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I've been poking around using some shady tools. The ROM seems not to be stored in cleartext, and there are virtual filesystems inside lots of the files I've got. For example, there's a virtual file called "patch" containing the text

>0x7ff0    string    "TMR SEGA"
>>0x7ffc belong    0x5250024f

0x0007b8:
byte 0xc9    # boss defeat flash skip

...which tells us they seem to be storing the ROM unpatched, and then removing the flashing (c9 = ret, have you memorised that yet?) due to stupid Americans who sue Ni****do when their epileptic kid sees something flashing. But I'm having no luck finding the ROM. Has anyone else tried?

Contact me privately if you feel it's appropriate.

Well, this is the ROM, in a mystery compression format. The first 2 bytes seem to be the same in all compressed files, but apart from that, I have no idea.

Edit: removed file.

http://www.groupsrv.com/science/about176335.html
Could this be the answer you're looking for?

Dammit, I thought I'd ruled that out...

A suitable decompressor is here:

http://www.zlib.net/zpipe.c

The ROM is a pure clean dump. I now (probably) know enough to inject any ROM into an SMS VC game, as has been done with other systems already, but I'm not planning to try it because it'd be easy for Ni****do to ban my console.

Is there anyone who'd like to help verify the same holds for Wonder Boy, or any other non-European releases? You'll need an SD card with lots of space and a copy of Z***a.

One more thing...

Manual

Nothing very interesting but I spent ages getting it.

Nice! Funny how the manual is much bigger than the ROM itself.
Would be good to confirm that their various releases are known ROM dumps and list their hack. I would however stay rather low profile since this could attract unwanted attention.

Funny how they call the German pages noe instead of deu or ger :)

So does anyone have Wonder Boy, an SD card and Z***a TP? I'm not about to spend 500 Wii points on every release. I can provide a guide and all software/files needed.

You could also use the SMS Plus port running on wii, I've heard it was working pretty well ;)

btw, how did you managed to dump the manual ?

SMS and Genny roms are known to be compressed in aproprietary format (and I don't think it's something as common as zlib), where as SNES and NES ones are not, which explain the recent released snes/nes pirated vc titles(sega is smarter than Ni****do, we already knew :) )

Well, this ROM is zlib-compressed. I don't have a Mega Drive ROM to play with, so I can only vouch for Fantasy Zone, but the structure is:

00000005.APP is a U8 archive (unpacker on Wiibrew) containing a single file called data.ccf.
CCF is a TAR-like format with a directory in the format:
Header: "CCF" at 0x0000, number of files at 0x0014
followed by n directory entries:
name: 20 bytes, 0-padded
offset: i32, multiply by 32 to get the real offset
size: i32
decompressed size: i32
...followed by the data, 0-padded to multiples of 32 bytes. If the decompressed size does not equal the size, it is zlib-compressed and can be decompressed by feeding it to zlib's deflate(), or through the zpipe utility I linked to above. There seems to be no CCF unpackers on the net yet, so I just pulled the bits out by hand.

The files are:
FantasyZone1_JUE_02. [filename cut off] - ROM
Opera.arc - I guess a mini Opera for reading the manual
config - says country="eu"\nromfile="FantasyZone1_JUE_02.SMS"
home.csv - a bunch of tab-separated Unicode strings for the Home menu, interestingly there's Chinese and Korean in there
man.arc - U8 archive of the manual
misc.ccf - looks like graphics data mostly, maybe the save icon
patch - I posted it in the first post

interesting, I didn't read anything about that anywhere else (even on wiibrew)
thanks maxim

PS: I'm sure the SMSPlus port is better than the official emulator used in VC titles...;)

I posted the details to Wiibrew just now. Let the piracy commence... and may Ni****do blacklist your MAC if you do it.

Martin wrote

Funny how they call the German pages noe instead of deu or ger :)

Yeah, I noticed that when cleaning my German PAL Super NES. Anyone got a clue on what it means ?

- "Nazis on Extacy" would be my guess. =P

It means Ni****do of Europe.
As opposed to Ni****do of America and Ni****do of Japan.
They have their european headquarter in germany.

D'oh!

