posted by taizou @ 2013-04-14 19:01:46
Dumps
on a little bit of a roll today - next up I've got a couple of variations on a theme, the theme being Sintax's surprisingly-decent "Castlevania DX" game - a demo ROM has been circulating for a while but the full version remains elusive. But! Suddenly less-elusive are these two dubious hacks of the full version based on popular RPG series, which surely has to be worth something.
A few general points that apply to both of these: they were dumped from GBA-sized carts, but the games still run in GBC mode; the black spot in the pics below is on my camera; and the new replacement sprites use swords while the original Castlevania guy had a whip, but the collision detection hasn't been updated to account for it, meaning you have to duck to hit enemies which look like they should be reachable. quality etc
Pian Wai Zhang Huang Jin Tai Yang - Feng Yin De Yuan Gu Lian Jin Shu (篇外章 黃金太陽-封印的遠古煉金術)
why yes, yes that is a long title, thanks for noticing. This one is based on Camelot's Golden Sun series, vaguely.
raw: Pian Wai Zhang Huang Jin Tai Yang - Feng Yin De Yuan Gu Lian Jin Shu (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Pian Wai Zhang Huang Jin Tai Yang - Feng Yin De Yuan Gu Lian Jin Shu (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
Yong Zhe Dou E Long VIII (勇者鬥惡龍VIII)
Well, VIII on the title screen, not-VIII on the box. But I think I've seen a box with VIII on it on Taobao or something. Anyway. Dragon Quest this time, and I do at least recognise a couple of Dragon Quest enemies they've shoved in there.
raw: Yong Zhe Dou E Long VIII (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Yong Zhe Dou E Long VIII (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
posted by taizou @ 2013-04-14 17:02:04
Dumps
well i'm just ploughing through some more Sintax stuff here. two variations on the previously dumped Spider-Man game! once again the raw versions should work in hhugboy & MESS + im supplying fixed ones for other emus.
Movie Version Spider-Man 3
This is the English version - aside from the language and a new animated "3" on the title screen it seems to be the same as the Chinese one. Dumped by BigFred!
raw: Movie Version - Spider-Man 3 (Unlicensed, English) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Movie Version - Spider-Man 3 (Unlicensed, English) [Fixed].zip
Chuan Shuo (傳說)
Lazy, lazy hack of Spider-Man. Still has his head in the status bar. Cart supplied by Qiezei, dumped by me.
raw: Chuan Shuo (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Chuan Shuo (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
posted by taizou @ 2013-03-07 13:58:47
Dumps
got some more backlogged Sintaxness today: He Jin Zhuang Bei II (合金裝備II) or Metal Gear II, a Metal Gear-based beat 'em up. It uses the Three Kingdoms engine but pretty much does its own thing with it (unlike Shaolin from the last post) and it's pretty decent, quite Metal Gearish in presentation and not at all Metal Gearish in gameplay.
(There might also be an English version and it possibly might have been released as "Eraq War II", but I've never seen it under either name.)
Cart provided by Qiezei - thanks (again)! As with the previous post, the raw dump should work in hhugboy + MESS and the fixed should work in everything else.
raw: He Jin Zhuang Bei II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: He Jin Zhuang Bei II (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
posted by taizou @ 2013-03-07 01:07:49
Dumps
got a bit of a backlog to clear here so i'm gonna get this stuff out of the way first - these are all Sintax games and they're all basically variations (different levels/intros/what have you) on existing dumps. They're all pretty decent anyway!
All the raw dumps here will work in hhugboy and they should also work in MESS thanks to etabeta's efforts on that front. but I'm also still posting fixed versions for other emulators where possible, because there are still plenty of platforms without any emus that support these things.
