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Hi everyone!

I´m from Spain (sorry for my english) and this is my first post. I´m a fan of the Sega Game Gear and I have two questions:

1- Why haven´t yet emulated games like Tarzan, Power Drive, Striker, Jungle Strike, Asterix and the Secret Mission, F1 World Championship or Smurfs 2?

2- Why Prince of Persia or OutRun Europe roms (and others) don´t work as gg roms if are roms for the Game Gear? (with extension .sms I operate these games in a emulator)

Thanks and greetings from Spain.

I'm not sure what you mean by your first question (games that haven't been dumped), but as for your second question; the Game Gear hardware is very similar to the SMS hardware to the extent that a pin on the cartridge port could be used to switch it into an SMS compatible mode. Some Game Gear games were SMS games that put the Game Gear in this SMS compatible mode. (The Master Gear Converter let you plug SMS cartridges into the Game Gear via an adapter).

The two most obvious changes in Game Gear mode are that the screen is cropped to a 160x144 area in the middle of the screen (the SMS typically ran at 256x192, when the Game Gear is in SMS mode it performs a crude scaling to fit the larger resolution on the smaller screen) and it uses 12-bit colour values instead of 6-bit. This is why games you mentioned need to be renamed .sms, otherwise you can only see the central part of the screen and the colours are all wrong.

Tarzan - dumped but unreleased, probably due to emulation problems in Meka (ie. Bock is evil)

Undumped, as far as I know:
Power Drive
Striker
Jungle Strike
Asterix and the Secret Mission
F1 World Championship (1995 version)
Smurfs 2

Are you sure these were released for GG? I can't find a picture of any of them on Google. Their appearance in lists of games isn't necessarily proof of anything. If you have them, we'd be happy to dump and release them.

Regarding the second question, as benryves said, the Game Gear has built-in Master System compatibility, so these games were released as a "Master Gear + Master System game all in a Game Gear cartridge". This was mainly because it was easy to convert the Master System version of the game this way (usually, the only difference is a larger font to make it more readable). However, the .sms and .gg file formats do not contain information about this "built in Master Gear" (really, just a wire connecting two cartridge pins), so instead the emulator will look at the file extension to decide whether to use GG mode or SMS mode.

Maxim wrote

Are you sure these were released for GG? I can't find a picture of any of them on Google. Their appearance in lists of games isn't necessarily proof of anything. If you have them, we'd be happy to dump and release them.

Asterix and the Secret Mission was released for the Game Gear in Europe. Here's a box shot. The other games were probably not released.

They were all released in Europe bar Jungle Strike which was a US release only.

Smurfs 2 I assume is 'Smurfs Autour de Monde'

Do you have photos of them?

Excuse me but I´m Spanish and I don´t speak English very well.

My first question is: Why can´t play games like Tarzan, Power Drive or Striker in a emulator? (I attached photo to see that there are real) Why these games aren´t emulated yet?

The second question is: Why there is no final version rom for Game Gear games like Prince of Persia (Prince of Persia (UE) [!].gg) or OutRun Europe (OutRun Europa (UE) [!].gg)? are emulated as the Master System but are Game Gear roms.

What does "dumped" mean?

Thanks.

revon wrote

My first question is: Why can´t play games like Tarzan, Power Drive or Striker in a emulator? (I attached photo to see that there are real) Why these games aren´t emulated yet?

They are not "dumped". This means, nobody has taken the cartridge, read all the data from it onto a computer, and put that data onto the internet for you to download.

If you have these cartridges, it is possible to send them to someone who has the necessary hardware to be "dumped". There are only a few people who have this hardware.

Quote

The second question is: Why there is no final version rom for Game Gear games like Prince of Persia (Prince of Persia (UE) [!].gg) or OutRun Europe (OutRun Europa (UE) [!].gg)? are emulated as the Master System but are Game Gear roms.

.gg means the emulator should act like a Game Gear in Game Gear mode.
.sms means the emulator should act like a Master System, or a Game Gear in Master System mode.
On a real Game Gear, you use a Master Gear to put it into Master System mode. A cartridge can have the Master Gear "built in". These two games have the Master Gear "built in". But the file doesn't show this, it only shows the data from the ROM chip inside the cartridge. So to make them work in an emulator, you have to use the .sms extension to tell the emulator to use the right mode.

