The rigs we've created for chipsynth MD's emulation.

I have the Chipsynth MD, which is a Sega Mega Drive (aka Genesis) based synth from Plogue and it's one of my favorite plug-in synths. It's pretty remarkable how much it nails the sounds from those games. This video shows some insight into the development process: ▶ this video

chipsynth MD is a musician-targeted emulator of the MegaDrive's sound chips; one of the authors goes into the difficulty of recreating things at ▶ this video (From memory: they sourced a variant of the sound chip with digital output, characterized the DAC that way, then built a test suite to compare emulator behavior with a real chip)

I'm an FM junkie and own various pieces of gear based on old yamaha FM chips, as well as actual yamaha FM keyboards. I think the various emulations out there are actually pretty good, and I have to admit I'd probably have a tough time with blind A/B tests. Probably the most noticeable (and sought after) out of the "lo-fi" effects is the ladder distortion effect on the old Sega megadrive YM2612 chips. I own a MegaFM synth with one of those and I do love the sound. I'm not sure if most emulators actually try to emulate it, but the plogue chipsynth MD plugin does. The creator has a really cool video on it ▶ this video .