gbstag : Java GBS tag reader (Game Boy Sound Files)

gbsTag is a Java stand-alone command line app for reading the tags from Game Boy music files (GBS).

GBS-files are sound files containing ripped chiptune music from Game Boy and Game Boy Colour games. GBS stands for Game Boy Sound System.

Usage

usage: gbstag <filename>
 -v,--verbose   verbose output
 -V,--version   print version

For example:

$ java -jar gbstag "/warez/gbs/dkland2.gbs"

Title		 : Donkey Kong Land 2
Artist(s)	 : Grant Kirkhope
Copyright	 : 1996 Rare, Nintendo
First Songs	 : 1
Total Songs	 : 28

Features

• ✔️ 100% Java (Java 11) ☕
• ✔️ Supports UTF-8 encoding in the tags!
• ✔️ Command line. Multi-platform.
• ✔️ Batch processing using wildcards is possible! For example: java -jar gbstag *.gbs

Building

This is a Maven-project.

Run:

mvn clean install assembly:single

to build the JAR-file. Or run the build script provided: build.sh

Binaries

I've included a compiled jar-file with /lib dir to simplify for end-users who can't compile stuff on their platform.

• Download gbstag-bin.zip

Development

1. I wrote this because there was a lack of tools supporting the GBS-format.
2. And it would be a fun project

Heavily based on the SPCtag code (equivalent tool for SNES SPC-files).

Java is multi-platform and you can run and compile 20-year old Java programs without any issues. So I'd figure this would be a suitable platform for posterity.

Changelog

• 0.1 - first release! August 2019
• 0.2 - UTF-8 support (replacing latin-1) November 2019

Licence

GPL 3 only. See COPYING

Libraries and copyright

• Apache Commons CLI-library - Apache Licence version 2
• Image by Flappiefh (2013) from Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported licence.