#NES/FC/FDS/Dendy

1 messages Ā· Page 15 of 1

grand jewel
timber lava
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Big collection of NES core ^^

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half pasture
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Thanks for making NES core great again! elmorise

fallen brook
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@tame flame where are you? please commit your mappers šŸ™ (and accept my pr)

fierce estuary
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this option already exists?

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this is s bad as when my last atari 2600 bug that I worked on for over a week was for the game "beat 'em and eat 'em"

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and it turned out it was just a switch position issue that nobody had ever documented

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dejitter is intentionally in the advanced options

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because I don't want ordinary users thinking about it

tepid umbra
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I never thought about it. I must be ordinary. derpsanta

fallen brook
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Ive seen the AVGN episode on beat em and eat em, hilarious šŸ¤£

grand jewel
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Nothing fancy, just OCD.

tepid umbra
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I want a dijittir option.

grand jewel
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Next time.

tepid umbra
glacial turtle
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All this Sachen talk has reminded me that Jesus Fish and I found a couple of graphical issues in Mega Duck games we never got round to logging, will need to do that

steep yew
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Mega Duck, my beloved

glacial turtle
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I wonder if the screenshot tool can grab images of the issues, presumably it can

fierce estuary
glacial turtle
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It was weird screen tearing if I remember

fierce estuary
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it's probably not a bug

steep yew
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I donā€™t even remember tbh. Thatā€™s such a strange system

tame flame
fallen brook
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I say good enough to test in unstable

clever scarab
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Pins updated as well

fallen brook
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today is a great day if you want to play obscure nes stuff

frigid marten
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and this year has been the year of the NES core elmorise

half pasture
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Xmas came early!! elmorise

clever scarab
half pasture
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Dendyear

frigid marten
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i should read up on the history of the dendy, maybe there have been some exclusive games i don't know about yet blobfoxinnocentmlem

fallen brook
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that little xmas hat cant be a coincidence

aXRsZS5wbmc.png
glacial turtle
fallen brook
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alright fine, I tried worm visitor, runs fine

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on super cartridge 8

clever scarab
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You got a worm visitor on your super cartridge 8 or are you happy to see me

fallen brook
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guess what makes it super šŸ˜

clever scarab
glacial turtle
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Apologies, I went offtopic here

fierce estuary
latent breach
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I wonder if we have anyone in this Discord that actually owns real Mega Duck hardware NotLikeThis

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great scottā€¦nearly $500 on eBay for one with the box and also non-functional
derpsanta

image0.jpg
dreamy marten
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Good thing they have a coupon

glacial turtle
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I will get them screenshotted and documented, and if someone can verify that would be grand

cursive sable
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Weren't there clones OF that bootleg? IIRC I think there was one called the Cougarboy

fierce estuary
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they were all kind rebranded

dreamy marten
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They have the best naming department

steep yew
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Kit, will you accept bugs when compared to a cougarboy? or are you mega duck or bust

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Best I can do is a Play Manā„¢

fallen brook
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spent some hours this morning and I finally have 3 CSV tables with all no intro roms and which (sub)mapper they have. finally the overview I needed

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now let's see how I can make good use of this to fill the blanks in the core

clever scarab
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lol youā€™re a machine

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famimachinecom

glacial turtle
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Oh nice, you should put this on a GitHub page

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It was talked about awhile ago, but it would be nice if there was a way to check what mapper a ROM was on a MiSTer (in the core, or even a separate utility)

fallen brook
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those exist

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not in the core but punes has a nice viewer/editor, and there are also separate apps for that

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I needed an overview to find which roms belong to a mapper, especially the exotic ones

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add a pivot and I can count them too

mint lichen
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Awesome, would love to see more unlicensed stuff working. Toy Story was one I always wanted to speedrun but doesn't work. Some of the games from that company work, Mickey Mania 7, Contra Spirits, but most don't. https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/Ex-Sachen_developers

BootlegGames Wiki
Ex-Sachen developers

Ex-Sachen developers refers to two distinct but connected contract development teams that mostly consist of ex-Sachen staff. Both have worked on a number of original titles and backports for the...

fallen brook
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as long as it is feasible

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the core is now at 71% and these mappers do not take a lot of resources, especially if you merge it into an existing module

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but this is quite a chore tho, if you want to eat an elephant you have to do it piece by piece

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I got time to spare today because the missus is at her sis now šŸ˜…

mint lichen
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Yeah, I get it, I was just mentioning that set of games. I just like all the bootleg stuff so it's cool to see more working already.

half pasture
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Great to see new mappers being added to this amazing core!! elmorise

fallen brook
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porkchop added so much that I cant stay behind šŸ˜…

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should be done with 29

mint lichen
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Just trying the latest Unstable core and savestates are totally broken, can't load any of my savestates

hasty river
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So real talk do we have an actual number of total mappers that aren't supported no matter how offbeat they are

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or is that kind of an unknowable number with all the unlicensed stuff

fallen brook
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I got a list of mappers in the no intro set, including the aftermarket and private ones. that is the best I got

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still is not "complete" because the pc-10 punch out for instance is not in there, but it is something

hasty river
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That's good at least

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Do any of these help:

https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/List_of_mappers

https://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/nesmapper.txt

https://megacatstudios.com/blogs/retro-development/nes-mappers?srsltid=AfmBOooI5Ta8msNWeR31xD-8hVTLiCxvsnhn70py_OIEmxsiLwjcB-vN

https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/List_of_mappers_by_Release_Date

https://datacrystal.tcrf.net/wiki/List_of_iNES_mappers

NESdev Wiki
List of mappers

The following is a list of iNES mappers, and their more common designations that correspond to them. This is meant to make it easier to find the iNES mapper number for your favorite mapper.

Mega Cat Studios, Inc.
NES Mappers

LIST OF CATEGORIES

Title
Size
Mirroring
Mapper
Common Designation
Notes

ā€¦

NESdev Wiki
List of mappers by Release Date

Here is a partial list of mappers ordered by the Release Date of the first game to use the mapper.

fierce estuary
fierce estuary
fierce estuary
fallen brook
fierce estuary
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it uses a database to make sure every game has the right mapper and submapper and a nes 2.0 header

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so it's better before cataloguing those things

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I mean you could also just.. use the database

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I already did exactly what you are doing, of course, about 5 years ago, and made sure any mapper for any decent game was added

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99 is the one that really needs to be there

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but we have different definitions for what is a decent game

fallen brook
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I wish I knew about that db sooner šŸ˜…

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still had to parse it to make it searchable but would have made a better source of truth I guess

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personally I find 3/4 of the nes library absolute dog shit

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those were the times when we were kids and nobody could tell if a game was good

fierce estuary
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NewRisingSun maintains that and he's super pedantic

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it's very accurate

fallen brook
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where is the repo for his nintendulator fork

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all the links I found online were dead

fierce estuary
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it's annoyingly hard to find

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I always have to hunt for it

fallen brook
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a bookmark is easily made

fierce estuary
fallen brook
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maybe it is google enshittification but I searched my ass off

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oh fuck me the source is right in there

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I thought it was just the binary

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thanks šŸ˜…

fierce estuary
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it's one of the best sources for obscure mapper references

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since he's obsessed with mappers

fallen brook
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is it a problem for you if I start adding more mappers?

fierce estuary
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if they have real value

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my usual line is "would someone realistically play this game for more than an hour"

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if the answer is no, then I just write it off as they can use a software tool for novelties

glacial turtle
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Cough... Datach Mapper... Cough... šŸ˜‰

fallen brook
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I was planning to add a bunch of them just for the sake of preservation

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who am I to judge if somebody wants to replay that bootleg he got from uncle sam as a kid

glacial turtle
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You can play the Datach games without using the barcode scanner, they are official Bandai games, there is a Dragon Ball fighting one. Not sure how hard the mapper is though, it is a whole bit of hardware that plugs in

fallen brook
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especially simple mappers I can just merge with an existing one so it doesnt take much resorces

fierce estuary
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im a strong believer in the 80/20 rule

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fpga things are particularly limited in that adding stuff isn't free

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so let software worry about preserving the pond scum of the library

fallen brook
fierce estuary
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it's true whenever you have a limited valuable resource

fallen brook
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but if I develop or am interested in a tool, I would be disappointed in a tool that is missing 20% functionality

fierce estuary
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it's also true for user experience

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retroarch is a good warning for what happens if you don't stick to that principle

fallen brook
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that concern I understand

fierce estuary
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with mister, we can easily accomodate every official game and every game anyone will realistically play

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however we can't really have a "gotta catch 'em all" attitude

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there's an endless pile of nes mappers and people add new hacky ones all the time

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there's that new MXM trash fire of a mapper which we'll probably have to add since it's heavily advertised

fallen brook
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is that the one with an mcu on board?

fierce estuary
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it's hard for me to keep up, they keep throwing new things into it

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whatever it is, if it's even a little worthwhile it will use a huge chunk of resources if we do add it

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and we don't really know what the future holds for other worthwhile mappers, so we need to make sure we can deal with those

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right now, I get bad builds like 50+% of the time

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that's not good

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they dont pass timings

fallen brook
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in the timing analyzer?

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I see them too, on the snes core they are pretty much constant

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but then it is complaining about a divider in an expansion chip that is communicating relatively slow

fierce estuary
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right, you don't want it to say it failed timing

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our cores shouldn't fail timing

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for a while all but two or three passed

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im not sure if that's still true, but NES did

fallen brook
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were those failures for you also in sys?

