[adaml]

After reading the Mickey's Dream Balloon thread I started playing the old Bugs Bunny games from Kemco. I played through Birthday Blowout and then decided to try the proto Birthday Bash. Is this completely unplayable? I noticed if I held one of the buttons and hit reset it would bring me to that whack a mole game, but it was unplayable. Holding a different button and hitting reset brought me to the lives screen. Do I have a bad ROM or is this game just horked?

[handofg0d]

The general consensus IIRC was that it was a bad dump. I actually have 2 dumps, that are 0.1kb different in file size. I've never compared them beyond that because they both seem exactly the same otherwise. If you want I can provide both.

Holding Select while it boots brings up the whack-a-mole game
Holding Start while it boots brings up a stage select

On the stage select screen use the left and right arrows to change the level, press down to be able to change the stage with left/right.

Level 1-1 doesn't work
Level 1-2 is glitchy
Level 1-3 is a solid screen but if you walk right far enough you will get to the normal level area.
Level 1-4 doesn't work
Level 2-1 suffers from a similar effect of 1-3 but hurry to the right because the ground is disappearing behind you. It's playable though.
Level 2-2 through 3-2 don't work
Level 3-3 is another that starts off without the background - this one I can't figure out because if you go right you die, and going up doesn't help.
Levels 3-4 through 6-4 don't work

None of the levels are completable though - (to my experience) you reach the end area and there is no large carrot to proceed or boss to fight. Obviously there's no enemies at all in any of the levels either.

Since I have 2 dumps, I don't think it was a bad dump, I think it's just that the proto is in a very early stage and a lot wasn't in place yet.

[BMF54123]

The dump is definitely corrupt, though it doesn't appear to be bit rot. Every x number of bytes (it's been a while, I can't remember), there are one or two corrupted bytes, usually zeroes, if I remember correctly. Several of these bad spots litter the PRG data, which causes the game to hang. Fortunately, in most cases, the correct bytes can be deduced by examining the code around them, and the game can be restored to a somewhat more playable state (though there is a ton of stuff that's just not implemented yet, like enemies).

I have a "fixed" ROM archived somewhere, and as soon as I find it, I'll upload a patch.

[edit]
Well, that was quick.

[adaml]

Thanks for the info fellas.

[etabeta]

ehm, despite what the readme says, there are actually 2 different versions[1] of the proto (both bad): CRC=af432446 & CRC=129a2bb6...

which one should be perfectly fixed by that patch? (those 2 images differs for few bytes, but differences remain after applying the patch, so I hope it's not a completely dumb question )

or do you know what other differences are there between those two?

thanks in advance (and btw hi to everybody... i've just created my account after a couple of years of lurking!)

[1] actually there is a 3rd one = the first with at the end the Vimm-trash signature... I'm not referring to this one!

[KingMike]

I can only find two protos of the game:

one has CRC 85d02cd4 and is 98KB (not even a realistic ROM size).
the other is 256KB and has CRC 7e713df4 (according to FCEUltra). This one seems to be fixed. Still can't finish a level, but I can play it. The enemies are invisible, holding Start while resetting gives a level select (but Select does nothing). Holding Select while Bugs is still or rising in a jump will let him continue to rise (but it doesn't work while he's falling). I think this might have been after applying the patch to the 256KB dump.

[BMF54123]

That 98KB ROM is actually a decade-old underdump of the retail cart that needs to die. I was not aware there was an alternate copy of the proto, though my patch should work fine on either one. The alternate one is probably just a further-corrupted copy of the original dump anyway...

[handofg0d]

Both can be found here, they are both mislabled as "Bugs Bunny Birthday Bash (Proto)" if anyone is interested.