Major issue of getting raw output of music (BMG) from legacy video games:


Most legacy systems use proprietary formats that do not store PCM sound, but more along the lines of MIDI.
This creates major issues to get lossless audio dumps of theses old games, due to them being broken into parts and the output on my pc is different then the console its self since it it mainly depended on that consoles sound chip.

To save space the audio is just codes that are sent to the sound chip in a form very similar to midi, but since its completely depended on the sound chip it can sound different platform by platform.
There are also broken in banks/channels so it is easily to accidentally disable an instrument with out knowing how to get back to the original setup.

For Nintendo systems due to limited storage and memory many games use old MIDI style audio files much latter then competitors.
It was not until the Gamecube for home consoles and 3DS for handhelds where Proprietary versions of PCM audio was finally implemented.
Even then many GCN and original Wii Games used an MIDI like format and rarely used proper PCM format. Was not common to use PCM style audio files until the Wii U and 3DS.



Date: September 14th 2025


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