I've read that it can be done, but I was wondering how much it would cost to buy it from one of the people here, as i've read there are some who can do it. I have about $70 left over from buying the super everdrive but it cannot play star ocean (96 mbits and all that).
Wait awhile, RetroZone (
www.retrousb.com) showed off Star Ocean reproduction cartridges awhile back so probably sometime in the near future they will be available and won't be hacked together reproductions but actual new nicely made carts.
I read that somewhere else too, is there an estimate on the price and time yet?
Judging by the SNES Campus Challenge that he already sells, I wouldn't expect it to cost more than that which is at $80. I would expect it to be cheaper but you never know.
Alright thanks for the info.
Good idea, specially that most people are lazy and take an actual Japanese Star Ocean cart to mod instead of taking a crap sport game and modding it to take the 96Mbits decompressed version that doesn't require an SDD-1 donor cart. Plus with Retrozone, you get a a cool clear cart
I noticed they now have mr.gimmick and some other one, I don't think I saw those earlier this day, might have missed them. But it seems promising!
MottZilla wrote:
Wait awhile, RetroZone (
www.retrousb.com) showed off Star Ocean reproduction cartridges awhile back so probably sometime in the near future they will be available and won't be hacked together reproductions but actual new nicely made carts.
Try Ziggy587 over at racketboy.com forums. Much better personal service than at retrozone.
I searched for him and he doesn't seem to exist on those forums...
mgalekgolo wrote:
I searched for him and he doesn't seem to exist on those forums...
Sorry I fixed it, its Ziggy587, not Jiggy587
Oh, thanks
.
Its up on retrousb, for $12,000. Why does that piss me off?
http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.ph ... cts_id=113
You may have been
semipredicated. The pattern 12345 ("that's the same combination as my luggage!") makes me think it's a sentinel value, and the product isn't really for sale yet. Notice that the description hasn't really been written.
I think he's trolling me.
That should be some kind of joke. Nobody would pay $12k for a cartridge, no matter what it is. I guess the most expensive carts were prototypes which was arround $1k.
I finished Star Ocean recently (I used BSNES because I'm against reproductions) and honestly the game is similar to Tales of Phantasia, but much less good. The battle system is very messed up, all dunegons are mazes that are extremely annoying to figure out, and save points are sparse.
So I'd recommend you play Tales of Phantasia instead. (also I recommend you use an emulator or a PowerPak but that's another story).
I've played both bro, and the star ocean battle system is flawless. It just requires speed. I like both, but I think star ocean has a better story. I got about half way through both. They are both games worth paying the triple digits for, not 5.
No thats not a troll, typo, or the final price! Just a work in progress
Will still be a few more days before I get everything finished and available for ordering.
However if some crazy person wants to actually pay $12k I would send one now...
I thought it would have been obvious that the price was not serious or trolling.
Final Fantasy V and I think there may have been another one are supposed to be coming soon right? I know I'd like to see Seiken Densetsu 3.
Glad to hear. It was very amusing though
. Do you have an estimate for the price?
Even though I'm not all that enthusiast about it, it wouldn't be a bad thing if Retrozone sold such types of cartridges if the price is low enough as that might stop people from selling translated repro cartrides as real games for high prices.
Yeah, I was thinking 85-90 usd.
So we go from modified original Star Ocean cartridges and partly copyright issues from the english fan translation to complete copyright issues because the game rom AND the translation is not licensed. Great
I don't know how this is an improvement on the moral side of things, repros of Star Ocean never seem to go over 60 Euros in the last eBay auctios anyway.
No one said it was some "moral" or legal improvement. This is solely an improvement on quality and resources. The quality should be much better and the lack of destroying the limited number of original games is very nice.
Well I got into contact with ziggy and he said the cart would be 100 usd. Retrousb now says $70, which is amazing. Which should I buy? Also ziggy said he would put a save I've been working on (4 hours into the game).
Definitly wait for the retrousb version. No destroyed cart in the process and high quality. Don't give more money to that guy, I'm sure that he made way too much already considering people are even advertising his name here.
Buy the RetroZone version. Pretty sure it's factory quality. Not hand made. It beats some mess of wires with an EPROM. And it's cheaper. If you want to put a save on the cartridge there are other means to do that potentially.
