You can now play NSF (Nintendo Sound Format) on the Analogue Pocket. This is due to tweaks implemented by Teminator2K2 on agg23’s NES core (ported from MiSTer). It now uses three cores, and automatically swaps between cores as required by the content that’s being loaded.
See the core in action in the video below:
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🎵 What is an NSF?
NSF stands for Nintendo Sound Format.
It’s a music file format created to store and play back music and sound data from NES (or Famicom) games.
📦 What’s Inside an NSF File
An NSF file isn’t a recording, it’s a dump of the actual sound code and music data from an NES game.
It includes:
- The music engine (the code that drives the NES’s sound hardware)
- The music data (notes, tempo, instrument info, etc.)
- Metadata (title, artist, copyright info, etc.)
🎮 How It Works
When played on an emulator or NSF player:
- The program emulates the NES’s APU (Audio Processing Unit), the Ricoh 2A03 or 2A07 chip.
- The NSF’s embedded code runs just like it would on real NES hardware.
- You get authentic NES chiptune sound, the same bleeps and bloops you’d hear in a real game.
⚙️ Sound Channels
The NES APU offers:
- 2 Pulse (square wave) channels
- 1 Triangle wave channel
- 1 Noise channel
- 1 DPCM (sample playback) channel
Some NSFs also include expansion audio from Famicom cartridges, such as:
- VRC6, VRC7 (Konami)
- FDS (Famicom Disk System)
- MMC5, Namco 163, etc.
🧰 How to Play NSF Files
You can play NSF files with:
- FamiTracker (a tracker for composing NES music)
- Foobar2000 with the Game Emu Player plugin
- VirtuaNSF, NotSoFatso, or NSFPlay
- MiSTer FPGA or Analogue Pocket with NSF player cores (for hardware-accurate playback)
🎹 Why It’s Popular
- Used by chiptune artists and retro game composers
- Allows easy ripping and studying of original NES soundtracks
- Perfect for testing sound engines on real or emulated hardware