Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

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UncleSporky
Posts: 388
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2007 8:44 pm

Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

Post by UncleSporky »

Hello! I haven't posted here in almost 10 years. How's everybody doing? I love that this place is being kept alive, there are so many good resources here dating back a long time.

With the recent localization of the Famicom Detective Club games to the Switch, I've been interested in checking out the original games just to compare the graphics and scenes.

I loaded up the first game, The Missing Heir, using the latest version of Win32 FCEUX downloaded fresh from the website. However, the graphics for characters in the game are often corrupted and glitchy. Some people look fine, others don't, but outside of that the game seems to run fine.

A normal forensics officer, looking fine:

Image

A glitched doctor:

Image

Here's what the doctor is supposed to look like:

Image

...Ok, yes, I'm kidding. :P But this sort of comparison is what I've been trying to do, and it doesn't work very well when half the people are screwed up!

I also tested this on puNES, apparently one of the most accurate Famicom emulators out there. Same situation.

This is not only my problem...the only other footage I've found of the game also has the same issue:

Image

I don't know what emulator this person was using, but it's not FCEUX, the menu structure was different.

My question is, where does the problem likely lie? Do most emulators have a coding flaw when it comes to interpreting the way Famicom Detective Club handles people? Or is the only widespread copy of Famicom Detective Club corrupted in some way?


And does anyone know how we can go about fixing this?


If anyone else goes searching for this game, you may find it under the name Famicom Tantei Club: Kieta Koukeisha.

And if anyone decides to look into this, here are the in-game steps to reproduce in order to get to the first glitched person:
Boot up the game and press start on the first title screen menu option to start.
きく -> じぶんのこと
しらべる -> じぶんのからだ
ばしょいどう -> じこげんば

しらべる -> じこげんば
きく
しらべる -> どこ? -> Move your cursor and select the person up on the cliff.
ばしょいどう -> がけのうえ

きく -> なまえ
きく -> じぶんのこと
ばしょいどう -> うつぎじむしょ

きく -> じむしょ
きく -> うつぎのこと
きく -> うなかみのがけ
しらべる -> どこ? -> Move your cursor and select the note on the table.
ばしょいどう
おもいだす -> Enter your name.
Watch the intro sequence of the game, then when prompted, eject the disk, flip it to side B, and re-insert.

The first scene that comes up will show a glitched train station clerk.
Pokun
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Re: Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

Post by Pokun »

Hello I've just tried the game in Mesen and the station clerk is not glitched for me.
Maybe it's the emulator or the disk image you have. The disk image I used came from a disk image collection "no-intro 20170211". No-intro disks are often dumped incorrectly like Paluthena no Kagami which has a glitched skyworld due to a bad dump and Zelda II which has missing items due to an incorrectly erased save file. If you want to be sure it's not the disk image, you can try Nintendo's own dumps (from the "giga leak") if you can find them and convert them to FDS.
The most accurate emulators are said to be Nintendulator (and TheNewRisingSun's fork of it) I think, but Mesen and puNES should also be very accurate.

Oh now I feel like playing this game. I've had the disk for years but haven't played it yet!
Last edited by Pokun on Sat May 22, 2021 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ben Boldt
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Location: Minnesota, USA

Re: Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

Post by Ben Boldt »

There are 2 different revisions of FDS BIOS ROM (plus a third for the twin famicom). Have you tried both revisions BIOS with this disk image?

May be worth sharing checksums of your working combination of disk image and BIOS Pokun.
Pokun
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Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 5:49 am
Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Re: Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

Post by Pokun »

Ah right, here they are:

Code: Select all

"Famicom Tantei Club - Kieta Koukeisha - Zenpen (Japan).fds"
CRC-32: EC4C0E91
CRC-64: 28A5676BDAEEF148

"disksys.rom"
CRC-32: 5E607DCF
CRC-64: 94E791A2FC65E841
The CRC of the FDS image is not the same as the one from the giga leak as far as I can tell (but I might have made a mistake converting it). It might just be a change done by the disk writer in the header though.

The BIOS I used is the "Newer Standalone" version without the drop shadow on the text on the Mario & Luigi screen (which is the most common BIOS in RAM Adapters I think).
UncleSporky
Posts: 388
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2007 8:44 pm

Re: Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

Post by UncleSporky »

Thanks for checking this out for me!

I went looking for other sources for the rom and discovered one of those "no-intro" collections. The game was separated into different files for disk 1 side A, disk 1 side B, disk 2 side A and B. So I needed to read up on how to concatenate them into one file for the sake of the emulators I'm using.

When I got back up to that point in the game, the character was no longer corrupted! So it was simply a matter of the specific disk image. The emulator and BIOS were fine.

That's my own fault (and the youtuber's) for taking the path of least resistance and grabbing the first copy that comes up. :P
Pokun wrote: Sat May 22, 2021 1:37 pm Oh now I feel like playing this game. I've had the disk for years but haven't played it yet!
The story ramps up and gets excellent toward the end, overall it contains subject matter more serious and evocative than any other 8-bit game I've played.