MottZilla wrote:
Buy the RetroZone version. Pretty sure it's factory quality. Not hand made. It beats some mess of wires with an EPROM. And it's cheaper. If you want to put a save on the cartridge there are other means to do that potentially.
Agreed, although I must admit there's also been some really shitty soldering coming out of retrousb too since there's been lots of defective cart reports with stuff like the Super Power Pak.
SkinnyV wrote:
Definitly wait for the retrousb version. No destroyed cart in the process and high quality. Don't give more money to that guy, I'm sure that he made way too much already considering people are even advertising his name here.
Support is horrid from retrousb. Plus, you are using a circuit board that was designed in some dudes house, so who knows how long the thing will last, if it will burn into flames from overheating, short circuit your system, etc. Ill take a cart from original parts that had millions spent in quality testing any day of the week.
MottZilla wrote:
I thought it would have been obvious that the price was not serious or trolling.
Final Fantasy V and I think there may have been another one are supposed to be coming soon right? I know I'd like to see Seiken Densetsu 3.
I have labels for some of the FF/DQ series, but for some I was having trouble finding the best translation. On one DQ (I think) you would get more gold than you could spend the whole game
Seiken Densetsu 3 has the same problem where there are so many versions and multiplayer hacks it may be hard to find the best.
Tormenter wrote:
Support is horrid from retrousb. Plus, you are using a circuit board that was designed in some dudes house, so who knows how long the thing will last, if it will burn into flames from overheating, short circuit your system, etc. Ill take a cart from original parts that had millions spent in quality testing any day of the week.
Designed at some dude's house? Oh my. Since when does it matter where the pcb was designed? Quality of the build matters, and I would think he doesn't use some terrible board manufacturer. While the original parts certainly are of great quality, once people start hacking them up and soldering wires it is no longer of that robust quality. The weakest link is the worksmanship then of the cartridge hacker. And sorry but anytime you are using a bunch of wires to hookup the rom chip that is never going to be as good as components that are properly soldered to the board.
I haven't exactly bought an extensive amount of stuff from RetroZone but both my PowerPAK cartridges have been excellent. The build quality seems solid to me.
Fixed minor spelling error.
To provide a another view from the support complaints:
I've only ever had two support questions (one email), but he (bunnyboy/retrousb) responded in three hours.
MottZilla wrote:
The weakest link is the worksmanship then of the cartridge hacker. And sorry but anytime you are using a bunch of wires to hookup the rom chip that is never going to be as good as components that are properly soldered to the board.
Well nowadays you don't really use eproms which you need to connect one for one to the pcb anymore. You can't get more highquality
Tormenter wrote:
Plus, you are using a circuit board that was designed in some dudes house
And when you're playing a homebrew NES game, you're playing a game that was "designed in some dudes house". You're starting to sound like Nintendo with its "home offices are not considered secure locations" spiel on WarioWorld.com. However:
MottZilla wrote:
Quality of the built matters
My
Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril cart occasionally has wavy interference lines across the screen that no Nintendo-licensed game has, and I have to move cables around to get them to go away.
I emailed him a bit ago and he responded same day with 2 questions about the powerpak. I ran out of money for it so I couldn't buy it but I know he answers emails.
Hias wrote:
MottZilla wrote:
The weakest link is the worksmanship then of the cartridge hacker. And sorry but anytime you are using a bunch of wires to hookup the rom chip that is never going to be as good as components that are properly soldered to the board.
Well nowadays you don't really use eproms which you need to connect one for one to the pcb anymore. You can't get more highquality
What do you mean nowdays you don't have to? All I can think you are referring to is the 32bit flash to SNES DIP36 adapters. While those are a vast improvement over the mess of wires with EPROMs, it could still be better.
If you know how to solder, the wires are not going to fall or break off. So there is nothing to worry about. Most electronics have some sort of wires in it anyways.
Tormenter wrote:
If you know how to solder, the wires are not going to fall or break off. So there is nothing to worry about. Most electronics have some sort of wires in it anyways.
