- Joined: 06 Jan 2005
- Posts: 177
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Build dates in roms?
 Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:03 pm
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Probably a really dumb question but how does one go about viewing build dates of roms?
Ideally looking for a way to check build dates of not just SMS roms but also SNES roms and megadrive roms too so if there's a program or tool I can get that can do all these that would be perfect
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- Site Admin
- Joined: 19 Oct 1999
- Posts: 14744
- Location: London
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Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:24 am
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The Master System doesn't have a build date in the ROM header, anything you find is non standard. Other systems may have something but I expect it's not super reliable.
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- Joined: 14 Oct 2008
- Posts: 511
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Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 7:01 am
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Definitely not on SNES.
Although the official Genesis header definition includes a field for build month, it's probably safe to assume developers didn't usually bother to keep that up to date.
Like in the same way both consoles had checksums but I don't know if either required them be accurate so devs usually didn't care. I know SNES didn't so it usually wasn't correct until the final build. Not sure if the Genesis TMSS mandated it.
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- Joined: 08 Dec 2005
- Posts: 488
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:20 pm
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KingMike wrote Not sure if the Genesis TMSS mandated [an accurate checksum].
It does not. Nonetheless, around 80% of licensed Genesis releases (excluding prototypes etc) do have a correct checksum.
Note that some games (e.g. Out Run, Sonic 1) will verify the checksum themselves and refuse to start (showing a completely red screen) if it is incorrect.
KingMike wrote Although the official Genesis header definition includes a field for build month, it's probably safe to assume developers didn't usually bother to keep that up to date.
The month may not have been kept up-to-date during development, but most released games do seem to include reasonable values. I suspect that most developers (especially those who set correct checksums) did set the date correctly on completion.
Although in some cases the information in the ROM header will be inaccurate, it is probably the closest we will come to official build dates for the majority of Genesis ROMs.
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