need someone to help me with some eeprom programming

[notaburger]

howdy,

i am here asking for a favor from someone on this board. i have recently finished a super mario brothers 1 hack and i was wondering if i could pay someone here to do the burning for me. I looked into purchasing a programmer myself but it is an investment that i can't really afford to make right now. By no means am i asking for a hand out, i will gladly pay beyond what the chips are worth for this help.

the story is this. I am actually proposing to my long time girlfriend in the game. we first connected over gaming, so i thought it would be kind of neat for her to be able to have something that she can go back to and remind her of the proposal. in other words, this project is kind of time sensitive (i will have dinner reservations the night i wish to propose) and it needs to be done correctly.

i am willing to pay whatever is fare. i was going to purchase the repropack and cart shell from retrozone and will do the soldering myself (unless whomever is willing to help will do that too).

the rom is a .nes file and i should have it all bug tested by the end of next week (around july 29) and i will need it back no later than august 10th.

if anyone is up to the task, please email me at notaburger@gmail.com or reply to this thread.

thanks,

dave

[atari2600a]

Wow...what a kick-ass way to propose!

Have you considered purchasing a PowerPak? I can understand if you'd want EEPROMs for durability.

Oh & also, did you do it in a Hex editor, or did you do what every uber-novice ROM hacker does & swap the text tiles, raping all other text?

[peppers]

programmers dont cost that much a desent one is around $30
exsample

[notaburger]

unfortunately i used an "uber-novice" editor and changed up the levels and text
it's not exactly what i wanted to do but i wanted to ensure that the game was solid and, let's face it, it doesn't get much more solid than smb

initially, i was also using it as a way to sneak it past her so she would be surprised because i was going to have a friend of mine who owns a classic game store to say that he stumbled upon it but couldn't sell it

i have unfortunately been dragging my feet on this and now it just needs to be done

hopefully she won't be able to figure it out before she beats the game

i did look at the powerpacks and they seem like a really good deal but i was looking for something more personal, that seems like it's just a step above running the game in an emulator on an xbox

nes dev is something that i've been dying to get into (the only languages i know are pascal, c++, and java, but it sounds like a fun challenge) but time was an issue with this one (she knows that i have the ring)

thanks for the help guys
i have someone already that has stepped forward to help
hopefully this will all go off without a hitch (huh....huh?)

now that i've graduated college, maybe i'll get some free time to pick up another hobby

[atari2600a]

Wait, so you've put the text in on the "Thank you Mario" scene? Are you sure she'll be able to make it that far? Are you sure she'll even WANT to play it that far?

[notaburger]

yeah, i upped the live count to 99
it's a wee bit harder than the original mario so i wanted to make sure that there is no way that she'll have any problems beating it
i am going to be playing it with her so at the very least i will beat the levels and then die intentionally

that will give her an opportunity to see how i did it

the overall flow of the game is very similar to the original, i moved stuff around and mixed up the types of levels a little, but it still feels like the original mario game

the final castle just has "will you marry me erica?" spelled out in bricks (except the question mark which is made of question mark boxes)

after that there are 2 warp pipes, one with an N that leads to a never ending corridor and one with a Y that leads to the end where there are no baddies

the text is changed for the final scene to something "sweet" and then that's the game

more than likely she'll catch on but will play dumb, so i should be okay

i think i'm going to tell her to take a day off from work for a different weekend just so she thinks that i'm going to ask then

that might work......
if anyone wants to try it out (sort of like a game tester) i will make it available on here as soon as i finish up the last details

hopefully i'll have some time tomorrow to tackle it

[No Carrier]

So... how did it go? What happened? Details, please!

NC

[notaburger]

So I realize that this is looooooooong overdue, but I just wanted to share that everything went well. She was able to beat the game (with my help) and she accepted my proposal. Unfortunately, we discovered a few bugs that I let slip through, but she soldiered through it. She loved the proposal and we proudly display the game cart alongside our other NES games. This August will be our 3rd anniversary.

The real reason why I'm resurrecting this thread is that I'm trying to get a hold of the original forum member that helped me. If the person who programmed my ROM for me is still floating around these parts, do me a favor and drop me an email (it's still notaburger@gmail.com).

I never thanked you properly and I'd really appreciate the opportunity to more appropriately send my thanks.

[notaburger]

Well, this is my last attempt. I apologize for bumping this thread yet again, but I REALLY want to be able to thank the person that helped me before. All of our correspondence went through my college email, which I haven't had access to in years. If he doesn't come forward this time, then I'll finally let this go.

For those of you curious, me and the wife just had our first child about 5 months ago. He's a healthy baby boy that loves to watch his dad play video games. Just yesterday he sat intently while I beat Duck Tales. I'm sure that it had more to do with the bright colors and catchy tunes than my mad platforming skills .