Since I'm still early in my project, I have plenty of time to choose which mapper I will use.
Today I found by luck a few MMC5 carts for very cheap and I thought that could be great dev cart (for the curious, Just breed). But before I decide to mutilate those carts, I would like to know what are the goods and the bads about that mapper? Is it only good things?
I remember Tokumaru and Bregalad talking about it somewhere but couldn't find the appropriate thread but I just want more information about what to expect about it.
Good :
- Extended graphics features
- 2 more sound channels
- Very fine tuned PRG and CHR bankswitching, all imaginable shemes allowed
- Customizable nametable mirroring, all imaginable shemes using up to 3 different tables are allowed
- Very good scanline IRQ that can perform about anything in the world
- Hardware multiplier so that it fast things up
- Have mapper RAM that can be used for either graphics or programm so that you don't need an extra RAM chip if your game engines require up to 3kB
- Can hanle a lot of extra SRAM, theorically up to 64kB.
- Very safe battery backup
Bad :
- Carts are rare to find, and Just Breed is a very good game. You should destoy a Koei game instead if you can because they suck.
Technically there is only good points about it. Great, now I need to test how to use the mapper then! Thanks for the info.
Bregalad wrote:
Bad :
- Carts are rare to find, and Just Breed is a very good game. You should destoy a Koei game instead if you can because they suck.
In my case, since I'm in japan, I found today those 2 Just breed in a junk pile for 1$ each. When I saw that, I jumped on them. In general they are sold between 6$/10$. They can still be found at least. For now one seems to work properly, the other one didn't have any save game on it so I don't know yet if it's ok or not.
Of course I want to keep at least one. Those not so great koei game, I guess there must be in that junk pile for 0.50/1$. I just need to make a list before I got "hunting" for those cart. Now I just checked the mapper list and I found out that l'empereur is one of those MMC5 game, didn't know.
Bregalad wrote:
- Have mapper RAM that can be used for either graphics or programm so that you don't need an extra RAM chip if your game engines require up to 3kB
But can the MMC5 map RAM into the pattern tables in case my game needs to display graphics that don't fit well into tiles? Think Videomation, Qix, Elite.
I can't think of anything bad about the MMC5 except that it's a rare mapper, which makes reproducing games quite hard. Heck, I'm still looking for ANY MMC5 game so that I can make a devcart out of it (no Bregalad, I don't care for any of them). Sadly, I've never seen a MMC5 cart at all, let alone for sale. Maybe I should try online, and pay some outrageous price plus shipping...
Feature-wise, it's got a bunch of stuff that you can choose to use or not, and in some cases the games could even be easily converted to other simpler, more common mappers. What I'm trying to say is: It won't hurt to have a MMC5 devcart. I want one, even if only for experimenting with it's features.
Tokumaru, I'm sorry but Castlevania III and Just Breed are probably the 2 best NES games I've ever played (with Final Fantasy III) and both are MMC5. I really don't understand how you could not care about those game.
But it's true if you find a loose cart for $1 it shouldn't be too lame to destroy it. But I paid my Just Breed $60 and this was supposed to be cheap
(I already see some Final Fantasy 3 cartridges for arround $180 here one has to be crazy to buy that). Anyway pretty much all video games here are 3 times the price they are somewhere else in the world, especially import games (because porting is expensive).
And I don't even have my brother in law's 60to72 converter any longer so I can't even play it, the cart is pretty worthless as it.
And Tepples pointed out the only weakness of the MMC5, it doesn't allow for CHRRAM at all. But in most cases the indefinite BG tile feature and full 8kb sprite pattern table features really make CHRRAM not needed.
Looks like Nintendo was really going for CHRROM towards end MMC3 and MMC5 area, few games used CHRRAM.
Bregalad wrote:
I'm sorry but Castlevania III and Just Breed are probably the 2 best NES games I've ever played
Sorry, no special feelings for them... =) And destroying carts is not the worse thing in the world. If you are successful at making the devcart, you can always burn the original game and play it there.