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sys has seen lots of updates too as of late

fierce estuary
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you can't really tell where a timing failure is happening per se because it will almost always happen in the HDMI stuff if there's too much pressure

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but where it gives up is kind of arbitrary

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it just means there's too much pressure somewhere so some part of the design doesn't get signals set in time for when they need to be set

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it has to compromise randomly

fallen brook
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if quartus has a good understanding of when it needs to be set at least. in that divider example I gave you, it didnt

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thats what I am wondering atm

fierce estuary
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you do a lot of things to help it

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but eventually if you add too much logic per tick, it just doesn't have the resources

fallen brook
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fair

hasty river
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To be fair I'm the same way

mellow dawn
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It might be time to add some conditional compiles. Easily skipping things not needed for testing/debugging might be worthwhile. Most builds do not need the nsf stuff which is probably unnecessarily large doing all the midi/visualizer stuff.

cursive sable
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I agree, though also feels like then it will be debated what counts as unneeded/extra to toss into an alternate core

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I still have that alt core that had some speedrun script support

glacial turtle
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I don't think anyone is talking about alternate core, just a means for Devs to turns off things so their compiles can be ran off quicker during development.

cursive sable
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Oh

fierce estuary
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something like 80% of the games are 4 mappers

blissful prairie
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Quite a lot of games fixed now, but no big under the hood changes. Maybe a good time to cut a "happy Xmas" release?

fallen brook
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there is a regression in save states tho

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thereĀ“s options to consider (ignore, contain, save state conversion tool, revert), no idea what the right one is

blissful prairie
fierce estuary
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breaking save states over a mapper seems unreasonable to me

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I managed to not break them even changing half the ppu

supple ermine
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Since the same core contains all the mappers at once, are there some mappers that are inpossible because a register used in one mapper has a different meaning in another one?

hasty river
main narwhal
half pasture
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NESmm core wen

fierce estuary
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or just use mesen or something to test that chinese edutainment bootleg

inland blade
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Even if no one asked, I am with the opinion that all those strange mappers should be taken to a fork or something... If they make the core bloated and unstable, or affect portability to other smaller FPGA platforms, they should be moved there.

glacial turtle
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Well, non-MiSTer FPGA projects on potato FPGAs aren't anyone here's concern or responsibility. Anyone porting can remove the parts they don't want or won't fit. As it stands I don't think anyone has needed to with the NES core when it has been ported.

covert crypt
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I'm just not a fan of breaking a fantastic core for the sake of edge case mappers.

glacial turtle
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That option really isn't on the table. Nobody is going to accept a PR and release on the NES core that breaks something to add a niche mapper.

steep yew
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Yeah, I wouldnā€™t worry. Either they will get both save states and the mapper working, or the mapper will go

covert crypt
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Well that's good news

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Surely so long as 7 Grand Dad works, all the important mappers are covered

frigid marten
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NES fringe mapper core

dry lynx
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The lengths people will go to play a Chinese edutainment bootleg šŸ¤¢

tepid umbra
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Tbf sometimes you just get tired of playing good games.

covert crypt
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That's the perfect time to play Sonic Heroes

tepid umbra
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Or ant other sega game, really.bsmugnep

violet yoke
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What is this fringe mapper that's breaking save states atm?

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All I see is talk about a chinese edutainment bootleg

tepid umbra
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Fringe maller? More like, cringe mapper. robby šŸ˜Ž

half pasture
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RobbyMapper wen

fierce estuary
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it's probably changing the chr location

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so whatever mapper needed that

fallen brook
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that was 487. vram was moved to a new location to make chr larger. that broke save states

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can fix by updating the vram address for save states but they won't be backwards compatible

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i'm quickly testing a new pr to revert

tepid umbra
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I salute everyone who is working on the implementation of weird ass mappers that never should've existed just so 2 people can play 1 weird ass game nobody ever heard about. šŸ«”
This is the true spirit of Christmas. derpsanta

fallen brook
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let's not get condescending now

fierce estuary
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if a dev wants to add something they are really interested in we can spare it

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I just need to warn against the dangers of adopting a "gotta catch 'em all" attitude with NES

clever scarab
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Yes, there is a very real limit and it carries a future development cost alongside it. The more that gets added now means reduced likelihood in potential features being added in the future.

fallen brook
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I will be looking forward to the day the DE-10 gets succeeded

clever scarab
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I have no clue what the limit is and that shouldnā€™t stop anyone from doing what they want of course. Itā€™s just something to keep in the back of oneā€™s mind once we start approaching the current hardware limitations.

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Canā€™t stop progress for some future that may never come to pass.

tepid umbra
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This is who you seek to replace.

file_00000000a58872438330ea5bd53c5100.png
cursive sable
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It's the os-tans all over again

fierce estuary
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mister cores are actually super easy to port

blissful prairie
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Sorry, deleted my comment

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I felt it was too off topic for discussing here. Didn't see you were replying

fierce estuary
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we often pull them from situations where they are made to work directly with a specific bit of hardware and just abstract them to a point where all you do is have to plug in a bunch of pre-made shims to the current hardware, we dont use any IP or specific features in the cores themselves once ported

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the only reason there aren't more on pocket is because there aren't enough interested developers with any skill to do so

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it requires very little work

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this is the thing that gives mister its staying power, the people

fleet cedar
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Has anyone here tried Legend of Zelda: Ancient Dungeon rom hack on the MiSTer? Itā€™s an IPS patch that you apply to the NES Zelda and it turned it into a 255 room endless dungeon. Iā€™ve tried patching it a couple times, but it freezes as soon as I start. The same patched ROM runs on BizHawk.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7358/

fallen brook
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runs fine

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my patched rom has SHA1 984c75cf86ca5feec5f63ae2b7110433d999f034

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be sure to patch rev 1 as instructed

urban meadow
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Tested a bunch of the VS Arcade System games from the test-builds channel. Seems to work great for the games I tried out.

ember bone
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I'm assuming this goes in the arcade folder and the games are the MAME versions that go in the mame folder?

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Putting it together now to try

urban meadow
clever scarab
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MRAs go here: //media/fat/_Arcade/

  • can be in a sub folder if you want
    RBF goes here: //media/fat/_Arcade/cores
    Games go here: //media/fat/games/mame
hasty river
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oh snap so it's an arcade core interesting

clever scarab
ember bone
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Just played a round of Vs Super Mario Bros so it works for me so far

steel flume
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Good to see someone is finally showing the Nintendo vs system some love.

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Everything I've tried so far has worked a bit annoying trying to find roms since there is not a set of just mame vs roms

ember bone
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Itā€™s nice to ACTUALLY play the VS System instead of a bunch of hacked NES roms on a flash cart. Hell, I didnā€™t even see the high score screen for VS Super Mario Bros until tonight.

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Hoping this gets ported to Pocket too but even still. An NES core that is more accurate than real hardware, competition cart support for SNES, Jaguar basically on the way, ST-V games, and now VS System? We MiSTer users are eating GOOOOD.

steel flume
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The main thing I didn't like about the nes roms is unless they had a menu like vs smb which most didn't you had no access to dip switches

granite pivot
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Nice that it has support for lightguns and dual system

clever scarab
#

[Download Core](#1091056042667937944 message) pin updated

fleet cedar
clever scarab
fleet cedar
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That makes sense. Itā€™s been so many years since I was an emulator user that it didnā€™t occur to me. My last NES emulator was NESticle.

fierce estuary
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one of the reasons to strive for accuracy in emulators is to help people who develop those kinds of things catch stuff that would break on real hardware, since real hardware is increasingly less accessible

tepid umbra
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The console will barely be 40 years old next year. What do you mean, increasingly less accessible? derpsanta

amber willow
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Ackshually over here they did a test market in NYC around Oct 1985. Santa could have delivered a new NES to you that year.

clever scarab
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Going over the VS MRAs, I can't actually find "vs_urban.zip" anywhere as part of any mame set.

fierce estuary
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mame roms are garbage

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why not use the .nes vs roms which are easy to find

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they have more accurate metadata too

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and I don't mean the .nes hacks

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I mean the real roms

steep yew
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oh that's good to know. I have been trying to track down all the mame roms too

amber willow
# clever scarab

urban champion is from HBmame. Why it's not part of mame idk, I suspect it's from the switch which has a few more vs games not in mame I think.

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mame has this list of missing roms

# 
- Babel no Tou               (by Namco, 1986)
- Family Boxing              (by Namco/Wood Place, 1987; Japan version of TKO Boxing)
- Family Stadium '87         (by Namco, 1987; sequel to RBI Baseball)
- Family Stadium '88         (by Namco, 1988; sequel to RBI Baseball)
- Family Tennis              (by Namco, 1987)
- Head to Head Baseball      (ever finished/released?, by Nintendo, 1986)
- Lionex                     (prototype by Sun Electronics, 1986, DRGN-D board, unreleased dump exists)
- The Wings of Madoola       (prototype by Sun Electronics, 1987, DRGN-D board, unreleased dump exists)
- Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium  (by Namco, 1986; Japan version of RBI Baseball)
- Quest of Ki                (by Namco/Game Studio, 1988)
- Super Chinese              (by Namco/Culture Brain, 1988)
- Toukaidou 53tsugi          (prototype by Sunsoft, 1985)
- Trojan                     (by Capcom, 1987)
- Urban Champion             (1984)
- Volleyball                 (1986)
- Walkure no Bouken          (by Namco, 1986)
- Wild Gunman                (1984, light gun game)```
#

so if anyone can find any of those we'll add them.

