• Early mainframe intact chips had only simple tone and noise generators with few channels, imposing limitations on both the complexity of the harmony they could produce and the prime of notes that could be played at once

• Sound Chips class="even">In their fascination to create a more miscellaneous arrangement than what the medium apparently allowed, composers developed creative approaches when developing their own electronic cadence and scores, employing a diversity of both methods of total synthesis, such as pulse width modulation and wavetable synthesis, and compositional techniques, such as a liberal exercise of arpeggiation
• The resultant chiptunes sometimes seem harsh or squeaky to the unaccustomed listener.

In the last couple of years, chip music has returned to late gaming, either in full chip music style or using chip samples in the music. Games that do this in their soundtrack include Mega Character Battle Network, Seiklus, and Tetris DS.