The tension on the wire being bent not 100% right will break off a lot more of the time than any chip actually soldered to the board. Any wired up by hand product when you can have a chip on the board is a bad decision. And that 2nd sentence is just....wrong. Nobody uses wires stand-alone because they have a high rate of failure because 1 wire will probably fail before 32 pins on a PCB soldered right.
Right, if you wire and solder properly it should be pretty secure. However personally since I clean cartridges which involves taking them apart, it's not good if there is a big mess of wires connected to components. It's nicer if they are all soldered to the board.
All electronics have some sort of wires. To be honest Nintendo's boards aren't exceptionally well engineered, and a floating ROM chip on them puts them into the category of very poorly engineered. Not only is a floating ROM unsightly but you run into poor VDD decoupling, transmission line issues and signal delay. It might "work" for SNES, but these practices will not work in more critical or high-speed applications.
Now i'm being offered the cart for $77 shipped with my save on it from ziggy, Should I take that up? Its $1 more than the total of retrousb and it has my save on it... Should I forget my save?
Retrousb's version IMO will hold more value than a repro from a random guy. Plus it has a clear case and uses new parts. IMO it's a no brainer, retrousb version for sure.
I was thinking along those lines.
mgalekgolo wrote:
Now i'm being offered the cart for $77 shipped with my save on it from ziggy, Should I take that up? Its $1 more than the total of retrousb and it has my save on it... Should I forget my save?
Question is, do you want a cart that looks authentic and good in your collection, or do you want a cart that is in a super fami shaped shell that is not like the other snes games?
Ziggy's game is famicom, but I broke my tabs long ago. He offered me ntsc for 15 more.
Let me guess, he sacrifices original Star Oceans the repro?
What is the matter with everyone???
Tormenter wrote:
mgalekgolo wrote:
Now i'm being offered the cart for $77 shipped with my save on it from ziggy, Should I take that up? Its $1 more than the total of retrousb and it has my save on it... Should I forget my save?
Question is, do you want a cart that looks authentic and good in your collection, or do you want a cart that is in a super fami shaped shell that is not like the other snes games?
Do you want a cart with a bunch of wires made from a perfectly good original copy or do you want a new one with new hardware? Plus, you can get a case from a game of yours and get a $5 label and make your own "official" looking cart, but IMO it doesn't make it any more valuable at all. It makes it easier for somebody to scam somebody if anything.
MottZilla wrote:
Hias wrote:
MottZilla wrote:
The weakest link is the worksmanship then of the cartridge hacker. And sorry but anytime you are using a bunch of wires to hookup the rom chip that is never going to be as good as components that are properly soldered to the board.
Well nowadays you don't really use eproms which you need to connect one for one to the pcb anymore. You can't get more highquality
What do you mean nowdays you don't have to? All I can think you are referring to is the 32bit flash to SNES DIP36 adapters. While those are a vast improvement over the mess of wires with EPROMs, it could still be better.
You can use a 29L3211 e.g. for Star Ocean, you just solder it on the pads. You need an voltage regulator though.
[Looks like I reposted instead of edited, oops]
looks like i'm getting the retrousb one then. Now if bunnyboy would just allow ordering...
Hias wrote:
You can use a 29L3211 e.g. for Star Ocean, you just solder it on the pads. You need an voltage regulator though.
Oh I see. I suppose that would make for a better build assuming your voltage regulation could be done without some wonky looking hack.
Tormenter wrote:
mgalekgolo wrote:
Now i'm being offered the cart for $77 shipped with my save on it from ziggy, Should I take that up? Its $1 more than the total of retrousb and it has my save on it... Should I forget my save?
Question is, do you want a cart that looks authentic and good in your collection, or do you want a cart that is in a super fami shaped shell that is not like the other snes games?
I personally like the Super Famicom cart shape. I put all of my own modified games back into their original SFC shells.
PAL carts are the same shape as the Super Famicom so almost all my carts have this shape (as they are either PAL or SFC), I only have two USA games.
Orders are up
Fuck...
Hey guys. My name has been thrown around in this thread here and there, so I thought I'd chime in. I'm not here to try and argue with any one, I just wanna tell you my personal thoughts on the matter.
