Hello all. I just picked up a Kazzo cartridge "INL Retro" Dumper-Programmer and found this site in the install instructions. Lovin it so far and hope to learn as much as I can and build up my own library as well. I do have a few questions if people don't mind, and would love some advice as well in the future.
I see a few others use the Kazzo system and would like to know about about the erase process. Shouldn't I be able to erase legitimate NES cartridges? Here is a specific example I am doing and have had no luck so far. John Elways Quarterback. NEStopia says it is PRG-Rom 32k and CHR ram 32k as well. No matter what I try, I have not been able to erase these chips. I know I am not totally brain dead, because I also bought a 4mb SNES chip and have been able to erase and install Chrono Trigger, DK1, and Secret of Evermore with the install/erase process. As long as I don't piss off everyone with this initial post, I would love to discuss in detail burning some homebrews in the future as well.
Commercial games that released in that era were released on so-called "mask" ROMs, where the values have been indelibly baked into the ROM when it is made. You cannot erase them, and you cannot rewrite them.
Good to know, I feel a bit foolish for asking but thanks for the quick respond. My next question was reference to burning homebrews on the Kazzo. I have yet to be able to successfully burn a homebrew to the snes cartridge I bought. Is this because there is errors with alot of the roms out there, or am I doing something dumb.
The only foolish question is the one you choose to not ask for fear of looking foolish
I don't actually have one of his flashcarts, so I don't know why that's not working. The small images may not be handled well by the flashing tool, since nothing commercial smaller than 256 KiB was ever released for the SNES. Have you tried using
Danin's replacement flash tool?
Thanks I pm'ed about the software, I will have to give it a try. I think I jumped into the buying side a bit early, and purchased a FME-7 cart randomly without knowing what I was doing. I need to order a few more carts, and until they arrive will keep trying the SNES side.
I am looking to burn the much desired Zelda Parallel Worlds, and am having no luck. I don't know if I can provide a link to my original source, however, I have tried both a "ready to burn" version and a version I had to use Lunar IPS patch then expand and neither seem to work. Any ideas if there is a specific version I am supposed to be using to ensure this works on a NA system, or am I missing a step? Thanks again for the help so far.
Think of MaskROM's like pressed CD's as opposed to CD-R's. The data is imprinted as part of the manufacturing process, not programmed onto a complete chip. There are such things as OTP (one-time-programmable) ROM's which are more like single-burn CD-R's but that's not what is used in cart-based video games, and they definitely don't use erasable chips (EEPROM's), except in prototypes.
A few Bandai games use a small (1 or 2 kbit) I2C EEPROM for saved games. The program is on a mask ROM as usual.
Games from the modern era also use EPROM of some sort. My copy of Action 53 vol. 1 has black electrical tape, and Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril has an ST M27W201, apparently an EPROM in OTP packaging. I'm told Study Hall has flash memoryand saves to it.
Good to know. The analogy of cd-r and cd-rw definitely makes it concrete. I have a store local to me that specializes in classic gaming, and I bought 10~ .99 cent NES games just to try out on. Oh well... Looks like John Elways Quarterback, Baseball, Hoops and MLB will live to see another day!
Besides the fact I cannot seem to burn homebrews (probably something I am still doing wrong), I think I should be able to get the programmer running correctly with the right boards ordered. If anyone is able to help guide me with some homebrews such as Zelda Parallel Worlds, or one of the many Mario World remakes, I think I should be good and wont have to bug anyone for a while! Thanks again for all the help so far.
NYMike wrote:
If anyone is able to help guide me with some homebrews such as Zelda Parallel Worlds, or one of the many Mario World remakes
Zelda Parallel Worlds is easy enough, you just need a 16Mbit LoROM donor like College Slam, Dig & Spike Volleyball, NBA Live 96, or NBA Showdown (or any other SHVC-1A3B or SHVC-1A3M board, check snescentral). You can use a Micron M29F160 flash ROM with an adapter board, or any 16Mbit EPROM. If you're talking about Super Mario World for the SNES, it's worth mentioning that a large number of SMW hacks use broken tools that result in ROM hacks that are only really playable on emulators, and they break when you play them on real hardware, so be sure to try the game out in higan/bsnes before going to the trouble of building the repro only to be disappointed.
qwertymodo you solved my problem immediately! I bought a 4mb card from INL.com and all I had to do was throw it in high and set and expand to 16mb instead of 4mb. It works, with a bit of pixel problem on the front screen. I will try a few other versions to see which is the best and go from there.
