Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

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Fiskbit
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Fiskbit »

The no dump entries are totally fine by me, but "Excite Bike (Japan) (FamicomBox)" is a duplicate entry of "Excitebike (Japan) (FamicomBox)", so the former should be removed; these are the same game.

Everything else looks correct to me at this point. Thanks for all the work!
Hiccup
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Hiccup »

Fixed!
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togemet2
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by togemet2 »

Released the dump of the Senjou no Ookami cartridge to the public for anyone who wants to check it out.

Within the ROM the strings "88/11/5 FOR FAMCOM BOX" can be found, pretty neat :)
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Fiskbit
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Fiskbit »

I have CRC32 information for a few more games, though I don't have access to the dumps.

Code: Select all

Argos no Senshi (Japan) (FamicomBox)
CRC32: FBA8113B

Devil World (Japan) (FamicomBox) = Devil World (Japan) (Rev 1)
CRC32: 145A9A6C

Donkey Kong Jr. (Japan) (FamicomBox) =  Donkey Kong Jr. (World) (Rev 1)
CRC32: 4864C304

Excitebike (Japan) (FamicomBox) = Excitebike (Japan, USA) (En)
CRC32: 49AEB3A6

Fighting Golf (Japan) (FamicomBox)
CRC32: 9FF3089B

Ice Climber (Japan) (FamicomBox) = Ice Climber (Japan) (En)
CRC32: 0B58880C

Ninja Ryuukenden (Japan) (FamicomBox)
CRC32: 8528E509
So, this verifies the dumps we already have of Argos no Senshi, Fighting Golf, and Ninja Ryuukenden, and indicates Devil World, Donkey Kong Jr., Excitebike, and Ice Climber are all consumer versions, which is unsurprising.

I've listed the games we're still looking for below. Games with *'s are ones I'm not sure actually exist, but which I have seen mentioned online.

1943
*Akuma-kun: Makai no Wana
*Donald Land
*Kame no Ongaeshi
Punch-Out!!

[Edit: 1943 and Punch-Out!! have now been dumped. Akuma-kun is believed to not exist. Kame no Ongaeshi and Donald Land are confirmed to exist.]
kmg
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by kmg »

The updates are much appreciated, as always. That there may be an Akuma-kun is news to me.

http://famicombox.jp/deai6.html has a photo of the Kame no Ongaeshi cart and mentions Donald Land earlier. I can't imagine there were many knock-off replicas (with labels) made for a relatively obscure platform, especially back then (the site hasn't been updated in 11-12 years it seems). Also interesting is the mention of a BG bug in 1943 in the same paragraph. I wonder if some or all 1943's just had mis-soldered V/H pads?
Fiskbit
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Fiskbit »

This is the site that mentions Akuma-kun. In addition to Kame no Ongaeshi, I take your link as strong evidence that Donald Land does indeed exist, so Akuma-kun is now the only one I'd call questionable.

Wrong mirroring on 1943 sounds plausible. I also learned recently that Rockman has bad audio because it doesn't initialize the sweep registers, which get used by the FamicomBox menu; ideally they would have rolled a new version of Rockman that initializes these. Nintendo may not have given all of these releases that much attention.

Your link also mentions startup issues on some of these. I wonder if this is unreliability related to MMC1 booting up in the wrong mode or with the wrong bank. If different versions of MMC1 have different boot behavior, I could see these releases having unique startup issues that would make them not show up in the menu.

Finally, I also have information about another Knight Rider dump that was showing as all FF's. This is the same issue we had when dumping Knight Rider until we realized it was actually twice the size. I take this as confirmation that the first 64 KB of the FamicomBox Knight Rider should indeed be FF's.
NewRisingSun
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by NewRisingSun »

Akuma-kun would be the only Bandai mapper game in a 72-pin cartridge.
kmg
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by kmg »

More evidence from the same site is this picture: http://famicombox.jp/PICS/console/titleall.JPG. If you look in the middle right column there's exactly one Donald Land label between the Rockman and Knight Rider carts.

As for Akuma-kun I'm guessing it comes from a mistranslation. The video game kraken site lists Operation Wold [sic] (戦場の狼). Others have pointed out that this mistranslation of Senjou no Ookami is the likely source of the claims that Operation Wolf was on the FamicomBox. Note, Senjou no Ookami (Commando) is also in the same list. Similarly we have the two entries: Akuma-kun: Makai no Wana (Makai Village) and Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins (魔界村). That looks an awful lot like somewhere, someone along the line mistook Akuma-kun for Makai Village, aka Makaimura.

Still I'll keep my eyes opened for the possibility they or others exist. An even 40 games would be satisfying. The Japanese site says the same and notes that games were sold in sets of 5. Is this right? Did the 10-game box sets only come with the systems themselves? I wonder if there are any sources on which games were sold together in which packages?
Fiskbit
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Fiskbit »

Senjou no Ookami definitely causes a lot of confusion. I'd certainly believe that this is the same thing, but with Makaimura. The fact that it's an oddball mapper makes it seem already suspect to me.