Hmmm, does opera open these manuals? Not sure if I've ever seen a .arc file, so I dunno.

-Rob

ARC is a Ni****do archive format. It's used on the GC and DS among other places.

This thread is getting very off-topic.

NTSC and PAL Wonder Boy: both contain known Wonder Boy ROM as WonderBoy1_JUE.SMS, no patches.
NTSC Sonic: contains known Sonic 1 ROM as Sonic1_UE.SMS, no patches.

Anyone who can help getting access to the data of Sega 8-bit VC titles, please contact me.

Don't mean to throw this further off topic, but is that to mean they are using existing ROM dumps? Or have they simply followed the same naming structure?

It means their ROM images match the cartridges we've dumped.

Maxim, check here, someone is building a CCF tool to extract roms from VC titles

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=100556

to dump VC titles from your Wii internal meory, you could use this application:

http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_apps/fs_browser

I'm glad someone's finally made a CCF tool (no doubt based on my documentation), although it takes all of 30 seconds to do it by hand. I'm already aware of how to dump the titles, I just don't want to pay for all of them (and besides, I can't access other regions). I only want to dump them for historical reasons, to see what, if anything, is changed.

= Alex Kidd in Miracle World [v0] (US)
The config seems to be mapping the buttons in the more "usual" way (the original has punch, jump "backwards").

Riceball or Hamburger?

Rice ball. They even warn about it in the Wii shop description.

Maxim wrote

Dammit, I thought I'd ruled that out...

A suitable decompressor is here:

zlib.net/zpipe.c

The ROM is a pure clean dump. I now (probably) know enough to inject any ROM into an SMS VC game, as has been done with other systems already, but I'm not planning to try it because it'd be easy for Ni****do to ban my console.

Is there anyone who'd like to help verify the same holds for Wonder Boy, or any other non-European releases? You'll need an SD card with lots of space and a copy of Z***a.

I can verify Wonder Boy, but I'd need an executable of that decompressor.

I can't work with .C files over here.

Oops, sorry for that previous post, I couldn't read the newer messages for some reason.

I just got that CCF tool program and it works wonders.

is identical to the EU version, see above.

ROM filename is "SpaceHarrier_JU.SMS" which is known to us as
SMS beddf80e 0AEA3665ABDB3AB1 Space Harrier [50-60 Hz]/COUNTRY=JP,US/PRODUCT_NO=G-1310,7080

I have a full collection of SMS Virtual Consol title for Wii... is there a list of dumped ones ? I can extract the missing if needed !

Whatever's in this thread is what we have. It'd be good to confirm the regional versions too.

Maxim wrote

Whatever's in this thread is what we have. It'd be good to confirm the regional versions too.

Just extracted all my PAL collection (full .ccf extraction included): sendspace . com / file / 34howk
(add w w w at the beginning, remove spaces)

I don't remember if Wonderboy is pal or not.

Do you have the Japanese and US ones? Your Wonder Boy is the EU version.

The patches are the most interesting to me, many are commented in Japanese, most seem to be removing flashing but also removing red crosses on hospitals - any guesses why?

I'd like to publish the details with IPS patches and screens hots. I also want to confirm the ROM checksums when I get a chance :)

Maxim wrote

Do you have the Japanese and US ones? Your Wonder Boy is the EU version.

The patches are the most interesting to me, many are commented in Japanese, most seem to be removing flashing but also removing red crosses on hospitals - any guesses why?

I'd like to publish the details with IPS patches and screens hots. I also want to confirm the ROM checksums when I get a chance :)

The rom JUE are Japanese-USA-EUR version I suppose. Anyway those are my only titles. Hokuto no ken was released in Japan only.
Titles (wads) can be eur/ntsc-u/ntsc-j but the rom inside can be multi-region i suppose.

Games seems to be working correctly with dolphin emulator.

I heard that a few years ago the red cross skoke out against the use of their symbol on medipacks and stuff due to them occuring mostly in shooters. I think this started also the trend of things like regenerating health in shooters. Could be that it's related this

DerZocker wrote

I heard that a few years ago the red cross skoke out against the use of their symbol on medipacks and stuff due to them occuring mostly in shooters. I think this started also the trend of things like regenerating health in shooters. Could be that it's related this

I agree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regionally_censored_video_games

It seems Ni****do has been editing out Christian crosses and red crosses for export releases since the 80s, long before the Red Cross started criticising video games. It isn't helped by the many Japanese games where the church is a magic/healing/resurrection location.

Maxim wrote

Do you have the Japanese and US ones? Your Wonder Boy is the EU version.

The patches are the most interesting to me, many are commented in Japanese, most seem to be removing flashing but also removing red crosses on hospitals - any guesses why?

I'd like to publish the details with IPS patches and screens hots. I also want to confirm the ROM checksums when I get a chance :)

Luckly enough I had another folder with all NTSC-U SMS Titles !
I was correct: JUE stands for JAP-USA-EUR.
All the games are identical except for space harrier: https://www.sendspace.com/file/py5q6n

Did you analyzed the roms in the previous pack ? Are them new or already known dumps ?

Anyway here it is the full extracted NTSC-U data package: https://www.sendspace.com/file/vquwdm

I didn't get a chance yet, it's a simple task to run SMS Checker over them (or a competing product) but I can't easily do that on my phone. Sega (or Ni****do?) seem to have used clean dumps with a patching system rather than patching binaries, but I'm still interested to see if there are unreleased bug fixes they used (since in the mask ROM days, minor bug fixes would only get released if they sold out the last batch). There's something in there about variants of Sonic 2 but I suspect it's the bug fix we already know about. Paul Baker will turn up sooner or later to confirm :)

Maxim wrote

I didn't get a chance yet, it's a simple task to run SMS Checker over them (or a competing product) but I can't easily do that on my phone. Sega (or Ni****do?) seem to have used clean dumps with a patching system rather than patching binaries, but I'm still interested to see if there are unreleased bug fixes they used (since in the mask ROM days, minor bug fixes would only get released if they sold out the last batch). There's something in there about variants of Sonic 2 but I suspect it's the bug fix we already know about. Paul Baker will turn up sooner or later to confirm :)

I forgot about sms checker ;)
Here it is the scan:

So i think they are not "new" dumps, correct ?

oUB1zZE.png (24.19 KB)

Indeed, they are not. A bit odd that they used v0 of AKMW when v1 had a bug fix - see http://www.smspower.org/Development/AlexKiddInMiracleWorld-SMS - and they didn't patch it either. But then again, it's a minor cosmetic bug.

It's good to see that they didn't have GoodSMS-named ROMs - do they match anything else? My suspicion is that they obtained the ROMs from the internet rather than Sega's archives.

Most are much GoodSMS names renamed to remove spacing and special characters (presumably because the Wii file system may not support them).
HOKUTO-B.sms and scommndo.sms are very early internet names, the first one in particular is how I named the Japanese dump when we first had it: http://www.smspower.org/db/hokuto-b.shtml

Good catch :)

Page added here:

http://www.smspower.org/Development/NintendoWiiVirtualConsoleTitles

I didn't make IPS patches (or even test the effect of the patches) for all the games - this already took several hours. (I assumed the comments were telling the truth to describe the patch effects - the data seems to match the comments.) If someone else wants to do that, and get more screenshots, please contribute them in this thread.

I'd like to confirm the remaining Japanese titles - I suspect they are the same as the US ones.

Probably the most impressive part is how they made some fairly minimal patches to the data to edit the graphics - when the data itself is compressed. The edited bytes may just be in non-RLE runs, but it's still pretty difficult to do.

Maxim wrote

I'd like to confirm the remaining Japanese titles - I suspect they are the same as the US ones.

Unfortunately seems that no one ever dumped the jap titles.

I found some disreputable sites with some of them in a short Google search... I suspect there will be local versions of the Monster World and Phantasy Star games, maybe also the full version of Enduro Racer. I doubt there's anything too exciting to find, but it would be good to finish the job.

(The 3DS virtual console comes next, I have no idea if those are even dumped. There are probably other modern and older consoles with emulators which haven't been hacked apart yet as well.)

