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Messages - forgotusername

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16
Famicom/NES / Re: miscellaNEouS files
« on: February 11, 2024, 02:43:55 PM »
The "decompilation" was referring to CoolX, which pertains to the other games you mentioned (Boogerman II, FDS ports etc.). The Action 52 rips I mostly re-coded myself, and are unrelated to CoolX; there is no full decompiling of Action 52 AFAIK.

17
Famicom/NES / Re: miscellaNEouS files
« on: February 11, 2024, 01:06:12 AM »
I didn't touch much of anything in the "CoolX" mapper hacks in terms of coding, but I would assume anti-piracy measures were disabled. The github page had what seemed to be full decompilations of the ROMs (albeit still in PRG/CHR-like formats, not outright source code); which I unfortunately didn't back up.

I see in your "Streemerz" rip that there's a visible health bar; is that an unused function, or was it custom coded? (I assume the heart graphics themselves are new)

18
Other Pirates / Atari Gamestation Pro analysis
« on: February 06, 2024, 05:46:10 PM »
My Arcade recently released a "firmware update" for the "Atari Gamestation Pro" console, downloadable via their website (see https://www.myarcadegaming.com/pages/atari-gamestation-firmware-upgrade-to-v-1-3-only). Similarly to the Arcade1UP firmware updates, this update is effectively just a full ROM dump of the console; allowing its entire contents to be viewed using a tool such as 7-Zip.

There is... a lot to note about this console, including the following:

*All emulation is RetroArch-based. It mostly uses unaltered RetroArch cores, though MAME is replaced with a custom (?) fork called "Jungle" (with variants for MAME 2003, 2014, and 2016).
*There is a "games.db" file with cached data related to the SD card. This includes a giant list of pirated ROMs, with names that match those seen on many recent bootleg consoles (e.g. "Little white rabbit lost.nes", which I have a ripped ROM of from another plug & play; it's an unhacked copy of Pyokotan no Dai Meiro). The ROM names are in English, Chinese, Korean, and Thai.
*The Atari 2600 ROMs have various oddities. Two games (Maze Craze and Surround) inexplicably use PAL copies, whereas the PAL prototype of RealSports Basketball uses a fan-made NTSC conversion. Aquaventure (another prototype) uses the bootleg CCE rom, with its hacked copyright; despite that proper Atari copies have existed for years.
*There are 4 or 5 2600 games that I'm almost certain My Arcade/Atari would not have permission to use on the Gamestation. These include Boxing, an unhacked Activision game; Drag Race, a fan-made graphic hack of Activision's "Dragster"; and Space Raid, an 80s bootleg of Activision's "MegaMania". There is also Fast Eddie, a game originally from 20th Century Fox; and the somewhat odd case of Road Runner, which is too complicated to even explain (and as a bonus, it's another CCE rom).
*The console features many "bonus games", all of which are licensed from Piko Interactive. These are mostly nasty copyright hacks of Beam Software NES games and other junk, alongside the detested hacks of prototype games.
*There are two Shiru NES games on this console that have not been dumped previously: POW 2, a 2048 clone, and Gorodki (mislabeled as "Gordoki"), a port of a Soviet arcade game. Note that (AFAIK) these two games were solely designed for use on Famiclone-ish plug & plays; they also appear on the Go Retro Portable. Snakky is also on this console (mislabeled as "Snakki"), which has been dumped previously but is uncommon. There are also two Piko-watermarked homebrew games from "Segaman", Sumo Slam and Switchblade; I'm unsure if these games have been dumped otherwise or not.

I have also created a TCRF article on the Gamestation (https://tcrf.net/Atari_Gamestation_Pro), which features some more technical details (and k-pop test samples). I have attached the three uncommon Shiru games; though not anything with the accursed Piko Interactive watermarks, in case they get angry and insist they're Illegally Obtained Unreleased Nintendo Switch Leaks or whatever. In any case, I created a .txt documenting any weird ROMs I noticed; you can easily download and navigate the firmware update to obtain them (note the game ROMs are on the "data.img" image within the Firmware.img file).

19
Famicom/NES / Re: miscellaNEouS files
« on: January 20, 2024, 04:04:30 PM »
Here is an attempt at ripping and decoding the games from the "Digital EZ-LG" 15-in-1. The games are encrypted in a somewhat simple way: each game requires bytes #800C-800D to be replaced with the bytes located at #8008-8009. Some of these extracts (particularly Space War) have issues, though the majority of them work fine.