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updater will take care of the roms so that won't really be a problem in the future.

clever scarab
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I tried Gradius and that did not work for me. I'll give it another shot.

amber willow
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Gradius should work, the konami games might boot to a blank screen(they're checking the roms) and then it says - rom OK

clever scarab
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Ohhhh, that's what it is

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I didn't wait long enough lol, I was blitzing through them to see if they all loaded

amber willow
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And say I used a file loader and used the .nes files, I would have then have the problem of how do I get the dipswitch info(which is different for every game), which is a reason I went with the MRAs.

clever scarab
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MRAs are consistent with other arcade games anyways

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@amber willow When I loaded Duck Hunt just now it had this constant sound playing.

amber willow
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Sorry that's the alarm that sounds when gun isn't detected, turn osd setting "Light Gun" to Yes and reset the alarm should stop.

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They did things a little different and tied a signal low when using the lightgun. so there's actually 3 signals instead of 2 like the nes. and they read them differently, you may notice you can press right on controller and that will be the trigger.

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They changed that so they could read all the dips and coins

clever scarab
#

Looking at the alternative MRAs, some of them didn't load, providing missing file errors, so I dug in.

Modifying the <rom index= line of these files to include the merged zip worked for me:

|vsbball.zip:

  • Vs. Baseball (Japan, set BA A-1).mra
  • Vs. Baseball (Japan, set BA A-2).mra
  • Vs. Baseball (Japan, set BA A-3).mra

|excitebk.zip

  • Vs. Excitebike (set EB4-4 A).mra

|iceclimb.zip

  • Vs. Ice Climber Dual (set IC4-4 A-1).mra

|nvs_machrider.zip

  • Vs. Mach Rider (Fighting Course Version).mra

|vspinbal.zip

  • Vs. Pinball (Japan).mra

|smgolf.zip

  • Vs. Stroke & Match Golf (Japan, Men Version).mra
  • Vs. Stroke & Match Golf (Japan, Men Version).mra
#

The following merged zip inclusions didn't work for me:

|excitebk.zip

  • Vs. Excitebike (set EB4-4 A).mra

|vssoccer.zip

  • Vs. Soccer (set SC4-3).mra

|smgolf.zip

  • Vs. Stroke & Match Golf (Ladies Version, set E).mra

Vs. Soccer (set SC4-3).mra already had included |vssoccer.zip in its <rom index= line

amber willow
#

Uh Robby can you tell me the name of the set where you got those roms?

timber lava
#

using mouse for gungame is possible ?

clever scarab
amber willow
#

Ok I'll look, I didn't have to add those ORs so I must have some other set.

amber willow
clever scarab
#

I could have bad dump?

timber lava
amber willow
#

you could try to check the crc and see if it matches what's listed

ember bone
#

Just tested Zaparoo with this core. Since itā€™s Arcade, it works! Now just gotta make the cards.

amber willow
timber lava
rare edge
#

What a cool new unstable core! It finally runs a ton of my childhood multi-game cartridges, thank you so much! I can't wait to run the famous 999999in1 with the seagulls on the splash screen.

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For those interested, there's a great collection of dumps called "CaH4e3's FAMI Dumping project" with lots of interesting stuff there.

glacial turtle
rare edge
rare edge
glacial turtle
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No, each mapper needs to be added individually

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Did 212 support get added to MiSTer?

rare edge
#

I noticed a problem with the video signal output to an LCD monitor via HDMI-VGA. In PAL and Dendy modes, the image is stretched vertically, and only the top half is visible. Everything is fine with NTSC.

clever scarab
rare edge
#

I tried the Mega Drive core in PAL, and it's the same thing...

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Samsung SyncMaster 710n

granite pivot
#

Are some of the Namco Vs. ROMs not dumped? Some of them are on PS4/Switch via Arcade Archives. Valkyrie no Bouken, Quest of Ki, and Babel no Tou have Vs. versions.

granite pivot
amber willow
#

I think you may have found some bugs in the mras, I had the crc messed up in the few you couldn't fix.

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if you could see if those work, I think they will. I found an error in that version of golf not the ladies version.

amber willow
clever scarab
granite pivot
#

and "Babel no Tou" is "The Tower of Babel" in romanji in the ACA, IIRC. New title screen looks weird and some versions of the game were renamed to "Mystery Tower" to make matters worse.

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Looks like there's a JP Family Stadium version of Vs. RBI Baseball, according to system 16, as well.

amber willow
#

did you see this list ?<#1091056042667937944 message>

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who knows what's out there, check out this flyer I found while doing research

#

it lists vs 500 and vs helifighter which are no where to be found

#

it also tells you the price they were charging for the paks, $295.

#

I think you got the ppu, some roms, the marquee, and instructions in a neat case

granite pivot
#

thanks. DIdn't scroll up enough to see the list. So more than one Family Stadium got a Vs. Release. I read somewhere that Vs, RBI is actually based on 87.

#

I wonder why the heck Namco gave Valkyre no Bouken a Vs. Release. Not the first game that would come to mind.

#

I also have the ACA versions of Ki and Babel. Ki has a special set of levels and Babel has a timer system instead of the power number that goes down when you pick something up.

granite pivot
#

I wonder if Nintendo 500 would have been F1-Race.

idle patrol
#

Desearos a todos una muy feliz Navidad ! Cristo ha nacido ! Hope you have a merry Christmas ! ā¤ļø

clever scarab
half pasture
#

Feliz Natal a todos do Discord do MiSTer FPGA! šŸŽ…

fierce estuary
#

what?

tepid umbra
fierce estuary
#

why does that mister have a safety helmet

tepid umbra
#

For safety.

#

It... my precious. smugnep

half pasture
#

That ring has a typo on it

tepid umbra
#

Dunno the guy I got it from gambled it away in a cave.

cursive sable
#

It says... "One bing to rule them all"?

#

Goddammit Microsoft

tepid umbra
#

Yeah it looks home made and has a self written poem on it.
Guy who made it clearly put in a lot of effort.

cursive sable
#

... you can read that?

warm galleon
#

LotR fans are on a different level

cursive sable
#

I guess I should not be surprsed, there are many Star Trek fans that can speak Klingon. Just didn't know that Elfish in LOTR was a full readable language

#

Me? I basically failed my high school Spanish classes so... xD

tepid umbra
#

Elfish isn't even a language. You probably mean sindarin or maybe quenya

#

Dwarvish is also a full language afaik. Tolkien was mad about languages.

cursive sable
#

I meant whatever is the language written on the ring

#

Can you tell I am not huge into LOTR? XD

#

I'ave seen most of the movies, that's it

#

(And years years ago played a LotR-based Q-basic game someone once made that I randomely downloaded, that at the time I had no idea was based on LOTR or what LOTR even was)

#

I just remember it was impressive for a free randomly downloaded qbasic game at the time XD

tepid umbra
#

There are even books. šŸ¤Æ

#

Sadly no nes games afaik.

clever scarab
#

The Willow game on NES is cool

#

Thatā€™s basically like Lord of the Rings

topaz siren
topaz siren
#

That image would not have been possible without the VS NES test core. Thanks, @amber willow

amber willow
#

I think one of the versions has a special reveal that's unique to vs.

plucky hearth
#

someone knows about Vs.urban champion ..the game is nowhere to be found

topaz siren
amber willow
plucky hearth
#

thanks guys !!!!!! happy christmas to yall!!!!!

clever scarab
topaz siren
clever scarab
#

Thatā€™s the first Nintendo lady hero, right?

topaz siren
clever scarab
#

Baraduke came out five months earlier and did the whole ā€œwoah youā€™re actually controlling a ladyā€ surprise first

#

I canā€™t say with certainty but considering how closely knit the gaming community was, Nintendo had to have seen that and been inspired by it

signal sundial
echo night
#

Does the VS. core default to the correct palette? I havenā€™t been able to test yet, but I happen to remember something about it having a unique palette. Also, I had no idea there were so many VS. games!

amber willow
#

Yeah Vs used 10 different PPUs I think, with about 5 or 6 different palettes. The correct should be used but you can override that and pick a different palette if you want to see what those look like. It will probably look weird depending on the game since they scrambled them as a form of copy protection.

fringe shadow
#

Can you save highscores with Tetris on the NES core?

latent breach
#

Just the standard version of Tetris? I donā€™t see why that wouldnā€™t work if the original game could save the high scoresā€¦

#

if you lost a save, make sure you have saving set to ā€œAutoā€ and that you are opening the OSD once before shutting down your MiSTer

fringe shadow
#

I played a few games, but didn't see any saving after opening and closing the OSD. And the next day all highscores were reset. It shouldn't matter if you place them in a zipfile, right?

latent breach
#

games can be in a zip file

#

what is your save setting set to

fringe shadow
#

I think it's the standard version of Tetris. Howard is always at the top of the list šŸ™‚

urban meadow
#

Tetris does not save high scores. It never did. I would just create a save state to preserve them and load it whenever you boot up the game.

fringe shadow
#

Auto safe is ON

latent breach
#

ahhh

fringe shadow
#

Ahh

urban meadow
#

GB Tetris doesn't either.

fringe shadow
#

Okay, save states it is. The same then also goes for the game boy version. Same problem...

latent breach
#

those seem like titles thatā€™d be ripe for an sram patch if no oneā€™s done those

#

thatā€™s surprising to me

urban meadow
#

Most puzzle games didn't save back in the day. Even on the SNES.

fringe shadow
#

Yeah, I thought all NES games would have a save option.