Shaoling Legend: hero, the saver (Fantasic ShaoLin Kungfu) / Shao Lin Shi San Gun - Ying Xiong Jiu Zhu (少林十三棍-英雄救主)
Basically a reskin of True Thre(e) Kingdoms/Shin Sangoku Musou/whatever the ROM version was called again. All the sprites have been badly re-edited but the new(?) backgrounds are quite nice. And I have both the English and Chinese versions here! so yay for that. (note that in the Chinese version, the in-game character portraits are glitched - it's like that on the real cart too)
english raw: Shaoling Legend - Hero, the Saver (Fantasic ShaoLin Kungfu) (Unlicensed, English) [Raw Dump].zip
english fixed: Shaoling Legend - Hero, the Saver (Fantasic ShaoLin Kungfu) (Unlicensed, English) [Fixed].zip
chinese raw: Shao Lin Shi San Gun - Ying Xiong Jiu Zhu (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
chinese fixed: Shao Lin Shi San Gun - Ying Xiong Jiu Zhu (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
2003 Ha Li Xiao Zi IV (2003哈利小子IV) / 2003 Ha Li Bo Te 2 - Xiao Shi De Mi Shi (2003哈利波特2-消失的密室)
The dumped "Harry Potter" platform game with different levels/intro/etc. The only difference between the two versions seems to be the titles (which translate to Harry Boy IV and Harry Potter 2, though the latter just uses its subtitle on the title screen, Chamber of Secrets).
hb4 raw: 2003 Ha Li Xiao Zi IV (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
hb4 fixed: 2003 Ha Li Xiao Zi IV (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
hp2 raw: 2003 Ha Li Bo Te 2 - Xiao Shi De Mi Shi (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Raw Dump].zip
hp2 fixed: 2003 Ha Li Bo Te 2 - Xiao Shi De Mi Shi (Unlicensed, Chinese) [Fixed].zip
Digimon Yellow Jade
Digimon 9 with a new title screen/story (in English!)/levels. Also the Agumon sprite has been redrawn for some reason. It's a bit skinnier and less cute but it has all the same animations.
raw: Digimon Yellow Jade (Unlicensed, English) [Raw Dump].zip
fixed: Digimon Yellow Jade (Unlicensed, English) [Fixed].zip
posted by taizou @ 2013-02-19 00:08:46
hhugboy
well hey, I made an emulator! an emulator by the name of hhugboy, which is very very heavily based on GEST. because the world definitely needed another gameboy emulator. I have zero experience of emulator coding and I've done a little bit of C++ before (which 99% of emulators are written in) but I don't get along with the language one bit, so it's been kind of... a learning experience for me, to say the least, but I've finally got something I'm fairly happy with.
the major thing with this emulator is it supports Sintax and Li Cheng mappers on unmodified copies of their roms (ie the "raw dump" versions I've posted previously). I've been hacking these games to make them work on standard emulators, but this has proved a little difficult with a few games, which got me thinking - why not try and emulate their mappers instead? and so.. I did. Those two, anyway. Li Cheng's was easy, Sintax's was a bit more work and isn't 100% perfect (new dumps may or may not run, but most should). Also, for any other emu authors or other interested parties, I'm going to document those two as much as I can at some point soon.
This does raise the problem of how to detect which games use which mappers - I've kind of tried to fudge it based on the boot logo but that isn't 100% reliable so I've put in a manual override in the menu too. It'd be nice if the Game Boy had a ROM file format like the NES's (iNES and UNIF) containing cartridge info independent of the internal GB ROM header (which was set by the developers and often wrong for unlicensed games) avoiding the need for either hacks, dubious autodetection attempts or manual overrides to determine which mapper to use. I don't know if there's enough interest for something like this to take off, given that it's only necessary for unlicensed games (and Mani's multicarts) though.
Anyway I've made a bunch of other improvements and tweaks to the original GEST, including screenshots, a recent ROM list, sharper filtering at larger sizes, Unicode filename support (which I haven't seen in any other emu, so have fun naming your roms in whatever language takes your fancy), a nicer/somehow appropriate onscreen font (from codeman38), and more!
Latest downloads, source code and issue tracker can all be found on bitbucket, so..go there! and try it. and if you find any bugs add them to the tracker.
(also I realise there aren't any Li Cheng roms out there to play on this thing but I'm planning to fix that in the near future too)