The no CHR RAM thing is the reason I'm not using MMC5. I want to be able reuse any tile without defining it more than once. There are probably features that allow you to bankswitch less than the whole pattern table though, and these would help. Oh, and also, I want my polygonal movies. I know you could use 4x4 pixels, but that's not what I want to do. And also, it would take A LOT of CHR ROM space to define all the shapes you'd want to use.
Oh, and Bregalad, I payed $9 for Final Fantasy III. Since it was just a loose cart, I bought another boxed copy of the game to keep for $30, and I will be using this one as a DevCart.
Tokumaru, there are plenty of copies of Castlevania III for sale on Ebay. Though if for some reason Ebay isn't an option, yeah, I don't know what you'd do to find a copy.
I just looked, and there's a copy for $10 that ships to Brazil for $8. I suppose this is a little expensive for shipping though.
Celius wrote:
I just looked, and there's a copy for $10 that ships to Brazil for $8. I suppose this is a little expensive for shipping though.
Thanks for the tip. Yeah, it's not very expensive, but the shipping does get in the way a bit. Maybe I can find a person with other interesting carts and get a few at once.
Celius, MMC5 can bank eight separate chunks of CHR-ROM. Far less than having to swap an entire table. If you were creative you could probably use CHR-RAM on MMC5, maybe even have both CHR-RAM and CHR-ROM.
I think MMC5 is awesome, but it'd far less common than the very capable MMC3. I really think for most projects the best choices are MMC3 or discrete logic boards like UNROM.
So you can bankswitch out 1k chunks at a time? This would be very cool.
What was strange yesterday was when I saw them, I didn't say "Just breed at 1$! That's a good game, let's buy them!" but "Just breed at 1$! MMC5 mapper, let's buy them!" (...)
I kind of changed recently in my perception on how I see carts in the junk pile
tokumaru wrote:
Heck, I'm still looking for ANY MMC5 game so that I can make a devcart out of it
If you can use famicom cart and I find other deals like that, I can always send you one someday. The only possible "issue" is some junk cart connectors are not always like new. They can have more wear than non junk carts. If you don't mind that part then the're plenty of loose cart here. I could always send to other interested people too.
Bregalad wrote:
But I paid my Just Breed $60 and this was supposed to be cheap Sad (I already see some Final Fantasy 3 cartridges for arround $180 here one has to be crazy to buy that).
At 180$, wow, that's expensive. It's not that price at all. One day when I was in Akihabara, I heard some European complaining about how expensive the same game was in their country. Online dealer are the worst, they sell those imports at very far from their original price and often they're not in mint condition!
Final Fantasy 3 recently became cheaper in Japan (if you search properly). I guess that must have happened after the DS version came out. If you pay more than 30$ for it, that's too much, even 30$ is still expensive here.
Bregalad wrote:
And Tepples pointed out the only weakness of the MMC5, it doesn't allow for CHRRAM at all.
Hmm.. I was planning to use that. But if you have access to more chr-rom then maybe it's not an issue after all. I will need to study what I can do with the MMC5 and plan my game according to it.
Edit: We should make a list of interesting cart for dev use. I'm sure people would find that information useful.
More cons:
-As such a powerful mapper, MMC5 may be thought of as wasted if it's not used to the fullest extent.
-Any clever effects may be unfairly attributed to the MMC5.
-Some people look down on MMC5 since it can enhance the NES perhaps beyond recognition
-MMC5 can't fit into typical CPLD so without resorting to discontinued FPGA, it's not feasible for legal game production.
-Building your own mapper will let you tailor functions to your game, probably far outperforming MMC5.
kyuusaku wrote:
More cons:
-As such a powerful mapper, MMC5 may be thought of as wasted if it's not used to the fullest extent.
-Any clever effects may be unfairly attributed to the MMC5.
-Some people look down on MMC5 since it can enhance the NES perhaps beyond recognition
-MMC5 can't fit into typical CPLD so without resorting to discontinued FPGA, it's not feasible for legal game production.
