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Messages - forgotusername

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31
Famicom/NES / Re: miscellaNEouS files
« on: December 12, 2023, 06:34:16 PM »
As further torture a bonus, here is a set of NROM conversions of most of the Action 52 games. Additionally, I have a custom sprite hack of sorts here that requires a bit of explanation.

A couple attempts of Action 52 rips have been done before; though generally, they run on the native Action 52 "mapper 228", due to each game using one extra sprite bank for text screens (menus, score counters, etc). As with the aforementioned educational computer programs, Action 52 often combines two or three games into one file; however, the Action 52 code is quite well documented by this point, so decoding every game was trivial. However, due to how resourceful the Action 52 code is - with enough hacking - 46 of the 52 games can run as standard mapper 0 files, without the need for the extra sprite bank. Absolutely no visible sprites have been removed in these conversions; with the sole exception of the copyright notice on Ooze, which was removed for space. I also ripped a "prototype" copy of French Baker, and a modified ROM of Ooze starting on an unused "Level 8".

Now comes the more intriguing part. In 2011, a crappy little reproduction cart called "Cheetahmen: The Creation" was released. This literally $200 USD cartridge is a badly cut-up copy of an otherwise-undumped Action 52 prototype build, which featured a different game at slot #52. However, half of this ROM is some other scrapped Action 52 game, which is not accessible through the Cheetahmen: The Creation cart whatsoever. Of course, since it is from that overpriced abomination, the graphic data for this unused game is not present; though you can get a general idea of how the game plays with some junk data in its place.

I previously released the unaltered, unused game ROM on The Cutting Room Floor, though I have also mirrored it here. In addition, I have created a simple hack called "Here & Hare" with custom graphics; which almost certainly looks nothing like the game was supposed to, though it makes it much more playable.

32
Famicom/NES / Re: miscellaNEouS files
« on: December 12, 2023, 05:29:30 PM »
Recently, I did a large study on "educational computer" Famiclones. As part of this research, I ripped many ROMs from various educational computer systems and cartridges.

Many years ago, I attempted to rip some of the educational computer games as standalone ROMs; though I dubbed almost all of them "bad roms", as they would display glitchy graphics in every emulator. As it turns out, however, I simply...didn't understand how the coding of the games worked. On almost every educational computer device, the internal programs read all graphic data off of the PRG rather than using an additional CHR chip. In my older extracts, I had unknowingly copied decoded graphic data to the games as separate CHR data, which FCEUX places as additional (often incomplete) code in its hex editor. With this in mind, I was now able to extract the ROMs without issue.

It is still rather obtuse to run some of these via single-rom extracts, given the multitude of different inputs required between programs. Most games use a Subor keyboard and either a "3x8-bit mouse" or a "24-bit mouse". Fully 24-bit mouse-based games also work with standard NES controllers, but often have an issue where the cursor will dart to the top-left corner of the screen; I'm unsure what causes this, though it's an issue with the educational bootlegs in general rather than these extracts. Additionally, many ROMs have a second program (or more) built into them; in some cases I was able to separate both games from the file, while in others I could not. Some games also had to be physically decoded to run as separate extracts.

There are around 175 ROMs here total, including variations. These are mostly English and Spanish-language programs, with a handful of Russian ones; Chinese programs are much more difficult to rip (mainly as they use ~224k of data just for the font), though I did rip a few for testing. As a side note, I retained all documentation for this process, but I didn't include it here (as it's kind of a giant mess...); I can provide it if that's something people want.

33
Famicom/NES / Re: miscellaNEouS files
« on: November 16, 2023, 01:34:30 PM »
No problem. :)

34
Famicom/NES / Re: miscellaNEouS files
« on: November 05, 2023, 07:06:23 PM »
I have a massive folder of NROM and MMC3 conversions (that's mappers 0 and 4 in iNES header-speak), which are generally bootleg in origin. I'm not sure how much interest people have in mapper conversions these days (I mainly use them for the purposes of rom hacking), though I may as well publish them here. The folders are as follows:

*MMC3 conversions - CoolX-Lite: a set of very elaborate conversions, designed for a customizable multicart developed in Ukraine. while most are pure MMC3, some are based on the "CoolX" mapper itself, which i don't think exists in the iNES 2.0 database yet. there was a giant github page for these which seems to have been taken down, so this moreso serves as a mirror for them. about 100 games in here.
*MMC3 conversions - multicart rips: conversions which i've ripped from various multicarts and plug & plays; many of these are CNROM (or CNROM-like) games. quality control greatly varies with these, some work perfectly while others do not (for example, buggy popper crashes at level 4). 113 games here.
*NROM conversions - misc: anything NROM-based. a few of these are likely available elsewhere, though they can be difficult to find. some of these (including everything in the "plug & play" folder) are my own conversions, with some being created as a "basis" for my previous rom hacks. around 50 games here.

I skipped the other directories I have, as those files can generally be found elsewhere (GoodNES, romhacking.net, clusterrr's website, etc).

