MIDI is still widely used for professional music production. It sounded goofy back in the day because synthesizer it was played on was not very good.

I remember at one point RuneScape switched from the built in Microsoft midi whatever to their own sound engine, and from that day, everything sounded wrong, even the frogs, because to me, the crappy midi sounds were the whole personality and feel of the game.

I'm thinking canyon.mid on Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth.