I thought it was noteworthy because it includes a graphic editor (or "editer," if you will, heh) for Famicom Disk System which may not have been dumped yet. The seller also posted a number of screenshots. After searching around a little, I also found a thread on Famicom World about it:
Just registered. Actually I've been reading these forums for a while now, but this topic caught my interest and so I decided to join.
Actually I have this disk (no, not original for obvious reasons, but anyway it wasn't licensed software to begin with) since the Famicom's own era and I recall having fun with it some 20 years ago.
As far as I remember, it's actually similar to those graphics tools Sunsoft used as mentioned in this thread. I don't have time to figure out how to use the Sunsoft ones yet, but I recalled that the Hokusai tools were much more user friendly (or, I was just having too much time to learn about it through trial and error back then).
With it, you can put CHR tiles on the Name Table, set up the (sub)palettes and assign them to the Name Table and you can draw directly on the tiles (so that entries assigned to the same tile on the screen will be changed together in real time). You can create data disks to hold the CHR data and the Name Table, so you basically can make "pictures" and preserve them.
The greatest thing about it is that you could load CHR data files directly from authentic FDS games, so that you can rip graphics (say, from the title screen of a game or some great cutscene pictures) and manually arrange the tiles piece by piece to assemble back the original picture and then save it for your own enjoyment. Even better, you can actually save the files back to the original games, so it's actually a powerful graphics hacking tool and you are able to make graphic hacks of games easily (well, not that easy in fact, as the FDS media are not random-access floppies, when you save a file that is not the last file in the file list of the side, the entries to the remaining files would be destroyed and you would need to use some tools capable of file copying to copy those files from the original disk back).
I had some good memories with it, too bad my Famicom units are broken so I'm not able to access stuff I made with it. It is also a pity that this is not dumped yet, as hac... er... editing graphics on the real thing or in a real Famicom emulator is an awesome thing since you can get immediate feedback on how stuff are actually like on the system, as opposed to using other external software (such as YYCHR) that hack ROM images.
I still have my collection of FDS disks, but I don't have any means to dump them. It doesn't make much difference anyway, as I expect that they're quite possibly all de-magnetised over all these years and have everything lost already.
I still have my collection of FDS disks, but I don't have any means to dump them.
Not trying to put words in Rob's mouth here, but I'd bet he'd be willing to copy those for you, if you're up for loaning them to him. Rob is the same guy who copied those Sunsoft disks you referred to.
I figure as such, but as I mentioned, the disks have been left used for many years and so their data may not be accessible any more.
If people really want them, I am actually more than happy to give them away in case their contents can be dumped. I don't need the disks back either, as they're useless to me and are just sitting there any way. They're worthless since they're not original disks and it wouldn't be likely that anyone can make a fortune selling them in eBay. Of course, if possible, I will still be happy to have my stuff saved in digital form. I just don't need the physical disks any more.
I have doubts whether it's worth other's effort though. Apart from the possibility that the disks are already useless as mentioned above, I think most of the FDS library has been dumped already, that there won't be much left apart from possibly a few exceptions such as this Hokusai editor and some disk copying tools (and some of my creations as well such as lame half hacked games that only I myself would be interested to preserve). Also, since they're not original disks their contents might have been hacked slightly already, so they may be of no use to people who want to maintain "clean" sets. Postage may also be a problem.
Any way, I may try to look at those disks in my free time and see if something can be done with them.
I'd be glad to check them out. I find that the disks are rarely demagnetized, as a finely tuned FDS can usually pull data from disks, though I admit, I had to do hundreds of passes on some disks to dump them before. But that's rare.
But yeah, I'd be glad to dump them, or if you really don't want them, I'd be glad to pay shipping on them if you want to just get rid of them. If they are totally dead, they are always good as disks that can be overwritten.
I've checked my stack of FDS disks last weekend. Unfortunately I couldn't find the Hoksai editor. Turned out these several dozens of disks were just a small portion of my collection (most of the Game Converter "backup" disks of cart games were missing) and most of them were just typical stuff, with some of them hacked to have infinite lives. etc., also uninteresting. I might have put the other stuff in some of the boxes when I moved 10 years ago, that I may check when I have time for it, maybe they're lost forever though.