35
Famicom/NES / miscellaNEouS files
« on: November 05, 2023, 06:21:31 PM »
I've ended up with a rather large selection of random NES files that I haven't released anywhere, generally obtained from hack testing and whatnot. Since I've never really found a place to put these, I figured making a miscellaneous thread here could be a good way to distribute them.

To start, here are three hacks obtained from some quite obscure multicarts. Down Deep (a Dig Dug hack) was unplayable within the multicart itself, while Route-16 Moto (hack of Route-16 Turbo) was on a plug & play thing that I couldn't get to emulate properly (it's somewhere on Clusterrr's website...) Dungeon Escape was playable on the multicart iirc, though it's a very obscure game variant regardless.

36
Famicom/NES / Re: 88-in-1 + unused hacks
« on: November 05, 2023, 01:10:38 PM »
I did a code analysis of the aforementioned 5-in-1 cartridge; there are some unused code bits (a copy of "Bicycle Race" and a 6-in-1 menu), but nothing that noteworthy.

Somewhat interesting, though, is that the game "Brave Boy" is a crappy title hack of Nice Code's Twin Cards; specifically the original release with Pikachu intact. As far as I know, the Pikachu version was undumped, outside of another title hack called "Ilk Cards". As the CHR is basically untouched, I was able to recreate a proper Twin Cards ROM using the PRG of the Power Joy version (which replaced Pikachu with a plane).

37
2000-present / Re: Nice Code "Go Retro Portable" copyright restorations
« on: November 03, 2023, 09:15:12 PM »
The My Arcade 220-in-1 I mentioned here was just dumped, so I ripped a few additional copyright variations from it, including restoring their two-player modes (as the 220-in-1 removed them). I also compared my prior copyright restores with some of the games featured; the majority of them ended up being byte-for-byte identical, with a few oddball exceptions (namely, Contest 2004 had a single different byte that wasn't related to the copyright...) There are lots of other alternate Nice Code revisions on this console, though for now I just ripped the games I had already studied previously.

38
Famicom/NES / 88-in-1 + unused hacks
« on: November 03, 2023, 04:20:55 PM »
Among numerous other consoles, an "88-in-1 Joystick" Famiclone was recently added to MAME. This system is effectively a variant of the common "Arcade Action II" 101-in-1 that has been circulating online for years, with the removal of a few games in exchange for a bunch of Cube Technology VT02 hacks (which are quite uncommon compared to the Inventor hack library).

For whatever reason, there are two unused - and as far as I know, undocumented - games in its code: Bon Bon and Air-Launch, hacks of Devil World and Raid on Bungeling Bay, respectively. There may be some other unused games in it as well, though these two stuck out to me given I had never seen them before. Downloads of the two games (alongside an iNES-headered copy of the 88-in-1) are attached below. There is also a 5-in-1 cartridge for this console, though I do not have a copy of the ROM for it currently.

39
Famicom/NES / Re: gamezone 2 128in1 rom on its way
« on: November 03, 2023, 03:04:56 PM »
Extracts for 4 out of 5 of the arcade ports...Scramble is a 97k ROM (32k prg/ 64k chr) on god knows what mapper, so I couldn't easily get that one to work. The other four games are typical NROM.

40
Famicom/NES / Re: gamezone 2 128in1 rom on its way
« on: November 03, 2023, 02:22:19 PM »
The ROM is heavily encrypted for whatever reason; it's effectively a combination between how the NX-85 and the Pac-Man Pocket Player are coded, both of which had unique forms of protection. Here is a decoded copy, created using the EEPROM Pin Swapper (swapping bytes D0 and D1) and the byte-swapping Python code used for the Pocket Player. I haven't tested it fully yet but it seems to work fine.

41
2000-present / Re: Nice Code Software
« on: October 23, 2023, 01:36:36 PM »
Virtually every Intellivision-based hack has a copyright of 2004, with at least two particularly early revisions - "IQ Champion" (Buzz Bombers) and "Defend Homestead" (Astrosmash) - having a date of 2003. Note that IQ Champion is credited to "Dongxin techno", a literal translation of Nice Code's Chinese company name. Some of the Atari hacks have variants with 2004 copyright notices, including "Sudden Strike" (Battlezone); though most currently dumped revisions instead feature "Power Joy Ltd" bylines without a year. The Atari Flashback itself (according to Wikipedia) was first released in November 2004.

The Volleyball game seen on the Atari Basic Fun system is, possibly by accident, the Intellivision volleyball game; which is potentially another indication that the Atari and Intellivision NOAC library originate from the same source. There is a third Blaze tabletop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hINjFL-AfBc) that also contains a volleyball game, though I am unsure if it's just the Intellivision game again or not.

EDIT: According to CaH4e3, the origin console of the Sudden Strike ROM (a 100-in-1 "D-CAT" plug & play) has a manufacturing date of 2004/12/17. So at absolute maximum, the hacked version was produced less than two months following the Atari Flashback's release (and it's more likely they were produced simultaneously).

