[Dune]

As some of you may have seen, there were a lot of Karaoke Revolution games released back in the early to mid 2000’s, particularly in Japan. I have been toying with some Japanese customs and thought it would be beneficial to explore extracting the MIDIs for the vocals from the games (if possible).

 

The Japanese versions of KR seem to use a MIDI engine within the game to produce the music instead of just recordings of anything (though please correct me if wrong). The actual game structure is very simple as you would expect (the actual contents of one KR disc I ripped was only 300 megabytes, to give you some idea). I have access to five or six volumes somewhere around here that I would be more than glad to go through if it would benefit everyone.

 

Unfortunately, I can’t find any references anywhere to anyone exploring the Japanese KR discs. Does anyone here have any experience doing similar stuff with SIngstar that would be interested in this sort of thing?

[Oddbrother]

MIDI engine? Do you mean like emulated music on PC in the 80s and 90s? Is there a gameplay video of it?

[Dune]

Here’s a video of it in action, which is very basic:

 

What I essentially meant was that I think the game uses MIDI charts to create the MIDI sounds in real-time, instead of using pre-recorded versions. There are numerous references to MIDI scripts within the disc files, so it seems pretty likely. Hopefully that makes a little more sense?

 

The title of this edition is “カラオケレボリューション J-POPベスト vol.8” / “Karaoke Revolution J-POP Best vol.8” (Disc code SLPM-62456). You can get an idea of what kinds of songs are on the various discs on Konami’s website.

 

Using IsoBuster, you can extract all of the disc data pretty easily but, of course, the contained files are all almost all not in their actual formats. Using TrIDNET to identify the actual file types for extraction provides some clues but I’m not sure I have the ability to extract the necessary files without the proper tools.

 

Karaoke Revolution J-POP Best Vol.8

 

The base file structure begins with the following folders and four files:

 

[CNF]

[DATA]

[FMOD]

[FMOD2]

[FRES]

[LICENSE]

[MODULES]

[NTCNFBIN]

[OTHER]

[PKF_DATA]

[PKT]

FEEGAGUI.ELF (7,845 K:cool:

NETCONF.ELF (3,454 K:cool:

SLPM_624.56 (4,832 K:cool:

SYSTEM.CNF (1 K:cool:

 

CNF: PS2 system files

ICON.SYS (1 K:cool:

SYS_NET.ICO (32.8 K:cool:

 

DATA: Assorted game files

CAMERA.PKF (166 K:cool:

CHARA.PKF (75,596 K:cool:

KREVO.ICN (7 K:cool:

SONG.LST (7 K:cool:

STAGE.PKF (43,168 K:cool:

TITLE.DAT (1 K:cool:

 

FMOD: Standard PS2 libraries

IOPRP270.IMG

ATAD.IRX

DEV9.IRX

HDD.IRX

INET.IRX

INETCTL.IRX

LIBNET.IRX

LIBSD.IRX

MCMAN.IRX

MCSERV.IRX

MODHSYN.IRX

MODMIDI.IRX

MSIFRPC.IRX

NETCNF.IRX

NETCNFIF.IRX

PADMAN.IRX

PFS.IRX

PPP.IRX

PPPOE.IRX

SDRDRV.IRX

SIO2MAN.IRX

SMAP.IRX

USBD.IRX

USBKB.IRX

USBMLOAD.IRX

 

FMOD2: Additional ELF for MIDI reading?

EZMIDI.IRX (60 K:cool:

 

FONT:

ASCIIX_8.FNT (2 K:cool:

ASCIIX16.FNT (4 K:cool:

KANJIX16.FON (244 K:cool:

 

FRES:

BGM.BD (536 K:cool:

EFF.BD (143 K:cool:

JIS2UCS.BIN (128 K:cool:

UCS2JIS.BIN (128 K:cool:

BGM.HD (5 K:cool:

EFF.HD (2 K:cool:

CONNECT.M2V (1,748 K:cool: Viewable, just a background animation that plays on the menus

ROOT_ED.PEM (2 K:cool:

SAMPLE.PF (2,562 K:cool:

BG.RGB (840 K:cool:

BG_SV.RGB (840 K:cool:

BGM.SQ (128 K:cool:

 

LICENSE: “PlayStation 2” Programmer Tool Runtime Library Release 2.8

LIBEENET.TXT (13 K:cool:

 

MODULES: PS2 modules

DNAS280.IMG

IOPRP280.IMG

DEV9.IRX

MAIN_MOD.SPF

NET_MOD.SPF

NTGU_MO2.SPF

NTGU_MOD.SPF

 