-Building your own mapper will let you tailor functions to your game, probably far outperforming MMC5.
With all those cons that you suggested that may not be cons in some cases depending how you look at it, what would you suggest then? A dev cart made of a FF3J since it contains a MMC3 + chr ram?
kyuusaku wrote:
More cons:
[...]
-Building your own mapper will let you tailor functions to your game, probably far outperforming MMC5.
Pros: More emulators support MMC5 than a homemade mapper. This is important because most people will be playing your game's demo version in an emulator on a PC running Windows.
Banshaku, I'm currently using this same FF3J devcart, and if you have it at your disposal, then yes, I'd suggest that. And also, you'd get SRAM, which is basically a bag of gold for someone who's run out of RAM. It's also good because I have a polygonal movie engine that I'm revising/optimizing, and it requires 5k of RAM for a copy of the PPU data. SRAM allows for this.
You'd also have the scanline counter. Though limited, it can be great in some aspects. For more information, go to
This thread
And you'd get a great amount of PRG space, though a lot of it might be dedicated to CHR data.
Celius wrote:
And also, you'd get SRAM, which is basically a bag of gold for someone who's run out of RAM.
SRAM is a very important factor with a great impact on the complexity of a game. Although 2KB allows for a fair amount of complexity, it's not enough to hold data copied from ROM. In complex games, the engine has to keep track of so many different things (object definitions, level maps, sets of metatiles) that are much easier to work with when copied (or possibly decompressed, which saves ROM) to RAM. If there is no RAM for those things, you have to pack them all in the same ROM bank, without the possibility of combining them in different ways, and use part of the addressable space that could contain code instead.
I'm not saying it is impossible to make complex things with just 2KB of RAM, but you do need to make some sacrifices, as well as some gymnastics (lots of bankswitching) in order to achieve something easily done with WRAM.
Well my game engine uses barely more than 1kb of SRAM and I don't feel like it's extensively simple or anything.
And yes, people like me would hurl of horror if they see a game that uses a great mapper like MMC5 and wastes it's power to produce something very simple.
And tepples is right, emulators doesn't require custom-made mappers unless you write a plugin for them and this reduce portability. Also I doubt it's easier to produce your own PCB with custom logic (and it's likely you can't get it to work like excepted on the first try) than chaning a MMC5 cart into a devcart.
You could always make customs cart if you really need to sell tousands of copies of a great game, that isn't likely to happen in near future.
Banshaku wrote:
With all those cons that you suggested that may not be cons in some cases depending how you look at it, what would you suggest then? A dev cart made of a FF3J since it contains a MMC3 + chr ram?
It depends on your game; if you specifically want the MMC5's powerful IRQs, EXRAM, multiplier, and nothing more, go for it. If you just want a high performance game and think MMC5 will be most capable hardware for the job, that's probably a misconception. Personally I feel you should try to get by with as little as possible, and if your game progresses to a point where the default NES/mapper model (bankswitching, IRQ) isn't sufficient, you might as well blow away the MMC5 with a custom design like dual-port tile-granule bankswitched writable CHR ROM, etc etc.
tepples wrote:
Pros: More emulators support MMC5 than a homemade mapper. This is important because most people will be playing your game's demo version in an emulator on a PC running Windows.
You'd really only need one emulator to run your demo, and this could possibly be the same emulator used during the development phase. Assuming the author could implement the mapper for the PowerPak, that would also be another distribution channel, which wouldn't be accessible with MMC5 (or MMC3 really) since it's still not fully supported.
SRAM is also good because you can use it partially as regular RAM, and you can use it for saved game data too. I use about 3k for 3 save files in my game, so that leaves 5k for plain old RAM.
And yes, like you were saying Tokumaru, it's true that SRAM is essential in boosting the complexity of a game. I see pages 0-7 as good for holding variables and small arrays. Excluding the stack. But for copies of large things like levels and screens, the extra RAM is essential.