There're a few interesting ones though, judging from the labels I have written on them (thus it's not guaranteed that their contents match the descriptions), which are mostly disk copying tools or file (hex) editors I guess. Some disks were labelled as "Disk Raider", "Copy Master" and "Hammer" (??? I'm not sure what it was, but I think it might be a Hex Editor; the name could be wrong though, possibly due to my inability in comprehending the Japanese title screen and there was the image of a hammer in it).
Most of the disks have the same names on their labels though. Maybe they're the same thing of different revisions, or they're just duplicates of the same thing, that I usually made for more commonly used tools, so to avoid losing them when the media failed (this actually often happened at the time, as late in the system's life-span media were quite cheap, often lower than HK$1 per disk (~US$0.125) when you bought them in bulk packs, thus you cannot expect them to be of high quality).
I think some of these aren't dumped yet (not in No-Intro's dat, at least) but I'm not sure whether it's worth dumping them as these are of no use nowadays (unlike the aforementioned graphics editor, which still has its use) and for preservation purposes we cannot verify their liability as they're not original disks.
Anyway, if you want them I can even pay for the shipping (bet it won't be much and I can afford it).
Joined: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 285 Location: Murfreesboro, TN
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2010 8:02 am Post subject:
Gilbert, I am glad to hear my topic sparked your interest, and you decided to sign up. Lost Levels is one of my favorite message boards, and I always enjoy the threads here.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us- it was a little unclear to me from the descriptions of the Hokusai editor whether it could save graphics data to the original source disks, or merely its own. That's cool that it could save to data disks or actual games (though seemingly a bit dangerous for the latter!).
It's too bad the Hokusai I2 disc didn't turn up, but that is awfully nice of you to let Rob have a look at your Fami disks. Everyone here loves the NES/Famicom, and I'm sure they will be interested to see what's on them!
I just picked up a "Backup Techniques" mag from Sept. 1990 which happened to have an ad for various FDS copying/hacking tools.
Large pics:
The 1st pic has the famed copier, and the 2nd pic has various tools, including the Hokusai, Tonkachi Editor, etc, and a service for disabling FDS hardware copy protection.
I actually put a bookmark on every page of every issue of Backup Technique relating to FDS, though these are just the ads. I never scanned all the non-ad FDS stuff.
I still have several duplicate issues for sale if anyone wants some. Thanks for reminding me of all of the above, Chris!
Heh. It's interesting to see these original Japanese ads.
For some reasons I think the FDS was even more popular than Japan in here (by proportion of Famicom owners at least), since whereas one reason (I think) that Nintendo considered the system a failure was the ease of pirating the FDS games, this shiny little drive in fact prompted the invention of Game Copiers such as Game Converters and Game Doctors, so that even cart games were pirated and distributed wildly through this media. In other words, Nintendo themselves designed and produced (half of) the hardware and media for pirating everything on their system... These copying tools just helped the situation even more.
Almost every hardcore gamer here had an imported Famicom AND a FDS unit (and some other extra accessories) back at the time. This was quite possibly one main reason that the official NES failed here and ironically to its own twin brother. This also made Nintendo themselves to produce an official Famicom model for use in here only.
This is kinda off the topic, but... both the NES and the Famicom were officially released in Hong Kong?
I guess that would explain why the official carts I've seen are NES-style but the only (seemingly) official hardware I've seen is Famicom. Or was it a 72-pin Famicom console?
Good question, Mike. I always thought HK merchants imported the FC, but NOJ made NES units for official release in HK. Just speculation, though. I never was quite clear on that. I know I've seen official HK NES carts, but no official HK FC carts.
Actually because of the economic status of Hong Kong we almost imported everything back at the time, so before the NES was officially released here we had imported the original Japanese Famicom and games already. Even (Especially) large Japanese department stores would sell these.
The problem was, HK was a PAL region and the consoles were NTSC, but multi-system TV sets weren't popular at that time, so there were two common solutions:
1. The units were hacked to PAL.
2. The units were hacked to use an AV output and connected not to a TV but to a (usually 14") NTSC colour monitor.
Method 1 wasn't used by serious gamers as games would run slow for obvious reasons and there were reports that both the consoles and the TVs would be damaged after some time (probably due to unprofessional hacking jobs).
