Battlekid localized for japanese market

It's not my project but since I didn't saw any mention on nesdev I think I should share what I found. On today's news there was a mention that Battlekid was localized for the Japanese market. The artwork was even a collaboration with one of the guy that made the artwork for Guardian heroes on the sega saturn.

here's the link:
https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/do ... 33581.html

In japan, some small company are re-releasing title for the snes too these days (multicart with 3+ games on it) but I'm not sure they are available outside Japan though. It was games from Data east and SNK if my memory is good (saw them at the local game store).

All was good until I saw the name of the company which is releasing Battle Kid, Columbus Circle.

May I ask what is the issue with Columbus circle? I didn't know about them until today when I found that article.

I don't know about them, but skimming through the article, they made a disclaimer:
This is an original product from Columbus Circle. As it's different from the official carts, it may not work properly on some of the consoles. It is confirmed to work on Famiclones produced by Columbus Circles.

So they produce also Famiclones, and carts that may or may not work on consoles other than their own clones.

I really dig that box. Cool to see more Famicom releases.

@Gilbert

Maybe I misunderstood while reading but I though because of the shape of the cartridge it may not work. I may have read too fast.

@Sumez

It is made by a famous artist and from the look of it, they modified the game sprite too for the Japanese market (looks like it, I don't remember those sprites, it's been a while so..). They added some level of difficulty too.

It looks like they took some artwork from Battle Kid 2, which has a much superior art style.

Quite probably, as I think BK doesn't use a very complicated mapper, but anyway they just say in their disclaimer it may not work without stating what may be the problem (and, hopefully their products aren't poorly made that may fry the original consoles).

Speaking about this, I remember buying one of those cheap NOAC console-in-a-controller years ago, and its slot was designed to fit pirate carts, so I removed its back cover and then original carts worked without problem.

@tokumaru

I never really played them (just the demo) but I do not remember the characters from the cut-scenes. It seems an improved bk1 version since it's written 2.0 on the title screen. Now at last I can play it on my famicom but at almost 60$ that's a little bit expensive. I don't know how many they will have. Maybe someday I may be interested for the new box, which look nice.

@Gilbert

I don't really know their products so I couldn't tell but BK1 was an mmc1 from memory and it should be pretty common. The only clone I bought is a portable one and it kind of feel cheap, could break any time and the compatibility is so-so. I think I was able to make one of my devcart work on it but some games had issues to start because the contact were too old, damaged or dirty compared to my real famicom.

The first Battle Kid was on a clone of UOROM, which is UNROM with a 4-bit bank register instead of 3-bit.

That's the problem, they use 3.3v flash without level shifters : https://imgur.com/a/F2WMH/all

See here for the details : https://www.famicomworld.com/forum/inde ... ic=12633.0

Hey all. It's been a while.

This new version also uses UxROM and my prototype worked fine on an actual Famicom.

@Great Hierophant

I see. I didn't know about that issue. If the latest carts are like that then I would not be inclined to buy one. Maybe we can ask Sivak about it?

@Sivak

Hey, long time no see So it seems you have been busy these days. Like mentioned above, are you aware if they are now making their cart properly? It would be a shame if you cart would have the same issue has the one they did in the past.

Do you know if it's a limited run or they will make a lot of them? The article I read didn't say much about that.

So I take it they don't manufacture the cartridges themselves, but instead commission them from cheap Chinese manufacturers that will make cartridges from whatever ROMs they're given? That sucks.

Hello, thank you.

I have a prototype cart, but I don't really see any way of opening it easily... I did do entire playthroughs of the game and didn't notice issues. It was also brought to my attention that the original 8 bit Music Power was their first cart and they had issues getting it made.

I can't give out specific numbers, but they will produce carts as long as there is demand.

@Sivak

Thank you for the answer. If it was an issue with their first try then there is good chance they don't have that issue anymore. Since it is still not out yet I could always drop them a line about the concern of the community.

As for the amount available, understood! I think it was popular in Japan long time ago because I remember they were selling it at used store in Akihabara

The devious trouble with improperly designed 3.3v device boards plugged into a NES/famicom is that they don't kill immediately. Rather, they wear the NMOS logic in the console slowly. It's a bit like smoking. Any one cigarette doesn't kill immediately, but it is still bad for your health, and fatality may vary - when and if. A shorter life span is still statistically probable.

I'm sorry for the cold shower this might be, but opening it is the only way to know for sure. Photographing the board for a review by the EE savvy people here may help if it's your first time identifying parts and traces.

A technical explanation can be found here: https://db-electronics.ca/2017/07/05/th ... -consoles/
There was a discussion going on on the forums some time ago about the boards inside Quest Forge.


Ps. Cool to see you back on here!

I already sent them an email on the subject. I hope the answer will be that now their board are better engineered.