These covers've taken from a user who has all the games and is in this forum. This is the link: http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11119

I had Tarzan game, but the others don´t and I would like to know information about them, if are good or bad, any photo in action, and obviously play them.

About the second question I think I didn´t explain well. When I playing games like Prince of Persia or OR Europe I see in this:

Those are Game Gear games and If would to emulate well I have to change the extension to. sms. Why there is no definitive version of those roms for the Game Gear?

These games are Master System games inside Game Gear cartridges, with a built-in Master Gear. There is no "Game Gear mode" version. By renaming to the .gg extension, you are causing the emulator to act like the original cartridge with its Master Gear removed, ie. in a non-authentic way.

The definitive version of these games needs to be named .sms for most emulators to work properly, because there is no other way to tell the emulator that the Master Gear is there.

Thank you Maxim for your response and I understand that these roms work as if they had included the Master Gear.

I continue without understanding why a GG rom its not dumped as GG rom and has to be emulated as SMS rom because when I load the rom in the emulator Meka it names me like: Out Run Europe [SMS-GG], and in commentary it puts: This is GG rom running in Master System compatibility mode.

Why this roms hasn´t been dumped as other Game Gear's roms?

All ROMs are dumped in the same way. You think there is some difference that does not exist. A GG ROM is dumped as "some data", an SMS ROM is also dumped as "some data" - just pure binary data taken from the ROM chip inside the cartridge. This "some data" is then given a filename.

We give these SMS-GG ROMs (ie. SMS games with Master Gear built into a GG cartridge) the .sms extension to allow them to work in emulators. The data is no different, just the extension. There is no (easy) way for the emulator to know that the ROM is an SMS-GG ROM just from the data.

Thanks Maxim and excuses that you cannot stand with the same topic but, there is some way of being able to change the resolution and be able to play these games in a emulator with Game Gear's resolution? Personally I prefer all the GG games with the same resolution of screen.

PD: I name these 2 games because I had them but sold them, though there are more games that the same thing happens to them.

Cogwheel (requires .NET 2.0 and recent DirectX runtimes) supports the LCD scaling for certain "SMS-GG" games. In the Options menu, tick Simulate Game Gear LCD Scaling before loading the ROM.

This thread will explain why you get the colour fringes around objects.

benryves wrote

Cogwheel (requires .NET 2.0 and recent DirectX runtimes) supports the LCD scaling for certain "SMS-GG" games. In the Options menu, tick Simulate Game Gear LCD Scaling before loading the ROM.

This thread will explain why you get the colour fringes around objects.

Thanks, I will try this program.

Why not create a new extension for these games ?
.smsgg
or something like that.

then the emulator would know how to treat them (GG in SMS mode) and could do the proper scaling and such.

Is there any reason that prevent doing so ?

.smsgg would be no different to .sms. You can already name them filename.gg.sms if you want (presuming emulators check the extension in a non-buggy way).

Sorry, I'm just back from vacations. There will be a new ROM release batch before the end of the month. I got Tarzan dumped only recently (thanks to Brynaldo!) it should be among the released lot.
Still working on on obtaining more GG games. If you can lend or sell those games or find them in auction let me know.

Ok. if I can obtain these games on that I will comment it. The GG Striker game a boy of Madrid was selling it for 3 € but when I asked for this game already he had sold it.

The game of Tarzán and Astérix and the Secret Mission I had them in my collection but I sold them some time ago.

I already purchased the following:

Asterix and the Secret Mission
Smurfs 2
Striker

Hopefully will be dumped this month.

