Sound chip in atari arcade games circa 1985-1991?

[sirlynxalot]

There are a bunch of atari arcade games that have synthesized music such as super sprint, road blasters, hydra, 720, stun runner, marble madness 2, etc.

 

Some of the synthesized instruments remind me of the stuff I'd hear on a sega Genesis, suggesting maybe it's the same or a similar Yamaha synthesizer on these games.  

 

Does anyone know for sure?  Frankly I'd like to research if there is a particular 80s synthesizer that would have patches that sound like what's in these games for my own music playing and recording enjoyment.  There's also plenty of plugins that simulate the Sega Genesis sound chip, is that a suitable proxy for what atari was using?  I would like to make imitation atari style arcade music ?

Edited June 16, 2022 by sirlynxalot

[+x=usr(1536)]

Since the timeframe you're talking about encompasses a number of different hardware designs and revisions, I'd recommend checking out the Atari museum on system16.com.  The way in which they break down components for each platform is pretty good, and that can be correlated to specific games fairly easily.

 

Searching or browsing the MAME source tree would also net some results, but probably not as easily.

[DanBoris]

On 6/15/2022 at 8:06 PM, sirlynxalot said:

There are a bunch of atari arcade games that have synthesized music such as super sprint, road blasters, hydra, 720, stun runner, marble madness 2, etc.

 

Some of the synthesized instruments remind me of the stuff I'd hear on a sega Genesis, suggesting maybe it's the same or a similar Yamaha synthesizer on these games.  

 

Does anyone know for sure?  Frankly I'd like to research if there is a particular 80s synthesizer that would have patches that sound like what's in these games for my own music playing and recording enjoyment.  There's also plenty of plugins that simulate the Sega Genesis sound chip, is that a suitable proxy for what atari was using?  I would like to make imitation atari style arcade music ?

Most of those games used the Yamaha YM2151 and the Genesis used a Yamaha YM2612 which might be why there were some similarities in the sound.