Speaking of extra RAM, the MMC5 could allow you to have 64KB of it, allowing you to map RAM into any 8k section from $6000 to $DFFF, but $E000 to $FFFF is always ROM.
I agree with kyuusaku though that it's best to use only what you need. Don't waste features. Designing your own mapper for your game would be the way to go if you can do that. Although I wish someone would make their own MMC3 or better class of mapper for homebrewers and people building reproductions could have mapper hacks to it. It bothers me that the MMC3 lacks eight 1kb CHR banks. It shouldn't be a very tall order for someone to make a mapper that has eight 1kb chr, four 8kb PRG, a CPU and/or A12 based IRQ counter, and WRAM/SRAM support.
MottZilla wrote:
Speaking of extra RAM, the MMC5 could allow you to have 64KB of it, allowing you to map RAM into any 8k section from $6000 to $DFFF, but $E000 to $FFFF is always ROM.
I agree with kyuusaku though that it's best to use only what you need. Don't waste features. Designing your own mapper for your game would be the way to go if you can do that. Although I wish someone would make their own MMC3 or better class of mapper for homebrewers and people building reproductions could have mapper hacks to it. It bothers me that the MMC3 lacks eight 1kb CHR banks. It shouldn't be a very tall order for someone to make a mapper that has eight 1kb chr, four 8kb PRG, a CPU and/or A12 based IRQ counter, and WRAM/SRAM support.
I think you just described Sunsoft FME-7.
MottZilla wrote:
I agree with kyuusaku though that it's best to use only what you need. Don't waste features. Designing your own mapper for your game would be the way to go if you can do that.
I know what you mean. I'm still in the experimental & learning phase so I'm not sure yet how many features I will use from those possible mappers. Since I do have access to many junk cart I'm just trying to check which one I should salvage since it could be useful later.
I don't have the engineering background to be able to built my own mapper (I would love to be able to do it thought). So for now I will continue to hunt for some MM5 + ff3j junk cart, if I can find any.
Bregalad wrote:
Well my game engine uses barely more than 1kb of SRAM and I don't feel like it's extensively simple or anything.
Bregalad, I have nothing against you or your game. Stop interpreting everything I say as an attack towards you.
If you compare them directly, your project is simpler than mine or Celius'. Yours uses a first generation board, ours use an advanced mapper. You use almost no WRAM, we use every byte. You have no scrolling, we do, 8-way. They are very different projects, but it's not like we feel your game is inferior or anything. Hell, it's simplicity even makes it more interesting! I just love to see things that were well done in spite of the scarce resources. Also, you get to finish yours first, and that should be very rewarding. You said it yourself you'd go with a simpler project in order to gain more experience.
I never said you game is bad, looks bad, or is ridiculously simple. But it is not exactly ambitious either. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it was your choice, you said it. So please, stop defending yourself every time I say things that are barely related to your project. I have a lot of faith in your game because I know you are an exceptional programmer. I really want to play it, even though it's not my favorite style.
I'm not aprehending personnal attacks or anything, I don't know why you made this up.
And yes it's cool if you're interested in my game. Altough I wouldn't call that not ambitious.
Also I've made almost no progress since July and it's mid-september.
If I want to hunt those MMC5 games, what is the best way to know if a game is MMC5 or not without opening it?
Does the ines header of most rom can be trusted? The problem is some game that were released in the US had mapper changed so I want to make sur the Japanese version use the same mapper.
Example, Romance of the 3 kingdom 2 uses a MMC5 in the US but is the japanese one too? There must be plenty of those cart since that game was popular at the time in japan. Now, it's just rubbish, nobody cares about it (got 1 for 50 yen).
I saw one list of mappers (biga## mapper list 0.1) but it's not complete.
Bregalad wrote:
I've made almost no progress since July
Yeah, things have been pretty slow for me too.
Banshaku wrote:
Does the ines header of most rom can be trusted?
I'd trust Nestopia's View->Image Info. I doubt there are games erroneously marked as MMC5. Can anyone indicate other japanese MMC5 carts? I'd like to know too.
