Actually, I noticed weird pallete problems (which didn't happen before, but I dunno if it was under older mappers, like 1.33), but I didn't give it too much thought... I should take note of it in the list...

On maniac mansion the kids wont go past the first screen they just say i can't reach that. Has anyone else had this problem? I'm using the 1.32b2 mappers.

I'll have to check it out... how strange.

Did I miss a release somewhere? Just checked RetroZone and still 1.34

Bunnyboy released some betta mappers, some time ago (long time actually), that are still in "beta". These mappers have better compatibility, specially for unlicensed games. There's a link in my first post on this thread.

EDIT: I tried Maniac Mansion, and I can get past the first screen, just to address mrpogo's post.

^^I'll do it today, I promise! BTW, it seems that your newest version broke several games (TMNT 2, TMNT Tournament Fighters, Tecmo Bowl, Ninja Gaiden 3, are the ones I noticed, there may be many more because out of 7 games randomly chosen, these were broken). Games run but have sever glitches.

I apologize if this has already been addressed (I searched this topic but did not find any results)...but does this thing work with the Generation NEX? I own an NES and a NEX, but I use the NEX more often due to ease of transporting it when I fly home to see family. If this works on a NEX, I am ordering one tonight...if not I have to consider it.

Taken from Retrozone:

"Works on authentic Nintendo Systems including NTSC, PAL A, PAL B, and Asian top loader and toaster systems.
Works on Famicom using 72-60 pin converter.
Does NOT work on clone systems like the NEX, Yobo, or FC Twin.
Untested on portable systems, not likely to work."

So, nope, it won't work on a NEX.

At the going rate on Ebay I would sell the NEX get a PowerPak, then find a cheap NES console to leave at your family's house, all you transports is your PowerPak.

Well, my PowerPak came in the mail today.  I set it up the way I'm supposed to (I think), but my SAV files aren't working.  Here is what I did, if anyone can tell me where I made the error, I would appreciate it.

ok, so you put an empty SAV file in your CF Card (the one that is in Retrozone), and named it Tecmo Super Bowl. You saved your game in the game, held reset for a few secs, then it asked you to save right? try selecting the save file manually instead of autosave, then when you load the game again, you select the same file manually, and check if that works.

I'm assuming you did a normal battery save, and not a savestate with the special savestate mappers from thefox. If it's the second case, you have to load the saved game by pressing B and select.

selecting the file worked, but it seems weird that the autosave didn't take. I'll play with it a bit more and see if I can figure out what the situation is. Thanks for the help.

Just wanted to say thanks for the information. This was truly a great find.

Just wanted to add, the latest 1.4.3 savestate mappers are out now and should finally fix any and all remaining MMC3 mapper issues (Crystalis and Ninja Gaiden III confirmed working flawlessly on original, Action Pack, and Power Pack NES units -- the last of those being the ones that usually displayed graphics glitches). Finally, ALL of my MMC3 issues are gone. I realize that many people were not having any problems with MMC3 graphics, or saves, but I was having issues with both, and if I was, other people probably were as well. This solved my issues, so, anyone else having problems with graphics glitches or saves not working (with MMC3 games anyway), give this a try.

Since I've noticed some discussion of Harmony and Everdrive, I should mention both of those are absolutely worth grabbing. The Harmony plays every 2600 game I've thrown at it fine, especially Pitfall II (and with virtually no loading time -- the SD slot is a non-issue with games that small). And the Everdrive is amazing. I mean, it plays SMS games (via a built-in converter), Genesis games, 32X games, and can even load a region-free CD BIOS for playing Sega CD imports. Considering that, a little wait time is nothing to get worked up over. Though due to Sega's ghetto engineering, it's a good idea to have 2 Genesis units (though if you own a 32X, you probably already figured out why -- it's a royal pain to disconnect when you want to play SMS games).

Since it sounds like many of you have successfully gotten StarTropics I and II to work, perhaps you can tell me what I'm doing wrong. I have an up-to-date powerpak and no issues managing the other save files, but I can't get either of these games to work.

It probably has something to do with the fact that they use 32KB save files rather than the standard 8KB. If you try using an 8KB save file with either of these games, it loads the choose-which-file screen as names and chapter numbers full of gibberish and the game is frozen. Even a working emulator-generated save file (curiously itself 8KB and not 32KB) has the same effect.

Using a 32KB blank save file, on the other hand, loads an empty opening screen that looks like it's ready to go. You can select "register your name" and type one in. But when you submit it, it fails to save, and drops back to a still-blank choose-a-file screen. IOW, I can't even get it to save my name and assign me to chapter 0. For either game. (Different rom dumps give the same results.) It's not a huge deal for the original StarTropics (still have the cart), but I'd really like finally to play the sequel.

Little help?

^^I really don't know, I haven't tried saving on these games (just checked if they ran). I'll have to check it out!

Sounds like you're running an old mapper version. It's always a good idea to tell the exact mapper version when asking questions like this. Some of the older versions of loopy's mappers (and mine too, IIRC) implemented "WRAM protection", which breaks Star Tropics (because Star Tropics really isn't MMC3, but is marked as such).

Hmmmm. If the mappers are old, it's news to me. I just got my Powerpak a couple months ago:
Rom vers 1.12
Card vers 1.34

That's interesting about the 32KB saves, though. I swear I read that somewhere. Blank 32KB saves used to be available for download on Retrozone (and curiously are not anymore--are there any games that actually use them?). As mentioned, I get all three save slots pre-filled with gibberish/graphics, and it says i'm on chapter "C", etc., confirmed again a moment ago. Although one thing I did notice is that the game isn't actually frozen until you attempt to select one of the three savegames.

Sorry for the bump, but I noticed that the PowerPak does not allow the use of a Game Genie with FDS ROMS. I am using Mappers v1.35b with the additional Loopy maps extracted on top of it.

It is definitely possible (though probably unwise) to ghetto-rig a Game Genie to a Famicom Disk System system on real hardware, using a bunch of adapters. And very easy to do in an emulator. In fact, there are a handful of Game Genie Codes available for Super Mario Brothers Lost Levels (FDS) that actually work on my RetroZone repro cart. Yet there is no option to use GG codes on FDS ROMS. Why? I know the codes change certain ROM addresses, but in real hardware, this is done only within the interface between the devices. Would the Game Genie codes be written to the FDS ROM when it is re-saved and thus become permanent? In real life, a bad code could potentially cause a data write to the wrong address, permanently corrupting the FDS game, but on the PowerPAK, the FDS ROM could easily be replaced by the user or set to read-only attribute. Why not enable the possibilities of using cheat codes for FDS? I was disappointed slightly by this omission.

Kudos for enabling the demo mode where Mario and Luigi are seen running around on the boot screen!

I certainly don't mind the bump Still hoping someone can help me with StarTropics II. I see from your post that there's a slightly newer mappers version I need to get, but I'm wondering if that will actually solve the problem.

Thanks!

Why don't you just try it out? It should work with v1.35b2, as well as my Save State Mappers (current version v1.5).

Yay, excitebike!!

I did finally get it working, thank you very much thefox. I still do not understand why they acted the way they did with 1.34, but I must confess I had not read the OP and was not aware of the mappers available there. Both games function beautifully with 1.35+loopy's mappers.

nice, I'll add those to the good list.

Yeah bunnyboy probably should make an official release out of 1.35B2+loopy's latest updates, or start shipping the beta mappers to new buyers to avoid confusion...