Still interested in:

Power Drive
Jungle Strike
F1 World Championship (1995 version)

Author	Message
revon Guest	Non-emulated games for Game Gear Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 10:21 pm
revon Guest	Hi everyone! I´m from Spain (sorry for my english) and this is my first post. I´m a fan of the Sega Game Gear and I have two questions: 1- Why haven´t yet emulated games like Tarzan, Power Drive, Striker, Jungle Strike, Asterix and the Secret Mission, F1 World Championship or Smurfs 2? 2- Why Prince of Persia or OutRun Europe roms (and others) don´t work as gg roms if are roms for the Game Gear? (with extension .sms I operate these games in a emulator) Thanks and greetings from Spain.

benryves Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Posts: 391 Location: London, United Kingdom	Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:55 pm
	I'm not sure what you mean by your first question (games that haven't been dumped), but as for your second question; the Game Gear hardware is very similar to the SMS hardware to the extent that a pin on the cartridge port could be used to switch it into an SMS compatible mode. Some Game Gear games were SMS games that put the Game Gear in this SMS compatible mode. (The Master Gear Converter let you plug SMS cartridges into the Game Gear via an adapter). The two most obvious changes in Game Gear mode are that the screen is cropped to a 160x144 area in the middle of the screen (the SMS typically ran at 256x192, when the Game Gear is in SMS mode it performs a crude scaling to fit the larger resolution on the smaller screen) and it uses 12-bit colour values instead of 6-bit. This is why games you mentioned need to be renamed .sms, otherwise you can only see the central part of the screen and the colours are all wrong.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:05 am
	Tarzan - dumped but unreleased, probably due to emulation problems in Meka (ie. Bock is evil) Undumped, as far as I know: Power Drive Striker Jungle Strike Asterix and the Secret Mission F1 World Championship (1995 version) Smurfs 2 Are you sure these were released for GG? I can't find a picture of any of them on Google. Their appearance in lists of games isn't necessarily proof of anything. If you have them, we'd be happy to dump and release them. Regarding the second question, as benryves said, the Game Gear has built-in Master System compatibility, so these games were released as a "Master Gear + Master System game all in a Game Gear cartridge". This was mainly because it was easy to convert the Master System version of the game this way (usually, the only difference is a larger font to make it more readable). However, the .sms and .gg file formats do not contain information about this "built in Master Gear" (really, just a wire connecting two cartridge pins), so instead the emulator will look at the file extension to decide whether to use GG mode or SMS mode.

CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:19 am
CRV Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 668	Maxim wrote Are you sure these were released for GG? I can't find a picture of any of them on Google. Their appearance in lists of games isn't necessarily proof of anything. If you have them, we'd be happy to dump and release them. Asterix and the Secret Mission was released for the Game Gear in Europe. Here's a box shot. The other games were probably not released.

Brynaldo Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 225	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:22 pm
Brynaldo Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 225	They were all released in Europe bar Jungle Strike which was a US release only. Smurfs 2 I assume is 'Smurfs Autour de Monde'

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:34 pm
	Do you have photos of them?

revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:35 pm
revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Excuse me but I´m Spanish and I don´t speak English very well. My first question is: Why can´t play games like Tarzan, Power Drive or Striker in a emulator? (I attached photo to see that there are real) Why these games aren´t emulated yet? The second question is: Why there is no final version rom for Game Gear games like Prince of Persia (Prince of Persia (UE) [!].gg) or OutRun Europe (OutRun Europa (UE) [!].gg)? are emulated as the Master System but are Game Gear roms. What does "dumped" mean? Thanks.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:40 pm
	revon wrote My first question is: Why can´t play games like Tarzan, Power Drive or Striker in a emulator? (I attached photo to see that there are real) Why these games aren´t emulated yet? They are not "dumped". This means, nobody has taken the cartridge, read all the data from it onto a computer, and put that data onto the internet for you to download. If you have these cartridges, it is possible to send them to someone who has the necessary hardware to be "dumped". There are only a few people who have this hardware. Quote The second question is: Why there is no final version rom for Game Gear games like Prince of Persia (Prince of Persia (UE) [!].gg) or OutRun Europe (OutRun Europa (UE) [!].gg)? are emulated as the Master System but are Game Gear roms. .gg means the emulator should act like a Game Gear in Game Gear mode. .sms means the emulator should act like a Master System, or a Game Gear in Master System mode. On a real Game Gear, you use a Master Gear to put it into Master System mode. A cartridge can have the Master Gear "built in". These two games have the Master Gear "built in". But the file doesn't show this, it only shows the data from the ROM chip inside the cartridge. So to make them work in an emulator, you have to use the .sms extension to tell the emulator to use the right mode.

revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:05 pm
revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	These covers've taken from a user who has all the games and is in this forum. This is the link: http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11119 I had Tarzan game, but the others don´t and I would like to know information about them, if are good or bad, any photo in action, and obviously play them. About the second question I think I didn´t explain well. When I playing games like Prince of Persia or OR Europe I see in this: Those are Game Gear games and If would to emulate well I have to change the extension to. sms. Why there is no definitive version of those roms for the Game Gear?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:12 pm
	These games are Master System games inside Game Gear cartridges, with a built-in Master Gear. There is no "Game Gear mode" version. By renaming to the .gg extension, you are causing the emulator to act like the original cartridge with its Master Gear removed, ie. in a non-authentic way. The definitive version of these games needs to be named .sms for most emulators to work properly, because there is no other way to tell the emulator that the Master Gear is there.

revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:39 pm
revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Thank you Maxim for your response and I understand that these roms work as if they had included the Master Gear. I continue without understanding why a GG rom its not dumped as GG rom and has to be emulated as SMS rom because when I load the rom in the emulator Meka it names me like: Out Run Europe [SMS-GG], and in commentary it puts: This is GG rom running in Master System compatibility mode. Why this roms hasn´t been dumped as other Game Gear's roms?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:00 pm
	All ROMs are dumped in the same way. You think there is some difference that does not exist. A GG ROM is dumped as "some data", an SMS ROM is also dumped as "some data" - just pure binary data taken from the ROM chip inside the cartridge. This "some data" is then given a filename. We give these SMS-GG ROMs (ie. SMS games with Master Gear built into a GG cartridge) the .sms extension to allow them to work in emulators. The data is no different, just the extension. There is no (easy) way for the emulator to know that the ROM is an SMS-GG ROM just from the data.

revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 6:43 pm
revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Thanks Maxim and excuses that you cannot stand with the same topic but, there is some way of being able to change the resolution and be able to play these games in a emulator with Game Gear's resolution? Personally I prefer all the GG games with the same resolution of screen. PD: I name these 2 games because I had them but sold them, though there are more games that the same thing happens to them.

benryves Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Posts: 391 Location: London, United Kingdom	Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:50 am
	Cogwheel (requires .NET 2.0 and recent DirectX runtimes) supports the LCD scaling for certain "SMS-GG" games. In the Options menu, tick Simulate Game Gear LCD Scaling before loading the ROM. This thread will explain why you get the colour fringes around objects.

revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 8:43 am
revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	benryves wrote Cogwheel (requires .NET 2.0 and recent DirectX runtimes) supports the LCD scaling for certain "SMS-GG" games. In the Options menu, tick Simulate Game Gear LCD Scaling before loading the ROM. This thread will explain why you get the colour fringes around objects. Thanks, I will try this program.

snb Guest	Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 8:03 pm
snb Guest	Why not create a new extension for these games ? .smsgg or something like that. then the emulator would know how to treat them (GG in SMS mode) and could do the proper scaling and such. Is there any reason that prevent doing so ?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 8:44 pm
	.smsgg would be no different to .sms. You can already name them filename.gg.sms if you want (presuming emulators check the extension in a non-buggy way).

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 9:39 am
	Sorry, I'm just back from vacations. There will be a new ROM release batch before the end of the month. I got Tarzan dumped only recently (thanks to Brynaldo!) it should be among the released lot. Still working on on obtaining more GG games. If you can lend or sell those games or find them in auction let me know.

revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 11:43 am
revon Joined: 19 Sep 2008 Posts: 29	Ok. if I can obtain these games on that I will comment it. The GG Striker game a boy of Madrid was selling it for 3 € but when I asked for this game already he had sold it. The game of Tarzán and Astérix and the Secret Mission I had them in my collection but I sold them some time ago.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:45 pm
	I already purchased the following: Asterix and the Secret Mission Smurfs 2 Striker Hopefully will be dumped this month. Still interested in: Power Drive Jungle Strike F1 World Championship (1995 version)

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