#

Wow.

#

I think I'll make a list for the puzzle games if I want to save my highscores.

urban meadow
#

If I remember correctly, the first NES game to have proper save support was The Legend of Zelda. At least outside of Japan (the Famicom Disk System did have a lot of games that saved).

fringe shadow
#

With the built-in battery. That explains a bit of the reset for NES games.

urban meadow
#

It's why a lot of NES games used password features outside of Japan. Like Metroid, which did have save support in Japan, but password only here.

#

They just didn't want to include the battery because it increased manufacturing costs.

#

And in Japan, that game was a Disk System release.

fringe shadow
#

Yeah I played Bomberman today and I got a password that was 20 characters longšŸ˜†

urban meadow
#

Yeah, I hated passwords even back in the day. At least today, you can either take a quick photo of the password with your phone so you don't need to write it down. Or just do what I do, and create a save state so I don't need to bother with passwords anymore entirely.

urban meadow
fringe shadow
#

I have Golden Sun, but I haven't played it yet. Thanks for the tip!

urban meadow
#

Checks notes, that password is..........260 characters long.

fringe shadow
#

Wow

elfin flume
hasty river
dim relic
#

Where do I get the vs arcade roms required? Do I look up the zips in a mame set?

urban meadow
dim relic
topaz siren
#

I am sad that I cannot find Vs Urban Champion and experience the self-harm of playing the game.

fierce estuary
#

so it's a lot less subjective than the NES

cursive sable
# urban meadow If I remember correctly, the first NES game to have proper save support was The ...

I guess that depends what you consider proper save support. There were several cartridge-based NES/Famicom games well before Zelda that had save support, but they required a cassete tape player/recorder accessory. Many of them left the save/load feature in the US release even though that accessory never came out here. I remember Excitebike being one of those. Wonder if there is any way to use that with the NES core.

cursive sable
# urban meadow Checks notes, that password is..........260 characters long.

IIRC it let you choose which one of three passwords you wanted to use. One was fairly short and just transferred the names, levels, collected dijins, and some other story items. The other also transferred exact stats of everyone and was a bit longer. And then there was that 260 characters one you mentioned that transferred everything. However, you also had the option of using a link cable instead of manually putting in a password if you knew someone with a GBA you could borrow for a second (Or if you had two yourself for some reason)

violet yoke
#

Hey just curious about something. Is it possible to add an auto region detect feature in the NES core? I know that many other cores have this feature. It's not a big deal at the end of the day bc you could just switch the region by opening up the OSD, but it'd be a nice QoL improvement if it's easy to implement. BTW, this issue is only really for the PAL games FYI

clever scarab
#

well it "works" just all garbled

violet yoke
clever scarab
#

So to your point, anything that can be automated to avoid issues like that would be beneficial!

fierce estuary
#

you can add ntsc vs pal detect

#

the majority of game headers don't have this set correctly though

#

if you use my script or get cleaned up nes 2.0 headers it's possible

#

dendy I think will always be wrong

violet yoke
fierce estuary
#

I don't see why not

violet yoke
fierce estuary
#

I hate feature requests

#

I actually ignore them out of spite

#

issues is for issues

tepid umbra
#

You gotta wrap it in a slice of cheese.

covert crypt
#

I just like to treat the core like it has a region switch

#

Like on a real console.

#

I also feel like I'd get unjustifiably angry if a game booted in PAL mode due to a naff header.

#

Then again, I'd probably never enable PAL mode anyway. I tried a few games out of curiosity and was "satisfied".

granite pivot
#

The US/EU version of Estique uses an odd mapper to switch between PAL and NTSC roms. It's janky and sometimes boots up the PAL ROM on an NTSC console.

timber lava
cursive sable
#

DMC+A tests? CDI

glacial turtle
#

I take it the core passes the new tests?

clever scarab
fierce estuary
#

seems okay

image.png
glacial pecan
#

Assumeing they'd be malicious/bored and implement a random fail test, how long would it take to find that?

blissful prairie
#

isn't it open source?

#

and i cannot really imagine malicious things on a NES FPGA. doing what? the NES connecting to the internet and leaking your hiscore in Popeye?

#

Or a malicious NES cryptofarming?

glacial pecan
#

No, just trolling kitrinx by gaving a test fail randomly.
But yeah if it is indeed open source that might be an easy catch

fierce estuary
#

you are underestimating how rigidly pedantic the nes dev crowd is, it wouldn't last 30 minutes before every aspect of it was picked apart

glacial pecan
#

That might indeed be the case

jade zenith
gray plaza
opaque hamlet
#

playing smb3

#

noticing some pixel flickering here and there and the edges of the screen

#

what does everyone set overscan, mask edges and extra sprites at?

jade zenith
#

i keep everything as stock tbh

hasty river
dire lodge
lime lichen
#

For the VS Nintendo build is it possible to have a high score save implemented?

zealous lake
#

I have this TAS dump to share for Adventure Island 2, which is a favorite of mine. I can verify it syncs on MiSTer all the way to the end. The game is beaten at a very speedy 22:37.23. This TAS video had me saying, "What the shit?" pretty much the whole time. I dumped this TAS file myself from a console verified fm2 movie. I will be doing more of these and providing them in my MiSTer Organize project.

šŸ“Ž red-crowned-cranehellagels1-adventureisland2.r08
fierce estuary
#

there's not much reason to change those options

#

extra sprites won't cause problems in any known game, except for an orange dot on the title screen of mike tyson's punch out

#

the cropped overscan is what nintendo expected you to see, they intentionally allowed garbage at the top and bottom in that era

#

mask edges uses the internal bit for showing a masked edge which is normally colored as black instead of a solid color, to match the blacked out border for hdmi. on a crt you'd leave that off and border on

fierce estuary
hasty river
#

So if you crop overscan does that goof up integer scaling on 1440? Since 240 x 6 = 1440 even

fierce estuary
#

no

echo tree
#

flickering sprites is as essential to the family computer experience as beautiful periwinkle skies i think

tepid umbra
#

I turned them off. Because Kit gave me the option. derpsmile

glacial pecan
#

back into the pi mines with you!

tepid umbra
#

But when you turn the flicker off and squint your eyes it almost looks like a super Nintendo! smugnep

dry lynx
#

Itā€™s almost bad as those animals who play the N64 using the turbo core cringe

#

Or worse, turbo core but with all the VI effects turned off cringe

tepid umbra
#

I'd never go so far! šŸ«£

glacial pecan
#

It is just one option

echo tree
#

if you deblur your n64 games youre not actually playing a n64 game anymore

#

youre false gaming, your fun is unreal

#

real fun is when your sky ir periwinkle, your n64 games are blurry and when your old computer games take 10 minutes to load

clever scarab
#

If you remove the intrinsic display parameters that define that console, are you really a fan of that console?

#

I say no

tepid umbra
# clever scarab I say no

I learned yesterday that the devs decide at the time what is real. That's why doom 3 isn't real anymore. derpsmile

dry lynx
cursive sable
#

What if I decompile a N64 game, and recompile it to run at 4k 120fps with dual analog controls?

high anvil
#

I am not sure if this is the best place to ask this question but here goes...
How are the cheats matched to a NES ROM?
I figure it could be by CRC but the 32bit crc didnt match with a known rom so I am at a loss

fierce estuary
#

crc excluding the header

#

you can also just use the rom name if you want

high anvil
#

I see so its only the actual ROM part... That will make it a bit more complicated to get it working on modified ones

high anvil
latent breach
#

@high anvil as far as I know, if the name of your rom matches the associated cheat file then it should work

high anvil
#

yes, worked fine to just copy and match the name šŸ‘ thanks

zealous lake
#

These TAS movies come from TASVideos.org. The TAS movie must be tested and sync on real hardware to be published on the website. The TAS submissions are judged by judges for authenticity.

#

Iā€™ve successfully dumped two TAS files so far. Adventure Island II and 10-Yard Fight. Adventure Island, I can confirm syncs to the game ending. Need to test the sync on 10-Yard Fight.

clever scarab
clever scarab
#

Now that we have a VS NES arcade core, @amber willow is there some sort of game selection ā€œromā€ that can be used to have a semi-facsimile of using an actual VS arcade unit?

amber willow
#

You couldn't select games with VS, it just had 2 spots for roms or daughter cards on the pcb. (one shown on each screen) Playchoice did have a game selection though

fierce estuary
#

that's correct

#

playchoice was the one with uhh, choices

#

it had two screens, one with a little mcu doing management tasks and the other with the game

#

I think a z80

amber willow
#

yeah a z80, pc10 had some game info screens on the z80 side that would be cool to see.

#

Here's what the dedicated VS cabs looked like for people who never saw them. pretty unique

image.png
median whale
#

One of my Red Tent boards. This one actually has an aftermarket switcher to switch between games on one side.

#

The yokes are close

Screenshot_20260110_173612_Photos.jpg
digital rampart
#

Anyone play around with Family BASIC?

clever scarab
clever scarab
amber willow
clever scarab
#

Is it for head to head multiplayer?

#

Or just to allow people to player different games?

amber willow
#

a few games are head to head, most just let you play 2 games.

