Handheld Underground

new dump! Qi Tian Da Sheng

posted by taizou @ 2013-02-08 13:50:23 Dumps

Got another one from Qiezei's 8 in 1 multicart today - a shooter by the name of "Qi Tian Da Sheng: Sun Wu Kong" (齊天大聖-孫悟空), also known as "West Story" based on its name in the menu of said multi.

born from an egg on a mountain top the punkiest monkey that ever popped he knew every magic trick under the sun

You may have seen an alternate version of this game before - "Harry Potter 3" (which I happen to have made an English translation patch for) - and while I'd previously assumed this game was the original and Harry was made later, the header actually says "HARRY2002" which is a pretty clear indication it was the other way around.

It is, I'm fairly sure, by Vast Fame, although unusually for them they've "done a Sintax" and stolen music from somewhere else rather than composing their own. Fortunately the soundtrack they stole was from Parodius and it's excellent.

Qi Tian Da Sheng - Sun Wu Kong (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip).zip (no need for a fix this time, yay)

8 Comments

new dump! Sheng Shou Wu Yu

posted by taizou @ 2013-01-22 13:46:07 Dumps

Sintaxmas may be over, but the most magical day of the year can come at any time - just when you're least expecting it.. it's New Vast Fame Game Day! (yay)

This is something I've been chasing for a while - it's a strategy RPG called Sheng Shou Wu Yu: Shen Long Chuan Shuo (聖獸物語-神龍傳說), which translates to something along the lines of "Holy Beast Story: Legend of the God Dragon". As you might expect from Vast Fame, it's pretty excellent.

Much like my previous dumps of Shi Kong Xing Shou and Xin Feng Shen Bang, this one was extracted from a Vast Fame multicart, this time an 8 in 1 - many thanks to Qiezei for providing the cart! You can find scans of the cart packaging, along with lots of other interesting stuff, on his blog.

Two ROMs this time, both work (ostensibly) but the raw dump has the wrong save type set in the header so fails to save properly in most emulators. The "Header Fix" version fixes that, and also the checksum too, just for the hell of it.

raw dump: Sheng Shou Wu Yu - Shen Long Chuan Shuo (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip) [Raw Dump].zip
header fix: Sheng Shou Wu Yu - Shen Long Chuan Shuo (Unlicensed, Chinese) (Multicart Rip) [Header Fix].zip

13 Comments

new dump! Mani 4 in 1

posted by taizou @ 2013-01-06 22:45:25 Dumps

well I covered this in a post a while back, and now it's dumped! ah the wonders of technology. or something. I dumped the menu and BigFred reassembled it using the existing Japanese dumps of these games (as the versions on the multi are identical to the standalone Japanese releases).

To quote BigFred, since he can explain it better than I can:

As you can see the global checksum is correct - actually this is the same as the other Mani/Taito Pack where the single ROM-images are just stitched together in a certain order. Now let me explain: A real MMM01 ROM-image does have the ROM banks including the menu at the end of the data rather than the start as other mapper games. This is not just speculation but was verified by a raw dump done by The Guru (MAME). We also received information about this matter from the dumper toshi77 who provided a few details about the MMM01 together with his dump of the Taito pack. MMM01 maps these pages as the first pages on bootup. This means most emulators will just load the first game and you won't see the menu at all. The only emulator that currently handles the MMM01 correctly is the french emulator rew. If you load the Taito pack into it you will get the menu and each game can be correctly loaded using the accurate "header at the end" raw image. However the Mani games do not have a correct header setting to MMM01 which rew uses to initialize the mapper. On real hardware this is not needed of course but on emulators you won't get a correct result.

4 in 1 (DMG-603 CHN) (Licensed, China) [Raw Dump].zip - The correct raw image with the menu at the end. This will not currently work in any emulators.
4 in 1 (DMG-603 CHN) (Licensed, China) [Menu First].zip - As above, with the menu moved to the start. This produces the correct checksum, and also works in MESS, which incorrectly implements MMM01.
4 in 1 (DMG-603 CHN) (Licensed, China) [Header Fix].zip - The raw image with the header edited to MMM01, works in rew.

btw, sorry to anyone who's been waiting for this!

13 Comments

MERRY SINTAXMAS EVERYONE!

posted by taizou @ 2012-12-25 00:43:20 Dumps

the twelfth day is finally upon us... and today I'm bringing you something I think quite a lot of people have been waiting for. a game I actually played through to the end because I legitimately enjoyed it that much. It's a strategy game, more or less based on Super Robot Wars gameplay-wise (also the music is stolen directly from the second GB entry in the series), but featuring characters from everyone's favourite monster franchise(s). And I have like four variations on it, so let's take them in order:

Pokemon Sapphire / Pocket Monster Sapphire

This is the first version I played, and probably the original. There's lots more info, along with pics of the box and stuff, here. This version actually seems to have been published by a company called "New Game Color Advance", using art straight from the official GBA Sapphire, as opposed to Sintax's usual ... idiosyncratic approach. (but don't worry, the next version has plenty of that)

raw: Pokemon Sapphire Version (Pocket Monster Saphire) (Unlicensed, English) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Pokemon Sapphire Version (Pocket Monster Saphire) (Unlicensed, English) [Fixed].zip

2003 Pocket Monster Carbuncle / Pocket Monster Ruby

Well we have Sapphire, so obviously there has to be Ruby too... Or Carbuncle, as Sintax prefer to call it. The title screen and some of the stage graphics are different, but I think everything else is the same as Sapphire. I suspect this one was made after Sapphire, though, if only because its title screen is fairly shoddy-looking compared to Sapphire's nice one. Qiezei has a bunch of scans here.

Dumped by RobGBA!

raw: 2003 Pocket Monster Carbuncle (Pocket Monster Ruby) (Unlicensed, English) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: 2003 Pocket Monster Carbuncle (Pocket Monster Ruby) (Unlicensed, English) [Fixed].zip

2003 Kou Dai Guai Shou - Lan Bao Shi (2003口袋怪獸-藍寶石)

The Chinese version of Sapphire - seems about the same, aside from being in Chinese.

I should note that I wasn't able to get a consistent dump of this one; my first dump worked, but all the subsequent ones didn't, so I can't verify whether it's a good dump or not.

Cart supplied by Qiezei!

raw: 2003 Kou Dai Guai Shou - Lan Bao Shi (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump-Unconfirmed].zip
fixed: 2003 Kou Dai Guai Shou - Lan Bao Shi (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed-Unconfirmed].zip

Shu Ma Bao Long - Shui Jing Ban II (數碼暴龍-水晶版II)

and finally.. the Digimon version! Basically the same thing but with different graphics. Strangely they bothered to redo the stage graphics again, but still left a few Pokemon and Pokeballs and other Pokestuff in the game. In one of the screenshots you can even see a Pokemon centre that they added into this version.

Cart supplied by Qiezei!

raw: Shu Ma Bao Long - Shui Jing Ban II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Shu Ma Bao Long - Shui Jing Ban II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip

and so it comes to an end! this isn't the end of Sintax though. not by a long shot.

19 Comments

The Eleventh Day of Sintaxmas

posted by taizou @ 2012-12-24 13:09:58 Dumps

the next (ooh second to last) game is a cute little puzzle-ish platformer based on the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch. what's awesome here is I have both the English and Chinese versions to release today - this never, ever happens (except the one other time it might happen), so enjoy it! The English version is called Space Baby on the cart and "The Firmament Baby" in-game, the Chinese is called Tai Kong Bao Bei (太空寶貝) everywhere. But I'm just going to call it Space Baby for convenience because I like that name.