Banshaku wrote:
If I want to hunt those MMC5 games, what is the best way to know if a game is MMC5 or not without opening it?
Does the ines header of most rom can be trusted? The problem is some game that were released in the US had mapper changed so I want to make sur the Japanese version use the same mapper.
Example, Romance of the 3 kingdom 2 uses a MMC5 in the US but is the japanese one too? There must be plenty of those cart since that game was popular at the time in japan. Now, it's just rubbish, nobody cares about it (got 1 for 50 yen).
I saw one list of mappers (biga## mapper list 0.1) but it's not complete.
That mapper list is not accurate, I verify games by just loading them in an emulator. There's also the NES cart database.
You can spot a MMC5 by it's oversized Nintendo made case with "FAMICOM" written on it. Konami's games have a black case, where IIRC all the others are white (like Just Breed).
kyuusaku wrote:
That mapper list is not accurate, I verify games by just loading them in an emulator. There's also the NES cart database.
I was using that list recently as a reference, I will stop using it then. So my Sangosushi 2 is a MMC5. Good find for 50 yen then!
Does the nes cart database talks about famicom cartridges too?
Quote:
You can spot a MMC5 by it's oversized Nintendo made case with "FAMICOM" written on it. Konami's games have a black case, where IIRC all the others are white (like Just Breed).
Ok, good to know. Some other carts did use big cases (for example Madara VRC6) but I don't remember if the word Famicom was written on it (I don't think it's the case). I will check my cart later and update this mail with the result then.
MMC5 for 50 yen? Holy crap! That's like 0.49 US dollars. That's a great deal for pretty much any game, let alone a valuable MMC5 cart.
EDIT: Do MMC5 games have a chip in each cart that says "MMC5" on it like MMC3 games? If so, well, there's another way to find out if a game's MMC5.
Celius wrote:
Do MMC5 games have a chip in each cart that says "MMC5" on it like MMC3 games? If so, well, there's another way to find out if a game's MMC5.
The people working at the store might not be so happy with you cracking the carts open... =)
Haha, I suppose. I didn't even think about that.
Banshaku wrote:
Does the nes cart database talks about famicom cartridges too?
It does indeed.
Quote:
Ok, good to know. Some other carts did use big cases (for example Madara VRC6) but I don't remember if the word Famicom was written on it (I don't think it's the case). I will check my cart later and update this mail with the result then.
Many Konami games back into the 80s have oversized cases, but don't say "FAMICOM", just Konami. Since there are only 8 MMC5 games, it shouldn't be a big deal finding them.
If you find a Metal Slader Glory cart for $0.01 you should absolutely buy it because we don't know which board it is (MMC5).
Many japanese MMC5 games are lacking on the database, it would be cool if you added them (in fact many japanese games at all).
kyuusaku wrote:
Konami's games have a black case, where IIRC all the others are white (like Just Breed).
Uchuu Keibitai SDF (HAL Laboratory) also comes in a big black "Famicom" cart. It's sitting on the shelf right next to me.
You should add it to bootgod's database then.
Where is this database? I want to see if I have any games that can be added. Though I doubt I do...
The URL is
http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/
I guess all licenced american games are on the database, most licenced European games are here too but a relatively weak part of japanese games are here.
At least Uchuu Kebaitai SDF, Metal Slader Glory and a couple of japanese Koei games and japanese Laser Invasion are missing in the MMC5 depatment.
How many pins does MMC5 have, and how many pins does any other ASIC on a cart board have?
Celius wrote:
MMC5 for 50 yen? Holy crap! That's like 0.49 US dollars. That's a great deal for pretty much any game, let alone a valuable MMC5 cart.
Yes, that cheap. And working 100%, battery too. I'm sure if I look more, I can find more of those Koei games that nobody wants. Maybe I should hunt more and provide people in the nesdev community with some MMC5 carts if they want to make dev cart.
About the chip, I cannot tell yet because I don't have the bit to open it. I will need to go buy it if I can find it.
