Action 52: Alfredo and Jigsaw are now "playable".

Yesterday I made a post on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/status/1246483734217609217  about researching and accessing the lost two games Alfredo and Jigsaw and how I decided to look into the game's programming to find out why they refuse to work in the first batch revision A cartridges of Action 52 for the NES. I also felt like researching a slightly more obscure limitation presented by the hardware limitations of the console.

I think we all know about Action 52 so I'm not going to waste your time by reviewing the notoriously awful compilation. Here is a picture of the REV A cartridge that has the "broken" games. A small amount of green REV B carts do exist and the issues were fixed in that release as well as a few other "glitches" because in this case that's not a bug, its a feature!

 

All green PCB revision A cartridges of Action 52 will crash upon attempting to load either Alfredo and Jigsaw. This is the result of an erroneous branching instruction that was implemented probably because of an oversight and the code was rushed (really, I don't know how much testing went into the development and I'm really afraid to ask). All black cartridges, including the one I own. Here is a picture of my cart that has both games working by default.

 

 

 (I can't believe I spent $199.99 on this pile of dogsh*t, I guess I'm a dumbass)

 

Accessing both games is possible using a Game Genie code; if you actually own a revision A cartridge, a Game Genie adapter and an NES. I'm not sure why you would want to for any reason. Alfredo and Jigsaw work OKOZETNN.

 

Secondly, there is a bonus item I wanted to show. Now you can hear the ... intro music in it's true quality (why would you want to is beyond my understanding?). Your curiosity has been answered for a question you never asked. Took about 2 minutes total. The game streams digital audio sampling at a bit depth of 7-BIT via constantly writing $4011. unfortunately this requires a lot of frames and because other game logic is running, resources are split between game logic and constantly writing to the DAC, this causes noticeable "garbling". This will work using actual Action 52 cartridges and a Game Genie with an NES console. Normally it is not possible to hear the full quality. I have no idea how the word "quality" was formed into that last sentence.

Action 52 (all revisions).nes

Clear intro audio

GZVAZPAX

 

 Clear intro audio "Make Your Selection, Now!"
GZVAZPAX
ZAUAIAAA

 The cart disabled the reset button on my NES at lease twice. That is definitely not a good sign. YEAH... WOO... YEAH... WOO... YEAH... NO

Complete list of games disabling Super Game Boy user palette selection

Several years ago when I was writing articles for a website that is dedicated to unused content in videogames, (well, actually it may have been a year or two before that site existed), I was annoyed by the fact that game developers cheapened out on proper Super Game Boy Support in their games (more on that another time because I actually plan on doing a well-written entry conveying every possible detail) and how many disabled palettes in their games where it was in most cases unacceptable.

Here is a complete list of games and Game Genie codes that will enable palette selection, and in some cases actually disable them as it was unused in the game's listing. Believe it or not, a few games actually use a more useless function that swaps the user's palette settings back to the one the game provides whenever it changes in-game. Amazing, right? Even more useless is that games disable the ability to use border screensavers. What was Nintendo thinking when they were designing the Super Game Boy? My best guess is that it was a rushed project because it is a wholly mess of incomplete functions and unused features, including the OBJ_TRN mode, which I will explain in another entry.

NOTE: You will have to physically modify the bottom of the Game Genie in order to fit it into a Super Game Boy. The Codebreaker is a more permanent option but the code format is different (which I cracked. It was relatively easy https://gamehacking.org/vb/forum/video-game-hacking-and-development/hacker-threads/13028-nensondubois-codes) and it supports several more patch codes and RAM based injections simultaneously.

Games that disable both controller and palettes will not be distinguished, but only game and is a sister set "Tokimeki Memorial Pocket" actually does solely disable the user's ability to set the controller selection. The most probable reason is because it is a quiz game and pressing the wrong button would have hindered progress?

