Hmmm...Super Cars was one of the games I fixed the other day, and yeah it seems to work fine now.  Do we have more details as to why some these games were labeled as "incompatible"?  Because some of them seem to work just fine.

Well, I just tried to run each of them until gameplay (not just the title screen). Super Cars was glitchy-unplayable, but bunnyboy mentioned that mirroring thing I didn't understand about (still don't ). When I tried to repair Final Fight 3 (which didn't work BTW, removed the Bad Header warning, but after "loading", it gave me a BSOD) with nestopia, I saw the mirroring option, and remembered super cars. Right now, most games on the list are MMC5 related... The ones that say "glitches" run, but are unplayable (menu is not legible, garbled graphics beyond playability). Or which games are you talking about Mog?

I guess what I am not understanding is why it was labeled as incompatible, or who did it even. I can understand if the mapper is just not supported, but I was under the impression that all of these games were already tested and found to be unplayable. Not just listed because there because it might not work.

Star Tropics is listed as incompatible because of the mapper, but it starts up and plays just fine. Granted I only played it for about 2mins...which is why I am wondering if there are more specific details as to WHY its incompatible. Do I have to play it for 40mins to get to a part that causes the game to crash? It's hard to try and make a game work when I don't know why its not working.

Now for Super Cars it seems that the problem was a bad header, which is a real simple fix and shouldn't have been wrong to begin with (is every Super Car ROM out there messed up???). Did no one else actually LOOK into why these games were not working? The answer has to be no, because it takes about 5 secs to discover what the problem with Super Cars was.



Never used NEStopia, but FCEUX has message log that displays ROM data and any errors.  I went through all of the licensed ROMs myself the other day and found a few that had header errors, Super Cars was one of them. Others were:

AD&D Heros of the Lance - Was set to not use a battery

Caesars Palace - Mapper or mirroring error

Classic Concentration - Mapper error I think

Punch-Out!! - Mapper I think

Karnov - Mapper (game still doesn't work though)


Low G Man - Still dont know whats wrong, but it gives a weird error

Low-G-Man can not work normally in the iNES format.
This game has been recognized by its CRC32 value, and the appropriate changes will be made so it will run.
If you wish to hack this game, you should use the UNIF format for your hack.

Super Contra 7 also works

Hah, I don't know why I put Startropics there... maybe my ROM was a bad one, or I just messed up. As I told you, I tried them one by one 'till gameplay. I guess I need to try again those "incompatible" games, the new Cheetahmen 2 ROM I have works (still damn unplayable though)!

There seems to be a bug with 135b2 that I'm experiencing. If I press start button at the PP splash screen, it goes right to Game Genie with the last used game, last used Game Genie code, and last used save file. If I start the game at that point, sometimes the game would report empty save file but if I load the save file manually before starting the game, it works fine. It's almost as if the PP isn't properly loading save game if I use Start button to quickly get back in the last game I played.

EDIT: tried and reproducible with Dragon Warrior 1 and 2, haven't tried other games with battery save option.  Using an USA toaster NES BTW.

Update: I think I figured out the save file bug. It seems to happen if I power off the system. When I power the system on and go right to the Game Genie screen, the PP's memory remained blank because the save file are never loaded. But if I just reset to (for example) change Game Genie code then go back in the game, the save file are still in the RAM and doesn't need to be reloaded.

Perhaps a check to compare the save file with the internal memory while loading game ROM, and to load save file if the internal memory is bank or different?

It would be good if you report bugs to the user "RetroUSB Support". Bunnyboy (the creator of the Power Pak) sometimes reads this thread, but not so often, and never reads PMs. That's what RetroUSB Support is for supposedly (though I wrote him once, and never got a response).

How fast the ROM's on the SNES Powerpak loads compered to the Super Everdrive

Final Fight 3 now working with minor glitches (jumping) at bottom of screen. Takes 25 seconds to load, seems normal so far for mapper 90 ROMs to take along time to load.