When I found that 50 yen MMC5, I found at the same time a FF3J for 380 yen (?!). I jumped on it! It was in the junk bin but completely functional. I already opened it. The standard cart don't have screws but it was a pain to open it (I broke one plastic pin). I can't wait to make those 2 dev carts. The next step will be to buy at least a eeprom burner and get back my soldering iron (or buy a new one).
Bregalad wrote:
If you find a Metal Slader Glory cart for $0.01 you should absolutely buy it because we don't know which board it is (MMC5).
Many japanese MMC5 games are lacking on the database, it would be cool if you added them (in fact many japanese games at all).
If I find it at that price, I will jump on it like a pack of wolves because the usual street price in japan is around 100$ (!). I never saw the game, I should try it in an emulator to see why they sell it that expensive.
If I do have the chance to open one someday, I will be more than happy to provide the information. But I never saw the cart so I guess that will be hard to do.
BMF54123 wrote:
Uchuu Keibitai SDF (HAL Laboratory) also comes in a big black "Famicom" cart. It's sitting on the shelf right next to me.
Yes, it is black, I saw a few on friday. It was in a junk pile for 900 yen but I wasn't 100% sure if it was a good deal or not. Since it is junk, I try to get them when they are around 200/300 yen max.
tepples wrote:
How many pins does MMC5 have, and how many pins does any other ASIC on a cart board have?
Good question. If I can find the bit to open them I could confirm most of the japanese one and even post pictures.
It's really weird Metal Slader Glory is 100 times more expensive.
Sure, it has the particularity of being the largest (licenced) NES game ever released, but aside of that it's not really a video game it's more an interactive book so I wouldn't feel bad about making a devcart out of it (but I'd ask myself if he uses ELROM, EKROM or something else to handle the special 512kb CHRROM).
I guess Uchuu Kebatai should be ELROM but this isn't confirmed until someone opens the cart.
MMC5 has 100 pins, MMC3 44 pins and MMC1 24 pins. Why that question ?
Bregalad wrote:
MMC5 has 100 pins, MMC3 44 pins and MMC1 24 pins. Why that question ?
Lag from discussion continuing onto the next page. I should have quoted the specific post to which I was replying, like this:
tepples wrote:
Celius wrote:
Do MMC5 games have a chip in each cart that says "MMC5" on it like MMC3 games?
How many pins does MMC5 have, and how many pins does any other ASIC on a cart board have?
The implication being that one can recognize an MMC5 by sheer pin count.
Quote:
I guess Uchuu Kebatai should be ELROM but this isn't confirmed until someone opens the cart.
I could alway get one that I saw and open it (once I get the proper tool to do it).
Banshaku wrote:
If I find it at that price, I will jump on it like a pack of wolves because the usual street price in japan is around 100$ (!). I never saw the game, I should try it in an emulator to see why they sell it that expensive.
Are you shopping in Akiba? If so, I think that's a reasonable price for it since in 2004 the average price was around Y18000.
BMF54123 wrote:
kyuusaku wrote:
Konami's games have a black case, where IIRC all the others are white (like Just Breed).
Uchuu Keibitai SDF (HAL Laboratory) also comes in a big black "Famicom" cart. It's sitting on the shelf right next to me.
Right, so are all the Koei games too, I don't know how I came up with that. White are the exception, only Just Breed and Metal Slader Glory.
Also I just noticed that some earlier MMC1 Koei games use the MMC5 case but have "Nintendo" in place of "FAMICOM" and additionally some of the later MMC1 games use the "FAMICOM" like MMC5 so this isn't a perfect way to detect MMC5.
kyuusaku wrote:
Are you shopping in Akiba? If so, I think that's a reasonable price for it since in 2004 the average price was around Y18000.
Sometime since it's on my way to work. The only issue is that they opens late and close early. So it's not easy to shop. Other place I go is Hard off for the junk (same thing as book off except for hardware). When I go on vacation to see my family, I go to a small store in Kyushu that sometime have deals.