However, it isn't much of a "game." There are almost no puzzles to be solved, no "use lighter on branch" etc. It's really about choosing the right options that advance the story, and it's often not obvious which ones will do that. You will have to do things which you've already done again, because the game decided that it's the next thing you have to do. You might start off every room "look"ing at everything and then talk to people; however there's at least one point in the game where you have to "look" at someone after talking to them in order to keep the story going, and no indication that you need to do that. There's at least one point where you have to do something fruitless multiple times in a row, with the same response, to trigger something happening. And there's one point in the game where I got very stuck, because I was expected to talk to one person, then talk to someone else, and then attempt to talk to the first person again in order to trigger the next thing. Very old school.
Pokun
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Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Re: Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

Post by Pokun »

Glad you got it working!
The no-intro disk I tested is 128 kB so it has both sides. Zenpen and Kouhen are in separate images though, which makes sense since I think both disks are supposed to be bootable on their own. I tried Kouhen and it gave error 20 in Mesen which is strange. Nintendulator-NRS is able to select a different file when switching disks I think, and it should probably work with sides as well.

UncleSporky wrote: Sat May 22, 2021 3:42 pm
Pokun wrote: Sat May 22, 2021 1:37 pm Oh now I feel like playing this game. I've had the disk for years but haven't played it yet!
The story ramps up and gets excellent toward the end, overall it contains subject matter more serious and evocative than any other 8-bit game I've played.

However, it isn't much of a "game." There are almost no puzzles to be solved, no "use lighter on branch" etc. It's really about choosing the right options that advance the story, and it's often not obvious which ones will do that. You will have to do things which you've already done again, because the game decided that it's the next thing you have to do. You might start off every room "look"ing at everything and then talk to people; however there's at least one point in the game where you have to "look" at someone after talking to them in order to keep the story going, and no indication that you need to do that. There's at least one point where you have to do something fruitless multiple times in a row, with the same response, to trigger something happening. And there's one point in the game where I got very stuck, because I was expected to talk to one person, then talk to someone else, and then attempt to talk to the first person again in order to trigger the next thing. Very old school.
That sounds a lot like the sequel. I played the SFC version of the second game back when Tomato fantranslated it and I loved it. It's a lot like a sound novel though much more interactive, I don't have any problems with this genre. I always hoped for the first game to be translated as well but it never was. Until now for the Switch but I've already learned Japanese since. I look forward to play the first game for the first time, and the original version of the second game. It's just too bad that I still remember who the murderer was in the second game...
UncleSporky
Posts: 388
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2007 8:44 pm

Re: Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

Post by UncleSporky »

Pokun wrote: Sat May 22, 2021 4:47 pm Glad you got it working!
The no-intro disk I tested is 128 kB so it has both sides. Zenpen and Kouhen are in separate images though, which makes sense since I think both disks are supposed to be bootable on their own. I tried Kouhen and it gave error 20 in Mesen which is strange. Nintendulator-NRS is able to select a different file when switching disks I think, and it should probably work with sides as well.
I have almost zero knowledge of this, but I believe there are very few 2-disk FDS games, and so support can be spotty.

FCEUX seems to only support flipping a single disk and re-inserting it. In puNES, the menu shows support for up to 4 disks of both side A and B. I concatenated all four files together and it does show options for A/B of both disks. I imagine this may be necessary for this particular emulator at least, opening a new file acts like resetting the system.
Pokun
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Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 5:49 am
Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Re: Famicom Detective Club's corrupted character graphics

Post by Pokun »

I see. Yeah there only 6 two-disk games that I can think of (the two Famicom Mukashibanashi games, Tantei Jinguji Saburo, Time Twist and the two Famicom Tantei games) and I think most modern emulators supports them all if all disks are in the same file at least. Nintendulator-NRS is special in that it can load another file when switching side/disk, and it has a special file dialogue for that. This is great since you can easily load any combinations of disks, and use things like the official disk tester disk and Chris Covell's disk listing program. I don't understand why other emulators don't do it this way, it makes much more sense since there is no limit how many and what disks you can load after each other on a real FDS. NRS also supports unlicensed 3.5" disk systems used by Famiclone computers, so you need to pick 2.8" for FDS QuickDisks.

Otherwise Mesen is probably the best emulator if you have a somewhat modern computer. It's very accurate and is made for both playing games and for developers with great debug tools. It's too bad Sour stopped development on Mesen and Mesen-S, but I think he was overworking himself (updates came very fast) so he really needed to rest.
FCEUX is only decent by modern standards (though it's still very accurate for its age). I only use it on my laptop because Mesen is a bit slow on older computers while FCEUX is very fast and also has great debug tools.
PuNES also seems good but I haven't used it as much.
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