BrokenBlog

This entire guide has quite possibly been upstaged by unsavoury characters at OCRemix with Chipamp, which is an all-in-one package for Winamp emulation plugins. Harumph.

The following is an extensive guide to emulated video game music, which is music extracted from its original source (like a game cartridge) and played using special players. Each system has its own format, since they all handle music differently, and this is a guide to major types. I don’t condone downloading music for games you don’t own, and there isn’t much point to doing that anyway, so don’t do it.

The best formats are almost always playable (on Windows) using a Winamp plugin. If these plugins don’t come with an installer, than just put the files included in your Winamp/plugins directory. Standalone players, which usually only play one or several formats, never work very well for Windows. Foobar2000, which is a less pretty but more powerful music player than Winamp, supports many video game music formats, but the ones available for Winamp are usually better. Mac users have Audio Overload which seems to play every major video game format, so if you use a Mac, you know what player to use.

One of the biggest annoyances in emulated music is the tendency to combine the entire soundtrack of a game into one file. These types of files never seem to work well with your playlist, and block you from removing, altering, or rearranging tracks. They’re are workarounds to most of these types of files, which I’ll explain. Most plugins also ignore Winamp’s superior naming capabilities, and force you to use theirs in its place, which is adjustable from each plugin’s respective configuration window.

NES

• Format of Choice: NSFe
• Player of Choice: NotSo FatSo
• Resource of Choice: Slick Production’s NSFE Archive

There are two NES music formats, NSFe and NSF. They’re basically the same, except NSF doesn’t have an metadata like song titles or artist information, and NSFe is less widely supported. Since NSF files are extracted sound files directly from the game, the often include annoying sound effect tracks, while many NSFe files avoid this altogether.

They both combine the entire soundtrack of a game into one file, but NotSo FatSo has a feature called “shadow” tracks (Right-click on an NSFe file, then press the Shadow->Winamp button) so you can create a playlist file that allows you to have control over which tracks are played. NotSo FatSo plays both NSF and NSFe, and does an amazing job of it. Your TV’s speakers could never really get across how tinny NES music really is, but NES emulation has advanced enough to make you curse getting such nice speakers when you play NSFe files. But fear not, NotSo FatSo’s main advantage is its filtering (Highpass/Lowpass/Prepass) capabilities will filter out the piercing nature of NSFe files without hurting the nostalgia.

Slick offers the best collection of NSFe files I’ve found, but seems to be missing some games. If you can’t find a game available as an NSFe, than try Zophar’s NSF collection. Keep in mind they’re NSF files (not NSFe) and some include way more sound effects than I’d like, but if it’s not there, than the game you’re thinking of doesn’t exist.

SNES

• Format of Choice: SPC
• Player of Choice: SNESamp (It’s in the “downloads” section)
• Resource of Choice: SNESmusic.org

SPC files are one-track only (thank god) so each track for a game is an individual file. Some evil person decided this wasn’t such a great idea and made RSN, which is basically a renamed RAR file. So if you find an RSN file, change its file type to .rar and extract it with WinRAR. SNESmusic.org is probably the most effective SPC resource, and has very complete soundtracks. Nonetheless, there’s always Zophar’s inferior collection. SNESamp has some issues but plays SPC files very well. It also has plenty of neat features, including improving the quality of SNES music (you can always set it to “SNES” mode which makes the quality the same as the SNES if that isn’t your thing).

Sega Genesis

• Format of Choice: VGZ/VGM
• Player of Choice: in_vgm
• Resource of Choice: Project 2612

VGM (usually available as compressed files, which are named VGZ) is a very recent format, and is extremely media-player friendly. It’s even one-track per file! It replaced GYM as the standard for Genesis games, as GYM was a poor format with timing issues (and often included annoying sound effects at the beginning of tracks), and there weren’t any quality GYM players. Yet another format, GSR, intended to fix these problems, but VGM made it quickly obsolete.

VGM sounds perfectly accurate, has a very nice plugin for Winamp (and Foobar2000 actually) AND is the only plugin I’ve found that plays nice with Winamp’s naming system. Project 2612 is currently an extremely active group constantly churning out new soundtracks. The Genesis didn’t have great sound, but the VGM format is great nonetheless.

Gameboy (Original/Pocket/Color, but not Gameboy Advance)

• Format of Choice: GBS
• Player that Actually Plays: Meridian Advance
• Main Resource: Zophar’s GBS Archive (you’ll probably need to copy the URL then paste it into your address bar since Zophar mysteriously blocks linking directly to this page)
• Secondary Resource: Zophar’s GSF Central

GBS is a good format but it lacks metadata and the proper attention. Meridian Advance, which isn’t even a Winamp plugin, is the only player I’ve been able to use for Windows since its counterparts (including a Winamp plugin version of Meridian Advance, and the more “advanced” Meridian Prime) can’t actually seem to play anything. I’ve had some luck with the Winamp plugin NEZPlug but it can break other plugins if you don’t configure it properly and wouldn’t always play tracks properly for me. You can also try GBS files converted to GSF (more on this format is farther down). They’re available at GSF Central (at the bottom of the page), although the selection is pretty small.