For the price, I checked the superpotato website and usually their price is very close to the retro potato store in Akihabara (and usually they are the one charging the highest too). But it changed a lot in Akihabara since the first time I came to Japan around 2003.
Quote:
Also I just noticed that some earlier MMC1 Koei games use the MMC5 case but have "Nintendo" in place of "FAMICOM" and additionally some of the later MMC1 games use the "FAMICOM" like MMC5 so this isn't a perfect way to detect MMC5.
And this game
http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1531 comes in a big purple famicom case but it is a MMC1. So I think it's better to know the cart before buying it. I bought this one out of the current theory but it failed
But that's ok, at the price I paid and since I didn't have it, I don't mind much.
Now, after reading back the specs, it's a MMC1 with CHR-RAM. hmmmm.. Maybe this cart is useful after all. How useful is an MMC1 + VRAM?
What do you mean useful? It's only as useful as what you can make of it.
MMC1 w/ CHR RAM is very common, but in this case the board SUROM is very rare. It will give you access to 512K of PRG ROM, but only through convoluted bankswitching so it's probably not in any way preferrable to MMC3 unless you need one-screen mirroring.
Personally I think you should just get a PowerPak, this talk of butchering carts is making me sad :(
kyuusaku wrote:
Personally I think you should just get a PowerPak, this talk of butchering carts is making me sad
Of course I would prefer not to have to destroy carts, I don't enjoy that. But I cannot use easily a PowerPak on my famicom unless I get some kind of fancy adapter.
So I have the following possibilities:
- Get that apdater + powerPak : easily 200$
- Get back a nes + step-up converter (I'm in japan) + powerpak: easily more than 200$
- Get an unknown famicom cart, rotting up in junk pile that contains the mapper I want: 1$ (+ possible eeprom burner if I can't borrow one)
So my choice is more money based. And can you really get a PowerPak these days? They are hard to find you know.
What makes me more sad is to think about those junk carts I see in a box that nobody use and that could end up in a garbage truck someday. Ending up as a dev cart is a better fate then been destroyed completely.
Personally I love big MMC1 games with more than 256kb of ROM or more than 8kb of VRAM (SUROM, SOROM, SXROM) tough I don't have any.
They beat the MMC3 because you can support more SRAM, more PRG bankswitching shemes, 1-screen mirroring and have CHRRAM (well MMC3 can also have CHRRAM and 1-screen mirroring but those carts are rare and you need to modify more common carts to get them).
kyuusaku wrote:
[SUROM] will give you access to 512K of PRG ROM, but only through convoluted bankswitching
A typical game of that size has at least two screens that use nearly disjoint engines. Viewed in that light, a mapper designed for a dual-SNROM multicart isn't so convoluted.
Quote:
so it's probably not in any way preferrable to MMC3 unless you need one-screen mirroring.
Or unless you plan to mass-produce. MMC3 hasn't yet been made to fit on a CPLD.
MM3 has single screen mirroring on special boards, like what NES Play Action Football uses.
Banshaku wrote:
kyuusaku wrote:
Personally I think you should just get a PowerPak, this talk of butchering carts is making me sad
Of course I would prefer not to have to destroy carts, I don't enjoy that. But I cannot use easily a PowerPak on my famicom unless I get some kind of fancy adapter.
So I have the following possibilities:
- Get that apdater + powerPak : easily 200$
- Get back a nes + step-up converter (I'm in japan) + powerpak: easily more than 200$
- Get an unknown famicom cart, rotting up in junk pile that contains the mapper I want: 1$ (+ possible eeprom burner if I can't borrow one)
So my choice is more money based. And can you really get a PowerPak these days? They are hard to find you know.
What makes me more sad is to think about those junk carts I see in a box that nobody use and that could end up in a garbage truck someday. Ending up as a dev cart is a better fate then been destroyed completely.
