A little over a year ago, I was prototyping a method to leverage Google Chrome’s Native Client technology in order to play old chiptunes (video game music) directly in a web browser. The last time I posted on the matter, I said that I might have something ready for public consumption by the time Google Chrome 21 rolled around. I thought I was being facetious but I wasn’t too far off. Chrome 20 is the current release version as I write this.

Anyway, I did it: I created a chiptune music player in Native Client by leveraging existing C/C++ libraries such as Game Music Emu, Audio Overload SDK, and Vio2sf. Then I packaged up the player into into a Google Chrome extension and published it on the Chrome Web Store. Then I made a website cataloging as many chiptunes as I could find for 7 different systems:

Check it out if you have any affinity for old game music or you want to hear how music was made using a limited range of bleeps and bloops. Thus far, the site catalogs NES, SNES, Game Boy, Nintendo DS, Genesis, Saturn, and Dreamcast songs. I’m hoping to add support and catalogs for many more systems, though, eventually bringing support in line with the Chipamp plugin for Winamp.