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?

[forgotusername]

Here is a decoded copy of the recently dumped "Danz Kara" plug & play by Game Star, alongside extracts of some of its games. The decoding process was relatively simple for the console itself; though some of the "educational computer"-based software contains further encryption (alongside strange compression [?] for two games' CHR data), so I was not able to extract every single game.

This console is a bizarre mishmash of various developers' games, to a level where I can barely even comprehend where some of its contents were sourced from. Of particular note is that two games, Runner and Mole, are originally-developed games by Inventor, which have not surfaced on any other console. The copyright notices were removed in both, so I have included guesswork restorations below. Oddly, the Runner notice was covered up by coding in a row of blank tiles to mask the original notice; so I just zeroed-out that code to display the Inventor credit. Due to the aforementioned CHR issue, Runner has been given an 8K CHR file; I am unsure if this is the intended code structure, but it seems to run fine.

Note that the Smart Millionaire game has a tendency to crash on certain questions; the MAME team states that this is just how the game plays (great quality control), and is not an emulation/dumping issue.

[forgotusername]

Does anyone have the extracted SD card contents of the "Retro Arcade FC A6Plus - 8Bt Game Console" (ROM name "a6plus")? According to MAME, the console uses a VT369 menu interface, but reads most of its games off of a MicroSD card. Going by a Reddit post, the games seem to be standard .nes files, albeit very poorly-named (https://www.reddit.com/r/Handhelds/comments/1bu06a1/what_the_heck_is_this_aliexp_mini_arcade_with_tf/).

If the game list beginning ~FA400 in the ROM is accurate, it appears that a number of games are rare (e.g. Air Raider, Pikachu5) or potentially undocumented (e.g. "Bomb-Mar", "Video Player"). The ROM itself does contain ~6MB of Nice Code games (some being Qi Sheng Long variants), but I did not see anything undumped at a cursory glance.

[NewRisingSun]

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?

Leaked betas, though those count as "pirated" as well. Distributing normal non-protected versions would defeat the purpose of having copy protection.

[forgotusername]

This may not be the most elegant analysis, but I recently attempted to fix the PCM issue present in games from the unknown set of five 8-bit games (which are speculated to originate from zhengyaxin_8bit). This game set includes Fruit Pig, Eeeck! A Mouse, Echo Chamber, Sudoku, and Trounce; fixed ROMs are provided for the former two.

All of the games in this set repurpose their sound engine from Parasol Henbee; more specifically, they literally copy the entirety of bytes 18010-1C00F from Parasol Henbee (containing all music and sound effects), with no code alteration whatsoever. Seemingly because of this, something within the code results in a bunch of static-like sound coming out of the PCM channel, which is not present in the Parasol Henbee tracks themselves. This is especially egregious in Fruit Pig, in which the entire game sounds heavily muffled.

Further connected to this issue is another oddity; all of the games (save for Sudoku) feature a blank PRG area of 2000 bytes. As far as I can tell, the blank areas are merely intended to mask further PCM output; as filling them with code can further worsen the audio. While I'm not 100% certain on this, I suspect that this is also why Fruit Pig's audio is worse than the others; as its blank area is from 6010-700F, while the other games hold it in 4010-600F. (While entirely unrelated, this also means that the games are effectively only 8K in size outside of audio...)

In Fruit Pig and Eeeck! A Mouse, I was able to reduce the PCM playback by zeroing-out some of the sound channels. There is still some level of PCM present, though it is drastically improved regardless. Unfortunately, this solution did not work for the other games; I was able to reduce Trounce's playback by putting a row of eight "FF" tiles from 4090-4097, though I assume this to not be an ideal code fix (and haven't attached it as such). The sound issue is negligible in Echo Chamber and Sudoku to begin with, so I don't feel a fix is needed for them anyway.

As an additional side note, for whatever reason, Eeeck! A Mouse effectively "plays itself" in some emulators, registering random inputs in-game. Furthermore, Fruit Pig will skip the opening win condition screen, which I suspect is a similar input issue. Both issues miraculously fixed themselves upon muting the audio channels; so that's just an extra benefit, I suppose...

[forgotusername]

This is more of an irrational rant than anything, but I'll offer some ROMs at the end for your troubles. There is a specific VT369-based game set that I periodically look around for, used across multiple handheld systems; it can have either a 416-in-1 or 500-in-1 game count (both of which contain duplicate games). This set includes several rare, undumped games, most notably "Attack Force" and "Space War3", which are affiliated with the "ex-Sachen" developers. A video showing the full game list can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRXnr87Whes

A few months back, a "D12" handheld was added to MAME (ROM name "d12power"); going by footage online, this system contained the 416-in-1 set I was looking for. While the dumped revision uses the same menu layout, however, the entire game list was swapped out with more common/standard plug & play ROMs; excluding every game I was looking for. A handheld that featured the 500-in-1 set, the "D9", was also just dumped (ROM name "d9_500"); but similarly, its game list was substituted with an even more infuriating selection. All of the games are non-curated, run-of-the-mill crap, to the level of the first game being Super Chinese with its mirroring bit set incorrectly.

In terms of potentially finding the original revisions of these consoles, the only difference I can spot (outside of game list) is that the earlier versions use Cube Technology-style sampled audio in the menu systems, and have lowercase letters in their English font. The later/dumped versions use NES-capable music, and have an all-caps font. As it stands, though, the more interesting game set is still MIA.

The D12 does actually have a handful of less common games on it (the D9 does not), so I have attached extracts of those below. Boat Race does not work correctly here; it may need initialization or something similar. The console also has many, many repeated games with altered title screens per duplicate entry; these are technically somewhat rare to see, though I haven't bothered extracting them as of currently.

[forgotusername]

A few additional hacks sourced from other recent MAME dumps, each of which have some fairly interesting backgrounds:

*Anger Bird 2 (Flipull hack) - This hack originates from the "Play Vision Portable" systems, and was denoted as becoming unplayable after level 4. Going by the ROM itself, this appears to be the result of a poorly-done MMC3 hack; I re-converted the hack's elements to a cleaner MMC3 port of Flipull, thus allowing the game to be fully playable.
*Game Mars of JJ (Super Mario Bros. hack) - A recently-developed variant of Frog Prince that was designed for the "W1 Mini Retro Chick", a handheld modeled after a chicken, for some reason. The hack uses the same chicken as the outer handheld itself.
*Tag Team WWF Smackdown (Tag Team Pro-Wrestling hack) - Generic title screen hack, though it previously appeared on the common 200-in-1 plug & plays with "WWF" ripped off of the title (making it just "Tag Team Smackdown"). I vaguely recall some early 200-in-1 models retaining the WWF logo, though I don't think any dumped revisions retain it.