Dai-2-ji Super Robot Taisen G (J)
Enable Palettes When Played Using a Super Game Boy (Title Screen; palettes are re-enabled afterwards.)
000-7BB-E6

Retrieve (J)
001-B0B-E6E

Animaniacs
00F-C18-E6E

Enable Screensavers When Played Using a Super Game Boy
00F-D08-6EF

Beatmania GB
002-80A-E6E

Beatmania II
002-80A-E6E

Bomberman Quest (GBC)
000-F1B-E6E

Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren GB: Tsukikagemura no Kaibutsu
008-BEB-E6E

Little Indian Big City
003-54D-E66

Lodoss Wars (J) GBC (Lodoss Tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishiden GB)
001-B0B-E6E
Palettes do not swap to software priority when they change
001-A0B-E6E

Masakari Densetsu - Kintarou RPG Hen ()
003-53A-E6E

Mini 4 Boy II - Final Evolution
00E-FCD-E6E

Rock 'n Monster (J)
004-10C-E6E

Tokimeki Memorial Pocket: Culture-hen: Komorebi no Melody (GBC)
00C-4D9-E62

Tokimeki Memorial Pocket: Sport-hen: Komorebi no Melody (GBC)
00C-5C9-E62

Umi no Nushi Tsuri
001-BFB-E6E

Uno 2: Small World
00E-A88-E6E

Wario Land II
00C-21D-E6E
Enable screensavers
00C-31D-E6E

Wario Land II (GBC)
001-0BC-E6E

Trade & Battle Card Hero
006-469-E6E

Dragon Quest Monsters (J) (GBC)
001-C4B-E6E

Dragon Warrior Monsters (GBC)
001-C4B-E6E

Dragon Warrior Monsters V1.16 (GBC)
001-C4B-E6E

Dragon Quest/Warrior Monsters 2 Ruka's Adventure
001-BFA-E6E

Dragon Quest/Warrior Monsters 2 Iru's Adventure
001-BFA-E6E

FIFA '96
003-59A-E6E

Game Boy Gallery (E)
Palettes do not swap to software priority when they change
00B-F6D-C4D

Pocahontas
00C-82C-E66

The Smurfs
00B-718-E6E

Centipede
00A-85C-E6E

Superman
00E-ECD-E66

Madden 96
005-7D2-E66

Mole Mania
001-CBB-E6E (Unused; listed in the game's internal command packet listing)

Quest for Camelot
00F-DEE-E66

NBA Live 96
002-10E-E66

Donkey Kong Land 2
000-9AB-E6E

Donkey Kong Land 3
000-9AB-E6E

Conker's Pocket Tales
000-9AB-E6E

Dragon Quest 1&2
001-B1B-E6

TinTin in Tibet
009-E38-E6E

Kirby's Dream Land 2
Disable palette software priority swapping when they change
71F-E0A-A2B

Spirou
(Unused; listed in the game's internal command packet listing. Palettes were supposed to have been disabled based on the other Infrogrames titles)
01A-A78-E6A

Doraemon no GameBoy de Asobouyo DX10
Disable controller settings (Unused; listed in the game's internal command packet listing)
6E9-3EA-192


Crayon Shin-chan: Ora no Gokigen Collection
Palette software priority (Unused; listed in the game's internal command packet listing)
13A-E68-E62

Crayon Shin-chan 4: Ora no Itazura Daihenshin
Palette software priority (Unused; listed in the game's internal command packet listing)
646-0EB-F7B

There are a handful of other games that disable palettes and contain unused enable / disable commands in their internal command packet listings, this is the bulk of the games spanning both GB and GBC. I will add the rest once I find them in my notes from several years ago, if not then I will recreate them to complete the listing.

YEEEEEeeeeeHaaaaaawwww!! Toy Story Unused music found in Sega Genesis Mega Drive

A while after discovering the unused music in the Super Nintendo version (actually waaaaay longer than it should have nd no real exscuse) I've found yet another gold nugget! This time it's Toy Story for the Sega Genesis / MegaDrive. Well, at least it's accessible now on real hardware using a Game Genie cheat device, after investing the time using a hex editor within minutes (these sort of things always came easy to me; it's a blessing and a curse! I learned 68000 in a lot less than a week a few years ago, actually so this was moot effort.)

 Sega reaches for the stars what Nintendon't!

For reference, I will link the two unused songs that are in the SNES version. Both are actually fairly interesting. According the the audio engineer Allister Brimble, the song "You've Got a Friend in Me" was never set up to play in this version because there were apparently licencing issues. He wasn't very specific because he didn't remember all that well. I may ask him again a later date.

Unused Song 1: Roller Bob

Unused Song 2: "You've Got a Friend in Me"

Toy Story (U) [!].bin

[CODE]

Options screen music modifier

01DB8C:00??