The original patch has a glitch in the title screen on real hardware. Here's a fixed patch:
http://zelda.qwertymodo.com/gamefiles/z ... _ikari.zip
I will patch the file and see what happens. Any ideas why the battery is not saving? I got Chrono Trigger and Secret of Evermore to save perfectly fine with the same setup.
So I have been fooling around a bit more, and I have found the following: Retro:Prog runs and burns alot more games successfully than INL-prog (for me anyways). Also many homebrews either 1/2 work or certain portions don't work. Examples: My version of Parallel Worlds will save a file name i.e. "Link", but will not save the game data. Super Mario 3x (SMB hack) will play the first level but the second level has no sound, and if you die, the game crashes. This is both on a Retro Duo portable as well as the standard system. I am guessing that many homebrews rely on an emulator to work rather than work correctly on a cartridge and am wondering if there is a list of ready to burn games, or is there a program that will allow me to easily fix some of these errors?
To rule out reliance on an emulator, you can try running the games on SNES PowerPak or Super EverDrive.
Nowadays, I'd guess that original homebrews are less likely to rely on emulator bugs than ROM hacks. Most Super Mario World hacks, for example, run correctly only on older Super NES emulators, such as Snes9x or ZSNES, and not newer emulators that try harder to emulate the limits of the actual S-PPU, such as bsnes-classic or higan SNES. On the NES it's better because decently accurate emulators have been around for years, such as Nintendulator, Nestopia, and to a lesser extent FCEUX. But on the Super NES, a lot of the hacking community is stuck in what amounts to the NESticle days.
I think now that I have successfully burned a few roms, I will make a list of whats gone right/wrong and post and see if others are having the same issues with SNES Hi/Lo ROM reproduction PCB/flash boards, or if its the roms, or if its something I am still doing wrong.
Ok stupid question time. I apologize in advance. I am able to burn Zelda Link to the Past E, Parallel Worlds, and Goddess of Wisdom and they play and the game will save the file name i.e. Link, however the game play will not save. In all 3 games, once I power down and turn the game back on or reset, the game will act like Link is still in his bed. Is this because I am using a 4 mb cartridge? If I order a 8mb or 12mb cart from
http://www.infiniteneslives.com/snessupplies.php will my solve my problem?
Did you buy one with a battery?
Yes I might seem new but I'm not that new! Heh. I have used this same cart and have been able to play and save data in Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World and Brutal Super Mario World. Fire Emblem Thracia 776 also seems to save data. The weird thing about the 3 Zelda's is that I can start a new game, name the character and the game will save that name. I.e I can turn off the game, and turn it back on and my character name (Link, AAAAA ect ect) stays. However any amount of time in any of the games, items found, heart containers found will not stay.
I guess I should of checked this first, but Zelda Parallel Worlds and Goddess of Wisdom do not work in ZNES on my pc either. I have downloaded a few versions, and manually patched some .ips files and still get the same problems. Is it possible that the versions online are corrupt? Or did they never manually save the game and required save states to play. Also when I start the game in ZSNESW it shows that it is a "bad rom" as well as chksumfail.
ZSNES and SNES9x are so far off the bottom of the spectrum of accuracy... you should test with bsnes=higan or one of its myriad forks.
Ok progress! So I updated Zelda Parallel Worlds to 1.1 and after a few days of Googling found this
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8705&hilit=Goddess. Ironically enough I found the answer to my problem on this site. I grabbed the sword and immediately saved the game, and it saved on a 4mb cartridge. Looks like it is standard function in this game. I am going to flash the cartridge with Goddess of Wisdom, grab the sword and see what happens. I guess the original ZPW was just too hard for me and I never made it far enough to even get close to the sword. Sorry to bug everyone, but I think I have the SNES side almost down pat.
