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etabeta
Joined: 21 May 2007
Posts: 70
Location: Italy
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 Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 2:46 pm Post subject: an old NES curiosity |
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i always wondered if anybody has any sort of info on FMG, the company who pirated all the famicom pre-1987 titles...
dumps of these pirate versions are around since when I started to be interested in emulation, but I've never found any info around... |
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TheRedEye
The Internet's Frank Cifaldi
Joined: 26 Aug 2003
Posts: 4192
Location: Oakland, CA
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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| If I remember correctly, those were copied off of CDs that played in some kind of backup unit? It's been a long time. |
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etabeta
Joined: 21 May 2007
Posts: 70
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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not so sure about it (but maybe i'm only a little bit unexpert when discussing about backup units).
if you hexedit one of these images, you find that the 40K file [1] is made of twice the same 16K PRG and then 8K CHR, with only the copyright lines changed w.r.t. a good jpn dump...
can a backup unit find and change such a line on many different titles, changing nintendo, namco or konami in fmg and the year (between 1983 and 1987) in 1987, with no human help?
it sounded more reasonable to me if there was some sort of company selling those titles on some different asian market, after having changed the copyright screen...
but again, I'm far from being an expert 
[1] recently, they appeared also in a different format: 25K with only once the 16K PRG, but I think is "howdy doody" or someone else artificially cutting off the overdumped part...
EDIT: nice the way the name of a certain programmer of renaming tools is automatically changed by the forum (probably to avoid rom requests?) |
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KingMike
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 898
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 2:09 am Post subject: |
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| etabeta wrote: | not so sure about it (but maybe i'm only a little bit unexpert when discussing about backup units).
if you hexedit one of these images, you find that the 40K file [1] is made of twice the same 16K PRG and then 8K CHR, with only the copyright lines changed w.r.t. a good jpn dump...
can a backup unit find and change such a line on many different titles, changing nintendo, namco or konami in fmg and the year (between 1983 and 1987) in 1987, with no human help?
it sounded more reasonable to me if there was some sort of company selling those titles on some different asian market, after having changed the copyright screen...
but again, I'm far from being an expert :)
[1] recently, they appeared also in a different format: 25K with only once the 16K PRG, but I think is "howdy doody" or someone else artificially cutting off the overdumped part...
EDIT: nice the way the name of a certain programmer of renaming tools is automatically changed by the forum (probably to avoid rom requests?) |
Not sure if they had tile editors back then, but now it'd take about 10 seconds with a tile editor to find out the code for each letter, and then find the code in the ROM.
It probably helps that many of the earliest generation of NES games used almost the same font. |
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kap
Minister of Paranoia
Joined: 28 Aug 2003
Posts: 2107
Location: purgatory
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 3:00 am Post subject: |
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| etabeta wrote: | | EDIT: nice the way the name of a certain programmer of renaming tools is automatically changed by the forum (probably to avoid rom requests?) |
It's to prevent the fighting and drama and off-topicness (and because many of us think howdy doody is a piece of sh.. crap, look at that, going off topic already!) that goes with bringing him up.
Also, I am Conan the Grammarian. Hack that shit to pieces. |
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TheRedEye
The Internet's Frank Cifaldi
Joined: 26 Aug 2003
Posts: 4192
Location: Oakland, CA
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 1:13 pm Post subject: |
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| No, I mean that the CDs were used on the backup devices themselves. They're CDs full of pirated NES games that you put in a CD-based unit to play. |
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Carnivol
gay dickhead
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Posts: 576
Location: confirmed
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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Was there such a device for the NES?
I seem to recall there being a PC like thing that could play a very limited amount of famicom roms (mapper support limitations) from a floppy drive. (NESWORLD LINK)
I know there was a CD-Rom based Snes Clone atleast. (GameStation at Rob Webb) |
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Li Wang
SnHX WiIYrd
Joined: 29 Aug 2003
Posts: 798
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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| I've actually got a few multicarts that couldn't be from any time period but back in the day with FMG hacks on them, so I doubt the CD based backup unit was where they originated. |
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TheRedEye
The Internet's Frank Cifaldi
Joined: 26 Aug 2003
Posts: 4192
Location: Oakland, CA
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Carnivol wrote: | Was there such a device for the NES?
I seem to recall there being a PC like thing that could play a very limited amount of famicom roms (mapper support limitations) from a floppy drive. (NESWORLD LINK) |
Dr. PC Jr., I have one of those! It's pretty decent. |
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rbudrick
not rubrdick
Joined: 09 Oct 2006
Posts: 549
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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Did Dr. PC Jr use CDs? I can't remember. If it did, it's the only CD capable backup unit for FC I know of.
Anyway, yes there were editing tools back then. Tonkachi Editor is one of them. I think Kyuusaku told me they can change most things, except file headers (beginning and individual files) on the FDS disks. I haven't a clue if it worked on anything other than SMB. I've never really used it.
-Rob |
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Tongueman
Joined: 27 Feb 2004
Posts: 631
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 3:12 am Post subject: |
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The Dr PC Jr might have been able to have a CD-ROM drive attached to the parallel port in the back, but it would have to be the same oddball one that the GDSF7 uses.
The PCJr isn't really a backup device, just a "computer" that loads Famicom ROMs from disk.
I miss mine... :cry: |
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etabeta
Joined: 21 May 2007
Posts: 70
Location: Italy
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 8:35 am Post subject: |
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| TheRedEye wrote: | | No, I mean that the CDs were used on the backup devices themselves. They're CDs full of pirated NES games that you put in a CD-based unit to play. |
| Li Wang wrote: | | I've actually got a few multicarts that couldn't be from any time period but back in the day with FMG hacks on them, so I doubt the CD based backup unit was where they originated. |
thanks! these are probably the most useful information so far in the whole web
we can say at this point that FMG (or something similar) was/is very probably an asian producer who made pirate multicarts (and lately CDs for some, probably PSX-shaped, famiclone)
I would make a further guess: they were in the market back in the famicom days, producing single pirate carts (like those producers from brazil. this would explain why they changed the copyright screens and used the 1987 date: to make old '83 games more appealing). then they re-used the IPs they have already stolen to make multicarts and CDs.
I would like to find out:
1. if FMG still exists (maybe with a new name). I think they're asian since they pirated a lot of japanese games like Touch, so you would argue that they had a japanese-speaker audience...
2. if anyone else can confirm where those dumps come from (they could well be come from CD rips, like the Konami Collection ones...)
anyway, once more thanks for the infos |
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TheRedEye
The Internet's Frank Cifaldi
Joined: 26 Aug 2003
Posts: 4192
Location: Oakland, CA
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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| The FMG stuff came directly from Cowéring, if I remember correctly. He had CDs full of these game dumps in some kind of backup format (not *.nes, something else), we kind of manually converted and tested them out. A bunch of early Sachen games came from those CDs too. |
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KlarthAilerion
Staff
Joined: 26 Aug 2003
Posts: 673
Location: New Orleans, LA
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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| They were picked and "fixed" out of the at-one-point huge list of ZZZZ_UNK_etc named titles in those Tools. |
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Li Wang
SnHX WiIYrd
Joined: 29 Aug 2003
Posts: 798
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| Posted: Thu May 24, 2007 5:08 am Post subject: |
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| The CD based system might have been one of those VCD Player/Famicom combos that were relatively common at one point. |
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