VGM (file format)

VGM (Video Game Music) is an audio file format for multiple video game platforms, such as Sega Master System, Game Gear, Mega Drive/Genesis, MSX, Neo Geo, IBM PC AT (Adlib/SoundBlaster), and has expanded to a variety of arcade system boards since its release.

The standard filename extension is .vgm, but files can also be Gzip compressed into .vgz files. Technically, .vgz files should be named .vgm.gz, but because some popular operating systems' file managers cannot handle file name suffixes that themselves contain a period, .vgz is used in order to launch a VGM player, not a file archiver program such as WinZip or WinRAR.

The VGM format is different from formats like NSF or SID, which contain the game's music code. Instead, the instructions sent to the sound chip are logged.

On November 20, 2005, VGM 1.50 was officially announced, and a new version of the input plug-in released. The new version of the format supported PCM optimization for the Yamaha YM2612 sound chip, which significantly reduces the size of VGM files by avoiding redundancy. The first YM2612 VGM archive, Project 2612, optimized all of its packages soon after.