#

Wrecking Crew is head to head and does something neat. One screen is mirrored on the other side so it looks like the 2 players are on the opposite sides of the site. Like mario will move right on one screen and it will look like he's moving left on the other.

granite pivot
#

IIRC, Balloon Fight and Ice Climber are head to head. Ice Climber has both Uni and Dual System versions.

hasty river
cursive sable
#

??? Solar Jetman in a transparent Tang Orange cartridge shell?

fallen brook
#

guessing reshelled or a repro

hasty river
#

Yep

#

With textured holo label

hasty river
fallen brook
#

oh wow

#

that looks like a horse stepped on it or something

hasty river
median whale
hasty river
#

Even I knew that!

median whale
#

Also in VS duck hunt you can shoot the dog, not that you should, but you can.

#

Here's some Red Tent info I've collected since getting mine

Baseball.png Castlevania.png DR-Mario.png Duck-Hunt.png Excitebike.png Golf.png Gradius.png Gumshoe.png Hogans-Alley.png Ice-Climbers.png
#

cleaned quite of few of those cards up so I could print them and put them on the machine when you switch to the matching game(s)

hasty river
#

Wow that's so cool

median whale
#

That last one shows it in a home install situation, can't imaging that was common. There were also longer leg kits if you wanted to set the red tent up as a standing unit

#

I think the VS is the only version of the Goonies as well, I thing Goonies II came out for the NES but not the first one? Could be wrong on that.

#

There were also "topper" cards for the Red Tents, I've seen a VS Super Mario Bros one and I think and Excite bike one. They may have been to promote the games but more likely they were to prevent people from resting drinks on top of the Red Tent.

#

I would LOVE a MisterCade that had the connector for the Red Tent, Nintendo vastly cheaped out on the chip sockets (single sided) and they are a PITA to change and get working each time.

amber willow
#

Cool stuff Dolch bet those legs in the box are rare. I was thinking that about Goonies too but we're wrong it was on playchoice too, it came out on famicom but not nes.

median whale
#

Mikes Arcade (a good source of repo parts for Red Tents) acquired a set a while back and was going to reproduce them, not sure if that ever happened (they had a fire or something I think). I like mine at stock height, it's kinda top heavy looking extended IMO

clever scarab
#

I assume North American release in general but I only know US for certain

cursive sable
#

I've seen the red one in the US before

clever scarab
#

I think Iā€™ve only ever seen a Play Choice 10 as a kid. Iā€™ve seen the red tent of course but years later in collectors hands.

dreamy marten
#

I asked Santa for a pc10 for years

#

"If he really has magic, why can't he just bring one over?"

glacial turtle
#

My suspicions of Santa started when year after year he neglected to gift me a Hoverboard.

cursive sable
#

Eh, those don't work over water anyway

glacial turtle
#

That is why I also asked for James Bond's Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me

#

I don't get one of those either, even though I had been very good that year.

amber willow
granite pivot
amber willow
#

Yeah I said goonies was on PC10 about 1 message before Robby said it was just on VS šŸ˜„

clever scarab
#

I confuse VS and PC10 tbh

#

I thought they were the same thing but the Japanese just had a red tent version of it

amber willow
#

They are similar, VS came out in 1984 it was the first version of the famicom the US got. The gimmick was the 2 screens and having head to head or even 4 player games, but they had to be programmed to support that. Eventually we got the NES here in 85/86. The Playchoice was released in 1986 it was nintendos arcade successor to VS. It had 2 screens also (1 for game, other for selection menu) but now the games were just the nes versions since it didn't need to support 2 screens like VS. It was timer based now so each quarter bought more time, arcade operators probably preferred this. You could select any of the 10 installed games and switch as often as you wanted within the time limit. That gave kids the chance to play a game then go buy it at the store. I have heard nintendo made these 2 screen games to be unique and to get rid of extra monitors they had in the warehouse.

granite pivot
#

I think the last Vs. game was Dr. Mario?

amber willow
#

mame says Dr. Mario(1990) and Freedom Force(1988). those are the only 2 listed between 88-90, so Vs wasn't getting much support by then.

median whale
#

There's a Red Tent mini that holds two switch's

Screenshot_20260111_193523_Photos.jpg
granite pivot
#

I think Namco was the last to support in Japan. There was a Vs. version of Quest of Ki. The FC version came out in 1988.

#

I don't think that one was dumped for MAME.

#

Definitely worth the purchase for the ACA version, which has some extra levels IIRC.

timber lava
#

On the aca website of vs. Qu'est of ki there is this mention
This game uses the Japanese ROM for the main part of the game.

VS. THE QUEST OF KI & Ā©Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.

granite pivot
#

yes. Pretty sure it never came out in the US.

#

but their JP only releases may have been some of the last games for the Vs. System.

timber lava
#

It is great aca version has more levels šŸ‘

granite pivot
#

Babel no Tou is edited. Title changed to "Mystery Tower" in the west and "The Tower of Babel" in romaji in Japan.

#

Not even sure why the JP title screen was changed. It just said "Babel" originally. The JP Switch Namcot Collection had the title as "Babel" initally, but changed it later in an update.

topaz siren
#

@amber willow I had a thought regarding the PlayChoice 10. With the recent advent of the Sega Channel Revival core and its astounding rom size, having the ability to insert the pc_gamerom.zips into ten different ā€˜slotsā€™ and have it be possible to have it behave and function as close to an actual PC-10 would be extra nice. Is it under development? Or am I just spitballing obviousities?

#

Ooooo - maybe have a buffet-style MRA?

amber willow
#

I don't want to make any promises

steel flume
#

ive seen those short red vs cabs used as single single monitor pc10..with just a seven segment digital readout for time

granite pivot
#

I haven't seen those, but I have seen a small version PC-10 cab with a terrible stick without a top.

median whale
#

man I want one of those

cursive sable
#

That looks like it came right out of an old Diner XD

keen pasture
#

As a kid I used to play on a bootleg cabinet of Vs. SMB and the local arcade had one of those Multi Game bootlegs, 32 games and no timer!

steel flume
#

Found a picture of a play choice in that cabinet

pc10_tbl_lg.jpg
topaz siren
#

If I remember right, the second screen of Metroid for the PC10 featured a map

topaz siren
#

FYI: if you play anything higher than the Easy difficulty on Vs Duck Hunt, the game eventually throws 3 ducks at you. Definitely threw me off.

amber willow
topaz siren
#

lol 1st Miniboss and 2nd Miniboss, but yet whenever I play it, the reverse is always true.

clever scarab
# steel flume

See this is what confuses me, @amber willow did they convert some of the red tents to playchoice 10 machines?

steel flume
clever scarab
#

Ohhhhhh

steel flume
#

Nintendo liked to repurpose stuff a lot when came to arcade machines

#

From what I understand they had extra punch-out cabinets in a warehouse somewhere they wanted find a way to use them.

clever scarab
#

So youā€™re saying they recycle their content to sell games?

#

that explains so muchā€¦.

steel flume
#

Arcade machines to them were mostly advertisement for games you could buy for your console at home. I was playing super Mario bros 3 on pc10 months before it released on nes.

amber willow
#

there's manuals for the kits they sold for pc10, they had kits to convert punchout and VS unisystem (single monitor) to pc10. I didn't see one for red tents though.

#

Nintendo never sold a red tent with playchoice boards in it that I'm aware of. Japan didn't even get the PC10

steel flume
#

The only red tent machine I seen in person was pc10. It's new knowledge to me that those were vs cabinets

amber willow
steel flume
amber willow
median whale
steel flume
#

The conversion I know disables the 4 player mode and each side is like its own cabinet.

median whale
granite pivot
#

The first PC-10 cabinet I saw only had one game in it, the original Mario Bros.. It didn't last long. Out of all the games, they chose a game that has a superior version already in arcades?

heavy dust
#

I remember playing Goonies (not 2) on ā€¦ whichever of Vs or PC10 it was released on.

#

Made me one of the privileged few to know Goonies 2 wasnā€™t a sequel to the movie.

cursive sable
#

Is there any emulator that supports the two screen version of metroid? Would love to see that in action

amber willow
granite pivot
#

Mike Tyson's Punch Out on PC 10 has a similar initial entry to the arcade games and saves best times. Another World Circuit is blocked out (and has glitchy best times if you do find a way to play it).

digital rampart
#

Is there any documentation of the various mapper chips that talks about them more from a gaming perspective? I've always been interested in how they impact games and such

fierce estuary
#

im not sure I understand the question? Theres a lot of documentation on mappers, but they all do similar things in different ways

#

effectively, wth a 16 bit address bus, only 0xFFFF+1 addresses are available, and some of that range is reserved for system ram and things. So to have games larger than that, you need to map banks into the addressable space

#

the different mappers have different ways of mapping those banks. ie, the way you change banks varies, but they all do that. Some of them have extra functions, like mapping a little battery backed ram or work ram into adressable space, or providing a simplistic IRQ. A handful of japan specific ones provide extra audio channels.

#

Overall there's hundreds of mappers but 85-90% of games use only a handful. The big ones are basically nrom/nxrom/etc where there's no mapping, MMC1 (ninendo), MMC3 (nintendo) and MMC5 (nintendo).