Play unused song at options screen

BXPT-CAEN

0C - Unused Song

[/CODE]

Toy Story (E) [!].bin

[CODE]

Options screen music modifier

01DCFC:70??

Play unused song at options screen

BXRA-DA96

0C - Unused Song

[/CODE]

Fiinally what everyone was waiting for forever. I'm surprised no one did this already. https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/st...6647971832627201 - Level 1: That Old Army Game (With Marching Soldiers)

02 - Level 2: Red Alert!

03 - Level 3: Ego Check

04 - Level 4: Nightmare Buzz

05 - Level 17: Light my Fire

06 - Level 6: Revenge of the Toys, Bonus & Characters

07 - Level 7: Run Rex, Run!

08 - Level 18: Rocket Man

09 - Level 9: Food and Drink

0A - Level 10: Inside the Claw Machine

0B - Level 11: Really Inside the Claw Machine

0C - Unused Song

0D - Level 13: Sid's Workbench

0E - Woody on Fire

0F - Level 14: Battle of the Mutant Toys

10 - Level 12: The Claw!

11 - Level 5 & 16: A Buzz Clip & Day-Toy-Na

12 - NULL

13 - Buzz Battle

14 - Game Over

15 - Level Complete

16 - Patrick Collins, Randy Newman, Andy Blythe, Marten Joustra and Allister Brimble - [Toy Story] Storyline (You've Got a Friend in Me)

17 - Continue Screen

The rest are sound effects and DAC/PCM samples.

The menu and credits songs are MOD files.

https://gamehacking.org/vb/forum/video-game-hacking-and-development/hacker-threads/13028-nensondubois-codes?p=202834#post202834

Musical glitches in NES Urban Champion!

TKO! No, this isn't punchout!

Kick, punch it's all in the might! (Except there's no actual kicking like a little girl)

I am surprised at the commission of Urban Champion from Gamecube Animal Crossing. I have a lot to talk about and cover in Gamecube Animal Crossing in the not-so distant future. I guess Nintendo didn't like it, they ran out of space to include it in the original N64 version, or they felt nineteen was a round number for collectible NES games. Perhaps Nintendo sisn't want a game about a city in Animal Crossing but that may not be true because they have items including an Office Wall and several types of paper showing cityscapes. Definite curious invoking.

Nintendo, however plastered the game onto five E-Reader cards which was quite nice. I'm still upset about the early discontinuation and support of the Game Boy Advance E-reader. I may elaborate why in a future article because I deem the criticism necessary. I am curious if the street brawlers will make an appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Recently I found a musical glitch in Urban Champion. Nintendo's early sound driver fixed this is issue in other titles. I could go into great detail about how they work but that far outreaches the scope of this article. Another time. The music will glitch after looping 49 31h times.

https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/status/1006558548338401280

Urban Champion (W) [!].nes

Round 3 music because it reminds me of Gary Coleman for some odd reason I can't explain. Does that sound weird? It is the thought this song my mind associates with so it is going to be known.

Disable title demo (also allows demo to continue until a victory. Victory animation does not progress.)

KESKXIVI

Music will glitch out after 2 loops (Round 2 music will cold stop without glitching; use with individual song selection codes.)

ZAXKPUYU

Title screen music modifier (The music will glitch after looping 49 31h times.)

Round 1

EENTAYZA

Round 2

EENTAYZA

ZVXKTVOO

Round 3

EENTAYZA

VKXKTVOP

Round intro

GENTAYZA

Next Round

AENTAYZE

Game Select

AONTAYZA

Round Start

AXNTAYZA

Victory

AKNTAYZA

Are you still punching and kicking like a little girl after reading this article? I know I am.

Continuing ~ Super Mario Bros. World Class Track Meet Duck Hunt - Unused Mario 2 Lost Levels Tiles Graphics

Time for another Super Mario Bros. article where we take a look at Super Mario Bros. 2 assets that remain inside of the menu programming of the one of the most videogame cartridges ubiquitous. Seriously, everybody and their dog owned a copy. I still do along with the manual. It never came with an official box as it was bundled with the Action Set NES.

