Vs. Super Mario Bros. on PowerPak

[oRBIT2002]

"The Goonies" is one of my favourite movies ever.
I'll do some checking and see what I can come up with..

[GameMachineJames]

"The Goonies" is one of my favourite movies ever.
I'll do some checking and see what I can come up with..

Ohhh... Getting this playable on my PowerPak would be magnificent! ^_^
I know the mapper is a variant of VRC1.

[oRBIT2002]

"The Goonies" is one of my favourite movies ever.
I'll do some checking and see what I can come up with..

Ohhh... Getting this playable on my PowerPak would be magnificent! ^_^
I know the mapper is a variant of VRC1.

Hey, check your messages, I've sent you a pm!

[SkinnyV]

Just saw that you released the VS Goonies patch, you're on fire these days Too bad I can't play it on my Everdrive N8 since mapper 151 is not yet supported. I tought mapper 151 was supposed to be pretty much the same as mapper 75 so I tried to see if it would run as VRC1 but no dice, the gfx get messed up and unaligned... That's curious, aren't they supposed to be the same ASIC?

[GameMachineJames]

Just saw that you released the VS Goonies patch, you're on fire these days Too bad I can't play it on my Everdrive N8 since mapper 151 is not yet supported. I tought mapper 151 was supposed to be pretty much the same as mapper 75 so I tried to see if it would run as VRC1 but no dice, the gfx get messed up and unaligned... That's curious, aren't they supposed to be the same ASIC?

Hehehe this is my first-ever released hack of anything. "You're on fire these days" tickles me. Also yeah. I was of the impression that VRC1 and Mapper 151 were identical as well. If I had to venture a guess I'd say that the Mapper-switching you're attempting is causing some chr addresses to show incorrectly.

Try it on a PowerPak, it might work better. I simply can't stand Krikzz hardware because he phones it in.

[SkinnyV]

I was under the impression that oRBIT2002 was responsible for hacking the control routine... As for playing it on Powerpak, I can't as I do not own one anymore.

[oRBIT2002]

Mapper 151 is very simple, odd that it's not implemented on the Everdrive.

[SkinnyV]

It is not implemented yet, that's why I tried to run it as mapper 75 which is supported. But the same issue appear when playing it as mapper 75 on nestopia so I guess I'll have to wait for Krikzz to add mapper 151.

[lidnariq]

I suspect that the problems are because Nestopia isn't allowing a mapper 75 game with 4-screen mirroring.
FCEUX (other than the palette being wrong) seems to work when I add a NES2.0 header: 4e 45 53 1a 04 08 b9 49 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00

[GameMachineJames]

The same thing happens when trying to run it on a PowerPak as Mapper 75. Once we somehow get this working on Mapper 75, I reckon it'll be a lot easier on some people.

[lidnariq]

Ok, I think this is actually fixable with a ROM hack instead of fixing the m75 definition to support 4 screen:

Change the byte at 0xF037 from 01 to 00. This changes LDA #1 / STA $9000 to LDA #0 &c. For some reason the game explicitly writes the wrong value to the mirroring control register on a machine where I think that isn't used for anything? ( http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/VRC1 ... .249FFF.29 )

Someone with the actual hardware would need to see whether the Vs. System Goonies module actually connects pin 17 to anything ( http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/VRC1_pinout ), or if this is just an anti-piracy measure.

I'm terrible at this game, and haven't beaten the first level, so someone else will need to make sure this is all that's necessary to fix things.

[SkinnyV]

Nice digging around lidnariq, it now seem to work perfectly on my Everdrive N8. Thanks. I'll make a patch for the user of the Everdrive N8 forum letting them know it is because of your research.

[GameMachineJames]

Ok, I think this is actually fixable with a ROM hack instead of fixing the m75 definition to support 4 screen:

Change the byte at 0xF037 from 01 to 00. This changes LDA #1 / STA $9000 to LDA #0 &c. For some reason the game explicitly writes the wrong value to the mirroring control register on a machine where I think that isn't used for anything? ( http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/VRC1 ... .249FFF.29 )

Someone with the actual hardware would need to see whether the Vs. System Goonies module actually connects pin 17 to anything ( http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/VRC1_pinout ), or if this is just an anti-piracy measure.

I'm terrible at this game, and haven't beaten the first level, so someone else will need to make sure this is all that's necessary to fix things.

I can't speak as to Everdrive N8 and have not yet built myself a VRC1 test board... But it runs beautifully as Mapper 75 with this fx on a PowerPak, and in Nintendulator!

Thanks everyone. You've made my dream of a home-playable copy of Vs. The Goonies on real hardware a reality!

Goonies never say die!