So Ive started to rack up titles that I have successfully burned, and think it might help someone else in the future if I post a bunch of games and their results on a INL fllash cart and the Retro Program which usually auto expands files if needed. *No matter what anyone says, Retro Prog auto pads the rom so don't waste your time padding!*
Code:
Game Name Cart Size Saves? Rom Notes Valid/Kazzo compatible) Notes
Breath of Fire II 4mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/firmware hirom) Will require several tweaks in Ucon64 to get past the copy protect
Breath of FIre II Fan made with intros 4mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/firmware hirom) Same as the regular version, a few cracks needed, played till completion
Brutal Mario (English) 4mb Yes lo rom (Yes/Probably) Tested game and save till 1st castle
BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 4mb No battery lo rom (Yes/Never) Game seems to work even though Retro-Prog says it will "never work"
BS Legend of Zelda 4mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/firmware hiRom) Played 1st and 2nd map till completion. Retro-Prog says will probably not work
Chrono Trigger 4mb Yes (Yes/Firmware hiRom) Played and saved on the over world. Retro-Prog says will probably not work
Classic Kong Complete 4mb No battery lo/fast (Yes/Probably) Made it to second stage seems to play fine
Dragon Quest 1&2 English port 4mb Yes lo rom (Yes/Probably) Tested Dragon Warrior 1 save file looks helluva better than GBC
DKC Kremlins Revenge 4mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/Firmware hiRom) Retro-Prog says will not play, but seems to. Ucon64 hack required
E.V.O. Search for Eden 4mb lo rom (Yes/Probably) Seems to work fine only played first screen need to look into saves
F Zero the lost tracks 4mb No battery (Yes/Probably) Only tested to second stage
Final Fantasy 3 4mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/Firmware hiRom) Tested for 30 minutes of play. Retro-Prog says will probably
not work
Final Fantasy 4 10th Anniversary (J2E) 4mb Yes lo rom (Yes/Probably) Seems to work just fine
Final Fantasy 5 English port 4mb Yes lo rom (Yes/Probably) Tested to first ability to save
Mega Man X 4mb No battery lo/fast (Yes/Probably) Only played first stage but seems fine
Oh No! More Zombies Ate... 4mb No battery lo rom/rom (Yes/Probably) Tested to level 9
Radical Dreamers v1.4 4mb Yes (Yes/firmware hirom) Requires v1.4 to save
Rockman and Forte EN 1.0 4mb hi/fast (Yes/hiRom)
Secret of Evermore 4mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/hiRom) Tested till 1st save point in village. Retro-Prog says will probably not work
Secret of Mana 2 4mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/firmware hirom) Played for 15 minutes until first save. Retro-Prog says will probably not work
Super Mario World 4mb Yes lo rom (Yes/Probably) Tested till 1st Switch Palace
Super Mario 3+ The New Islands 4mb Yes lo rom (Yes/Probably) Tested and saves at first save point
Super Mario Return to Dinosaur Land 4mb Yes lo/fast (Yes/Probably) Tested to 1st Castle, saves and plays fine
Super Metroid Zero Mission 4mb Yes lo/fast (Yes/Probably) Tested to first save point. Will require Ucon64 to pass copy protect
Super Metroid Redesign 4mb Yes lo/fast (Yes/Probably) Will require Ucon64 to pass copy protect
Super Metroid Justin Bailey 4mb Yes lo/fast (Yes/Probably) Will require Ucon64 to pass copy protect
Zelda Goddess of Wisdom 4mb Yes* lo rom (Yes/Probably) Game will not save until you rescue Princess Zelda!
Super Mario 3x Final 2.6 4mb Yes lo/fast (Yes/Probably) *Must manually add a header* Can play till completion with minor errors
SMW The Lost Adventure E.1 4mb Yes lo rom (Yes/Probably) *Must manually add a header* Shadow dungeon has errors if you die
SMW The Lost Adventure E.2 4mb Yes lo rom (Yes/Probably) *Must manually add a header* Played till 1st castle
Zelda Parallel Worlds Remodel 1.1 4mb Yes* lo rom (Yes/Probably) *Game will not save until you get your sword*
Zelda Goddess of Wisdom 4mb Yes* lo rom (Yes/Probably) *Game will not save until you save the Princess*
8mb carts (Special thanks to Gered and sherpahigh for help in pm help)
Chrono Trigger Retranslation 8mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/firmware hirom) Seems to work perfectly fine, will update the the future
Chrono Trigger Prophets Guile 8mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/firmware hirom) Seems to work perfectly fine, will update the the future
Chrono Trigger Crimson Echoes 8mb Yes hi/fast (Yes/firmware hirom) Seems to work perfectly fine, will update the the future
12mb carts (Special thanks to Gered for a easy patch and pm help again)
Star Ocean 12mb Yes lo/fast (Yes/Never (needs patch) Interesting note here I cannot get the game to work when burned with Danin's software, but properly with stock software)
Bad Games (If anyone using SNES Hi/Lo ROM reproduction PCB/flash boards get these titles to work, please share!)
Fire Emblem Mystery of the Emblem cannot seem to get past the region crack even with Ucon64 anyone wants to help me out with that would be great!
Super Mario Land 3 NES Hack
As I test more games, I will continue to update the list, unless this information is not relevant to anyone.
If you wrap your table with [code] before and [ / code] after, it will preserve your formatting.
(omit the spaces, otherwise phpBB would have actually converted my text into preformatted monospace text)
Heh. Thanks lidnariq it looks alot better, but could still use a bit more cleanup. I will try to keep updating as I try more cartridges and maybe ask a couple more questions if they arise.
Added a few more games to the list. After a week of browsing the forums, I kind of think that this topic might belong in say NES flash carts or SNES section than Repro. If any of the mods think the topic should be moved, I wont get my feelings hurt.
Added a few new games, added a list of bad games. If anyone using INL.com SNES Hi/Lo ROM reproduction PCB/flash boards get the games I list off as bad to work, let me know!
Hi,
When it comes to cartridge based games, I think you should do a little more research on chips etc. for the games you're looking into. Anything that needs a DSP-1 or above will not work on INL carts, unless he's fixed since the last time I messed with them. I know hacks and/or games that use the "true" special chips like Mario RPG etc. do not work at all. The Star Ocean hack works because someone hacked the game to run without the required chip.
Attached is the spreadsheet I used to help create games from donor carts, but it also helps to identify what chips are used for each game.
Super Mario World The Lost Adventure - check the rom you're using.
Super Mario Kart (Retro Prog says will never work) - DSP-1 game
Super Mario Kart R (Retro Prog says never work) - DSP-1 game
Super Mario Land 3 NES Hack - check the rom you're using.
Super Mario RPG (Retro Prog says never work) - Special Chip game
Super Mario RPG Armageddon - Special Chip game
Fire Emblem Mystery of the Emblem - Should work (
http://www.jcretail.ca/fire-emblem-myst ... he-emblem/)
That's quite an impressive list. I would love to openly discuss the roms I have not been able to get to work. I think posting the link on where I downloaded them from would help out immensely, however I don't want to do this until I get a 100% ok answer. Maybe a mod/admin might pop in this thread and give an official yeah/nay on posting links for my sources on non licensed Nintendo games (hacks/homebrews) as well as English translated ports.
Links to copyright-infringing material is officially not allowed, but you can link to the patch (such as on rhdn) and/or provide a hash of the resulting image (which is enough to uniquely identify a file).
Added a few more games to the list. Added a bit more details, hopefully the chart did not get confusing now. If this information is helpful, maybe I will move the list to the front of this thread in case someone new might be able to use it.
Having a bit of trouble getting Breath of Fire II and the fan patch to work correctly. Digging around this site though it looks like others have been able to get around the issue I am having. I can burn BoF II and the patch, they both start up just fine, but I get the new game error loop where it will not save the game. I am more interested in getting the fan patch to work, anyone able to assist?
I start off with Breath Of Fire II (U) [!].zip , I then use Ucon to strip the header. I then patch the file with ips. It then makes the file an even 4mb. I have tried a few different options, I have tried strip header, fix checksum, crack, slowRom fix. Nothing seems to get around this issue. I am able to get past this issue on both the normal rom and the homemade version on zsnes. Has anyone else been able to burn the fan made version to a INL 4mb flash cart and get past the infinite loop error? Thanks for any continual help, and hopefully this is a quick fix since it seems others have been able to get around it.
NYMike wrote:
zsnes
You should test with bsnes or its forks; ZSNES and SNES9x are phenomenally inaccurate.
Tested in bsnes it works on my pc as well as zsnes. For whatever reason, when I burn the rom to a INL cart, it screws with the ability to create game data. I am guessing that it is something that I am doing wrong on my end and would love to know if someone else has been able to get this working. The patch looks pretty impressive (to me at least).
OK progress! I have officially been able to burn the Fan translation of Breath of Fire 2 with both the Japanese song intro as well as Into the Fire and the Flames found at
http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1384/ onto a 4mb INL board. It plays on both a SNES as well as a Retro Duo Portable as well. The issue was not burning it, it was having to do several fixes in Ucon64. So far most games just needed 1 fix with Ucon64, so I would chalk this up to me being inexperienced in the whole process still.
NYMike wrote:
I have officially been able to burn the Fan translation of Breath of Fire 2 with both the Japanese song intro as well as Into the Fire and the Flames found at
http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1384/ onto a 4mb INL board.
Is that really "Through the Fire and Flames" (tippity-tappity tippity-tappity tippity-tappity HOPOs, then suddenly strum-like-my-life-depends-on-it) or something else?
Not my video, but its still the video for the beginning of the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S2-NMyJgGQ I went out and bought a original copy of the game off of Epay and I do admit, the translation makes the game better in my eyes.
Starting to get a build up on old boards. Ironically I get these sports game boards for the cheapest, and they are the most sought after for reproduction. I found this site
http://www.gamereproductions.com/ that gives credit for complete carts like these. Is this my best route to go, or does anyone have a suggestion that I could take to reuse the old parts?
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Added even more games to the success list. I also got my hands on some 8mb and a 12 mb cart. Time for some Chrono Trigger remakes and Star Ocean. If anyone has any tips on those, feel free to school me!
Still having issues with hi roms on inl 8 and 12 mb boards. Anyone able to tell me if I am doing these steps right?
1. Remove header
2. Test in Bsnes (works)
3. Split file 4mb and 2mb
4. Select 2nd half of file first and recombine file
5. test in Bsnes (works)
6. Erase cart in Retro-Prog, select 8mb board
7 Still fails.
Any help would be appreciated. I know the boards work because lo roms work on these boards but hi does not.
So, I just recently made myself a DQ3 repro. It's a 6 MB ROM file, so requires use of the 8 MB INL board. Basically, I padded the file to 8MB, then in a hex editor I swapped the first and last 4MB around, and then duplicated the first 2MB (which was originally the last 2MB before I swapped the halves in the file) so it appears twice at the start of the file.
A diagram to (hopefully) more clearly illustrate what I did:
Code:
Original ROM file layout:
0 2 4 6 8 MB
+---+---+---+---+
| A | B | C | |
+---+---+---+---+
After fixing up the layout in a hex editor:
0 2 4 6 8 MB
+---+---+---+---+
| C | C | A | B |
+---+---+---+---+
Also, when I did this I just assumed the "fixed" ROM wouldn't work in any emulator and just flashed it to my INL board and it worked, so all good. But I just now tried opening the ROM I flashed to my INL board in bsnes, and as I expected it didn't work. Not sure why yours
was working in an emulator after editing the file layout, that seems weird to me.
Honestly I am stepping out of my limited experience with the 8mb boards and was just recommended a new program to try today. It was free file splitter (
http://www.filesplitter.org/), so it is possible that when I split the file, and recombined it that it did absolutely nothing but put the 1st and 2nd half together in the same exact order.
edit: will report back when i try some more things
So I am having an issue with an 8mb board still. Working with a member in private messages we have a copy of Crono Trigger Crimson echoes. On one 8mb board the game runs fine without issue. On
the second board if I try to enter the menu to save the game on a SNES it crashes. If I try playing it on a Retro Duo Portable, it will enter the save screen, but the text is a bit garbled as well as the game save is very off. Instead of saving in the chapter prologue, it saves as the last chapter with 99 saves and 99:59 hours played. No matter how many times I erase the board, it still gives me this error. I have tried pulling out the battery and letting it sit over night. Anyone have any suggestions on how to fully purge a 8mb inl cart? I get the feeling that there is some remnant data even after an erase.
Solved? So it seems like there is a small imperfection with this board. By itself it has issues, in the snap connect holder it has issues, but in a regular cart with security bits cranked down, so far it plays fine.
Added 8mb and 12mb games to the list. Special thanks to Gered and sherpahigh for help in private messages as well as multiple testings and findings with different software that resulted in some interesting errors.
I knew this would happen... I wander back to the website and now my Xbox One is collecting dust and all I am playing is NES SNES and N64 games. Well I have the itch again. This time I want to make some NES games. Is anyone interesting in making sure I place the right order from INL.com if I list off the games and the figures that should match up? Or (if allowed) if anyone on site sells rom hacks, I would be interested in buying some boards (I do not need labels or carts) ready to go from someone on the site that deserves some feedback and most importantly $$$.