#

there's a small mountain of MMC3 clone mappers with minor differences

#

Umm what else

#

MMC1 was made to replace the functionality of FDS in japan, basically for carts. The IRQ in MMC3 is mostly used to detect the break between a status bars on the top of the screen and the game area, but it's imperfect which is why you see minor pixel junk near the edge of status bars often. Of the various audio mappers, mostly people only care about VRC6 (japanese castlevania 3), VRC7 for La Grange Point, and Bandai's one for Mr. Gimmick. MMC5 also has effectively a clone of the APU in it, but it's seldom used for anything notable.

#

there's a few oddball mappers for a kids tablet, a mediocre karaoke game or two, and I think a barcode scanner?

#

I guess you could consider FDS a mapper, but it' sort of special

#

It has RAM, extra audio capabilities, and of course all of the disk drive mechanics

main narwhal
#

he goes on to explain, in later posts, some design choices for their upcoming custom mapper

main narwhal
fierce estuary
#

it's not in any way

main narwhal
#

they have to load data from disk and present it as a ROM data

fierce estuary
#

there were mappers before it though

#

im not even sure i'd call it a mapper any more than i'd call vs a mapper

main narwhal
#

yeah or the modem

#

its more of a proper expansion

#

to the console

fierce estuary
#

kind of

#

there's an argument to be made both ways

#

it's an asterisk regardless

#

but it wasn't first

main narwhal
#

yeah good point

fierce estuary
#

the concept of mappers predates the NES entirely, atari had several

main narwhal
#

Nintendo tried all kinds of things over the years after all

#

oh I meant for the FC

#

not in general

#

Atari Pitfall had a mapper no?

fierce estuary
#

but the NES had some before FDS

#

tons of games were mappers on 2600

#

pitfall 2 was the DPC mapper

amber willow
#

mapper 87 is claimed to be the first mapper for famicom I read

main narwhal
#

I baffles me how simple the 2600 is

#

I would not want to code for that

fierce estuary
#

it's trash

#

I say that because 2600 had several cost cutting choices made that really made it mediocre

#

the entire atari company was penny pinching

#

and it suffered for it

main narwhal
#

you have to make the CPU change the pixel color during a scanline... and only 128 bytes of RAM to manage everything

#

Nintendo hit gold with their system... there's a pretty fun book on the history of nintendo that covers it

fierce estuary
#

homebrewers often invent new mappers to hide their lack of ability in making a game for existing hardware

#

part of the skill of making games is being efficient and working within the constraints of the hardware

main narwhal
#

he does have a certain philosophy for it i.e. it is done with some constraints

#

he is mostly trying to add space to make the system closer to the PC Engine with a CDROM

#

it could have been a PC Engine game instead; but they probably have no market for that

main narwhal
main narwhal
amber willow
#

yeah there was a progression of the mappers beginning using ttl parts to expand things in different ways then making dedicated chips to do more specialized things. And there's differences between usa and japan. Japan was like the wild west for mappers

fierce estuary
#

the guy just doesn't know how to draw the line and make a game that is reasonable without adding modern chips

#

but of course, this guy has been talking about the ever expanding mapper for like 5 years now afaik

amber willow
#

wasn't he going to expand it to like CD size?

clever scarab
#

I think what heā€™s doing is cool as hell and Iā€™m happy for him but letā€™s not kid ourselves, that wouldā€™ve never happened back in the day. Itā€™s like saying those Atari carts with the crazy coprocessor are authentic 2600 games.

#

Oh wait deja-vu, I had this hot take on here months ago and people called me out on it.

#

Uhhhh

#

listen, my entire shtick is making shitty jokes, I have no clue what Iā€™m talking about

amber willow
#

yeah that was my point if it was cd sized in 1987 it would have cost $1000 and no one would have bought it

main narwhal
#

I mean it did exist in 1988, technically, just not for Nintendo

#

the CD-ROMĀ² was a bit like an FDS on steroids (minus sounds I suppose)

#

well, it did have CD sounds and ADPCM at least

amber willow
#

Yeah nes didn't have a cd drive so unless you're going to make one for your 1 game and sell it first, it would never happen and it would have taken a lot of chips to equal that size and be really expensive.

#

He's free to do whatever but working in the confines is cool too

main narwhal
#

at least NEC made it modular and their CD drive was compatible with some PC88 computers as well

amber willow
#

I didn't know that, but I don't know what a PC88 is šŸ˜ƒ

keen pasture
clever scarab
#

youā€™re forgetting the mountain of porno games made for it lololol

amber willow
#

impenetrable you say? looks like there's a lot of games for it, do we have a core for that?

main narwhal
main narwhal
fierce estuary
#

I dont think the loading times of a cd would have really worked with nes

#

you'd need an enormous amount of buffer ram, and nes itself didnt have audio input particularly accessible

#

there's the ext port, but that probably wouldnt have been enough to work with with a cd drive

amber willow
#

I don't think enough of the pins are on the expansion port to do it, it would probably have to be cart with a ribbon cable or something. kinda like the FDS

fierce estuary
#

the fds pretty cleanly fit into the cart slot of a famicom

main narwhal
#

couldn't you put the RAM in the "cart" and then use bank switching or indirect addressing?

#

I was thinking FDS style

fierce estuary
#

that doesnt work on a nes

#

no audio pins

main narwhal
#

I was thining of the FC. For the NES the pins are in the expansion port at the bottom, right?

fierce estuary
#

yes, but there's not enough other pins to support an addon like fds

#

so it would have to be some weird running cable thing

cursive sable
#

You can't output audio directly to an NES? I assumed that was how that thing where someone just stuffed a raspberry pi into an nes cart to run doom worked for it's audio.

mellow dawn
#

If it doesn't connect to the expansion port then I assume it is using the NES APU sample channel. Since the cpu is not doing much it is free to use the data bw. Presumably it just produces the data in real time instead of reading samples.

supple ermine
#

I never quite got the idea of the MSU-1 which didn't exist back then on a SNES. (Except for the edge case of BS Zelda, where it replaces the over the air audio.)

digital rampart
#

And I've seen some super impressive Orchestral tracks for it

cursive sable
#

Does the MSU-1 let you load data? Or only stream video/audio? If the latter then dosen't really seem like a what if since you can't use the "CD" for game data

digital rampart
#

I'm not sure if it can write-data though

clever scarab
fierce estuary
mellow dawn
#

Nah. Just has to use the full 7-bit sample mode. Not the single bit mode.

fierce estuary
#

and what, completely bombard the bus wth dmc dma?

mellow dawn
#

Yep

fierce estuary
mellow dawn
#

Doesnt matter if the cart is doing all the game code on a pi. CPU is doing nothing else.

fierce estuary
#

it still has to do oam stuff

mellow dawn
#

Do you need sprites?

fierce estuary
#

I mean.. yes?

mellow dawn
#

I guess you could use sprites for more colors but the pi is going to be generating every pixel.

fierce estuary
#

its just gong to paint the entire game as background?

#

I hate ever part of that, that's not a nes game

mellow dawn
#

I did not say it was a good idea. Just my best guess as to how it works.

fierce estuary
#

yuck

cursive sable
# fierce estuary I hate ever part of that, that's not a nes game

Oh, it's not. It's running entirely on the Raspberry Pi, it's just simply outputting the video and audio to the NES and taking controller inputs, that's it. Other than I guess the very slight interesting bit of it having to convert the video into tiles and sprites for the NES, I assume with a method similar to how Elite did it, it's pretty much not using the NES at all and I don't see much of a point.

#

I never found it that impressive since it's just simply a Pi running Doom

mellow dawn
#

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCWhWBtu0LA Looks like I was right about no sprites but wrong about apu sample channel.

YouTube
TheRasteri
NES DOOM - Cartridge Build Guide

This is an in-depth technical overvew and cartridge build guide for my port of DOOM to the NES. It's part of the PiPU project, which puts a Raspberry Pi inside an NES cartridge to use as a graphics accelerator.

Full build guide and source code can be found at https://github.com/rasteri/PiPU

Introduction video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

ā–¶ Play video
fierce estuary
#

well, I respect the real doom track for nes, just not everything else about it

inland blade
fierce estuary
#

it's a bit different

#

but to be fair, starfox for snes is kind of horrible

blissful prairie
#

I don't get how a raspberry in a cartridge can get enough power

mellow dawn
#

He mentions in the video it is using 300mA more than a standard cart. (a bit more than double)

clever scarab
main narwhal
mellow dawn
main narwhal
#

just make a dedicated core for it at that point

#

one could just make a cart that is a USB adapter at this point... pass through controls and maybe as bonus feature serve as audio processor....

vivid roost
#

whatever happened to that doom FPGA project

#

they were making doom in hdl, no general cpu etc allowed

warm galleon
#

It's basically a raspberry pi mapper

cursive sable
#

Just load Doom on the DE10's ARM cpu at that point

fierce estuary
#

it would be significantly better since the nes can't really show many colors at a time that way

#

not that it has that many even if it could use all the ones it can produce

clever scarab
fierce estuary
#

you'll shoot your eye out

clever scarab
#

@fierce estuary knows best, I guess I donā€™t need it marioohno

glacial pecan
#

he has two eyes and can take the blow

keen pasture
#

All this talk of converting the Pi video output to NES tiles/sprites/whatever is making me wish for a NES Blu-ray player

heavy dust
#

Reminder that there are new commercial Atari 2600 games that are basically a microcontroller in a cartridge.