I don't think SMS games were even released on 3DS VC anywhere?
(with the only Sega games being the arcade and Genesis 3D Classics upgrades, using a custom emulator)
I'd have to check again, maybe Fantasy Zone II, or was that made using the "arcade" version Sega made for the PS2 FZ collection? FZ2 Deluxe, I think they called that port?

No SMS titles, but 22 Game Gear games are available on the 3DS Virtual Console (16 in EU/US), mainly things like the Sonic games, GG Shinobi and Columns.

Maxim wrote

I found some disreputable sites with some of them in a short Google search... I suspect there will be local versions of the Monster World and Phantasy Star games, maybe also the full version of Enduro Racer. I doubt there's anything too exciting to find, but it would be good to finish the job.

I was not able to find those jap files, if you want pm me (many sites have very very old non working mediafire links).

Author	Message
Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Dumping Wii VC SMS titles Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 10:29 pm
	I've been poking around using some shady tools. The ROM seems not to be stored in cleartext, and there are virtual filesystems inside lots of the files I've got. For example, there's a virtual file called "patch" containing the text >0x7ff0 string "TMR SEGA" >>0x7ffc belong 0x5250024f 0x0007b8: byte 0xc9 # boss defeat flash skip ...which tells us they seem to be storing the ROM unpatched, and then removing the flashing (c9 = ret, have you memorised that yet?) due to stupid Americans who sue Ni****do when their epileptic kid sees something flashing. But I'm having no luck finding the ROM. Has anyone else tried? Contact me privately if you feel it's appropriate.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 1:51 am Last edited by Maxim on Mon May 05, 2008 10:19 am; edited 1 time in total
	Well, this is the ROM, in a mystery compression format. The first 2 bytes seem to be the same in all compressed files, but apart from that, I have no idea. Edit: removed file.

DMEnduro Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 420 Location: Australia	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 3:43 am
	http://www.groupsrv.com/science/about176335.html Could this be the answer you're looking for?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:34 am
	Dammit, I thought I'd ruled that out... A suitable decompressor is here: http://www.zlib.net/zpipe.c The ROM is a pure clean dump. I now (probably) know enough to inject any ROM into an SMS VC game, as has been done with other systems already, but I'm not planning to try it because it'd be easy for Ni**do to ban my console. Is there anyone who'd like to help verify the same holds for Wonder Boy, or any other non-European releases? You'll need an SD card with lots of space and a copy of Z*a.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:11 am
	One more thing... Manual Nothing very interesting but I spent ages getting it.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8242 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 10:52 am
	Nice! Funny how the manual is much bigger than the ROM itself. Would be good to confirm that their various releases are known ROM dumps and list their hack. I would however stay rather low profile since this could attract unwanted attention.

Martin Joined: 04 Nov 2004 Posts: 270 Location: Deutschland	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 11:17 am
	Funny how they call the German pages noe instead of deu or ger :)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 11:54 am
	So does anyone have Wonder Boy, an SD card and Z***a TP? I'm not about to spend 500 Wii points on every release. I can provide a guide and all software/files needed.

Christophe Joined: 23 Feb 2007 Posts: 18	emulator ? Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 1:17 pm
Christophe Joined: 23 Feb 2007 Posts: 18	You could also use the SMS Plus port running on wii, I've heard it was working pretty well ;) btw, how did you managed to dump the manual ? SMS and Genny roms are known to be compressed in aproprietary format (and I don't think it's something as common as zlib), where as SNES and NES ones are not, which explain the recent released snes/nes pirated vc titles(sega is smarter than Ni****do, we already knew :) )

