Did you know that, unlike its Western Counterpart, the Japanese Sega Master System
had its own FM soundchip? oh, you did? Well of course to you would – you’re a smart,
witty and generally amazing Sega Master System fan.
What you may not know, however, is that due to the Japanese Master System’s abrupt termination,
a surprisingly large amount of Western-only Master System games retained FM soundtracks. Rather
than take them out, programmers would often simply bury them inside inaccessible bits of
game code.
A Good Few Years ago, SMS Power! User “Sonic of 8” uncovered a number of action replay
codes that would allow these hidden soundtracks to be heard – although only in certain
emulators and not on the original hardware.
I’d recently finished creating rom patches for all of the complete soundtracks,
so I thought I’d quickly go through and create patches for the games that contain only
fragments of sound (one or two finished jingles, or just place holder sounds/drums.)
This is really for curious completists only – there are no finished soundtracks here.
To download the finished patch set please click: here
The package contains the necessary ROM patches, a multiplatform tool for patching the ROMs and a readme to walk you through it.
What’s that? you want to here the soundtracks in action? Knock yourself out. Most soundtrack snippets are recorded from a Japanese Master System: