📰 New article from RetroRGB
Magical Puzzle Popils – NES Audio
https://retrorgb.com/magical-puzzle-popils-nes-audio.html
Imagine playing a lost NES game… only to realize the music is gone. Not just muted—erased. That’s exactly what happened with Magical Puzzle Popils, a never-released Famicom gem whose soundtrack vanished with a missing EEPROM chip. Cue the heroes: a band of retro-savvy fans who turned detective, sound engineer, and bard—all in one.
Using gameplay footage from the game’s creator Jun Amanai and the Game Gear version as their Bible, they painstakingly reverse-engineered 34 sounds—18 songs and 16 SFX—with tweaks to ADSR envelopes, vibrato, and note pitches until it sounded right. The other 17? They got a cheerful little beep. Fair trade.
What’s wild? The sound driver and structure were still intact—just the melody was missing. Like finding a fully-built piano… with no sheet music. And yet, they played it anyway.
This isn’t just a patch—it’s resurrection. You can download the ROM and patch right now, and it even works with existing hacks. So go ahead: hear Magical Puzzle Popils as it was meant to be heard. Or at least, as close as we’ll ever get.
(And yes—Frank’s podcast told this story first. You should listen.)