List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, etc)

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bucky o'hare
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by bucky o'hare »

rainwarrior wrote:Here's a very simple FCEUX lua script to detect it for you. Says either "NO PCM" or "PCM" in the corner depending on whether PCM is currently playing.
This is awesome! Thank you for this.
rainwarrior wrote:
bucky o'hare wrote:za909 helped me identify what's apparently 1-bit PCM, from World Champ. Which seems really strange to me!
The PC speaker could naturally do 1-bit PCM, for instance, and so could a few other systems (ZX, etc.). Did it originally appear on another platform?
I tried looking up World Champ and Great Boxing on more platforms, doesn't seem like it. But maybe the devs had the limitations of other systems in mind, that could make sense.
Memblers wrote:Ghostbusters
For this one, does anyone know where I could locate the Japanese rom? My google-fu is failing, I keep finding the US rom. I'd like to double check if it's the same as the US release. If the original Japanese release has PCM too, then it's even earlier than Dead Zone and will be the earliest known NES game to have PCM (so far).

edit: I already had the ROM, smh. And it does have the same sample, so it is currently the earliest known example. :beer:
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by bucky o'hare »

Found a few more examples, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Roger Clemins' MVB Baseball, and WWF Wrestlemania: Steel Cage Challenge. Basically just went through Sculpture Software's games after seeing they had a couple other examples.

Here's a pretty lengthy PCM event in Star Wars-
https://youtu.be/nhk2_shrbhc?t=50m26s
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nin-kuuku
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by nin-kuuku »

Looks like really crappy game. Is that lightsaber sound raw 4011h?
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by bucky o'hare »

Yup! I didn't calculate the samplerate on it, but there's a similar quality sound effect for swamp noises in Degobah, and that was around ~11.72 kHz.
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by bucky o'hare »

My friend Kevin found an earlier example in Tag Team Pro Wrestling. The bell sound, player groan, and the counting of "1, 2, 3" are all PCM. It came out in April of 1986, so it currently rests as the earliest known example.
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by nesrocks »

Does natsume's S.C.A.T play a PCM when a new game is started? It says a pretty long phrase: "You must destroy them! The Earth is counting on you, good luck." Actually it sounds like it is two samples, there is a small audio glitch after the first sentence. The quality is very good.
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by thefox »

nesrocks wrote:Does natsume's S.C.A.T play a PCM when a new game is started? It says a pretty long phrase: "You must destroy them! The Earth is counting on you, good luck." Actually it sounds like it is two samples, there is a small audio glitch after the first sentence. The quality is very good.
Yeah, it's raw PCM. (It was actually already in the list as "Final Mission (S.C.A.T.)".)
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Fisher
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by Fisher »

Isn't the dog's bark on Duck Hunt PCM?
I think the percursion on many Sunsoft games (Journey to Silius, Batman - Return of the Joker, Gremlins 2, Fester's Quest...) are PCM too.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 uses some voices too.
Gradius 2 has many voices that tell the item you got.
I think the noise that Simon's Belmont does when hit on Castlevania 3 is a kind of voice too.
If I remember correctly, Kung-Fu Master has some voices on it.
I think Super C uses PCM on the "orchestra hit" that's used on many of its sounds.
Last edited by Fisher on Thu Jun 22, 2017 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by tepples »

Woof and quack are DPCM.

Drums in Journey to Silius and Batman ROTJ can't be PCM because that'd interfere with playback of bass through DPCM.
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Fisher
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by Fisher »

Oops... looks like I confused the drums with the bass!! My bad.
I added some more games on the list. Most of them I'm not sure.
Oh, and there's a laugh on Castlevania 3 that may be PCM too.
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by mikejmoffitt »

To add to the Action 53 vol 3 entry, Karate Kick uses raw PCM for the yelling sound when a player dies.
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by bucky o'hare »

Fisher wrote:Isn't the dog's bark on Duck Hunt PCM?
I think the percursion on many Sunsoft games (Journey to Silius, Batman - Return of the Joker, Gremlins 2, Fester's Quest...) are PCM too.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 uses some voices too.
Gradius 2 has many voices that tell the item you got.
I think the noise that Simon's Belmont does when hit on Castlevania 3 is a kind of voice too.
If I remember correctly, Kung-Fu Master has some voices on it.
I think Super C uses PCM on the "orchestra hit" that's used on many of its sounds.
Ah, these are all examples of 1-bit DPCM. I'm on the lookout for raw PCM, which handles sample playback differently and is less common. :)
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by tokumaru »

Just to make the difference clear in case anyone's not familiar with the terminology:

DPCM: 1-bit differential PCM, where each bit modifies the waveform relatively from the previous value, increasing or decreasing it. These can be automatically read and played by the APU while the CPU runs code normally.

PCM: The software writes 7-bit samples directly to the APU, so it has full control over the source format of the audio data and the playback rate. The fact that the software is busy preparing the data and outputting it at a steady rate often means it can't do anything else, so there's usually no action when these samples are played.
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by bucky o'hare »

tokumaru wrote:...The fact that the software is busy preparing the data and outputting it at a steady rate often means it can't do anything else, so there's usually no action when these samples are played.
A great example of this is Robodemons. There are animated graphics on the title screen, but they very blatantly pause every time the game plays a sample:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriTocGzp3o

At the other end of the spectrum, Gauntlet 2 does manage to pull off PCM without interrupting gameplay. And there's PCM galore!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISyFQpZkSS0

I think the low samplerate (approximately 5.2 kHz) is what allows the game to juggle its resources. It seems to be the most effort any NES game put into having lots of PCM with gameplay. And now that I think about, I believe Gauntlet 2, Skate or Die 2, and Battletoads might be the only games that have some PCM where not everything else pauses?
Last edited by bucky o'hare on Fri Jun 23, 2017 10:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: List of NES and Famicom games that use raw PCM (7-bit, e

Post by Bregalad »

Battletoads definitely pauses when playing PCM. Even in the intro. Just pay careful attention and you'll notice it.
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