There's a chance they improved that aspect, as it really wasn't out in the open at the time 8-bit Music Power was released, and I think most people weren't aware that it could cause any issues.
It was famously an issue with the Everdrive too, and as far as I know, Krikzz has been using 5V components from that point on? despite defending the idea that he didn't consider 3.3v components damaging to the system.

Actually, the smoking comparison is incredibly apt.

I just hope they will give an honest answer about it. For now, I only received the automated mail about the message.

By "smoking comparison " I just hope you don't mean to compare on much smoke it make based on voltage sorry for the lame joke, too tired today!

In case anyone else reading this in the future doesn't understand English language metaphors:

Tobacco use causes damage over the long term.
Use of 3.3 V parts in a 5.0 V environment without voltage translation causes damage over the long term.

@tepples

Now that I re-read the previous message, I remember the metaphor about smoking (by FrankenGraphics I think?) and I did understand it but now it just that I didn't sleep well most of the week (busy and very hot these days) that my mind don't make much sense and miss/forget many things along the way My bad.

But sometime those state of mind are good for creativity. I should try to write something now ^^;;

Still, thanks for the explanation!

I found out that they are using 3.3 volt boards, but improved. I don't know what that means, though.

Thanks for being honest about it. It's up to people if they want to use that stuff in their NES or not, but it's good to at least know about it.

The boards for Columbus Circle's first cartridge, 8-bit Music Power, were not just modern pirate quality boards, they failed in more official systems than they worked in. The board I linked to had no translation Their next release, Kira Kira Star Night DX worked in pretty much any Nintendo-made system but had iffy luck with the Sharp-released stuff. I do not know if the situation further improved with their next releases, 8-bit Music Power Final and NEO Heiankyo Alien, but I know they were still using 3.3v flash with Kira Kira.

Ultimately, the architecture of the NES makes it rather unattractive for level translators. Assuming they use 5v parts for the mapper, you still need translators for the two chips. That's 15 address lines and 8 data lines for the PRG-ROM and and 13 address lines and 8 data lines for the CHR-RAM (Mapper 2). So unless they are using three 16-line voltage converters, they aren't implementing 3.3v properly without them. Current limiting resistors aren't good enough.

I was able to receive an official answer from them and they said that their are still using 3.3v but an improved one and they didn't receive any inquiry about issue with those.

After living in Japan for a while, it can only means 2 things:

- yes, there is no issue
or
- there is an issue but nobody complained about it and just "gaman" (endure) the problem

I guess time will tell which one it is

There is little harm in putting the cartridge into a CopyNES-enabled system for the brief period of time it takes to dump the ROM and then to put it on your shelf to never use again.

Hey guys and Sivak if you can! Could someone tell me if the famicom cart will work on a Nes NTSC system if I use a 60-72 converter? I preodered the game but I just wanna be sure that everything will be ok. Thanks for you answer I already made the hardmod of taking off the Nes10 Lockout Chip.

I don't think there's any reason it wouldn't work with such a converter. The main thing that converters usually get wrong (4-screen or other unusual mirroring) isn't something that Battle Kid does. I don't have the Famicom cart to test, though, but from my experience almost everything works anyway.

The thing is, using 3.3V parts doesn't result in any immediate problems, everything appears to work at first and may continue that way for years even, so that's why there were no complaints. In the long run, however, parts may begin to fail, and the evil part about all this is that most people won't even think that these carts were to blame, since they may have worked fine for a long time.

Do not shoot the messenger

This is the answer I received from them so I was disappointed too. I shared it since people that may be interested about this product may want to know about the risk. I just feel bad for Sivak since my goal is not to tarnish the release of his game but was to let people know that you can now get it on famicom, which I was happy about it at first. I didn't know Columbus had an history about their products.

Those kind of issues are not found in repro board that I remember when I was more active on nesdev, right? Why is that so? The component used are different today or they didn't just do the proper research to make their carts?

I feel the same way. I want to see more and more quality NES homebrews being released on cartridges and keeping the NES alive, but when the actual product is harmful to people's consoles, then that's doing the very opposite of keeping the NES alive, it's literally killing consoles little by little, and tarnishing the image of the homebrew community along the way. I don't want Sivak to have problems because of this either, seeing as he probably wasn't aware of any of this, but I think it's important to educate not only consumers about the dangers of certain types of cartridges, but also game developers so they can better pick the companies they make deals with and don't take part in this shady business of selling harmful products.


I think that 5V components are getting harder and harder to find, and some people don't want to spend money doing proper voltage conversion, so they just... don't. It's lack of foresight really, because even though they're saving money now, by helping kill the consoles that are still in use they're obliterating the market.

There are only so many original consoles still in use, if we don't take good care of them, soon there won't be a market for physical retro game releases anymore.