As a side note, there is notable text data in four of the games' code: Perfect Puzzle, Quick Brain, Car Racing, and Cricket. Perfect Puzzle and Quick Brain both begin with what seems to be text for a 3-in-1 menu, with the third game being Car Racing. However, the Car Racing code instead begins with "(C)RAMA..RACE!!!", with Cricket similarly reading "(C)RAMA.CRICKET". Presumably, Rama is the name of the games' developers; they are likely also the creators of two other NES bootlegs, BugTris and Block Puzzle (or perhaps Rama is a 2000s offshoot of that developer).

20
Pirated Work / Re: 64-in-1 Classic Player (custom Famicom/NES multicart)
« on: January 08, 2024, 05:19:04 PM »
I have just released the "86-in-1 Classic Player Deluxe"; a sort of "sequel" to the 64-in-1, with additional games and some general code cleanup. The 86-in-1 ROM is attached below, with the development archive available here: https://archive.org/details/86in1.

21
Famicom/NES / Re: Project Plug and play update
« on: December 31, 2023, 02:42:41 PM »
There is actually one "hi-res" console listed in MAME ("dgun2572", see https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/nintendo/vt_unknown.cpp), though I can't make anything out of the code... It's either a bad dump or heavily encrypted/compressed or something, as it doesn't look like any other NES-based code I've seen.

The update looks good, I don't see any issues with it.

22
Famicom/NES / Re: Project Plug and play update
« on: December 28, 2023, 08:39:07 PM »
Yeah that's okay, thank you.

23
Famicom/NES / Re: Project Plug and play update
« on: December 28, 2023, 04:48:23 PM »
This is a pretty minor thing, though it would apply to many ROMs if implemented. Quite a few of the Nice Code ROMs currently in ProjectPNP have some slight issues (which do not effect actual gameplay/emulation), including the following:

*VT03 games using abnormal CHR sizes, such as 24k or 48k. From looking at various other files, I am quite certain they are supposed to use "standard" NES sizes from source (e.g. 32k or 64k), with the remaining data being blank "FF" tiles (and a single "00" per bank in non-Waixing versions for whatever reason). The issue of sizing may come from .wxn file conversions (?), and/or be related to the bullet point below.
*VT02/03 games with data of other game ROMs within their CHR. Multicarts often repurpose the games' blank CHR tiles to save space, which should probably be scrubbed out for extracted copies.
*Games which were compiled as using combined PRG+CHR, but are actually intended to use a separate CHR "chip"; this only applies to three VT03 titles (Lucky Time, Star, and Trooper).

I recompiled copies of all games I could identify as having these issues (attached below). This isn't something that necessarily has to be implemented (as all the games run fine either way); it was just something I was planning on doing anyway for personal use, which I thought may be relevant here. Also note that I trimmed some 256k ROMs to 192k, if the remaining 64k was entirely unrelated CHR data; it is possible the games are still meant to be 256k from source.

(EDIT: Also for the record, non-Nice Code-based Waixing titles do just seem to use odd CHR sizes like that. Only for the Nice Code variants do I believe the size is underdumped.)

24
Famicom/NES / Re: 183-in-1 Mini Classic Arcade Station roms extracts???
« on: December 27, 2023, 03:47:14 PM »
Old thread, but would it be possible to provide screenshots of every game's title screen on this console? I am currently attempting to restore Nice Code copyright notices myself (see http://bootleg.games/BGC_Forum/index.php?topic=3197), and this console is a bit difficult to find now (I didn't buy it when it released as it has the most abysmal emulation I've ever seen...)

25
2000-present / Re: Nice Code "Go Retro Portable" copyright restorations
« on: December 27, 2023, 03:32:35 PM »
Here are copyright restorations for two VT03 Nice Code games: Twin Fish and Speed Man. A few early Nice Code VT03 releases originally had copyright notices, though the majority of them never had copyright notation to begin with. However, finding VT03 ports with their copyrights intact is even less common than the VT02 versions, so only these two are present for now. Note that Speed Man's fine "Ppress Start Button" is SIC, and is currently based on a VT32 conversion, as I don't have the proper VT03 copy on hand.

26
Famicom/NES / Re: miscellaNEouS files
« on: December 26, 2023, 12:39:06 PM »
I see the files on the disk are just custom-headered NES ROMs... the old "Development Page" states that the other programs can't be run on standard NES architecture; is that truly the case, or the result of less information on the NES hardware existing circa 2001? Other disc images seem to use proper computer-like data (with .bin/.dat/.cmd files and whatnot), I assume those can't be compiled into a .nes file?

27
Famicom/NES / Re: Project Plug and play update
« on: December 26, 2023, 11:52:02 AM »
There are some additional Nice Code educational computer programs (though they all use a CHR chip), almost all of which are math-related. I've also noticed that many of the seemingly-CHR-RAM games only use ~16k of PRG, despite being compiled as 32k from source; I would assume this is also due to "educational computer"-like programming, in which two 16k-ish programs would be built-in to one 32k file.