Only yesterday I learned about the Everdrive's existence. From what I've read, no one complains about super-long loading times on the everdrive, but as the Powerpak uses Compact Flash, it should be naturally faster. I'm only speculating, as I don't have an Everdrive. If Everdrive's creator can be contacted, it would be good to ask him the average loading times of his cart.

how did you make it work?

Taken from the Final Fight 3 thread:

Looks like none of the games I own cart only copies of are on the NES incompatibility list anymore. Since I only collect CIB copies of games released for common systems from the NES and on, I will have a lot of good cart only NES games for sale. Same goes for SNES where I will only need to keep a few games.

Added Joshua to the bad list (noooooooo... anything but Joshua!). Added Super Bat Puncher to the good list (yay!).

I had a problem with M.C. Kids doing your suggested overlapping of mappers (latest beta mappers -> latest loopy mappers -> latest savestate mappers). The graphics were garbled until I copied over loopy's mappers again, then the game seemed to work fine for the most part (I'm guessing loopy's MMC3 implementation is a lot better than whatever the savestate mappers have). Does M.C. Kids have garbled graphics for you, buttheadrulesagain? And if not, are you able to use savestates with it? I'm just curious if the problem crops up for you or not, thanks.

I'll have to check. I haven't noticed anything wrong with the games I usually play, or any others I've played casually. I'll have to put a note on the original post.

Guess what, MCKids is bad on my combined mappers powerpak too. I'll just put a note for it in the Powerpak thread, but won't count it as it can be played without savestate mappers.

StarTropics was indeed incompatible in an older version of loopy's mappers. In that version it hangs after getting through the first city (when the game saves for the first time).

Well, I finally got myself an NTSC NES, and there's some slight corruption in M.C.Kids (blank tiles in the ground on the first level). Is that what you were talking about?

This indicates WRAM corruption which is a very bad thing... I wish somebody had reported it to me sooner.

I want to pick one of these up in the worst way but I have no clue what I am doing. Can anyone who has one please explain how this thing saves? I know it has a battery for the games that originally saved, but what about the ones that didn't? Can you save those too by adding save states somewhere on the card?

You can use save states using thefox's mappers, there's an article in the brewery about them. And you just put all ROM's and the PowerPak bios on the CF card and the bootloader runs and shows the menu and updates and then you pick a game and play from the menu.

It has no battery I don't believe, all the saves and stuff are stored on the CF card. Although I think the save files must exist before you can point to them.

Hey thanks for your reply. I think I am starting to understand this now. So when I get my Power Pak, instead of going to the retrosub site and downloading the mappers, I instead:

Download the 1.35 b2 mappers,
Download loopy's mappers
Finally, download thefox save state mappers..

Then I download the savestate files that buttheadrulesagain has at the end of the post.

Am I right?

You can save in any game that supported saving in the old days even without my mappers, for example Legend of Zelda, Kirby's Adventure and so forth.

Hello!
I have got a major issue with Kirby's Adventure with all mappers on PowerPak with my NTSC front-loader. I have tried all the [!] roms from GoodNES with the same result.
Official mappers 1.34 and 1.35b2: wrong palletes, the water is white instead of blue in the first level and overall more white than other colors.
Loopy's mappers: the pallette is fine, but occasionally the game hangs. The image on the screen is left intact and the music continues looping. The hangs are completely random.
Savestate mappers: hangs either the same way as with loopy's or with scrambled graphics and buzzing sound. Thefox kindly tested the game for me with his NTSC console, but could not replicate the error.
You may think it's because my console has got dirty contacts, but I have tried a wide variety of games and none of them have major graphical glitches and don't freeze. Also I have tried every test rom I managed to find, including NTF2 which is said to use all 72 pins otherwise it doesn't work. All roms from test carts work good every time I try.

I have also heard that some people had glitches with Crystalis on 1.34 mappers and some hadn't. I'm the one of those who had. So, if the problems are caused on some consoles but not on others, maybe this may help.

Also many thanks to bunnyboy, loopy and thefox for supporting this awesome project! and everyone else for reviews, compatibility lists and other stuff!