NES to Famicom Converters are easy to find and cheap. They are included with alot of Famiclones. The PowerPAK is not available at the moment but if you keep checking Retrousb.com it will eventually come back into stock. If you are going to butcher a cartridge you should choose it wisely. Something common and yet shitty is a good idea.
MottZilla wrote:
If you are going to butcher a cartridge you should choose it wisely. Something common and yet shitty is a good idea.
I really don't think butchering a cart is as bad as some of you make it to be. What's the difference if a cart is in a collector's shelf or helping someone in developing their game? Games are software, not hardware. You can always keep a copy of the original game data and play it in your devcart when you feel like it, the software remains intact. The only exception are the contents of WRAM in battery-backed games, I'll give you that. Still, batteries eventually die and the games would be lost anyway unless you have a way to backup that data, in which case using the same board for different games wouldn't be a problem in the first place.
A lot of people collect games just as much for the hardware as the software (I have a prototype Famicom cart that I would never part with, even though I've dumped the ROM). There is a finite supply of original NES/Fami hardware; just because something is plentiful right now doesn't mean it'll be plentiful 10 years or so down the road. Parts wear out, game shops trash their bins of old games, supply gradually dwindles. Butchering carts only serves to accelerate the process.
It'd be great if the PowerPak was cheaper, more readily available, and had better mapper support...
For straight homebrew (not playing pirated commercial NES games), even a cart capable of only UOROM would probably be appreciated.
MottZilla wrote:
NES to Famicom Converters are easy to find and cheap. They are included with alot of Famiclones.
If you live in the states I guess. Since I'm in japan, the famiclones doesn't comes with a converter since we don't need one. This is one of my issues right now.
MottZilla wrote:
The PowerPAK is not available at the moment but if you keep checking Retrousb.com it will eventually come back into stock. If you are going to butcher a cartridge you should choose it wisely. Something common and yet shitty is a good idea.
I would love to have one but I saw some people had issues with it (had to re-solder a few things here and there, don't remember the details) so I'm a little bit worried to buy it. Maybe the newest batch won't have the issue.
I'm more interested in the powerpak for dev use, not for playing games that I don't own so for me what is important is compatibility with the mapper I may use. I'm still not sure which one I will use, still investigating it. This thread was mostly for investigation. I don't know yet if I will use MMC5 or not. The reason I mostly asked the question is because I found some very cheap MMC5 carts, so I was curious about the specs. 2 days ago I found more MMC5 carts (the mahjong one) for a few hundred yen again so I may skip butchering Just breed after all. If I can avoid to butcher them, even better. I don't like to break carts, I'm a collector too and own plenty of them.
edit:
BMF54123 wrote:
A lot of people collect games just as much for the hardware as the software (I have a prototype Famicom cart that I would never part with, even though I've dumped the ROM).
If you decide to use a prototype for dev use, I would slap you silly
This is too rare compare to common cart that I could use as a dev cart.
It may be not common from an american perspective (I was not living in japan before you know), but for me, so many carts are available in that junk bin so why not. Before I moved to japan, I had plenty of Super Mario brothers carts, I would have surely used that as a dev cart (I should have never got rid of my american collection.. big mistake of mine before moving).
BMF54123 wrote:
There is a finite supply of original NES/Fami hardware; just because something is plentiful right now doesn't mean it'll be plentiful 10 years or so down the road. Parts wear out, game shops trash their bins of old games, supply gradually dwindles. Butchering carts only serves to accelerate the process.
Of course there is a finite supply, I do understand that. But which one is better: a cart ending in a land fill or as a dev cart? Is always depends on you perspective on the subject.
BMF54123 wrote:
It'd be great if the PowerPak was cheaper, more readily available, and had better mapper support...
Yes, I would love that too. But I never had the chance to test one so I don't know how well it would do the job for me yet.
I went on a yahoo japan 'large famicom lot' auction spree a while back, and have a fair bit of these large-case famicom games kicking around. If someone can describe how to relatively safely crack open a cart let me know and maybe I can actually verify some of the MMC5 jp boards for y'all.
I'd be curious too considering...