Ripping a GBA soundtrack by Altissimo at 11:51 AM EDT on September 20, 2015
hello, I am new here and if this is better suited to a specific thread or something feel free to point me in the right direction. Anyway I am on a quest to eventually find someone who can help me rip a certain GBA soundtrack that doesn't use the Sappy engine. The game in question is Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games and I don't know specifically which engine it does use, only that's it not Sappy. I'm trying to upload the soundtracks of the four localized Hamtaro games to youtube (because no one else has ever bothered) and while recording all tracks off my emulator worked fine for one of the games, I'm now at a wall because this game has an ambient soundtrack with many different songs and I don't know how many there are or what they're even called, which is why I want a rip just to be sure I have everything. I understand that without the Sappy engine this is a difficult task, but if anyone could help me with it - or point me in the direction of another person or forum who can - I would be super appreciative.
by birdmanager6 at 8:20 PM EDT on September 20, 2015
First of all, try loading the file into Audacity as an unsigned 8-bit PCM or as ADPCM at about 8000hz or so, and look through the data. If you find full songs, then it's streamed, so it can easily be ripped by splitting the data into the part with each song, and exporting the part as a WAV file. If you just get instruments, however, then I can't really offer any help. I don't know
This game might use the GAX engine. See if it's in the following list: http://pastebin.com/h2PSKQrf If so, then I don't know how to extract it, but I just posted a similar request.
Hmm, I don't see it in the GAX engine list. I have a friend who's helping me check for the Krawall engine, but we haven't come to any conclusions so far.
I did try to load the ROM into Audacity and saw a distinctive part of the resulting audio block (whatever it was called) that was thinner than the rest of it, but it didn't really sound like anything recognizable. I can try again, though, but I don't know how much I might find out from trying again. :/
Oh, and if it helps any: the game was made by AlphaDream (the same company behind Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, which does use the Sappy engine).
Some other research shows that someone requested a rip of Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games (and also Rainbow Rescue, which I also need to upload to Youtube still) here but as far as I can tell nothing ever came of that. Is unknownfile still around and ripping?
edited 9:48 PM EDT September 20, 2015
by MurraySkull at 1:47 AM EDT on September 21, 2015
I wish someone would decipher the other half of the engine M&LSS uses in case the game uses midis.
by birdmanager6 at 5:43 PM EDT on September 21, 2015
From what I recall, the non-Mario Bros. portion of the music uses a MODIFIED version of M4A "Sappy", but not the regular version of it. It's most likely the same engine used in most of Nintendo's other games, like Super Mario Advance 2-4. But, yeah, someone SHOULD research that engine more, which probably does use MIDIs, as the normal M4A engine does. It's kind of surprising and disappointing that after about 10 years, we still only know how to rip one GBA sound engine.