So, it sounds like there's just 4 games left, then. Last I heard, we had a lead on 1943 and Punch-Out!!, though it's been a while since I've heard an update.

Regarding sets, there were indeed sets of 10, possibly at least 4 bundles; I've seen images of 10-cart boxes labeled SSS-B and SSS-D. Still, I see carts in groupings of 5. I've compiled a list based on auctions from the last several months, numbered arbitrarily. Sets 1 and 2 were often bundled as a set of 10, I think, and I've seen an image of sets 1 and 3 in plastic in a 10-cart box.

Set 1:
- Baseball
- Duck Hunt
- Golf
- Mahjong
- Super Mario Bros

Set 2:
- Donkey Kong
- Mario Bros.
- Tennis
- Wild Gunman
- Wrecking Crew
(I've seen one of these with Devil World instead of Donkey Kong.)

Set 3:
- F1 Race
- Makaimura
- Pro Resu
- Senjou no Ookami
- Takahashi Meijin no Bouken-jima

Set 4 (SSS-G):
- Fighting Golf
- Ice Hockey
- Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! / Punch-Out!!
- Ninja Ryuukenden
- Rockman

Set 5:
- 1943
- Kame no Ongaeshi
- Knight Rider
- Soccer League: Winner's Cup
- Super Chinese 2

Set 6 (SSS-E):
- Argos no Senshi
- Gradius
- Excite Bike
- Twin Bee
- Volleyball

Set 7:
- Devil World
- Donkey Kong JR.
- Gomoku Narabe Renju
- Hogan's Alley
- Ice Climber

[Edited to update the list. I'll add to this as more is discovered.]
[Edit: I've seen Ice Climber bundled with 4 other games from SSS-E, but a box for SSS-E Type (H2) lists Excite Bike, instead.]
[Edit: Set 7 updated with Devil World and Ice Climber based on a set of 5 manuals seen at auction.]
Fiskbit
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Fiskbit »

I was shown an image that has a few more FamicomBox games I haven't seen mentioned anywhere: Spartan X, Spelunker, Star Luster, and Xevious. I don't know if I'd take this as proof that they're authentic; notably, the image also has Famicom controllers, so the setup isn't 100% stock. If these are genuine, though, I don't expect them to differ from the consumer versions because all 4 are present in the menu database. That also means they'd be easier to fake, because they wouldn't require any change to the ROM.
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Hiccup
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Hiccup »

Fiskbit wrote: Sun May 01, 2022 11:23 am I have CRC32 information for a few more games, though I don't have access to the dumps.
...
Would it be possible for you to get this info in addition to the CRC32s for these dumps?
https://dumping.guide/submission/general
Fiskbit
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Fiskbit »

This is all of the additional information I can give you without paying for copies of the ROMs, which I'm unwilling to do:

Code: Select all

Argos no Senshi: 128 KiB PRG, 0 KiB CHR, UNROM, Vertical mirroring
Devil World: 16 KiB PRG, 8 KiB CHR, NROM, Horizontal mirroring
Donkey Kong Jr: 16 KiB PRG, 8 KiB CHR, NROM, Vertical mirroring
Excitebike: 16 KiB PRG, 8 KiB CHR, NROM, Vertical mirroring
Fighting Golf: 128 KiB PRG, 128 KiB CHR, MMC1
Ice Climber: 16 KiB PRG, 8 KiB CHR, NROM, Horizontal mirroring
Ninja Ryuukenden: 128 KiB PRG, 128 KiB CHR, MMC1
Hiccup
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Hiccup »

Yeah if the dumper isn't interested then its probably best to leave it.
skaman
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by skaman »

I finally received a couple of FamicomBox carts for testing. The two titles are Baseball and Golf. The dumps match the No-Intro database entries.

In case anyone is looking to dump their own carts, I used a standalone Famicom Dumper that I built (it was the genesis for the FC/NES addon to sanni's Cart Reader). I made some FC-NES adapters to dump NES carts which came in handy for dumping these FamicomBox carts.

The FamicomBox carts would only work with the FC-NES adapter that did not have the sound expansion pins connected. In order to get a complete dump of a FamicomBox cart, you'll need to connect Pins 69 and 71 (PPU D4 to CIC CLK) and Pins 70 and 36 (CIC +RST to +5V). I used some test clips to jump the pins on the adapter.

Take Care!
Fiskbit
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Re: Famicombox Ice Hockey and Volleyball

Post by Fiskbit »

You should be very careful plugging FamicomBox carts into anything that uses the expansion pins, because some of those pins are connected to 5V and ground in the cartridge. You could end up damaging something.

Similarly, you should be careful plugging any cart that uses the expansion pins into the FamicomBox (I put a big warning about this on the wiki page, even). The FamicomBox runs 5V and ground over most of its EXP pins. I plugged a modern NES cart into mine that turned out to have ground on EXP0, which fried a chip in the cart. A friend put an Everdrive in and its audio out was damaged. The pinout difference is small, but significant.
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