X68000

The MMC5 (Multi-Memory Controller 5) was made by Nintendo and was used as an extension chip in Nintendo Famicom / NES Games. Besides more Soundchannels, it offered the Game Developer better graphical capabilites and other extras. It is also known as Mapper 5.

Technical Specifications

• Channels: 3
• Channel 1-2: Squarewave synthesis with 4 possible Duty Cycles (87.5%, 75.0%, 50.0%, 25.0%)
• Channel 3: PCM Waveform playback
• Channels 1 & 2 can be disabled independently

The PCM Channel, although documentated, has never been used inside commercial Games. Also as of writing this there aren’t any emulators or sound players which feature it.

Used in

The Chip is used in the following Nintendo Famicom Games (Japan only!)

• Just Breed (ジャストブリード)
• Metal Slader Glory (メタルスレイダーグローリー)
• Nobunaga’s Ambition II (信長の野望 戦国群雄伝)
• Suikoden Tenmei no Chikai (水滸伝 天命の誓い )
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms II (三國志Ⅱ)
• Uncharted Waters (大航海時代)

Castlevania 3, Gun Sight and Uchuu Keibitai SDF have the chip on the cartridge, but they don’t make use of the sound capabilities. Also, none of the Games use the PCM Channel.

Uchuu Keibitai SDF uses the MMC5

Special Applications

• It’s used together with the 2A03 (The NES / Famicom Main Sound Chip).

Emulation

• NSF | NES Music, aswell as all the expansion Chips, can be ripped and stored inside .nsf Files. NSF Files are basically stripped down roms that only contain the music code. There are numerous Players for this, 2 popular Winamp Plugins would be NSFPlug (Link) and NEZPlug++ (Link).

• There are also NSFe Files. The “e” stands for extended, which means that those files support Titles and Timing.

Music Creation

• MMC5 Music can be created with Famitracker, although it lacks the PCM Channel.