#

Likeā€¦ I donā€™t get it. Iā€™ve been working off and on a homebrew game and every time I think how easy itā€™d be to use a modern cart/mapper with oodles of ram and storage is it even writing a classic console game at that point? Iā€™d feel unfulfilled at the end of the day.

#

I guess from a hardware hacking perspective it could be a fun challenge to get it all working. But thatā€™s not my expertise.

clever scarab
#

Different folks for different strokes

keen pasture
#

one could argue that some early, pre-2600 consoles did use microcontrollers in a cartridge ā˜ļø šŸ¤“

heavy dust
#

Weren't those full on CPUs? Or whatever the difference was at the time?

clever scarab
digital rampart
#

I'd say the one thing I did find interesting that's "throw a chip on a console" is that person who put an NES-on-a-chip and put that in a Super NES

#

Honestly imagine DVD player on a chip and putting that in an old game console

keen pasture
keen pasture
keen pasture
heavy dust
#

he he

fierce estuary
#

anything that draws to a console like a paintbrush would be better if it just output video directly as a rule of thumb

#

so all of these microcontroller carts are just pointless hype and people who want to pretend to be retro devs

digital rampart
#

Like someone embedding the equivalent of an MSX in there

echo tree
#

i need my nes cartridge with a powerful intel cpu in it so i can run crysis on my nes!!!

heavy dust
#

I need my NES cartridge to have a vintage pentium in it so can usually, but not always, divide correctly.

heavy dust
#

Like it started with the best of intentions, etc.

fierce estuary
#

it started by being lazy and evolved into being lazier

#

who wants a cart with software emulation of mappers

heavy dust
#

well, started by being cheap and then turned into lazy-ier

#

i think

#

who knows

#

I can't code a 2600 to save my life.

#

I tried once.

#

I got better.

supple ermine
cursive sable
#

Well, it's the """FX3""" that's being software emulated but still

clever scarab
cursive sable
#

Pretty much, yeah, an ARM cpu emulating an overclocked hacked up FX implementation

fierce estuary
#

gross

cursive sable
#

Agreed

half pasture
#

I wish people stop buying that kind of crap so it's finally stopped

cursive sable
#

Yeah, it feels like if anything more people are now using LRG for their physical game production

#

Despite the increasing negative press

clever scarab
#

isnā€™t the CEO leaving

cursive sable
#

No idea

heavy dust
#

weren't we just complaining about this

image.png
cursive sable
#

Of course people are selling another person's free project

#

With what is guaranteed to be a pirated copy of doom2

#

In theory, that "cart" could "run" anything that the Pi itself can run on the NES anyway, it's not limited to doom... unless for some reason whatever method is used to create the tile data for the nes only works for doom

clever scarab
#

Someone said Pi, Iā€™m here

cursive sable
#

You asked for it šŸ™‚

main narwhal
#

so then its a matter of whether your game is following the essence of the platform

#

for the Atari 2600 the book is called "racing the beam" so if you pre-render your graphics, by that logic, then its not a 2600 game anymore

heavy dust
#

But the NES one is called "I am error" and while anything I write is bound to have errors, they're not required for an NES game.

main narwhal
#

let the one who has written a game without error throw the first cart

cursive sable
#

Pretty sure that's also a YouTube video about the same subject, racing the beam

fierce estuary
blissful prairie
cursive sable
#

I love how that was referenced in Super Paper Mario decades later

fracktail-iamerror.png
heavy dust
heavy dust
main narwhal
#

racing the beam made me a fan of the series. it had a nice blend of technical detail vs other perspectives

heavy dust
#

Same here

main narwhal
#

it has, however, made me want to not code a game for the 2600šŸ˜…

heavy dust
#

I am error is very similar content wise

#

But Iā€™ve read that other titles are lacking the more nitty gritty stuff

main narwhal
#

I read The Media Snatcher next, quite technical too

#

I am Error is still on my backlog

cursive sable
#

the 2600 required you to manually code the game to send out an rf signal with the CPU right?

#

It had no video hardware to handle that?

heavy dust
#

It had video hardware but you had to tell it explicitly when to do it I think

#

So basically no video hardware

#

Go read racing the beam it is good

cursive sable
#

I put it on camelcamelcamel

half pasture
main narwhal
#

and you have to squeeze any computation between scanlines

#

sometimes you see some black lines of the left of the screen,

#

thats due to the CPU taking too long to be able to draw anything in time...

#

cant be more barebones than that šŸ˜…

graceful field
steep yew
#

oh very cool

fierce estuary
graceful field
#

Thanks!

#

Most moderators and top times for nes speedrunning are on original hardware and it has taken a while to get mister allowed on a lot of leaderboards (though definitely improving!). While having extra sprites on might be ok, it adds more uncertainty for the mods on what that could affect so it just hasn't been worth it for me.

#

Though, on the bright side, just helped get mister allowed on the castlevania 3 leaderboard!

#

For my own understanding - does extra sprites just remove the flicker with too many sprites in a one sided way (ppu just displays them instead of a flicker) or can it loop back into the game execution in another way (e.g. cause lag frames).

#

I think I've associated it with dropping frames but that's probably because games sometimes lag when there is a lot of stuff on the screen because the game logic is managing a lot of stuff not because the ppu had too many sprites. šŸ¤·

fierce estuary
# graceful field For my own understanding - does extra sprites just remove the flicker with too m...

it is purely cosmetic, especially on mister. Basically when it goes to draw the sprites it searches through OAM ram for the first 8, then sets and overflow flag (according to some janky kinda broken rules) and then stops. On mister it does this, but at the same time a second routine searches for the next 8 sprites as well and stores them in a separate chunk of ram that a real system wouldn't have and can't be touched by anything else. When the system goes through the normal routine of fetching the data for the first 8 sprites, it typically has an equal amount of time where it does nothing just because of a sort of wasteful way the ppu operates. What I do is during that time, I use a totally seperate and isolated bus to fetch the data for the extra 8 sprites during that normally wasted time. It doesnt impact the cpu or mapper IRQ's at all, im very careful about that (it would be super obvious if it did), nor can it impact sprite 0 hits or anything by the nature of it. So it's purely just a cosmetic improvement.

graceful field
#

Thanks!

tepid umbra
#

There are weirdos who tell me the flicker is nostalgic and "the way Miyamoto intended the games to be played". NotLikeThis

keen pasture
tepid umbra
#

You are worthy of love and flicker free nes games! Don't let anybody tell you otherwise! šŸ˜­

cursive sable
#

I normally don't enable that just in case it breaks something. I recall a few days ago someone was having gibberish displayed on the screen on the 32X core, and realized it was because of extra sprites enabled.

#

(Apparently it even effects Sonic 1, Sonic will look fat with it enabled because they actually used the limit to cut off a part of his sprite)

jade zenith
#

i don't think it's as stable of a feature in other cores as it is in the NES one

cursive sable
#

Yeah, the older Genesis core had issues, just saying that's why I usually don't enable that feature. I have no idea how each system and even emulator for that system would handle it

#

Would this effect the spread gun in Contra or is limiting the bullets it shoots out when there are too many an actual coded limit?

urban meadow
#

The TG-16 core also has games with issues when extra sprites is enabled. So I can understand why turning it on would make people hesitant on any core, even if there aren't any drawbacks in some cores.

jade zenith
#

NES is the only core where i leave it enabled. as kitrinx said, it's purely cosmetic

#

some PC engine and many master system games benefit from having it enabled, but it can cause issues. during my playthrough of splatterhouse, i left the option on the entire time, and it was only in the credits that it showed visual anomalies

dry lynx
#

Flicker is nostalgic and the way Miyamoto intended the games to be played elmorise

tepid umbra
#

U see what I'm dealing with, Kit? šŸ˜“

dry lynx
#

Itā€™s not nostalgic for me because I didnā€™t play that many NES games back in the day flushedshy

#

But I still leave everything with the settings that are as close as possible to the original system flushedshy

tepid umbra
#

How often do you play nes? How would you describe the nes in one word? šŸ¤”

dry lynx
#

NES is one of my favourite cores on the MiSTer actually

#

The word: quality

#

You can really tell that Nintendo were trying hard to keep standards high imo

cursive sable
#

It would probably feel weird for me for the games to perform beyond what I remember playing them as for years

cursive sable
dry lynx
#

Like I said, quality

tepid umbra
dry lynx
#

There are a lot of good games on the NES. Theyā€™re just not the ones you play

cursive sable
#

What good games are there other than Gyromite and Stack Up?

tepid umbra
#

All the final fantasy, most dragon quest, both fire emblem, mother. Maybe megami tensei, haven't tried those yet.

cursive sable
#

It was just a reference

dry lynx
#

Donā€™t listen to @tepid umbra

#

He will lure you in with his siren song

#

Before you know it youā€™ll be playing Pokemans romhacks and stinky retro RPGs exclusively

cursive sable
#

Too late, Must... Play... Hoshi Wo Miru Hito

tepid umbra
cursive sable
#

Hey now, I've only cosplayed like three of the times I've been to an anime convention

#

( actually, I had to Google that thing because all I remembered was that there were some legendarily bad Japanese RPG under NES. Sure as hell didn't remember its name)

wide void
#

Is there a way to activate turbo fire in the NES/FC core? I don't see it in the core menu. I use a SNES controller and I would like Y to be Turbo B and X to be Turbo A

urban meadow
wide void
#

Menu button on my controller is down + select. I tried that + button I want for turbo but it just shows the menu

urban meadow
#

I've never tried it with a button combo for OSD before, so not sure if that works or not.

dreamy marten
#

It works

#

You might need to do it twice

#

But i use start + select for the menu and just used it tonight

#

On NES

steel flume
#

At least that's not something easy to turn on by accident. I had to disable it the old way coz I was always doing it accidentally.

dreamy marten
#

I had a dream last night I played NES

#

10/10 would highly recommend

tepid umbra
#

Man I wish there was a convenient and highly accurate way to play NES.

steep yew
#

have you considered the raspberry pi?