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:15 pm
	Well, this ROM is zlib-compressed. I don't have a Mega Drive ROM to play with, so I can only vouch for Fantasy Zone, but the structure is: 00000005.APP is a U8 archive (unpacker on Wiibrew) containing a single file called data.ccf. CCF is a TAR-like format with a directory in the format: Header: "CCF" at 0x0000, number of files at 0x0014 followed by n directory entries: name: 20 bytes, 0-padded offset: i32, multiply by 32 to get the real offset size: i32 decompressed size: i32 ...followed by the data, 0-padded to multiples of 32 bytes. If the decompressed size does not equal the size, it is zlib-compressed and can be decompressed by feeding it to zlib's deflate(), or through the zpipe utility I linked to above. There seems to be no CCF unpackers on the net yet, so I just pulled the bits out by hand. The files are: FantasyZone1_JUE_02. [filename cut off] - ROM Opera.arc - I guess a mini Opera for reading the manual config - says country="eu"\nromfile="FantasyZone1_JUE_02.SMS" home.csv - a bunch of tab-separated Unicode strings for the Home menu, interestingly there's Chinese and Korean in there man.arc - U8 archive of the manual misc.ccf - looks like graphics data mostly, maybe the save icon patch - I posted it in the first post

Christophe Joined: 23 Feb 2007 Posts: 18	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:24 pm
Christophe Joined: 23 Feb 2007 Posts: 18	interesting, I didn't read anything about that anywhere else (even on wiibrew) thanks maxim PS: I'm sure the SMSPlus port is better than the official emulator used in VC titles...;)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:39 pm
	I posted the details to Wiibrew just now. Let the piracy commence... and may Ni****do blacklist your MAC if you do it.

Christuserloeser Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 297 Location: Pangea	Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:28 pm
	Martin wrote Funny how they call the German pages noe instead of deu or ger :) Yeah, I noticed that when cleaning my German PAL Super NES. Anyone got a clue on what it means ? - "Nazis on Extacy" would be my guess. =P

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8242 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 5:17 am
	It means Ni**do of Europe. As opposed to Nido of America and Ni**do of Japan. They have their european headquarter in germany.

Christuserloeser Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 297 Location: Pangea	Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 6:30 pm
	D'oh!

rbudrick Joined: 21 Jan 2005 Posts: 77	Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 8:09 pm
rbudrick Joined: 21 Jan 2005 Posts: 77	Hmmm, does opera open these manuals? Not sure if I've ever seen a .arc file, so I dunno. -Rob

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 8:11 pm
	ARC is a Ni****do archive format. It's used on the GC and DS among other places. This thread is getting very off-topic.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 10:47 am Last edited by Maxim on Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:20 am; edited 4 times in total
	NTSC and PAL Wonder Boy: both contain known Wonder Boy ROM as WonderBoy1_JUE.SMS, no patches. NTSC Sonic: contains known Sonic 1 ROM as Sonic1_UE.SMS, no patches. Anyone who can help getting access to the data of Sega 8-bit VC titles, please contact me.

djbass Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Posts: 577 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 12:50 pm
	Don't mean to throw this further off topic, but is that to mean they are using existing ROM dumps? Or have they simply followed the same naming structure?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 1:13 pm
	It means their ROM images match the cartridges we've dumped.

Christophe Joined: 23 Feb 2007 Posts: 18	Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 7:47 am
Christophe Joined: 23 Feb 2007 Posts: 18	Maxim, check here, someone is building a CCF tool to extract roms from VC titles http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=100556 to dump VC titles from your Wii internal meory, you could use this application: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_apps/fs_browser

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2008 8:24 am
	I'm glad someone's finally made a CCF tool (no doubt based on my documentation), although it takes all of 30 seconds to do it by hand. I'm already aware of how to dump the titles, I just don't want to pay for all of them (and besides, I can't access other regions). I only want to dump them for historical reasons, to see what, if anything, is changed.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Alex Kidd in Miracle World (US) Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 5:28 pm
	= Alex Kidd in Miracle World [v0] (US) The config seems to be mapping the buttons in the more "usual" way (the original has punch, jump "backwards").

DMEnduro Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 420 Location: Australia	Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 5:44 am
	Riceball or Hamburger?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 8:34 am
	Rice ball. They even warn about it in the Wii shop description.

lCEknight Guest	Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 10:09 pm
lCEknight Guest	Maxim wrote Dammit, I thought I'd ruled that out... A suitable decompressor is here: zlib.net/zpipe.c The ROM is a pure clean dump. I now (probably) know enough to inject any ROM into an SMS VC game, as has been done with other systems already, but I'm not planning to try it because it'd be easy for Ni**do to ban my console. Is there anyone who'd like to help verify the same holds for Wonder Boy, or any other non-European releases? You'll need an SD card with lots of space and a copy of Z*a. I can verify Wonder Boy, but I'd need an executable of that decompressor. I can't work with .C files over here.

