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Emulation & ROM Hacking

Ripping Game Boy music - Page 1

Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: SatoMew
Date: 2015-02-18 17:58:40
I'm curious, how should I go about this? I know I can use an emulator to record the audio but that might not be the best way of doing it.

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2015-02-18 18:11:24
I unfortunately don't know the answer to this, but I know that a Nensondubois rips or used to rip GBS files. Perhaps he may be able to help you.

You can find GBS files already made on the Internet. Two good sources are Zophar's Domain and Snesmusic's "portable music history". (I am not sure how to search specifically for Game Boy music there but here are the submissions of "GBgbs")

There is a tool called GBS2GB (mirrored) that takes a GBS file and creates a ROM that plays the music.

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: SatoMew
Date: 2015-02-18 18:27:43

I unfortunately don't know the answer to this, but I know that a Nensondubois rips or used to rip GBS files. Perhaps he may be able to help you.


Thanks, I'll contact him about it.


You can find GBS files already made on the Internet. Two good sources are Zophar's Domain and Snesmusic's "portable music history". (I am not sure how to search specifically for Game Boy music there but here are the submissions of "GBgbs")


Isn't GBgbs a Japanese program for generating GBS files out of the audio data in the ROM? I think I used something like it but I can't remember well enough to be sure since it was years ago.

Found it. The author removed it from its website for some reason. I now recall that it doesn't support all ROMs but I think it could handle the Pokémon ones. Now for a download link… It's on MediaFire (the link comes from here). However, this seems to be an old version based on this capture from the Internet Archive.

I knew about Zophar's Domain but not about that particular section of Snesmusic.


There is a tool called GBS2GB (mirrored) that takes a GBS file and creates a ROM that plays the music.


Sounds interesting, I'll check it out.

EDIT: I was scurrying the Web and came across this. It mentions that ripping GBS files correctly can be difficult.

EDIT 2: Well, this was unexpected.

This user is currently blocked. The latest block log entry is provided below for reference:

03:52, 5 August 2014 BMF54123 (Talk | contribs) blocked Nensondubois (Talk | contribs) with an expiry time of indefinite
(account creation disabled, email disabled) ("Are you proud of yourself for engaging in counterproductive activity?
For the sake of everyone you should question your existence. I hope you die in a fire and never produce offspring!")

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: Spoink
Date: 2015-02-18 20:05:56
I can give you a suggestion. Turn off sounds, for example GS can be used for no sound in RBY
01002AC0
01002BC0
01002CC0
01002DC0
Then record a substantial amount, pop it into a video-to-audio converter, and pop it into a trimmer, trim it so all parts of the track are available, and then …

(This is why I don't recommend listening to my advice because I have no idea how to finish the sentence.)

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2018-12-17 11:39:02
This topic's as old as it gets, but I've been seeing guests view it for months, so I thought I'd throw in a mention that this is fully possible now, thanks to emu2midi. I've been able to finally study tons of long-time favorites thanks to it.

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: ISSOtm
Date: 2018-12-17 15:05:56
What the fuck is this hot garbage of a program O_O
Also WHY do they even need to convert GBS to ROMs????

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2018-12-17 15:18:29

What the fuck is this hot garbage of a program O_O
What it says on the tin!


Also WHY do they even need to convert GBS to ROMs????
GB/C emulators (and hardware) have better sound emulation than standalone GBS players, and also you need a ROM to use emu2midi to convert the contents to MIDI format.

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: ISSOtm
Date: 2018-12-17 19:15:05
I noticed what the program does (I can read this thread's title), but the UI just looks like a$$, and it just looks lazily slapped together.

A GBS is pretty much a ROM with non-audio contents stripped.
Again, why does emu2midi need a conversion, then??

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2018-12-17 20:05:26
If I recall correctly, it was just console output…? Unless you mean GBS2GB making you select the folders "the long way", which might seem like an easy thing to change to someone who's a developer. I just took the few extra seconds to select them. Not a big deal to me. Also, in order to play back music without sound effects on an actual DMG-001 (or an accurate emulator), you'd need to convert it back into a format the system is designed to read, so there is a purpose to GBS2GB.

I see your point about emu2midi, though; it would be more convenient to have a program that just takes a GBS as input and outputs a bunch of MIDIs, but an inconvenient solution is far superior to no solution at all IMO.

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: J92R
Date: 2019-03-28 10:21:01
I really wish there was a midi rip of the GB/GBC Pokemon games, cause all we have online are bits and pieces.

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-03-28 20:46:51

I really wish there was a midi rip of the GB/GBC Pokemon games, cause all we have online are bits and pieces.
The transcriptions out there are numerous and easily quality enough to have come from the ROM itself. Where were you looking?

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: J92R
Date: 2019-03-29 08:49:18


I really wish there was a midi rip of the GB/GBC Pokemon games, cause all we have online are bits and pieces.
The transcriptions out there are numerous and easily quality enough to have come from the ROM itself. Where were you looking?


Kind of everywhere, I've found s bunch, but also a lot of poorly exported midis as well.

Re: Ripping Game Boy music

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-03-29 15:19:12
You need to do a little bit of manual processing in the DAW to make them proper MIDIs if I recall correctly anyway. VGMusic was always my source when I did more remix-related work, and they seemed to have everything from Red and Blue.