Are you making just NES games? You should just download Nestopia and the GoodNES ROM collection. Drop your ROM into Nestopia, then open View > Image Info. Usually Nestopia is very accurate, but sometimes the iNES header is malformed and lists 8KB WRAM even if the game doesn't ever write there. This is super common among Mega Man hacks.
If you ever want to know whether an NES game really does use 8KB WRAM, then download FCEUX, open your ROM, open the Hex Editor and scroll down to the address range $6000 - $7FFF. If nothing useful is written there (usually FF), then the game doesn't use WRAM. Most games will write early in that range so it's easy to see. I've come across one Mega Man 3 hack where a little bit of WRAM is used near the end, so watch out.
So here are the titles I would like to put to cartridge. Little Samson, Bubble Bath Babes, Hot Slots, Peek a Boo Poker, Super Mario 3 Remix, Mega Man in Mushroom Kingdom, Super Mario Unlimited, Mario Adventure.
I will just do one and post the results and see what happens.
I will start with Super Mario 3 Remix. This is the screenshot I get:
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So when I go to INL.com is this the right board to select?
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INL.jpg [ 359.24 KiB | Viewed 3886 times ]
Then the FCEUX side just try to find $6000 - $7FFF and if it says "Error String Not Found" am I good?
Attachment:
Untitled-1.jpg [ 281.04 KiB | Viewed 3879 times ]
Do I need to worry about the W-ram or anything else? Is it really this simple? I know the SNES side is pretty dang simplified but since NES games have so many different chip sets on the game boards themselves I feel like I am doing something wrong even though I have successfully burned a NES game before.
Thanks in advance. I know this is a very dumb question and with all the SNES games I burned you would think I know how to do this. At $20+ a pop I want to make sure I get this right and unfortunately a week later, I still do not have a response from inl.com with there ticket support.
Edit: I got a response from the ticket today. Paul said he was out of town on vacation. I am going to try to get this wrapped up with him on the support ticket instead of bugging you guys.
HVC-Man wrote:
If you ever want to know whether an NES game really does use 8KB WRAM, then download FCEUX, open your ROM, open the Hex Editor and scroll down to the address range $6000 - $7FFF. If nothing useful is written there (usually FF), then the game doesn't use WRAM. Most games will write early in that range so it's easy to see. I've come across one Mega Man 3 hack where a little bit of WRAM is used near the end, so watch out.
NYMike wrote:
Then the FCEUX side just try to find $6000 - $7FFF and if it says "Error String Not Found" am I good?
[Screenshot of FCEUX with hex editor open, and the Find text "$6000 - $7FFF" command resulted in "String Not Found".]
I don't know much about WRAM, but here are some notes about a hex editor to help you:
In each row of a hex editor:
- The left number is an address.
- The middle numbers are values.
- The right characters are the same values interpreted as text.
HVC-Man was suggesting you scroll the window down until you see the rows 6000 to 7FF0. (Or go to the File menu, choose Goto Address, and enter 6000.) HVC-Man says if you see interesting looking values in this range, then the game uses WRAM.
Thanks. With these posts as well as the responses from inl.com I feel pretty confident about placing my next order and will probably end up ordering by the end of this week.
A good rule of thumb is if the original game used WRAM, then any hacks of it will also use WRAM. Super Mario Bros. 3 uses WRAM, so Super Mario 3mix will use it too. In fact, the game even has save files, which SMB3 never had. That should be an immediate indication that the game needs WRAM.
In case you're confused, WRAM (or I prefer PRG RAM) is usually an 8KB Static RAM chip accessed by the 2A03 and used for save files AND engine code or scratchpad memory. All NES games that record your progress use a minimum of an 8KB SRAM chip. There are some NES games that have a WRAM chip, but don't offer saving, like SMB2, SMB3, Kid Icarus, Metroid, etc. In the world of ROM hacking, this gets far more murky, because there exist hacks of NES games to support saving, such as SMB3 and Metroid.
Like I suggested before, get yourself Nestopia and use it to analyze the iNES header of the games you want to make. It has the occasional error with reporting WRAM usage, but it's very accurate when it comes to the other specifications, like PRG / CHR ROM sizes, presence of CHR RAM, mirroring control, mapper etc.
