Sean Riddle writes: "I dumped the Retro Station NX-85 1280-in-1.  Along with the normal 44 pads, there were 3 more address lines at the top.  They aren’t marked, so I have 8 dumps but I don’t know what order they should be in.  I assume Haze can figure it out by examination or trial and error."

https://archive.org/details/retro-station-nx-85
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QWX8AZDc8s

(This is a 1280-in-1 system so there's a lot of data in here- 256 MB in fact- but the Pikachu Gardman game should be in this dump .... somewhere. )

Many NES graphics are visible in the binaries, but sometimes they appear to be bit-shifted in some way, like the attached picture.

177300 in the 97 binary is Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular, and 1c6ABf0 is Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle -- in both cases these are very glitchy in YY-CHR, suggesting bit shift or bit reversal.

I will compare the hex here to the actual Snoopy ROM. 176B000 is snoopy with his medals, the CHR before the one with Charlie Brown .... this would be 2B010 in the ROM proper ...

03 1F 2F 6F F7 F7
would I think become:
14 97 D6 F6 7F 7F


It's therefore verifiable that Pikachu Wonder Rabbit is in binary 96 from around 135FF00 -- 13A1F00, something like that, but glitched consistently in this way.

1388000 in binary 96 is a glitched version of the HUD used in Pikachu Gardman (my hack) at 048010.

1398000 in binary 96 has the Pikachu player graphics, present in the Pikachu Gardman hack at 058010. It's consistent

1385000 is probably the title screen, matching Gardman at 45010



The CHR can almost certainly be find and replaced, based on a comparison of the data in other games like Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular, seen above. It's clear that every hex number is being replaced with a different "reversed" version of itself consistently.

For safety's sake, I should probably be comparing it with Gardman, or the Pikachu Gardman hack, where most but not all of the graphics are identical.


So I find and replaced some of the numbers, creating a less glitched but still glitched version ....

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7129/

Hack test, based on YT video.

Not perfect but good enough until the actual thing is dumped.

Added 16x16 block title screen, which was a bit of a chore.

Couldn't get a perfect scale-down from the Youtube video, so the graphics are only sort of right, but you get the basic idea.

Database match: Gardman (Asia) (Unl)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
File SHA-1: 5E707B25BC69C2342B01163F147536B6BF6E6365
File CRC32: 956A2EE5
ROM SHA-1: 46900B667F4149444063F798C7C1744D5695170D
ROM CRC32: 7B40535C

I'm interested in this and have tentatively sourced the "Game Station 5 1280-in-1" just in case.

This is, admittedly, getting into dicey territory, but I'm wondering if there is any kind of ASM (or other) framework out there for assembling NES/Famicom multicarts as ROMs.

As in: a script or application or framework which could assemble many 40k NROM NES ROMs into a single ROM. Or alternately could assemble NES ROMs of varying sizes into a single ROM. Or alternately could assemble 2k or 4k Family BASIC minigame NES ROMs (which all use the same graphics) into a single ROM.

We all know those pirate multicarts which turn up as ROMs or as their own systems. Here's an example ...

https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/Famicom_Yarou

Famicom Yarou 54 contains 54 games, mostly hacked versions (by Inventor) of early 40kb NES NROM games, and a few bootleg originals by Nice Code, which seem to be 64kb in their original form but also run off of two CHR graphics banks like a 40kb game. There is a bunch of empty CHR space in the ROM code.

The menu seems to just set which PRG and CHR banks are being used.

It is possible (and straightforward) to copy/paste the original ROM data, minus the header, into this multicart ROM, replacing their weird hacked versions of the games. The original games' PRG data appears in the first half of the ROM in various banks, and the CHR data appears toward the end somewhere in various banks.

Twinbee appears to be cut down to NROM size here.

Other multicarts use games of varying size, and even this one seems to do that to an extent.

Here's a "1280-in-1" multicart whose "524-in-1" section seems to include the elusive, undumped original Pikachu5 version of "Wonder Rabbit/Monster Brother."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QWX8AZDc8s

If I were making ROMhacks and original NES games, it would be at least interesting to combine several of them into one Multicart ROM. This could also be useful for combining several related minigames, which might not be as interesting on their own, into one coherent idea.

Such as, let's say, original minigames made in NESMaker.

Alternately: Recently, ozidual of Gaming Alexandria and others have been preserving games made in Famicom Family Basic back in the 80s and 90s. This was a keyboard/ programming add-on for the Famicom which allowed for 2k of programming RAM, or 4k in the 1985 V3 update. Programs for Family Basic were published in magazines at the time and on audiocassettes. These can, through a convoluted process (STTONES), be typed up and converted into standalone NES ROMs as minigames, in a standardized format.

These games all use the same graphics banks (unless hacked). The amount of code is only about 2k or 4k plus a background nametable. (Possibly two, although I've yet to see an example of that.) This is compiled from about 100 lines of code or less.

(Family Basic V2 was copied as GBASIC and FBASIC on the knockoff Subor and Dendy Famiclone computers, and most "educational" unlicensed multicarts included Family Basic in some form as the main attraction, such as Bravesoft Windows 2000.)

These games are not all that interesting as standalone releases but would work well as a multicart combining many examples of what Family Basic can do. In this case every game would use the same graphics, and much of what's in the ROM wouldn't be needed (theoretically) as it's the same each time.

I see this user has made his own multicart of various ROMhacks.
http://bootleg.games/BGC_Forum/index.php?topic=3046.msg21960#msg21960

There's also this whole situation ....
https://clusterrr.com/coolgirl/
https://github.com/ClusterM/coolboy-multirom-builder
https://github.com/coolgirl-multicart/coolgirl-multirom-builder
https://coolgirl.clusterrr.com/constructor/
I'll have to look into that.

Basically I'm looking for a framework which would make it easy to compile minigames or NES ROMs into a multicart, with a multi-page menu and title screen artwork.