ICEknight Joined: 03 Apr 2001 Posts: 596 Location: Asturias	Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 10:13 pm
	Oops, sorry for that previous post, I couldn't read the newer messages for some reason. I just got that CCF tool program and it works wonders.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Fantasy Zone (US) Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 1:36 pm
	is identical to the EU version, see above.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Space Harrier (US) Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 1:46 pm
	ROM filename is "SpaceHarrier_JU.SMS" which is known to us as SMS beddf80e 0AEA3665ABDB3AB1 Space Harrier [50-60 Hz]/COUNTRY=JP,US/PRODUCT_NO=G-1310,7080

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	SMS Virtual Console games Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 4:14 pm
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	I have a full collection of SMS Virtual Consol title for Wii... is there a list of dumped ones ? I can extract the missing if needed !

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 4:33 pm
	Whatever's in this thread is what we have. It'd be good to confirm the regional versions too.

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 6:04 pm
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Maxim wrote Whatever's in this thread is what we have. It'd be good to confirm the regional versions too. Just extracted all my PAL collection (full .ccf extraction included): sendspace . com / file / 34howk (add w w w at the beginning, remove spaces) I don't remember if Wonderboy is pal or not.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 10:24 pm
	Do you have the Japanese and US ones? Your Wonder Boy is the EU version. The patches are the most interesting to me, many are commented in Japanese, most seem to be removing flashing but also removing red crosses on hospitals - any guesses why? I'd like to publish the details with IPS patches and screens hots. I also want to confirm the ROM checksums when I get a chance :)

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 12:48 am Last edited by asper on Thu Nov 26, 2015 12:50 am; edited 1 time in total
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Maxim wrote Do you have the Japanese and US ones? Your Wonder Boy is the EU version. The patches are the most interesting to me, many are commented in Japanese, most seem to be removing flashing but also removing red crosses on hospitals - any guesses why? I'd like to publish the details with IPS patches and screens hots. I also want to confirm the ROM checksums when I get a chance :) The rom JUE are Japanese-USA-EUR version I suppose. Anyway those are my only titles. Hokuto no ken was released in Japan only. Titles (wads) can be eur/ntsc-u/ntsc-j but the rom inside can be multi-region i suppose. Games seems to be working correctly with dolphin emulator.

DerZocker Joined: 16 Jul 2006 Posts: 20 Location: Somewhere out in Germany	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 12:50 am
	I heard that a few years ago the red cross skoke out against the use of their symbol on medipacks and stuff due to them occuring mostly in shooters. I think this started also the trend of things like regenerating health in shooters. Could be that it's related this

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 12:52 am
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	DerZocker wrote I heard that a few years ago the red cross skoke out against the use of their symbol on medipacks and stuff due to them occuring mostly in shooters. I think this started also the trend of things like regenerating health in shooters. Could be that it's related this I agree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regionally_censored_video_games

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 6:46 am
	It seems Ni****do has been editing out Christian crosses and red crosses for export releases since the 80s, long before the Red Cross started criticising video games. It isn't helped by the many Japanese games where the church is a magic/healing/resurrection location.

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:10 am
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Maxim wrote Do you have the Japanese and US ones? Your Wonder Boy is the EU version. The patches are the most interesting to me, many are commented in Japanese, most seem to be removing flashing but also removing red crosses on hospitals - any guesses why? I'd like to publish the details with IPS patches and screens hots. I also want to confirm the ROM checksums when I get a chance :) Luckly enough I had another folder with all NTSC-U SMS Titles ! I was correct: JUE stands for JAP-USA-EUR. All the games are identical except for space harrier: https://www.sendspace.com/file/py5q6n Did you analyzed the roms in the previous pack ? Are them new or already known dumps ?

