Hello everyone! Today we have something a little bit different to share with you.
With the help of Frank Cifaldi from the Video Game History Foundation, we were able to preserve rare never-before-seen technical documents for the Yamaha YM2612 synthesis sound chip and the official Sega Mega Drive sound drivers developed exclusively by Sega of Japan!
(NOTE: While these documents are official, the information contained within cannot compete with reverse engineered information. As such, the information might sometimes be incorrect and should not be taken as gospel. These documents are presented for historical purposes.)
Video game consoles before and during the 16-bit era were unique in various different ways.
Since there were no hardware standards like there are in today’s consoles, each console used unique hardware that could produce vastly different results in comparison to other consoles that were released during the same time.
For instance, the sound hardware that powered the Sega Mega Drive was a completely different animal in comparison to the sound hardware that powered the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). While the SNES used a custom sample based chip called the S-SMP, the Sega Mega Drive utilized FM synthesis through the use of the Yamaha YM2612.