#

with just a few linux commands you too could be gamin'

glacial pecan
#

I could sell you a vintage nes classic

tepid umbra
#

My snes classic exploded, I don't trust those devices anymore.

steep yew
#

like the trees.......

cursive sable
#

I like cheese

median whale
# dreamy marten I had a dream last night I played NES

Got home yesterday and it was too cold to do much else so I fired up SMB3 with the thought of playing a few levels, beat it in an hour (warp whistles of course), didn't intend to but games so good just kept playing.

clever scarab
#

someone said PI, im here

cursive sable
half pasture
#

Got a freeze on SMB after entering the first pipe on world 2-1

#

Couldnā€™t reproduce it anymore

#

What gives? šŸ¤”

heavy dust
#

This core has gotten so accurate that I'd have to assume you've discovered a previously unknown glitch in SMB or maybe your hardware got hit by "cosmic rays"

half pasture
#

Agreed! Core is too perfect for SMB!

heavy dust
#

Fun fact: Kitrinx was so thorough in handling coreā€™s colors that she retroactively changed the real world appearance of periwinkle which is why everybody remembers the color of the sky in SMB wrong.

She said it was easier than perfectly performing a transformation from the PPUā€™s color encoding to RGB.

fierce estuary
#

nobody knows for sure

hearty trout
#

there's a VS The Goonies cab at Next Level Pinball in Hillsboro, OR

Screenshot_20260126-100433.png
fierce estuary
#

hey youuuu guyyysss

clever scarab
#

That arcade cab is going to be pretty hilarious once Gen-Z and Alpha see it

cursive sable
steep yew
#

um, I think you mean it could be better

cursive sable
#

šŸ¤£

#

I had that game actually, traded Skate or Die for it. Was never able to beat it, game is hard as shit

#

I did like it though

#

Actually had a voice line at the start... the japanese version had multiple smaller voice lines before each level instead

#

I recall I also had a pinball game on NES called High Speed that also had a few voice lines... but they were SO low quality I oculden't evne tell what they were saying

#

IIRC it even had more than one if you let the intro loop

glacial turtle
#

Hard as shit, you say?

cursive sable
#

That was totally on purpose šŸ˜›

median whale
amber willow
#

Make sure you have all the goonies before you go to the last level or they send you back to the beginning of the game.

clever scarab
#

lol ā€œmake sure you have all the gooniesā€

dry lynx
#

Where all the gooners at?

amber willow
#

yeah, another tip is find all the hidden items to make the game easier. There's 2 on the first screen, you have to jump around and kick the air. You'll find some headphones and a coat iirc

jade zenith
frank hinge
#

Just saw a post online about some nifty cool looking game called Shadowgate

#

Apparently itā€™s on the NES

tepid umbra
#

It's great, there is also a gbc version. That's the one I played as a kid.

frank hinge
#

Turns out I actually own Shadowgate

frank hinge
#

I just noticed the Soccor cartridge shell looks different to all the rest

median whale
#

5 screw cart

#

If you had a Tysons Punchout 5 screw you'd be happy

#

Loose 3 screw Tysons Punch out ~$41, Loose 5 screw Punch out ~$260

fierce estuary
#

people want the converter

frank hinge
#

Oh interesting

fierce estuary
#

well maybe, not sure if that game has them

#

it does

# 
the converter:
[spoiler]1942
Clu Clu Land
Donkey Kong Jr.
Duck Hunt
Elevator Action
Excitebike
Golf
Gumshoe
Gyromite
Hoganā€™s Alley
Mike Tysonā€™s Punch-Out!!
Pinball
Raid on Bungeling Bay
Rygar
Soccer
Stack Up
Tennis
Urban Champion
Wizards and Warriors
Wrecking Crew[/spoiler]
cursive sable
#

Is there a way to tell from the outside if there is a converter in the cart? I thought there wasn't really a way to tell without opening it.

#

(Also didn't expect officially produced ROM chips to just have an epoxy blob, I usually see that on bootlegs)

covert crypt
#

So it's just a Famicom cart with a converter?

amber willow
#

difference in weight

#

smb/duckhunt had epoxy blobs, one of the most produced carts

#

It's mostly just the black box games that could of had the converter, not sure of the reasoning if it was availability or they just wanted to get rid of old famicom stock

sand leaf
#

just testing a famicom SNAC adapter for a friend before shipping it,

#

3D glasses worked fine

#

Famicom pistol none responsive to duck hunt (world).nes

#

the hammer on the back is working tho

#

well, by working i mean it triggers a shot, but nothing registers

#

maybe the guns busted, wasnā€™t last time i used it but it is 40 years old

#

if anyone can test to confirm thereā€™s is working iā€™d appreciate it

sand leaf
#

oh dear, iā€™d forgotten the level shifter, hopefully i didnā€™t fry the gun.

it seems to work inconsistently now with the trigger

#

panic over, all good

heavy dust
#

There's preponderance of FC->NES cart adapters but it's hard to find a NES->FC adapter that works reliably and isn't horribly expensive.

fierce estuary
#

there's no support for famicom lightgun, just nes

#

unless someone added it at some point

sand leaf
#

itā€™s working perfectly iā€™m happy to report, always has

#

iā€™ve got a friend in Chile who wanted an adapter so iā€™ve finished up one of my spare PCBā€™s for him

topaz siren
cursive sable
#

Sounds about right, I recall it was something like that

granite pivot
fierce estuary
#

iirc the port is different

#

on NES, the gun can work on either port, and all games assume port 2 works

#

on jp I think it's not the same

granite pivot
#

The connections for the gun were moved to the controller ports and they are on the expansion port for Famicom

fierce estuary
#

right

granite pivot
#

and AV Famicom doesn't wire the controller ports for the gun

fierce estuary
#

right

granite pivot
#

I think the only game I tried that didn't work with the JP gun was Operation Wolf, IIRC.

#

or it might be the other way around

#

One thing I like is that the cord is actually a decent length for the JP gun, unlike some JP controllers that are stuck with a short cord.

granite pivot
fierce estuary
#

in some games the DMC samples are backwards

cursive sable
granite pivot
#

Pinball machine. High Speed. NES one is neat, but there ain't nothing like playing the real thing.

cursive sable
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I had no idea it was based on a real pinball machine

granite pivot
#

Classic Williams pin. Has a sequel that is also worth checking out.

granite pivot
cursive sable
#

Don't be silly, clearly that stands for Direct Mario Controller

hollow wyvern
#

Is the VS Nes going to be a separate core on mister devel ?

amber willow
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yeah that's the plan right now, it doesn't really share any code with the nes core

topaz siren
fierce estuary
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I was thinking of adding an option in advanced to swap it

fierce estuary
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@amber willow is the vs core going to be put in mister-devel yet?

amber willow
clever scarab
#

I think the VS core is pretty great!

cursive sable
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I prefer the Battle core myself, or somtimes the GP core

Screenshot202022-09-0320at2001-38-0020Mario20Kart206420-20Complete201002520Longplay20-20All20Cups20All20Tracks20All20Gold20150cc20Walkthrough20-20YouTube.png
amber willow
#

Do you guys want the VS game mras to be all together in the arcade folder? They all start with the Vs prefix so would all be in the V section. Or do you want the duplicate games to be in arcade/alternatives?

#

You may have to delete the old test mras before running update when it gets set up

clever scarab
#

Yeah thatā€™s what I did:

IMG_2705.jpg IMG_2706.jpg
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Maybe a VS System specific alternatives folder? So you donā€™t need to make one folder for each game.

blissful prairie
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The list is already so long and there are quite a lot of VS. games. Is a separate Nintendo VS. subfolder possible?

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A special case because they are arcadised console games?

clever scarab
amber willow
blissful prairie
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Not just for the reason of being arcadized console games, but that they didn't have arcade cabs of their own

amber willow
#

alot of arcade games didn't have their own dedicated cabs though, some only came as kits that you repurposed an old cabinet with.

clever wave
#

All Hell Unleashed v6.66 doesn't seem to work on my set up, has anyone else got this working on the core?

clever scarab
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Considering the MiSTer NES core is the most accurate NES emulator that's currently available, it's very likely that it doesn't work on real hardware.

#

Or it uses a mapper that's not yet supported, or maybe you have an issue with your config?

clever wave
amber willow
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it may have something to do with it being 512k in size

clever scarab
clever wave
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In terms of mapper it says for emulators to use sony-cxa2025as-us

clever wave
amber willow
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the sony thing might be a pallete or something. not mapper

#

if it uses mapper 2, that officially has a size limit of 256k I think

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but the game seemed to boot at least for me, I didn't play too far into it, does it crash or something?

hasty trout
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Seems to work ok for me too

clever wave
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If you reset after selecting a character and the game doesn't load there is some text displayed for the story. It just seems to hang.

amber willow
clever wave
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Interesting. Maybe I need to redownload the rom. Is this the v6.66 version as well?