NES tunes: .nsf players...for iPods?

[rbudrick]

I heard there were some .nsf players for iPods. I would love to be able to listen to NES soundtracks on the go.

What programs are available? Which ones are best? Do they only work on certain models? What kinds of limitations do they have?

-Rob

[Graham Mitchell]

I don't know about .nsf players, but there are several websites that have .mp3 files of NES (and other system) soundtracks that you can use immediately on an ipod. (I have the Amiga Shadow of the Beast 2 soundtrack on mine!) The issue is that what you get in the .mp3 depends on the amount of effort the person who recorded it put into it. In general, most .mp3's play 2 full loops of the melody and then fade out. This kind of sucks if it's a short song, becuase the track ends up being 40 seconds long. And this seems to be a hard and fast rule in the game .mp3 community: 2 loops. Nothing more, nothing less.

I don't have any good links for you off hand, but I found a ton of stuff by just googling "video game mp3's" or whatever I was looking for.

I do understand that with .nsf files they play repeatedly until you advance the track, which may be better.

[rbudrick]

Yes, some .nsf players allow you to set how long the track loops. On a gmae like SOlstice where the opening theme is about 2 1/2 minutes long (the longest NES track in history, as far as I know), I think that would be a good limit to set it to, since it's not going to get longer than that.

But yes, of course I know about the .mp3 files, but .nsf players are really what I'm looking for.

-Rob

[SkiDragon]

Man, if this existed (as well as support for .spc, .vgm, .gym, .gbs, .gsf, .usf, .psf, etc), I might actually buy an iPod.

[rbudrick]

Well, I guess they do exist. I did a google search on ipod and nsf player and it looked like a few existed. I just got so much crap in the search and was hoping for info straight from the horse's mouth, you know?

Plus, each ipod is a good amount different than the last and I'm sure there's varying degrees of quality with these programs too.

-Rob

[SkiDragon]

I had no idea these actually existed. How about players for any of those other formats?

[rbudrick]

Well, after a bit more research, I found something called RockBox, which is a replacement firmware for music players. Using RockBox, someone wrote an .nsf player:

http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/6122

NotSo Fatso by Disch.

Well, I really don't want to replace the firmware on my iPod, so I guess this is out.

Here's an SPC player for RockBox for iPod:
http://hcs64.com/rockbox/spc.html

I think RockBox really is the only thing out there. Perhaps with the iPod Touch SDK recently released someone will be able to write an app for it. I dunno.

-Rob

[shertz]

You can always listen to the Retro Videogame Music Show (shameless plug) on Tuesdays from 4 - 6pm ;-)

http://www.myspace.com/retrovideogamemusicshow

[Thrillo]

As has been previously said, Rockbox plays .nsf files. However, it's kinda clunky when it comes to playing songs randomly: I can get Rockbox to play random .nsfs, but not individual tracks.
Individual .mp3s are better; you can pick and choose which tracks you want while avoiding crappy tracks and sound effects, and if you make 'em yourself through Notsofatso then you can have pseudo-stereo tracks.

[Nescollector]

rbudrick Great thread. I recently bought a Zune and was wondering the same thing. I just found this for .nfs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYkJtZckgXE

Just went through the process and it works great. It's a nice way to get your favorites on your ipod / zune :)

[SkiDragon]

I know these formats can all be converted to mp3, but then they take up 1000 times the space.

[rbudrick]

Also a good point....way more space.

I wouldn't mind having Rockbox on my iPod if it ran as its own app and didn't replace the firmware. I don't think there's a way to do this, though, which is dumb. I would think that with current ipods running games and, especially on the Touch and Iphone models, apps of all kinds, this should be totally doable w/o replacing the firmware.

I guess I'll just have to wait and hope that someone writes such an app. Maybe we could bribe someone to do it, heh heh.

-Rob

[Eternal Champion]

As far as I know, Rockbox doesn't replace the firmware - I thought you could choose iTunes when it starts up.

[winniethepujols]

1. Get Winamp.
2. Download Out Lame (http://out-lame.sourceforge.net/).
3. Find the corresponding plugin you need at at Zophar's (http://out-lame.sourceforge.net/).

Install both plugins from 2 and 3. Now go to Winamp, go to your preferences and then your plugins; under output, change "Direct Out" to "Out Lame." Now when you go to play anything in your playlist, you won't hear any music. Instead, it will convert the file from its native format to MP3!

Now, as pointed out, MP3's are much, much bigger. It's easy to explain if you think about it this way: an MP3 is like recording an actual song. A format like .nsf is basically a music book -- it has a series of notes that your computer will play as it reads it. But yeah, you can get an entire SNES soundtrack at around 200 KB.. and find that, in MP3 form, it takes up a couple hundred MB's!

With how big MP3 players are these days, though, I don't think space is going to be that big of an issue for a good chunk of people. One advantage I really like with having music in MP3 form is being able to incorporate MP3-id tags.


Edit: maybe you knew this was an option but didn't think it was worth doing; if so, ignore this! Hopefully it'll help someone, though.