So I used to have a Yobo portable SNES (16 Go, I think), and it wouldn't play Super Mario RPG,

So I bought a SupaBoy and was pumped when I popped Mario RPG into it, and it fired up perfectly!

I began to play Mario RPG for a few weeks, here and there, I was up to about 6-7 hrs of game time, when my SupaBoy wouldn't start the game anymore??

Clean cart, reposition, on, off, on , off... Grey screen... Nothing??

So I let it charge overnight thinking it might be a low battery,

In the AM, popped in Mario RPG, game started first try... But with No Save files?? .srm was erased??

I powered off and on again, and started getting Grey screen again??

Any thoughts??

(oh, it plays carts without special chips perfectly, since then I have logged 10 hours on Chrono Trigger, and it starts and saves perfectly... Doom cart,Mario RPG... Grey?)

What do you guys think?

Im surprised supaboy played Mario RPG without the swap trick!

I stopped using my Supaboy after it zapped all my Final Fantasy 2 files when I was at the end of the game. It was like one day it decided not to play the game anymore. I feel your pain.

Have you recently tried to play it in a SNES?

It's possible that the Supaboy doesn't have much compatibility with those carts. Though it seems odd that the Supaboy would play it fine and then this happens. This would usually point to a not so clean cartridge.

Have you tried contacting Hyperkin support?

...and that's why I try not to deal with that third party stuff

Pichichi that swap trick I figured out works you're right, but some SA1 games will fire up if you're lucky but it's usually not consistent like he's saying it was. I'm surprised it worked for a few weeks let alone two times in a row.

I made a video of it:


TO make your game run:
- Put any non SA1 game in the slot
- Power ON
- When the game shows, press+HOLD Reset (blue screen appears)
- Swap out game, pop in SMRPG
- Release reset button and the game will boot up with no problem

I got upset when my chipped games wouldn't work after seeing them run online so I started goofing around with all sorts of tricks and figured that one out pretty quick after getting the v2 of the Supaboy last year.

Getting the SA1 games working only left me with 3 games that flake out. SDD1 chipped SF Alpha 2, Yoshi's Island commits suicide visually, and Stunt Race FX(and annoyingly Starfox2 which uses it as a repro) will work for 5 minutes then just soft reset like some store kiosk with a kill timer on it.

Also if that annoying d-pad is pissing you off making some games fairly or completely unplayable, search my user name and supaboy as I created a mod you can do with nothing more than a 2 cent piece of plastic and some sandpaper to size it up right and it will work as solidly as a real snes pad.

Ive heard a lot of rumors that ALL clone consoles drain batteries, and plain lose save states? is that true? I've got battery issues as well!

I have no idea as I really haven't used battery holding games much in it as I think of it more of a quick play thing. I've heard of that issue in the past with some devices like gb/gbc/gba flash carts.

Yeah I thought about messing with the D pad but it's really not worth it since I have been playing my 3ds for my handheld needs. I'm still praying a 3rd party company releases a solid handheld clone with no issues. I can dream right?

Honestly the supaboy is just a rough piece of equipment, I had high hopes for it.

I'm glad I had the self-discipline to NOT drop the cash the second I saw this thing. Also, I've heard nothing but issues regarding SMRPG and the SB...

Yeah it's got issues, but to be fair, you get what you pay for. For the price of 1 modern game you can get the Supaboy, so it's not you're paying for some pricey hardware here. I feel like I got my moneys worth out of it. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone but if you have a desire to play your original SNES software on the go, the Superboy is about as good as it gets.

haha, I ended up just building my own Super Nintendo console, not as pretty as Supaboy, but it works.

Thanks for the Tips Gents, I will try the swap method and let you know,

I don't have any Hate for the SupaBoy, I feel like its not bad for $75

I don't get all the crapping on it either. They don't have the tech docs nor can they use them if they did from Nintendo as that's a lawsuit waiting to happen if proven so they have to investigate, reverse engineer, and go from there. The fact it can run almost every title the system has despite all the weird cart configurations between the chipped titles says a lot of attempting to get it right went into it. The only thing I feel was totally inexcusable was the d-pad. Internally the SupaBoy is layered a bit to fit it all in and the dpad sits like nearly an inch (due to stilts) away from the contacts on the board. It has no center resistance like the SNES pad does with that little nub so it allows for up to all 4 directions to be hit at once causing games to go wacko. The little fix I made put that nub back there and it rolls like it should.

They already got a lawsuit cause nintendo sue them for "copying" their SNES cart slot on the Retron3, but nothing happened.

All the patents have expired, there are no copyrights, so there is nothing for Nintendo to sue about.  Emulators are open source so that is an easy resource for tech docs, but they don't design their own chips anyways.  Adding a ~$1 chip to emulate the console lockout would almost certainly get SMRPG and others working.

Source?

One of their employees told me.

Given their obviously false Retron5 claims, that is not a reliable source

lol if YOU say so

Aww don't go into taking on the retron5 in here, it's a nice system hopefully from the look of it.


And if you're right it would take a $1 chip, then they're cheapasses as it would have been negligible on their profits for it at the price they charge.

Its not about the system itself!  If they make up stories about simple things like the name change, why would they be believed about a lawsuit involving no copyrights, no utility patents, no trademarks, and no valid design patents?  Why were no other clone makers sued?  Why weren't they sued about earlier SNES clones?  Why is there nothing about this happening in any news sites?  If ~20 years after SNES is a problem for clones, how can they now do GBA after only ~10 years without being sued?  Just doesn't make sense.  

Check out the SuperCIC from ikari.  It can act as the lockout chip inside the console so the cart thinks it is in a real system.  Don't know if anyone has tested that with SMRPG or other SA-1 games tho.

Well if I knew if it were possible let alone how to wire something like that up, or if I could mail my Supaboy to someone who would do such a thing I'd love to see if that SuperCIC would put an end to the cart swapping bs for the SA1 games and who knows maybe it would help on the few FX titles that have a fit or time out after 5 minutes.

I have no idea what to make of hyperkin or the retron5 other than what they've displayed and as much as I like getting into politics, I don't so much with gaming so whatever they're up to I don't care to bother getting into to be straight with you. I think the system looks interesting and fun if it delivers on the claims of what it can do. If it can do what they claim it will I'd be in line to buy one as a backup easy to carry around thing to other tvs here or elsewhere. I have no idea why clone makers would be or wouldn't be sued. The one thing I do know well from the previous hyperkin stuff is that they're butchers which annoys the hell out of me because they'd cannibalize parts off of old in some way broken or dirt cheap to find systems and pop chips off the things to make their systems by their own admission.

Wasn't the first release/version of SMRPG done without the SA-1 chip? I recall reading that it wouldn't work in the retroduo, and my copy worked perfectly fine every time. The last time I beat it was on the retroduo (before it was traded away to another member here). Wouldn't that same version be usable in other clone systems?

Nah they all do just because the game physically can't run without what the SA1 chip actually is and does for it as the system can't handle it. You might be thinking of Starfox that didn't come with the FX1 chip as the earliest copies used the Mario CHIP which depending just how early was a sloppy gloptop or a legit extra chip. Later releases had the legit FX1.

Pulled from the wikipedia the SA1 chip does the following:

Upgraded 10 MHz clock speed, up from a maximum of 3.58 MHz
Faster RAM
Memory mapping capabilities
Limited data storage and compression
New DMA modes such as bitmap to bit plane transfer
Built-in CIC lockout, for copy protection and regional marketing control

If I recall right I think around 1/4 of the code of SMRPG actually is stored on the SA1 itself as another method of copy protection which is why the game was dumped far passed when most SNES games were put online as warez to use and abuse.