You can convert GBS to GSF yourself if you’re desperate enough, but as this article is Windows-oriented I’m not going to get into it too deeply. The Linux program gbsplay can convert a GBS file to a GB (Gameboy ROM) file which can then be converted to a GBA (Gamebody Advance ROM) file using Goomba which can then be ripped to GSF files and tagged. If you’re using Windows, you might be able to do it with Cygwin, but that’s out of the scope of this article. I’ll be impressed by anybody who can pull it off though.

Playstation1/2

• Format of Choice: PSF/miniPSF or PSF2/miniPSF2
• Player of Choice: Highly Experimental
• The Only Resource?: Zophar’s PSF Archive or Oddigy

PSF, while complex, is the basis of more advanced formats, including the format of Playstation’s successor, PSF2. miniPSF files are even cooler, since they’re shrunken to almost nothing as the similarities between all the tracks in a game are combined into a single special library file. The catch is that the library file has to be in the same directory as the miniPSF files, but it’s a small price to pay. I haven’t found a paticularly great resource for PSF files, but since I only wanted a few soundtracks, Zophar always did the trick.

Nintendo 64

• Format of Choice: USF/miniUSF
• Player of Choice: 64th Note
• Resource of Choice: USF Central’s Sets

USF is a pretty new format that few will touch due to how difficult it is to make or play them. 64th Note still does a pretty good job, but requires a hefty amount of processor power to play. Honestly, my recommendation is that you download the files and turn them into MP3s using 64th Note so you can listen to them easier (more info on converting files to mp3 at the end of this post).

Since making USF files is fairly difficult, many games aren’t available as of this writing. Some dynamic tracks that change while you listen (think every Rare game ever made, like walking around the main world in Banjo-Kazooie as the instrument playing the theme changes) don’t play properly, since they just play all versions of the song on top of each other. Zophar (for once) has a comparable selection of USFs, so be sure to check them out also.

Since the USF format is based on PSF, they’re usually available as miniUSF files which are very small, but require a special library file to be in the same directory to play.

Gameboy Advance

• Format of Choice: GSF/miniGSF
• Player of Choice: Highly Advanced
• Resource of Choice: GSF Central’s Sets

GSF is similar to, but sounds better than GBS (Gameboy), since it has more advanced hardware. The format has metadata, unlike GBS, but since it’s a recent format currently there is only the one player. It does the job, no more, no less.

Like all formats based on PSF, GSF files are usually avaiable as miniGSF files which are much smaller but require a special library file to be in the same directory to play.

What about Gamecube, or Xbox?

It’s hard to say if modern video game music will even need to be emulated. Gone are the days where music-playing was part of the hardware in the console, instead, formats can vary based on the game. Developers can handle music on the level they wish, from streaming it straight off the CD to coming up with a customized format to save space.

Still, there is effort to continue emulating music into the next generation. There’s a Gamecube player here, but unlike other plugins which emulate the format associated with the system, instead it works for various formats found in Gamecube games. It’s hard to say how much of an advantage this is over a fan-made mp3 soundtrack, but it’s an interesting project.

For now there’s mp3 soundtracks, the best place I (accidentally) found is Galbadia Hotel, which has a pretty damn good selection of more recent stuff and old stuff as well. In fact, sometimes limitations in the format (like USF’s understandable inability to handle “dynamic” tracks) are pleasently absent, so downloading them from here is sometimes better than using the original format. Sometimes. The catch is, all the files must be individually downloaded as they are all on seperate pages. I have a hack-job setup with a website archiving program, although I’m looking for something better.

Converting to MP3

Personally, I think all these formats, while high in niftiness, aren’t very practical. For some formats, especially USF, the best thing to do is convert them to MP3 files. Winamp’s Diskwriter will do exactly this, but doesn’t have much customization when it comes to formats (paticularly its lack of VBR capabilities with MP3). Since I don’t have a solid method of doing this, you’ll have to experiment. Get ahold of out_lame, and just in case it doesn’t work, you can try Chun-Yu’s MP3 Writer or this File Writer. As far as options go, a VBR MP3 with a maximum of 128 (maybe 160 if you’re feeling bold) and a minimum of 32 will do the trick. At least for me anyway. If a plugin wants a Lame DLL, it isn’t a programmer’s joke, but an MP3 encoder all three plugins use. Direct it to the “lame_enc.dll” file that’s in Winamp’s “plugins” directory, although it’ll only be there if you downloaded the “full” version of Winamp. You did download the full version didn’t you?

Other helpful stuff

• If you’re using Winamp and want to preview anything, or just play some music, use VLC. It can play MP3 files that are currently being written to, and your regular collection if you drag it to VLC.
• Want to listen to video game music without all this bull? Try video game music remix sites OCRemix and VGMix. Or you could try Video Game Music Archive which features MIDI remixes instead.
• For emulated music freaks like me, 8bitpeoples is a facinating project, check it out.
• There are more formats I don’t care to find out about, and if you want more Zophar is always the place to go. Check its Music Archive and Music Players sections. You can also try Wikipedia’s VG Music pages, which could help get you started on formats Zophar ignores.

So that’s it. This guide is a work-in-progess, so any advice is welcome. Feel free to leave a comment if you think something about this article could be improved.