NTCNFBIN:

EFF.BD (125 K:cool:

EFF.HD (1 K:cool:

SYS_NET.ICO (33 K:cool:

JAPANESE.PF (2,547 K:cool:

BG.RGB (840 K:cool:

BG_PAL.RGB (960 K:cool:

BG2.RGB (1,120 K:cool:

ICON.SYS (1 K:cool:

 

OTHER->FONT:

24X24X1H.FNT

24X24X1X.FNT

24X24X4D.FNT

24X24X4H.FNT

24X24X4K.FNT

24X24X4X.FNT

28X28X4D.FNT

28X28X4H.FNT

28X28X4K.FNT

28X28X4X.FNT

40X40X4D.FNT

40X40X4H.FNT

40X40X4K.FNT

40X40X4X.FNT

48X48X4D.FNT

48X48X4H.FNT

48X48X4K.FNT

48X48X4X.FNT

 

OTHER->GRAPHICS:

AIDOL.BZ2

AUDITION.BZ2

BG.BZ2

BOOT.BZ2

CHARISMA.BZ2

DEMO.BZ2

FACE.BZ2

HOWTO.BZ2

K_SCORE.BZ2

KARAOKE.BZ2

NATURAL.BZ2

NETOP.BZ2

OPTION.BZ2

RANKING.BZ2

RAP.BZ2

REVO.BZ2

SCORE.BZ2

SEARCH.BZ2

SELECT3.BZ2

STAFF.BZ2

STAND.BZ2

TALENT.BZ2

TEAM.BZ2

TEAMCONT.BZ2

TITLE.BZ2

USER.BZ2

VISUAL.BZ2

WALL.BZ2

WINDOW.BZ2

 

OTHER->PALETTE:

001DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

002DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

003DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

004DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

005DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

006DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

007DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

008DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

009DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

010DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

011DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

012DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

013DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

014DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

015DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

016DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

017DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

018DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

019DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

020DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

021DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

022DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

023DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

024DAM.PAL (1 K:cool:

 

OTHER->STORY:

STORY.PKF (1,274 K:cool:

 

PKF_DATA:

KBGM.PKF (19,762 K:cool:

SYS_SE.PKF (524 K:cool:

 

PKT:

STEST.PKF (66,728 K:cool:

 

 

The most important parts of data appear to be stored in these PKF files:

 

KBGM.PKF (19,762 K:cool: from PKF_DATA

SYS_SE.PKF (524 K:cool: from PKF_DATA

STEST.PKF (66,728 K:cool: from PKT

CHARA.PKF (75,596 K:cool: from DATA

STAGE.PKF (43,168 K:cool: from DATA

 

EDIT: I should add that TrIDNET gives a “100%” match on the above PKF files really being “Autodesk FLIC Image File (extensions: flc, fli, cel)”. I’m not sure if that’s even remotely accurate, but it seems to think so.

 

If anyone has some PS2 tools that could prove helpful or recognize the file concealment methods here, let me know. Most other music games have been fully extracted, so I imagine it would be pretty easy for this one too (when involving actual experts, that is).

[Dune]

I took a shortcut with the above and was able to perfectly rip out the vocal MIDI on a song-by-song basis. The MIDIs are extraordinarily accurate, surprisingly. With some of the usual cleanup, they can very easily be used in Rock Band customs.

 

If anyone is interested in how to shortcut this without breaking into the game: Use any of the games with an emulator, go to options, turn off the BGM, and just record the vocal MIDI in real time from your sound card (in Audacity or whatever is best for you). From there, just use something like Melodyne to very quickly and precisely convert the recording back to MIDI. I experimented with this a few times and got 100% accurate results on all counts.

 

I thought of this earlier but… I wanted to see if it’d be easy to just extract all of the charts for the sake of creating a large database for fellow customs authors to use. Currently, they all have to be recorded manually. If there are any Japanese songs from the discs I have that someone would want ripped, let me know here or in a PM and I’ll get it to you ASAP. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />

 

Here’s an idea of the types of artists on there: BoA, L’Arc-en-Ciel, Do As Infinity, GLAY, Bump of Chicken, B’z, SMAP, T.M. Revolution, KinKi Kids, Ayumi Hamasaki, ZARD, Morning Musume, Southern All Stars, Utada Hikaru, Mai Kuraki, Namie Amuro, Hyde, Porno Graffitti, and hundreds of others. Basically any group or artist that would come to mind for “Japanese music” in the era the games were released is probably available.

[Author]

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