Looking for that tune of frogger music you always wanted? Here are a few tips on getting it:

Where to find game music online

The easiest method of finding music is online. Why do all the work of recording or ripping a song from an old game when someone else has likely done all that work already?

If the game you are looking for is a Commadore 64, NES, or SNES game, you are in luck. They have amazing players for the data files from these games, and amazing resources online loaded with the music already ripped from these games.

Commadore 64

Music ripped from the C64 is put into .sid format (the sound chip for the C64 was named the Sound Interface Device chip or SID). The High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) is the largest collection of SIDs on the net by far (I'm talking about tens of thousands of songs).

To play it on your computer you need a player that can play SID files. The best player is Sidplay2. It may not be as nice as having a handy winamp plugin, but it sounds better than any of the plugins made for winamp. The only way I know that is that I've tested it against recordings made from a C64 directly. You can download a player for windows that uses sidplay2 code named Sidplay2/w.

With those two things, you should be well on your way to playing any music from the C64. If you need help finding info on the game you played, you can check out a c64 game site like Lemon64 which also has music for the games in their database.

NES

Most NES music wasn't as great as C64 or the SNES, but it still had some good tunes. It uses file format NSF. I don't really know anything about it, other than I use a winamp plugin to play them.

Here is where I will introduce the best site for emulators and game music. Zophar.net has a huge collection of music files as well as updated links to players to play them. It is the best resource for most of the consoles, and I highly recommend checking this site before any other, especially for SNES and NES titles.

I use Nosefart. Let me know if you know of a better one. This one has been the best I've used to date, and I have no complaints.

SNES

The SNES took video game music to a new level, a level that has rarely been matched to this day. Again, check Zophar.net before searching anywhere else. They've got a huge collection. I use SNESAmp for winamp which is very configurable, and will let you duplicate SNES sound, or up the settings beyond what the SNES can do. This player sounds very nice, as good as if you recorded it straight off the SNES. There are also ways to use the same engine on Mac or Linux. You can check out snesmusic.org for all the versions.

N64

I have yet to find N64 music players that duplicate the N64 sound. They are very close, that's for sure, but noticeably different. The one I use now is 64th Note, which can be found at Halleys Comet Software.

If you are a perfectionist, you will have to get a direct recording from the game, or find an album of music released from the game. They make them. You'd be surprised how many game music albums have been released for the Asian market especially. If you are happy with very close to the original game, you will be happy with 64th Note.

PC

Things are a bit more difficult for the PC because one PC does not necessarily sound like another. This is especially true if when you first played the game, you were listening to MIDI music. Many soundcards these days have crap MIDI players and if you try to play a MIDI file supposedly a rip straight from a game, it will sound like garbage. If you have a Creative Labs soundcard like a soundblaster live or an audigy, you should be able to get close to the olden days of your soundblaster back in the day. Otherwise, maybe you can find some software emulator for a midi player. I haven't had to deal with that because I have an Audigy2 which works for me.

However, MIDI music for video games sucks, and usually back in the day it sounded like crap compared to the non-midi soundblaster output. You are better off finding non-midi rips. For a few very old DOS games, check out this adlib archive. It has some song data and the means to play them. Another site that has many good music rips as well as links to a TON of websites with ripped music is mirsoft.info. That is definately worth checking out. Careful though, many of the mirsoft rips sound nothing like I remember the games sounding. XGMusic.net has some great copies of some good music, but their collection is smaller than others.

Recording your own copies

Getting your own copies is sometimes the only method, especially on rarer games. I suggest you check online all over before you bother with this one though.

DOS games: If you are having trouble running DOS games, I recommend DOSBox. Its a very handy DOS emulator which handles any game I've thrown at it so far. It allows you to record the sound from it while you play, with an emulated soundblaster pro. Its not a perfect emulation of the sound, but its quite good.

If you have a game from that time period when CD quality sound was first being used, its possible that the game CD is playable in a cd player already. Just rip the CD (skipping the first data track) with your favorite program. I recommend CDEX for windows users.

Have your own tips for finding good game music? Feel free to share them.