Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

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zoinknoise
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Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by zoinknoise »

here's an interesting pirate. Super Mario Bros. 2, PAL version. (a real challenge on my NTSC machine, since the whole game is sped up!) looks to be from late 1989.
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value of the tacked-on ceramic cap is 470pf. seems like another discrete MMC3-like mapper? i can't find mention of this hack on the wiki.
Last edited by zoinknoise on Sun Oct 23, 2022 1:52 am, edited 3 times in total.
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zoinknoise
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2

Post by zoinknoise »

despite the labeling, the game shows "Super Bros. 2" on the title screen. i have another version of this pirate, with the same label, which shows "Super Bros. 5" on the title screen, but it's running on a typical MMC3 clone chip. this version is using discrete chips.
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the opening text refers to Mario as "Merio." the Bootleg Games wiki suggests "Super Bros 5" is from 1991, while this version is from 1989.
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for whatever reason, the pre-stage "storybook" and pause screen is completely garbled, though the rest of the game looks ok.
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Individualised
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by Individualised »

Interesting cart, thanks for sharing your findings. Does this differ from the already known SMB2U/Doki Doki Panic pirate releases, i.e. do the already known carts all use an MMC3 clone as opposed to discrete logic? I've seen the Super Bros 2 variant before but not with the glitched level screen.

Sidenote: I wonder how many people living in Famiclone regions at the time thought this was just another sprite swap and not an actual official Mario game.
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zoinknoise
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by zoinknoise »

Individualised wrote: Sat Oct 22, 2022 7:23 pm Does this differ from the already known SMB2U/Doki Doki Panic pirate releases, i.e. do the already known carts all use an MMC3 clone as opposed to discrete logic?
i am not an expert, but i think there are bootleg carts of Doki Doki Panic out there with their own bespoke mappers. the only other bootleg hack of SMB2U that i know of is Super Bros. 5, which as i said, uses an MMC3 clone chip (at least my copy does). i have never seen a pirate of SMB2U that uses discrete chips, like this one. i'm not sure if this mapper has been documented or assigned a number either.
Individualised wrote: Sat Oct 22, 2022 7:23 pm I've seen the Super Bros 2 variant before but not with the glitched level screen.
i wonder what's up with that. it could just be my copy. perhaps one of the logic chips has failed.
Joe
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by Joe »

zoinknoise wrote: Sat Oct 22, 2022 7:08 pmseems like another discrete MMC3-like mapper?
I don't think so. The top-left chip looks like it's a mapper ASIC, not a ROM. The discrete chips are too simple to implement MMC3-style bank switching.
lidnariq
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by lidnariq »

I suspect it's a Namco 108 clone in one of the unnamed chips.
NewRisingSun
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by NewRisingSun »

It would have to be a Namco 108 clone that can address 128 KiB of CHR ROM. Then again, reducing the SMB2 ROM to the first 64 KiB of CHR ROM produces the exact graphical errors depicted in the second post here.
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by krzysiobal »

Yup, unnamed top DIP28 is AX-24G or NTDEC8701.
The whole remaining logic is to allow addressing 128 kB of CHR (AX-24G has just limit to 64 kB), mirroring select and WRAM decoder.

PPU-A12 seems to be wired into the AX-24G chip reversed (probably because SMB2 uses PPU A12 swap mode, but this chip does no support it)

The way they wired singe 74*153 to act as bot latch and mirroring mux is amazing:
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Also, is SMB2 the only MMC3 game that does not use interrupts at all?
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zoinknoise
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by zoinknoise »

krzysiobal wrote: Tue Oct 25, 2022 1:14 am The whole remaining logic is to allow addressing 128 kB of CHR (AX-24G has just limit to 64 kB)
interesting. but based on what NewRisingSun said, it sounds like the game is only reading the first 64KB of CHR? maybe something failed?
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Re: Super Wonderful Mario/Super Bros. 2 pirate cart

Post by NewRisingSun »

I would think that the logic that extends AX-26G CHR addressing space from 64 KiB to 128 KiB has a fault somewhere, indeed.

I don't think we need to assign a mapper for this, since it is effectively a partial implementation of TKROM. The existing dump of this cartridge of course is just mapper 4.
krzysiobal wrote:is SMB2 the only MMC3 game that does not use interrupts at all?
Oh, there is quite a few of them. SMB2 was MMC1 (SNROM) for much of its development phase, meaning its conversion phase from FDS to cartridge. It switched to MMC3 only to add CHR-bankswitching animation to the waterfalls and some objects and enemies.
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