I wonder if Music Moment originally used a mouse as a controller. It would explain why the game is physically impossible, as the character moves far too slow to complete the song. I would assume Eggs is also Nice Code's form of that educational computer "Word Game" with the elephant; it does seem there's an area for graphics in its PRG, though it's completely blanked out. I'm guessing this is because it was originally a Pikachu game (a single DreamGEAR console does feature the Pikachu version), which may have resulted in a more extensive removal.

28
Famicom/NES / Re: Project Plug and play update
« on: December 25, 2023, 07:18:00 PM »
Quote
Mostly on where they come from; I have never seen that version of I.Q. Champion, for example.
To the best of my memory, they were from the following MAME ROMs:
*pocket brick = "Virtual Football (with 3 bonus games)" [vfootbal]
*cute kids, iq champion, submarine bomb = "unknown VT02 based 25-in-1 handheld" [vt25in1]
*cookies labyrinth, golder = "Cyber Arcade Pocket (JL1895)" [lxcap]
*twin cards = "5 Bonus Games" [5bonus]
*apple chess vt03 = "Zudu-go / 2udu-go" [zudugo]
*solitaire (one-card draw) = "My Arcade Plug And Play 220 Game Retro Controller (DGUN-2959)" [dgun2959]

"Brave Boy" came from an otherwise-generic multicart released on LIBG, I don't recall the name of it.


Quote
I am not familiar with them, so I cannot say without having seen them.
I have five of them on hand. Antiquarium, Move Box, and Plane are just the current ProjectPNP copies with their CHR banks removed, as the code is additionally read off of the PRG; the common copies of Mine and Goblet Tower are fully converted to solely read off of CHR. Note that Goblet Tower is/was a VT01 copy that I altered to use its "normal" colors.

My theory is that the earliest Nice Code games used this CHR-less coding, as multiple additional titles seem to have zeroed-out graphics data within their PRG (Music Moment, Balloon Shoot, Toy Bricks, etc). AFAIK the general VT02/03 architecture isn't compatible with files like this (though UM6578 is), which presumably led to the games being converted to use CHR later on.

29
Famicom/NES / Re: Project Plug and play update
« on: December 25, 2023, 02:53:13 PM »
Quote
-Body Slam! Super Pro Wrestling (Nice Code) seems to run a bit glitchy
The current ProjectP&P copy appears to be missing half of the game's CHR data, I re-ripped it below.

30
Famicom/NES / Re: Project Plug and play update
« on: December 25, 2023, 02:19:48 PM »
I didn't take issue with the update for the record (and I appreciate the credit on the LIBG entry), though if I may add a few things:

*There is a distinct set of five games that is split between the Nice Code and !Other directories: this is comprised of Eeeck A Mouse, Echo Chamber, Fruit Pig, Trounce, and the "!Other" folder's Sudoku. These should probably be moved in one directory or the other.
*The Waixing game "Crazy Racing" should be categorized as a hack of Astro Fang - Super Machine. "Whirlwind Pikachu" in the !Other folder should be moved to the Funtime folder.
*"Reversi (Candy)" is a variant of RB Chess (AKA Apple Chess - not the same as the Subor version), which used to be in ProjectPNP, but at some point was removed. I believe RB/Apple Chess should probably be added back, particularly if the "candy" variant is present.
*A few Nice Code games have earlier revisions that use PRG for graphics instead of a separate CHR chip; should these be added as ROM variants?
*The Waixing versions of Apple Chess present in ProjectPNP have Mario removed from the game over screen; I recently compiled versions adding Mario back, which should probably supersede the older ones.
*The "Solitaire (unknown)" ROM in ProjectPNP uses three-card draw; there is an alternate version which uses one-card draw.
*Not sure if it really matters, but Plants vs. Zombies and Plumber are large overdumps; both games are intended to be 48k in size.

I have attached some assorted ROMs below (including the three last-mentioned bullet points); I have sorted by ProjectPNP folder structure but not renamed them. I can provide further details on any if needed. For ones that are most likely to need explanation:

*The added Hot Racing, Snowracing, and Gallop are games from the Racing Challenge 8-in-1; the former two have their original title screens restored (i.e. pre-Racing Challenge "replacement" title), but Gallop does not.
*The added Nice Code Sudoku is an attempt at making a single-game ROM retaining the title screen, by cutting down the 6-in-1 menu the game is attached to (+ making the menu instantly launch into Sudoku). The game uses two separate ROMs for the title screen and game itself, resulting in most multicarts skipping the title sequence.

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