miscellaNEouS files

[forgotusername]

Understood for the most part. I was able to follow your instructions, but I still could not conclude how to find what the replaced pattern is (in cases where it is not 20 F0 FF). Some of the ROMs read the $6100 instruction in places outside of the footer; Baseball has it at 7DF2 for example. Working off of HEX, I can just search [20 00 61] to find the code area.

I was able to fix all but four of the previously-unripped games (the missing ones being Baseball, Beach Volleyball, Ice Hockey, and Racing Rivalry). As I had mentioned before, there are a number of unused games on the Tetris system, though the majority have been dumped elsewhere (unaltered NES Tetris, VT03-based Bubbles and Horrible Area, commercial Data East games, etc). I somewhat expected to find greater unused contents here, as my (non-Tetris branded) copy of the console features undumped VTxx hacks in place of the Nanjing sports games; though they are not present in the code at all.

An improved bundle of games is attached below, pre-decoded and uncommon titles only; also attached is a better .txt summary for the sake of accuracy. I also restored some text in Forest Kid, though was unable to do so for Aether Puzzle.

[forgotusername]

Some context surrounding the VT03 hacks on the discussed VT32 consoles, since I'm unsure if it's been explained here. Prior to the common 2010s VT03 and VT32 consoles, there was a separate set of Nice Code-based VT03 ports that were published by Shenzhen Niutai (as evident by their generic "© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED" string, among other factors). Notable releases featuring the Niutai variants include the "151-in-1 Games" console by Qi Sheng Long (which I do have, but it's been buried in storage for years), and the "G-Factor" Famiclone cartridges. For whatever reason, a handful of the Niutai hacks were added to VT32 handhelds beginning in 2022; though most VT32 consoles did feature a sole Niutai hack before this (Deformable, with its "copyright notice" removed).

In being able to compare the code directly, it's quite clear that Niutai's VT03 port of Forest Kid was the basis for the more common "Kong King" hack. The coding layout and some graphics are virtually identical, with Kong King reformatting one area to reduce its file size. As to why Nice Code licensed to Niutai first, and did their own in-house (?) VT03 set later, I have no idea; but I do feel it's important to note that, at least in some cases, Niutai's versions came first.

Images of the 151-in-1 game set can be seen in an old download posted by taizou (based on a rebranded console by Overmax): http://bootleg.games/BGC_Forum/index.php?topic=321 Do note that the console has a mixture of games from Qi Sheng Long, Power Joy and the like (and switches over to the newer VT03 set by game 63), so not everything on it is Niutai.

[lancuster]

Combined the graphics in 4BPP in the game Bird Eggs. Also I decorated the sprites for clarity.
Please note that this is only a demo rom, in this form it will work with broken graphics, because the format of graphic data storage has been changed.

[NewRisingSun]

Here are the mssing games with the volume button JSR removed. In these cases, no footer was used, as the JSR $6100 was added at the end of the NMI handler. In such cases, I just replace the 20 00 61 with a 2C 00 61 (JSR $6100 becomes BIT $6100).

[SF-Human]

Not sure if anyone brought these up before.

Tetris is ripped from an otherwise unnotable Korean multicart. Looks very similar to the one on MSX and Arkanoid-clone arcade hardware.
"Zhong Xue Jiao Cheng" is ripped from the Mapper 241 version of Xue Sheng Dian Nao dumped by temryu.
For the second one I replaced the first bank with the first bank of Zhong Xue Jiao Cheng and changed the reset vector to the program's entry point. So there're definitely unused bank and theoretically can be trimmed down.
(UPDATE: Temporarily taking down Tetris (K) (from 64-in-1 Game Station).nes before I get this fully work. )
(UPDATE 2: Seems Tetris only behaves well when the RAM is filled with 00. Re-attached it. )

[SF-Human]

I've ripped 劲舞 (Jing Wu) from Subor 12.0 which only consists a single song. Probably the earliest trace of "ex-Subor Developers"'s DDR clone engine but I can't confirm that.
I also ripped 单词默写 (Dan Ci Mo Xie) which is more like guessing the word instead of reciting (since they literally didn't give you any clue and only gives a very short time to react).

[SF-Human]

A couple of interesting things I found in the Yi Jian Da study cartridge's ROM. The mouse accessory is unemulated, but if you select PS/2 mouse in NintendulatorNRS as the second port you can control mouse with the first controller in a bizarre way. I believe there're more than one program in the ROM itself because Shu Xue Yuan Di shares the same bank with My Computer, but I didn't figured out any entry points for now (plus it would probably be worth more to do so if the accessory is emulated).


(Edit: The mouse accessory is now emulated, thanks for NewRisingSun for pointing out the setup of the mouse (which replaces "Ze Cheng Keyboard" in NES 2.0 header when setting up) in NintendulatorNRS. I am going to check out tomorrow. )

[SF-Human]

Here're interesting stuffs I found on Chang Da's Educational Cartridges.
1. Individual versions of common Family Basic programs on these kind of cartridges (e.g. Calculator Board, Music Board) and "Letters Invade", done by hacking the extracted Family Basic portion in the ROM. This is actually much easier to do than other Family Basic variants (and even Nintendo's original Family Basic). Unfortunately Letters Invade has incorrect palettes that I may fix later.
*Side note: The educational cartridges has their Family Basic variants hacked to check certain values in the RAM and load the respective program. This variant of Family Basic just happened to have an easy-to-detect part of the checking program. I forgot where it was but you can do a quick comparison between them.
2. Sumangame's "Math Teacher"/"Shu Xue Jiao Shi" game which I've never seen before.
3. An unused menu lurking inside the ROM??? Looks like it was for a scrapped portion of a middle school learning software in the cart.

[lancuster]

I wanted to ask a question that has been bothering me for a long time. Are there normal (non-pirated) conversions of "Super Game" games on MMC3 that have copy protection removed or disabled? How many such conversions are available?