For aesthetic mental reference: The controller (left), NES (middle), cartridge (right)

  

Surprisingly Nintendo for some reason used the Japanese true Super Mario Bros. 2 and character tilemapping to form the basis of the menu; graphic tileset and relative assets. I guess they were porting the Famicom Disk System file system when writing the menu because it may have been quicker or it was just on their workstation at the time? Maybe they did this on purpose just to see if someone would undoubtably notice over time? I really don't know and we will probably never quite know exactly why this even exists on the cartridge at all.

What you are about to see may burn your eyes because it may look like a garbled mess, but actually it is clearly (well maybe not so clearly.) the graphics from Super Mario Bros. 2. The palettes are based on which game is selected in the menu so it is the most visually pleasing to look at the Super Mario Bros highlighted section for better visual analysis.

Long and behold the detail!

Title screen graphics of Super Mario Bros 2 for reference.

Here is the original information I found.

[CODE]
Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt + World Class Track Meet (U) (PRG0) [!].nes
Replace Super Mario Bros tiles with unused Super Mario Bros. 2 Lost levels tiles
IEXTGAZE
XEVTAZAV
ZPETALZA

Display unused Super Mario Bros. 2 Lost levels tiles at game select menu (I actually made this interesting discovery about a week ago. All of the CHR from the Lost Levels / Super Mario Bros. 2 is actually inside the Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt + World Class Track Meet game select bank! There are also unused tiles in Super Mario Bros. 2! https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/status/924508098907267072)

YPSTLGPA

Fixes Duck Hunt selection palette to match Super Mario Bros. / 2

TLXVYZPZ

YPUTAZTZ

YAUTPZIZ

Fixes World Class Track Meet selection palette to match Super Mario Bros. / 2

TLUTLZYL

YPUTGXZZ

YAUTIZPZ

Replaces Duck Hunt 'upper-left brick' tile with unused Super Mario Bros. 2 tile. The table starts is located at 0x01E556-1E8CA beginning with Super Mario Bros and ending with World Class Track Meet.

E665:??:AD

Replaces Duck Hunt 'upper-left brick' tile with unused Super Mario Bros. 2 star tile (there are other unused tiles but this is just an example)

OYVTIVSZ

[/CODE]

World's rarest Baseball videogame?

Swing! Batter! Batter! Swing! Heeeeaaaaarrrrrrr the crowd! The jeering fans! The crack of the baaat!

Previously I mentioned the ultra rare Famicom Box version of Super Mario Bros. I will briefly highlight the details.

The Famicom Box is the Japanese hotel pay-per-play offering a certain amount of time console each session. The cartridges were black sporting a yellowish Mario and the name of the game is written in Japanese. Ironically enough, the label says Nintendo Entertainment System even though it is incompatible with the console. and would only play on the Famicom Box unless you found a way to use a converter adapter allowing it to work with the Famicom.
It will work with an NES-to-Famicom adapter but will not work with the NES unless the CIC pin 4 leg is cut or lifted (I don't condone modding consoles for the).

This cartridge is the rarest Baseball videogame in existence (well, maybe not to the extreme, but it is still unheard of by most people). It will work with an NES-to-Famicom adapter but will not work with the NES unless the CIC pin 4 leg is cut or lifted. I don't condone modding consoles unless you.

There isn't much else to say about this version of Baseball because it is exactly the same as retail as far as the game itself plays. If you are able to find a cartridge at a reasonable price then go for it! Chances are you won't and I got lucky and only paid 56 for mine.

Get ready for an all-time low-flying adventure! Unused Superman Theme Song from the movie found in a videogame!

Brace yourself and prepare to for a rough landing! Try not to hit a tree... or a parked car while playing this game.

The Game Boy and N64 versions of Superman is based off the well-known franchise. I think the game developers were hit in the head with a chunk of kryptonite by someone before they designed the games.

MAAAANY people are familiar with the universally famous original Superman theme song, but not many are well-versed with the fact that the Game Boy game actually has a fully composed version inside the game's code.

Original post:

http://gamehacking.org/vb/threads/12747-nensondubois-codes

Title screen music modifier unused Superman Theme

0CA-1AF-D52

 Elmar Krieger arranged this version and I don't know why he didn't use it as the title screen since it would have been a better fit. My guess is that this was intended for an ending but the game does not have a proper ending and instead shows a generic "Congratulations! message with the stage clear theme playing.Why was this not used? The world may never know, and you can't spin the world in reverse to turn back time and find out.

