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The SM8521 is the CPU and sound chip of the Game.com, a handheld console released in 1997 as a competitor to the Nintendo Game Boy. Sadly, the Game.com ended up being a failure as well, mostly due to poor quality games. The Game.com only lasted 3 years before being discontinued. However, for its time, it was a pretty competitively priced system. The Game Boy Color was to be released in a year for 79.95,whiletheGame.comwasreleasedfor79.95, while the Game.com was released for 69.99; its later model, the Pocket Pro, was released in mid-1999 for $29.99 due to the Game.com’s apparent significant decrease in value.
In fact, most games never used the wavetable/noise mode of the chip. Sonic Jam, for example, uses a sine wave with a software-controlled volume envelope on the DAC channel.

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Sound Features

The sound-related features and quirks of the SM8521 are as follows:
  • 2 4-bit wavetable channels
  • 1 noise channel (which can go up to a very high pitch, creating an almost periodic noise sound)
  • 5-bit volume
  • Low bit-depth output (which means it distorts a lot)
  • Phase resets when you switch waves
  • 12-bit pitch with a wide frequency range
  • A software-controlled D/A register that (potentially) requires all other registers to be stopped to play. Due to this, it is currently not implemented in Furnace

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Effects

EffectDescription
10xxSet waveform
xx is a value between 0 and 255 that sets the waveform of the channel

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Chip Configuration

The following options are available in the Chip Manager window:
  • Clock rate: Sets the rate at which the chip will run

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Instrument Editor

This chip uses the SM8521 instrument editor.

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