there who have got the ultimate collection and don't like the Intro piano music before you get to the neighborhood.

1) Find an expansion pack music intro you like from one of the expansion packs you have installed, they are all on youtube.
2) Go to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\(Latest EP or SP)\TSData\Res\Sound - (or wherever you have installed it)
3) Backup the file named Splash.package
4) Go to C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\(The name of the Expansion or Stuff you want the music from)\TSData\Res\Sound
5) Copy the file named Splash.package and replace the one in 2)above