First off, now that Retro Zone has the Star Ocean reproduction available, I will no longer be modifying Star Ocean carts with the DeJap patch (the one that was gonna go to mgalekgolo will be the last one I sell). I agree, there's no need to mess with a real Star Ocean cart when an actual reproduction is available.
Not to derail the thread into debate, but I don't consider putting the DeJap translation on a Star Ocean cart to be butchering the cart (unless you ruin it in the process). It ends up being the same game, just in a language that more people can understand. I don't cut out mask ROMs or anything like that, so they can always be restored to stock. Still, I would rather people buy the reproductions than having to modify carts. Especially for all the people that will try to modify a Star Ocean cart and end up ruining it.
That being said, I have no moral qualms about modifying any Super Famicom cart with the game's English translation patch, but only when the game was not released outside of Japan. Again, I save the mask ROMs, they can always be restored if need be. As long as it remains the same game, only translated, I'm OK with it. But for example, I've turned down many people asking me to put Earthbound on a Mother 2 cart for them.
Yes, I have used donor carts in the past. I will admit. When I first learned about what the internet mostly calls "reproduction carts," the allure was strong. But I've only ever made games that were unreleased or not released outside of Japan. And I have never used a donor cart and tried to pass it off as a super rare real deal, and I've never sold a cart on eBay. The only time I've modified a cart, if not for myself, is when some one asked me to. The only time I've put modified carts up for sale (on a forum) is when the requester flaked out on me.
On that note, I have realized the ugly side of using donor carts a while back. And actually, I've been pretty outspoken against it. I've always advocated the use of flash carts over "repros", even before I realized how bad the use of donor carts really is. I'm all about playing and enjoying the games, which is why I got into modifying carts. But since I'm for the games, that includes preserving them. That means no donor carts.
What I have been working on for a while now is SNES cart PCBs. For the people that just can't use flash carts, a PCB so people can make their "repro" without having to use a donor cart. Measures will be taken to prevent the carts from being passed off as an official cart. I guess these would compare to the NES boards that are for sale on Retro Zone, only for SNES games.
I agree with what MottZilla said about the mess of wires. And while I have wired in EPROMs like that before, I've found out that the 29L3211 for Star Ocean is a much better option. You just have to step the voltage down to 3.3v (
picture). And then there's the TSOP adapters for the regular carts. As long as you know what you're doing with a soldering iron, the quality of the build using these two methods would be as sound as anything.
I guess this is more about rep than anything else
but... As far as my quality is concerned, I'm not a professional, but I've been soldering electronics for about 10 years now. In the past few years I've also been soldering plumbing. So I believe I have a good knowledge of soldering. I also stand by my work. ::Knock on wood:: I don't believe I've ever had to repair something of mine because of a faulty soldering job.
Anyways, I don't want you guys thinking I'm just another d-bag out there trying to sell his repro carts just for the money. I got into doing this to enjoy the games, and on real hardware. I started doing it for my friends on Racketboy so they could enjoy the games as well. The money I charge some one is for the parts and the time I spent doing the work. I have pretty much only made or modified carts for the regulars on my home forum (Racketboy) by request. Occasionally my name gets dropped, like it did here, and I get inquires from outsiders. But honestly, I don't have the time to be making these carts all the time. I've decided to limit myself to modifying SFC carts for Racketboy regulars only (upon request). If a regular wants to send me their SFC cart to put the translation on, fine. And that will no longer include Star Ocean. Anything else will be referred to my SNES PCBs, if that ever comes into fruition. If not, oh well.
Kindest regards ~ Ziggy
Your character is appreciated, atleast by me.
Ziggy, I completely agree with everything you have posted. Reading your post sounds like you live inside my head...
Would be nice if we could see the repoduction PCB of Star Ocean
Yeah I agree with what Ziggy said.
I don't have much problem with modifying a japanese SO for an english version, if :
- You don't pass it as a super mega rare real deal/prototype
- You don't make profit
Hias wrote:
Would be nice if we could see the repoduction PCB of Star Ocean
Just buy one from retrozone and you can look at it all day long
There won't be much to look at. It's probably the 96 megabit version meaning you will see likely a 128 megabit flash chip, some sram, battery, and some discrete chips or cpld. There won't be any voodoo or black magic included.
