nesdev.org

Only the NES-EVENT board (an MMC1 based board with some extra discrete logic) works, and if you have one of those, you already have the authentic cart. It would probably be possible to mapper hack it to run on a generic MMC1 board by dropping the submapper in favor of 32 KiB bankswitching for the SMB1 and Tetris segments, but nobody has had the time to do that.

If any of the NES flash cart projects get finished, it would be possible. BTW, my understading is that some emulators support the dip switch settings of the cart. Don't know which one(s) though.

-Rob

hmm i have nestopia, and it understands the timer and stuff for 5 minutes. Somebody should really try to hack this for a mmc1 board. For a certain time. It doesnt have to be able to switch times, just something to play and still make it a challenge. it would be awesome to have one of these and play it with a bunch of people. see whos got skills. that would be awesome. PLEASE SOMEONE HACK THIS GAME TO WORK ON A NORMAL CART!!! I would actually donate to a "make a repro NWC cart fund" lol.

Per KH's page, NES-EVENT has 256 KiB PRG ROM, 8 KiB PRG RAM, and 8 KiB CHR RAM, just like SNROM. But the lower 128 KiB are switched funny through register $A000; you'll want to log all writes to $A000-$BFFF in an emulator so that you can change those to use the upper 128 KiB.

The hard part will be finding some bytes in RAM that lie unused by all three game engines for the purpose of counting down the 18,000 frames and storing the game scores.

Given the deep disassembly of SMB1 and the existence of a homebrew Tetris clone, would it be easier to start anew by making some cheap racing game?

i dunno man, im still new to all this myself. But i would love for someone to dive into it a little further, especially if they already have the knowledge to do so. It would be great to be able to play this piece of history, At least a little similar to the way it originally was. Without having to pay a few grand for it. Anyone up to the challenge, ill pitch in some cash

You do know that mapper hacking for the express purpose of making reproductions is flagrant copyright infringement, right? I don't want to go to all the trouble of turning this into an SNROM and then get busted.

If you are looking for repro hardware, it can easily be done. Would cost around $90 for one assembled board or ~$30 each for 25 (no cart, no cic). This would be using a cpld instead of mmc1 and no dips so it wouldnt need old parts or be confused for the real thing. Building a pcb that looks relatively close to the original is also easy, but less interesting.

Alternatively you could wait for my PowerPak (yes I promise its still coming out!) which already plays NWC with the correct dip settings. Unfortunately my source for new cart plastics disappeared so it will be a while until I can get a mold made....

It would get scary if people started making NWC repros. Someone is most definitely bound to try to screw people if such a thing is accomplished. Sure, they'd probably be pretty easy to spot, but the potential to take advantage of people would be very real.

Bunnyboy, just curious...how do you intend to handle dip switch settings for your flash cart? Physical swtches, or menu-driven? Also, I hope your cart is designed as such that one couldn't put a single rom on there and have the cart boot up with no menu, as someone could put your cart in another case, put a fake label on it, and create fake NWCs more easily. If it is menu-required, it would help safeguard such an occurance from happening.

-Rob

tepples wrote:flagrant copyright infringement

Uh. Duh...even if one were to repro the cartridge with a 20-whatever binary counter and and aditional 161 to control the hi-bit banking, you still would have to copy the cartridge data from a rom image in the first place. Getting caught doing that alone (without permission) is enough to get busted.

Correction: A crapload of glue logic...just saw the board scan on kevtris' site...jesus...although I now see how this thing was dumped so easily. lol, EPROM. Also to note that it's 3 4040's for the counter (anyone that's ever made an EPROMr knows these pretty well...)

Also, one thing I didn't get is why nintendo didn't just control the stop time through the second controller port. They already had a plug in it for the starting trigger, why not to stop it as well...

The counter outputs to the IRQ which is unused on all those games, so no game logic needs to be changed. Of course I dont think they would have a problem getting the source for modifications...

bunnyboy wrote:The counter outputs to the IRQ which is unused on all those games, so no game logic needs to be changed

Then how does it know to switch to the next game? And where does it store the score? They had to have hacked the games even if only to add auto-starting and auto-finishing.

Yes the games are modified to do game switching, most likely just a couple new lines in each game. No reason 2nd controller couldnt be used except it would be another piece of equipment.

Just did a quick check of the code running and it looks like the wram is used for the irq code and the game loading code (chrram copying).

how do you intend to handle dip switch settings for your flash cart?

Right now PowerPak is just hardwired to the 7:21 time. I will probably add a menu for switching to other times. The cart starts up with my logo and a menu to choose the game so it wouldnt be confused for the real thing.

On a repro cart I wouldn't have any dips, it would just be hardwired. Anyone putting the board inside a fake nwc cart would have to make another place to mount fake dips. As has been discussed before, it would not be hard to create a believable fake so I'm not too worried about the repro board being used.

tepples wrote:Then how does it know to switch to the next game? And where does it store the score? They had to have hacked the games even if only to add auto-starting and auto-finishing.

Nintendo has source code to their games, obviously.

The cart uses WRAM...and I checked in and it seems that there is quite a bit of code saved to the cart's RAM...oh, and it's totally changable too bit-for-bit.

I'm also going to assume that square changed the code for their segment as well (and added some music ).

aamof, I'm gona go in and beat that mario segment right now, just to see if anything got changed...

Talk about minimalist changing.

Okay, I modified some loopyNES code I had lying around to not IRQ on the counter (which, after looking at a board, can be deemed innacurate anyways...I was going by scanlines (y'know, the chr address line trick), which is how MMC3 and MMC5(I think) do it...)

Played through, beat it. Nothing changed besides the 50 coin thingy. Pressed B to restart. Game starts over, 1-1, 99 lives. Plays * game (I ran into a buzzy beetle). Go fig.

Anyone ever go to the minus world in the NWC cart? I know it was different in Japan. Maybe it is on the NWC cart too?

Thanks for checking that out, though, Awal. I've always wanted to know about that.

I've also been quite curious as to what the maximum possible score can be in an NWC cart (not that you could actually obtain it). Anyone know a way to figure that out? Game Genie codes?

Lol, GG codes for NWC would be hilarious!!

Come to think of it, can the time be adjusted via a GG code? That may satisfy all those who want to play this is real competition time, but their emulator won't let them.

-Rob