I would like to know if there is any difference in making a dev cart from a nes cartridge and a famicom one?
My first impression would be no but I just want to confirm before I launch myself into this. There is many different type of cartridge that I can salvage from hardware shop in the junk section for 30/100 yen (especially baseball game... there must be millions of them here) that I guess I can find all kind of mapper combination if I look properly.
Quite interesting. Example: is the MegaMan2 cart board technically different from Rockman2 ?
Fx3 wrote:
Quite interesting. Example: is the MegaMan2 cart board technically different from Rockman2 ?
We could always confirm it since I do have Rockman 2. As long as I don't have to break the sticker on it, I wouldn't mind to open it and take a picture.
What I forgot to mention is I want use it mostly for development but I may want to reproduce a few cart that never came to Japan. For example, game like Kick master, Rollergames, low-g-man, strider etc. Ok, not all of them are great game but I can't buy them here and would love to try it again in a non emulated form (the worst is that I had all of them.. I should have never sold my american cart collection before moving here). Is there any restriction to make reproduction cart from an american game on a famicom cart?
It's exactly the same process as NES carts.
BTW, Rockman 2 is also the same as Mega Man 2, both MMC1.
kyuusaku wrote:
It's exactly the same process as NES carts.
Great! Now I just need to go hunting for generic baseball carts with the mapper I'm interested in and get wild then
But, regarding the repro-carts, japanese cart have extra hardware that limit which one will work properly in an american one because of an extra sound chip or something similar. I don't think there is any issue the other way around? Except I read one part about the nes has a raw mode for sound that the famicom doesn't have. Could that be an issue with a few games that I may be interested to make available in a famicom format or some coding that I could do?
Banshaku wrote:
But, regarding the repro-carts, japanese cart have extra hardware that limit which one will work properly in an american one because of an extra sound chip or something similar.
Huh? Some Japanese carts do, but it doesn't change the process at all.
Banshaku wrote:
I don't think there is any issue the other way around? Except I read one part about the nes has a raw mode for sound that the famicom doesn't have. Could that be an issue with a few games that I may be interested to make available in a famicom format or some coding that I could do?
The consoles are for all practical purposes identical, and it's even easier to make Famicom carts because there isn't a lockout chip.
kyuusaku wrote:
Huh? Some Japanese carts do, but it doesn't change the process at all.
Sorry, my comment was not clear at all. I write a little bit too fast because I'm doing it during some break time at work.
Great, for repro-cart the process is the same, thank you for confirming it. What I meant is if there is any american game that are not compatible on the famicom? I guess not since the famicom came first?
edit:
Worst case I just buy a nes-to-famicom adapter (if I can find one) and buy the game back. I want mostly to use the cart as a dev cart anyway. To play a few game I cannot get here was just a plus.
Banshaku wrote:
What I meant is if there is any american game that are not compatible on the famicom?
Perhaps the games that require a non-standard controller (e.g. Miracle Piano) or a Four Score accessory (e.g. Smash TV) because those differ between the Famicom and the NES.
Technicly those should stil be compatible with an adaptor for the plugs.
Yes some games wouldn't work easily. The power pad and 4 player adapters work different. I can't remember if the famicom lightguns would work with a US game either. But without add-ons, they should work fine. Nintendo used the same circuit board types--just in different formats.
Good to know. So mostly game that could use some peripheral may have an issue on the famicom. I will keep that in mind before I get back some american games.
At least now I know that any programming I will make will work without issue.
Great, thanks guys
Keep in mind that the rom pinouts may differ to! (they might not saying they do)
Jeroen wrote:
Keep in mind that the rom pinouts may differ to! (they might not saying they do)
I guess the information about the rom pinout must be on the wiki? For now I found the one regarding the mappers, cpu , ppu etc but not the rom. I will try to search more, I must have not looked at the right place.
Well the thing is as I understand that noa made all the games in america. (boards ect) so they bought the same chips ect. However in japan this was not the case. This allowed developers to just buy standard roms ect. So that's why pinouts may differ ect.
Hmmm... This mean I will never know what is inside until I open it. I may have to open a lot of those baseball cart in the junk pile before I find an appropriate one
Theres a good chance they all use the same rom and board. Just look up the pinout of the rom on the internet.
I'm pretty sure most FC carts have the same pinout as the NES, sometimes the ROM chips are directly the same (for old games).
However don't take word of this as it, there may be differences, especially for board with weird names (like SL1ROM, etc...)
Anyway the pinout of both mappers and FC cart connector is known, so you can just verify it with a beeping ohm meter yourself.
Ya i'd expect mostly third party dev's (konami ect) to have their own roms.
Yes but some games changed from third party boards to nintendo boards in the us--castlevania 3 for example. They're few and far between, but they exist.
The pinouts on official boards are the same, 3rd party boards aren't. I've made repros on famicom boards--only times I had to figure out pinouts were 3rd party boards. Do remember that the famicom chr and prg roms are on opposite sides of the circuit board.
I got an extra Olympus no tatakai for cheap yesterday (my original one was not working properly sometime). I was hoping to be able to use the old one as a test dev board since the english one was using an MMC1. After searching on the net, they used an UNROM instead... So it seems some game when they were ported were changed mappers in the US. I'm learning new things everyday, yay! (...) Oh well. I don't mind to have a spare cart for the price I paid anyway.
Yes, this is also the case for at least Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest II and Maniac Mansion. For Contra it's the other way arround: The US version uses UNROM while the japanese version uses a more advanced mapper.
I bet all non-Nintendo made board have standard EPROM compataible pinout, but maybe that's not the case. Konami could be evil enough to have swapped pinout as well, but I guess most other third-parties are safe (or just not rich enough to afford custom-made mask-ROMs).
Interesting, well you can always put another unrom game on it.
I don't think I knew some games made mapper upgrades, but that makes sense. Most of the mapper changes I could think of were 3rd party mappers to nintendo mappers like Tiny Toons 1 & 2 and Rolling Thunder.