42
2000-present / Re: Nice Code Software
« on: October 21, 2023, 12:14:14 AM »
I can confidently say in my research that the ports were Nice Code-developed, though that isn't easy to prove in short terms. Some examples off the top of my head:

*Numerous NOAC ports of Atari 2600 games (including Activision/Imagic titles) exist as Nice Code-hacked versions, but were never officially released on any licensed plug & play. This includes Street Racer ("Lightning"), No Escape ("Ice Ocean"), Pressure Cooker ("Candy Workshop"), and quite a few others.
*Nice Code released hacked up versions of unreleased "revisions" of the Intellivision ports. For example, the Snafu hack "Shrew Mouse" has three players, while the official INTV plug & play only shows two. It would be incredibly difficult for such features to be hacked in if Nice Code didn't, at the very least, hold the original source code.
*Other verifiable Nice Code games are known to be included on Techno Source consoles, meaning Techno Source presumably commissioned Nice Code to make the Intellivison titles. Nice Code may have also been hired by Techno Source to produce the Activision/Imagic titles; however, Techno Source's eventual p&p under this license used emulation.
*Some of Nice Code's generic hacked versions are dated 2003/2004, meaning they would have had access to the games at effectively the same time the "licensed" consoles released. As such, it's not like they got ahold of the source code after the fact or something; the generic hacks were produced alongside the official versions.

Additionally, you seem to be confusing two entirely different plug & plays mentioned here. The Missile Command NOAC port is on a different 10-in-1 plug & play; it was released by Basic Fun in 2017 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIYnHzGgpig). The Techno Source Activision console, while also not NOAC-based, was released in 2005 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSZLbjOBojc). The Jakks Pacific versions are presumably Winbond-based.

43
2000-present / Nice Code "Go Retro Portable" copyright restorations
« on: September 10, 2023, 03:01:36 PM »
On several recent plug & plays featuring the Nice Code VT02 library, the original copyright notices for the games (Power Joy Ltd, Nature Color Game, etc.) are intact on the games' title screens; such notices are almost always blanked out on older consoles. In particular, this includes the Retro-Bit Go Retro Portable, as well as an uncommon My Arcade 220-in-1, which was seemingly only released on the European market.

The consoles with the copyrights intact have not yet been dumped; though since the differences in these ROMs effectively only amount to the copyright notices, I attempted to restore a large majority of them. Using preexisting copies of the games (with the copyrights erased), I restored the copyright notices based on screenshots of the title screens. In most cases, the blank space is directly coded to fit the specific copyright byline, indicating that these are fully accurate in coding - or at least very close to it. The secret Power Joy screens (accessed via the code Up, Down, Up, Left, Right, Left, B) are also retained when possible.

In total, 47 games have had their copyrights restored here, out of around 55 unique copyright variations seen on the new plug & plays. Games which already had an identical copyrighted version available in ProjectPnP (as well as a few NX-85 rips) have been skipped; though games with a tilde ("~") in the ProjectPnP filename, from what I recall, indicated an unverified copyright restoration, so the copyrights have been visually verified for those games. See the included .txt files for additional info; download attached below.

44
Famicom/NES dumps / Re: ggdjr's dumps
« on: September 09, 2023, 07:12:59 PM »
There's a quite interesting game on the "8-in-1 (GD-8XX)"... "Math × ÷" is a Chinese translated, mapper 0 conversion of Sansuu 3 Nen, which is normally a mapper 185 game. This may be useful as a basis for further mapper 0 conversions, I attached a rip of the game below.

Edit: it ended up being quite easy to convert Sansuu 1 Nen to mapper 0 based on this code (as well as the Japanese language 3 Nen), so I have attached those converted as well. I was unable to convert 2 Nen, however.

45
Game Boy / Question about PocketNES extracts
« on: August 15, 2023, 02:33:01 PM »
This is a random thing I've known about for a while, which I've never really found an answer to. On Maxzhou88's website (a former Super Game developer for those unaware), there is a Game Boy Advance 30-in-1 "test" multicart featuring mainly PocketNES conversions. In this multicart is one (1) otherwise-undumped game; a hack of the Famiclone Astrosmash port titled "Defend Homestead". I'm rather intrigued by this hack, mainly as it appears to be quite early compared to the numerous other hacks of the game; making it possibly the "first" hacked Intellivision-NES game.

I have seen in some ROM sets that it is possible to extract and convert PocketNES games back into standard NES roms; however, I cannot find any documentation on how this is done. The games in the 30-in-1 appear to be somewhat compressed or something; as a test, I attempted to separate the Lode Runner PRG from the multicart, and it appears to be ~800 bytes shorter than the actual NES rom (going by the start and end points of the game). Does anyone know how PocketNES games can be extracted like this, and/or how to circumvent the compression? 30-in-1 rom attached.

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