Michael's Texas Embrace

Sometimes we all want to listen to video game music the way it was meant to sound, and midi just doesn't cut it. The midi "arranger" always takes some stupid liberty, and suddenly the Kingdom of Zeal is thumping half-assed house beats. And those mp3s! One minute and a half of Bubbleman's stage and then it stops? Why did I download that crap? We've all been through that.

Yesterday I downloaded a little player that plays .nsf files. NSF files are hacks of the original sound information from the NES, and the players are like emulators except just for the sound. And you can find .nsf files for just about any game! One file usually has every song from a given game, and they sound great! And usually they just loop the song until you switch the track. Now you can finally listen to Crashman's stage music for 15 minutes straight right on your PC or Laptop.

Go here for a page full of links to .nsf players.

And here is a good place to start looking for NSF music.

And if you're interested (i.e. super nerdy), get sidplay and some .sid files and listen to some Commodore 64 game music, which sounds rather different from the NES but is also lots of fun. (Michael recommends Wizball.)