The surprise does not end here! There is additionally an unused jingle.

Title screen music modifier unused Superman Theme

0BA-1AF-D52

Editor's note: I have no plans to review this game because we all know how notoriously awfulness all of the Superman and Titus games. The only worthwhile portion of the games (at least by Elmar Krieger) are the music and the Super Game Boy borders; the other game is The Quest for Camelot with a border.

Rare Zelda Gamecube Japanese Collection

Presenting with you today is another special and rare game! More importantly, the main differences between the international versions of the Zelda Collection is that the Japanese version contains different main menu music, Majora's Mask emulation has more crashes and bugs. The Japanese version also contains the "disksys.bin", funnier how it is possible to eject and cause FDS errors so you could see Mario and Luigi chasing each other in the void of Space.

Originally posted on Twitter:

 https://twitter.com/nensondubois_/status/989255145199370242

The second main issue is that FDS audio is completely inaccurate (most notable when Link dies in Zelda II). Unfortunately I had to cut short Majora's Mask because the game crashed upon entering the Clock Tower village. Note that my disc is completely scratch-free, no dirt, etc on it so that is an emulation issue on Nintendo's part.

Aside from the flaws, this is a really good collection only having 1,000 produced for Club Nintendo Japan fans. I paid a fortune for my copy and if people want to see more rare games,  please consider donating because it helps also with buying better video equipment. Hope you enjoyed this video. I also found development-related text in the ISO after examining the files. More details on this later.

Unused Super Mario Bros. NES Theme found in WarioWare, Inc. - Mega Microgame$!.gba!

WarioWare, Inc. - Mega Microgame$! GBA Menu Music Modifier Unused Microgame Music 2 0104 Super Mario Bros Theme.

We're on a roll with Super Mario Bros related content, so today is a step in the same direction. I'm sure many people have spent countless hours city surfing through Wario Ware Inc on their often eye-straining Game Boy Advance screens back when people no longer thought break dancing was cool.

One of the lesser-known interesting things is Wario Ware Inc actually has some music that was never used in-game and the best example of this is a rendition of the Super Mario Bros theme done in the theme of a microgame.

I located the internal song ID, known as a music modifier, where the main menu selects to play it's music using a debugger and it took some effort but it wasn't too difficult for my level of skill to figure out. To play this song, open up a hex editor of choice (mine is hex workshop) and go to the following address and change it to (in this case, 0104)

WarioWare, Inc. - Mega Microgame$!.gba Main menu song set 

(083FA4C0) 0x3FA4C0 0B00 to ????.

This is a weird one. A version of the Super Mario Bros. Theme with whispering, a baby crying and weight lifting samples! :S

Hut-hut-hut-Hii-yyaaaaAAAHHHHH!!!

          Hello everybody! I am starting a new series that will be about videogame related obscurities, rare items, my collection, technical information and various other fun content. I have been reverse-engineering videogames for a very long time and have discovered a whole slew of interesting, unused and various strange and amusing surprises!

Let the fun begin with the first entree of an extremely rare copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES.. no, the Famicom? Wait! [music slowing down to a screeching hault] it's not either of those!

You may or not know about the Famicom Box. It was a kiosk allowing timed per-pay sessions of popular Nintendo games in Japan found mostly in hotel rooms of customers.

The box had a selectable set of cartridges that the use would press a button to select that game. The cartridges, however were unique and not reminiscent of standard Famicom cartridges and appeared closer to western NES Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges.

Famicom Box cartridges were black as opposed to their grey western counterpart and had a generic Mario label that was based on the NES Test Cart labels. Mario is shown and it looks quite nice actually, simply depciting the name of the game in Japanese. Not a shiny gold cartridge like Zelda 1 and 2 had but it definitely holds up aesthetically. The internal board is actually an NES cartridge PCB with one small but important difference. The CIC 10NES chip is nowhere to be found and so it will leave your NES blinking unless you physically disable the chip, which I don't recommend for console purity's sake.

Super Mario Bros was not revised and is identical to the NTSC standalone world release.

There is a Sharp variation of the Famicom Box called the Famicom Station and the cartridges are grey instead of black. No actual PCB differences are known but assumed they have no 10NES CIC communication chip as well and will not function on an NES.