rom extension naming.

jargon · Post by **jargon** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:25 am

why is the extension for a NES/FC rom .NES
but a SNES/SFC extension is .SMC?

Dwedit · Post by **Dwedit** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:27 am

SMC = Super Magicom, a brand of copier.

Celius · Post by **Celius** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:59 am

All the SNES ROMs I have are .SMC.

NotTheCommonDose · Post by **NotTheCommonDose** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:04 pm

Celius wrote:All the SNES ROMs I have are .SMC.

ditto

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:22 pm

I have some ROMs with .fig extensions, but all of these are homebew. I guess it's like SMC without the header, I'm not sure however. I guess that there also is SMC files without header, and the emulator detects it somehow.

kyuusaku · Post by **kyuusaku** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:47 pm

.SMC is just used for historical reasons, most ROMs today don't have Magicom headers. If they do, they usually aren't given proper extensions anyway to designate between strict Magicom, Wild Card (.SWC) and Pro Fighter (.FIG) ROMs which are all very similar.

As I understand it, there's a big push for SNES ROMs to be straight binary files now since copier headers are pretty useless for emulation. Strict binary in itself is stupid though since you can't always rely on the data from the Nintendo header and ROM size. Even if you can emulate most games with the header information, it won't necessarily be accurate without emulating the specific PCB the game uses.

Nintendo's official ROM format is straight binary files in <=8M parts (don't remember the naming) given the extension .SFC, but when you submit the ROM to Nintendo, they know which board type you're using.

dvdmth · Post by **dvdmth** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:10 am

kyuusaku wrote:As I understand it, there's a big push for SNES ROMs to be straight binary files now since copier headers are pretty useless for emulation. Strict binary in itself is stupid though since you can't always rely on the data from the Nintendo header and ROM size. Even if you can emulate most games with the header information, it won't necessarily be accurate without emulating the specific PCB the game uses.

As far as I know, all SNES emulators rely on the internal header, not the 512-byte header, to detect ROM info (although some do a better job than others). The only time I know of that an emulator will look at the 512-byte header is if a special data block (generated by the ROM tool NSRT) is present there, which provides some additional information such as controllers used, game genres, etc.

The No-Intro SNES ROM set uses .sfc for the file extension. I believe NSRT uses .sfc for headerless ROMs and .smc for ROMs with headers when renaming.

atari2600a · Post by **atari2600a** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:15 am

kyuusaku wrote:Nintendo's official ROM format is straight binary files in <=8M parts (don't remember the naming) given the extension .SFC, but when you submit the ROM to Nintendo, they know which board type you're using.

Curious, can you cite this info? I'd be very interested in reading whatever documentation such fun info came from!:P

jargon · Post by **jargon** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:48 pm

i had some files with the 'fig' extension that turned out to actually be nes roms

i only had one 'swc' i couldn't get it to work in any emulator i tried it in at the time. even when temporarily renaming the extension.

btw not all .fig files are roms,

as there was a guy in the late 90s that went by the name 'Anthony Figluizi' (or was it 'Anthony Figluigi' sp?) that published Quick Basic demos via QBASIC.com and other various QBasic sites that used '*.fig' as his own self-contained universal media, save data, and initialization script database format for his demos and games.

jargon · Post by **jargon** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:06 pm

atari2600a wrote:
kyuusaku wrote:Nintendo's official ROM format is straight binary files in <=8M parts (don't remember the naming) given the extension .SFC, but when you submit the ROM to Nintendo, they know which board type you're using.
Curious, can you cite this info? I'd be very interested in reading whatever documentation such fun info came from!:P

maybe he used to work on REAL nes/snes games.

kyuusaku · Post by **kyuusaku** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:17 pm

Nah, just read it in the official docs similar to the ones scanned on the internet. These are probably similar but I haven't checked:

http://www.romhacking.net/docs/SNESDevManual.rar
http://www.romhacking.net/docs/sfcman.rar
http://www.romhacking.net/docs/SFC_Manual.zip

Post by **tepples** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:00 am

If those are the official docs, would reading them contaminate us under trade secret and copyright law?

kyuusaku · Post by **kyuusaku** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:08 am

I have no idea, but I have no problem with my post being deleted. I hesitated to post because of that, and because I actually linked to a ROM hacking website

WedNESday · Post by **WedNESday** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 2:33 pm

kyuusaku wrote:I have no idea, but I have no problem with my post being deleted. I hesitated to post because of that, and because I actually linked to a ROM hacking website

*Downloads them all very very quickly*

They seem to be very official indeed. Many pages of legal stuff. They make for one very interesting read.

Edit:

tepples wrote:If those are the official docs, would reading them contaminate us under trade secret and copyright law?

I mean, IF I were to read them...