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:16 am
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Anyway here it is the full extracted NTSC-U data package: https://www.sendspace.com/file/vquwdm

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 10:34 am
	I didn't get a chance yet, it's a simple task to run SMS Checker over them (or a competing product) but I can't easily do that on my phone. Sega (or Ni****do?) seem to have used clean dumps with a patching system rather than patching binaries, but I'm still interested to see if there are unreleased bug fixes they used (since in the mask ROM days, minor bug fixes would only get released if they sold out the last batch). There's something in there about variants of Sonic 2 but I suspect it's the bug fix we already know about. Paul Baker will turn up sooner or later to confirm :)

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 10:59 am
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Maxim wrote I didn't get a chance yet, it's a simple task to run SMS Checker over them (or a competing product) but I can't easily do that on my phone. Sega (or Ni****do?) seem to have used clean dumps with a patching system rather than patching binaries, but I'm still interested to see if there are unreleased bug fixes they used (since in the mask ROM days, minor bug fixes would only get released if they sold out the last batch). There's something in there about variants of Sonic 2 but I suspect it's the bug fix we already know about. Paul Baker will turn up sooner or later to confirm :) I forgot about sms checker ;) Here it is the scan: So i think they are not "new" dumps, correct ? oUB1zZE.png (24.19 KB)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 5:30 pm
	Indeed, they are not. A bit odd that they used v0 of AKMW when v1 had a bug fix - see http://www.smspower.org/Development/AlexKiddInMiracleWorld-SMS - and they didn't patch it either. But then again, it's a minor cosmetic bug. It's good to see that they didn't have GoodSMS-named ROMs - do they match anything else? My suspicion is that they obtained the ROMs from the internet rather than Sega's archives.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8242 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 7:47 pm
	Most are much GoodSMS names renamed to remove spacing and special characters (presumably because the Wii file system may not support them). HOKUTO-B.sms and scommndo.sms are very early internet names, the first one in particular is how I named the Japanese dump when we first had it: http://www.smspower.org/db/hokuto-b.shtml

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 8:21 pm
	Good catch :)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:24 pm
	Page added here: http://www.smspower.org/Development/NintendoWiiVirtualConsoleTitles I didn't make IPS patches (or even test the effect of the patches) for all the games - this already took several hours. (I assumed the comments were telling the truth to describe the patch effects - the data seems to match the comments.) If someone else wants to do that, and get more screenshots, please contribute them in this thread. I'd like to confirm the remaining Japanese titles - I suspect they are the same as the US ones. Probably the most impressive part is how they made some fairly minimal patches to the data to edit the graphics - when the data itself is compressed. The edited bytes may just be in non-RLE runs, but it's still pretty difficult to do.

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 10:54 pm
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Maxim wrote I'd like to confirm the remaining Japanese titles - I suspect they are the same as the US ones. Unfortunately seems that no one ever dumped the jap titles.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 13382 Location: London	Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2015 11:27 pm
	I found some disreputable sites with some of them in a short Google search... I suspect there will be local versions of the Monster World and Phantasy Star games, maybe also the full version of Enduro Racer. I doubt there's anything too exciting to find, but it would be good to finish the job. (The 3DS virtual console comes next, I have no idea if those are even dumped. There are probably other modern and older consoles with emulators which haven't been hacked apart yet as well.)

KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 354	Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 1:23 am
KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 354	I don't think SMS games were even released on 3DS VC anywhere? (with the only Sega games being the arcade and Genesis 3D Classics upgrades, using a custom emulator) I'd have to check again, maybe Fantasy Zone II, or was that made using the "arcade" version Sega made for the PS2 FZ collection? FZ2 Deluxe, I think they called that port?

BrambleG Joined: 08 Apr 2014 Posts: 34 Location: United Kingdom	Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 7:59 am
	No SMS titles, but 22 Game Gear games are available on the 3DS Virtual Console (16 in EU/US), mainly things like the Sonic games, GG Shinobi and Columns.

asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 4:00 pm
asper Joined: 25 Nov 2015 Posts: 89	Maxim wrote I found some disreputable sites with some of them in a short Google search... I suspect there will be local versions of the Monster World and Phantasy Star games, maybe also the full version of Enduro Racer. I doubt there's anything too exciting to find, but it would be good to finish the job. I was not able to find those jap files, if you want pm me (many sites have very very old non working mediafire links).

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