Curious question. Not sure if I should post here on start a new topic. I have personally put Zelda LTTP, Goddess of Wisdom and Parallel Worlds on INL boards successfully. However, I cannot get Zelda LTTP "Master Quest" to work. It basically changes locations and dungeons around. Anyone know why this one wont play? I am curious if someone can simply look at the file and tell me why exactly it does not work properly on INL boards (unless I am doing something dumb again).
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/601/ Filename: Legend of Zelda, The - A Link to the Past (U) [!].smc
SHA1: 8288b4bc88052a3cf4effed3acd6a498847bfb95
SHA-256: d9c69c5270b2f7eac54f254688a43cc767fd5cb4f21fc079a0f9fbe09978eaec
CRC32: dd42510e
MD5: 1a74468291b02729329dd1357afb45af
NYMike wrote:
Curious question. Not sure if I should post here on start a new topic. I have personally put Zelda LTTP, Goddess of Wisdom and Parallel Worlds on INL boards successfully. However, I cannot get Zelda LTTP "Master Quest" to work. It basically changes locations and dungeons around. Anyone know why this one wont play? I am curious if someone can simply look at the file and tell me why exactly it does not work properly on INL boards (unless I am doing something dumb again).
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/601/ Filename: Legend of Zelda, The - A Link to the Past (U) [!].smc
SHA1: 8288b4bc88052a3cf4effed3acd6a498847bfb95
SHA-256: d9c69c5270b2f7eac54f254688a43cc767fd5cb4f21fc079a0f9fbe09978eaec
CRC32: dd42510e
MD5: 1a74468291b02729329dd1357afb45af
I would start by asking the author for an older version of the IPS patch, specifically v1.01, and trying that. If you look at v1.5, they began "fooling around" with trying to get FastROM addressing to work, which is often way more complicated than (most) romhackers understand:
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/snes/pa ... readme.txt
Thanks koitsu. I tried an earlier version and it *almost* starts. I guess they indeed got it to work on emulators but native software is still iffy.
So interestingly enough, I have several people locally that are fans of classic gaming. Several of them have expressed interest in coming over to my house for a retro night at least once a month if not weekly. I have a 4 player adapter for the NES SNES and then obviously N64 on. I have been digging around online and just realized one of my favorite SNES multiplayer games had several JP only versions not released here in the states. I am talking about Super Bomberman for the SNES.
So: Has anyone tried burning Bomberman 1 2 3 4 5 on Snes INL boards? I might have to buy another 10 broads and then burn the JP only versions if someone can confirm they work.
On a related note, anyone have any other great rom hacks that support 4 players that they could suggest for these intended retro events?
Why don't you just buy the games from Japan? They are really cheap. I'm personally a great fan of Super Bomberman 5. Some highly original stages, and amazing frantic music.
I guess I could buy the SF versions. They are obviously in JP. Correct me if I am wrong, but SF games I have to snip off a plastic piece in the carts or was that to play SNES games on a Super Famicom?
There are two plastic tabs in the Super NES (NTSC U/C) Control Deck that you need to remove with needlenose pliers to make Super Famicom games fit.
Curious now... Instead of cutting the tabs on my SNES that I have owned since I was 10 years old. Could I just buy the JP versions and then gut a $2 NA cart and put the chip inside that cart?
NYMike wrote:
Curious now... Instead of cutting the tabs on my SNES that I have owned since I was 10 years old. Could I just buy the JP versions and then gut a $2 NA cart and put the chip inside that cart?
You could do that... or you could just break the plastic tabs off, like pretty much all of us have done (I didn't even use pliers when I was a kid, I actually used a soldering iron tip), so that you don't have to keep buying US carts and transplanting JP PCBs into them. :P
Curious as ever. Could anyone on this site make this? Its Super Bomberman 1-4 with English roms and 5 in Japanese all on one cart. If someone can make it correctly let me know in a PM.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/462304565/ ... ?ref=hp_rv
Multicarts like that aren't exactly hard, but they do require a little bit of cleverness. It would be a lot easier if you were already comfortable with 1980s-level low speed digital electronics engineering.
I'm only fooling around with the INL boards still and at the moment cant do mulitcarts. If I need to pay someone to make me one, I would rather pay someone who helps out in the community rather than someone random online.