MottZilla wrote:
There won't be much to look at. It's probably the 96 megabit version meaning you will see likely a 128 megabit flash chip, some sram, battery, and some discrete chips or cpld. There won't be any voodoo or black magic included.
Well if Zig is working at the same thing atm it cant be that easy either
Bregalad wrote:
- You don't make profit
So you are only allowed to do it if you cover your material costs and you have to work for free?
Technically, you're not allowed to do it at all. In practice it's a matter of triggering lesser penalties so that a copyright owner is more inclined to take action against a more flagrant infringer.
Most of this legal bullshit coincides with morals. I do not find any of this immoral, in any sense.
mgalekgolo wrote:
Most of this legal bullshit coincides with morals. I do not find any of this immoral, in any sense.
That doesn't make it legal... Or keep you from getting sued.
None of this is legal. I was not saying it was. I was just saying there is a large moral argument intertwined.
Well in case of Star Ocean you only have to worry about Dejaps copyright - if you supply the original mask rom with the modified cart.
Quote:
So you are only allowed to do it if you cover your material costs and you have to work for free? Smile
Exactly.
Making any profit would be disrespectful twoards the people that taught you, for free, how to do it (come on, nobody guessed how to rewire EPROMs in a cart just by themselves), and twoards DeJap who translated the game for free.
Well the modifcation of one cartridge takes time and maybe a little bit of skill too.
If everybody who wants a modified cartridge would build it by themselves nobody would buy one, so there must be a market.
So RetroUSB shouldnt charge for Star Ocean too?
I mean, they sure dont have the right to use the Dejap translation or the Star Ocean ROM.
Since they dont need an original cartridge or need to modify it and just have some streamlined assembling process they may spend less time per cartridge and make more money. Of course they created the cartridge layout, but I guess you can find that on the internet too.
Time isn't part of how much money you make though. It's solely the cost to make it, then you try to sell it with an offset to profit. Just because the "time" is less doesn't mean anymore than they can make more in less time. They have to produce the PCBs, Plastic Cases, purchase components, and assemble all that. If you are just hacking old game carts the costs to make it can be far less since you don't need to produce the PCB or Plastic Case, and can reuse some components.
But you are absolutely right that no one has any right to be making reproductions of the Star Ocean game and selling them. The Dejap translation I'm not sure they would appreciate indirect profiting off their freely available translation either. But things being illegal doesn't stop them from happening.
I think of it like this:
It's not a large business, so they charge their own price for labor. That is all they charge for, labor. It's not like the dejap translation is hard to come by, far from it.
Right but the point is without the translation's existence, there would be no demand for their work at all. Thus you are indirectly profiting off their free translation.
Without the work of Tri-Ace and Enix, there would also be no demand for DeJap's work.
The same could apply to nintendo if you go that far I guess.
tepples wrote:
Without the work of Tri-Ace and Enix, there would also be no demand for DeJap's work.
No, but there would be only demand for legit japanese cart so no fake rare english carts or things like that.
Quote:
Thus you are indirectly profiting off their free translation.
Very directly in fact.
The "labor" of programming an eprom and solder a couple of wires is nothing compared to the labor to translate thousands of lines of text and reinsert it in an existing ROM without altering other game data which would cause bugs.
I don't guess why some people accept to do 98% of the labor for free and some badass does 2% of the labor (assembling the cart from an existing one) and make major profit on it.
Bregalad wrote:
I don't guess why some people accept to do 98% of the labor for free and some badass does 2% of the labor (assembling the cart from an existing one) and make major profit on it.
Not that I'm supporting any of this, but I think the reason people accept it is they simply want the cart. I, they, and you realize there are other options than a repro/hacked cart. But at the end of the day they want a hard copy so they accept the only real way to get it regardless of who makes money off of who. The person who did all the coding work rarely cares to manufacture carts but the badass will.
People want what they want regardless of what other people think generally speaking, especially if the other people aren't directly impacted...
I guess what I really meant was at the very least you are indirectly profiting. But you should remember in perspective, people building bootleg translated carts and making money off doing so is an insignificant problem in the great scope of things. It's up to the translators and hackers to decide if they want to provide their works now in an age where they know what will happen when it is set loose. Years back it may not have been as obvious.