Method 2 was actually quite popular, since Apple II clones were extremely popular here and people already did this for the computers (similarly, PAL Apple II units were rare here ), so the investment in an extra monitor was worth it as it could be used to output both signals from an Apple and a Famicom (so I used this method also).
This caused the NES to fail when it was officially released here, as it had a much weaker library (getting imported games was easy here, and it's not uncommon that people would preorder larger titles such as the Dragon Quest games through department stores, and got the real things even before the Japanese launch dates) and it was hard to connect the NES to a FDS unit (well, and Game Copiers) and the lack of the extra sound channel support (without a hack) was annoying.
So, after the NES failed (I think sales of the NES was similar to the SMS, if not worse), Nintendo released a PAL Famicom model here years afterwards. It could directly play Japanese (NTSC) carts without much glitch (possibly due to timing differences from the PAL NES; I think some of the later, more complicated games that relied heavily on timing still won't work though) but I think the SFC was already released for a while (or not) so it wasn't much of a hit, and considering the fact that most people used imported units anyway.
Gilbert very kindly sent me the FDS disks he could find. I dumped them, and here's the results:
Copy Master 1-1-MOSTLY BLANK IMAGE
It's weird, there were 2 copies of this he sent and I was only able to dump one. The other had a bad block at the end I couldn't dump no matter what. I managed to dump this one, and it is mostly blank, except for a few scattered bytes right after the header. Loading it in FDSLoader directly to the RAM adapter just makes the screen go black like it's trying to load. FDSLoader goes crazy and keeps loading infinte green blocks across the screen until you hit ESC and then reset on the FC. As for the other disk, when loading it on the FC (with a Game Doctor, of course), it gives an error on screen reading something like, "Disk Err 20 Load Disk No A." I almost gave up on this one until I hit Reset and COpy Master loaded up on screen. WEIRD! I have a feeling this is a funky version of Copy Master with some messed up copy protection preventing me from dumping it or something. Either that, or this is the one I dumped, and it was a bad dump. No idea!
Disk Raider Copy 3 Drawing Office. Yeah, that's what it says on screen. WTF? Can anyone explain this?
Disk Raider Venus 1987 V3.0 BY JiM FOK. Again, that's what it says on screen.
Disk Raider Venus 1987 V MC BY JiM FOK. It doesn't say this on screen. Just kidding!
Hammer Editor-Same title screen as Tonkachi Editor with Different Menu and is in English (no Tonkachi Mario references in Katakana on the main screen either), except the Title Screen says "THANKS KIT" on it. So....did I get the Hammer Editor at all? Or just a hacked Tonkachi Editor? I think Gilbert gave me 3 disks of this, but hex compares showed them to all be identical.
Disk Raider (Pastel title screen-genericish disk labeled MAGIC COPY). Perhaps this was some hacked version of Disk Raider sold as something called Magic Copy? Or maybe Magic Copy was on the disk and was overwritten by this? Who knows.
SUper Mario Bros. 2.5. A 64k image with all 8 worlds (short levels). It is a hack , of course, but an evil and sometimes very imaginitive one. It takes advantage of many certain glitches just to show them off and often add to the gameplay. Also has some pretty odd placements for many items and enemies. I must say, this game is brutally hard and very unforgiving. Some mid-level spawn points have you standing on nothing, falling to your death, nowhere to even jump to....which would really piss you off if you had a 100 lives left over or something.
Doki Doki Panic hack with SMB1 Mario and possibly Power Rangers-Copy Protected. I dumped this one, but only the actual disk will play, not the image...seems the pirates took advantage of NOJ's copy protection to keep folks from copying their pirate hack. Can anyone tell me who these other characters are? I had a copy of Doki Doki once with Power Rangers in it (according to the guy that sent it to me), but I dunno. Also, this game has all levels for all 4 characters completed and ready to select (you can start on any world). They didn't change the ending and even left the Doki Doki characters in the ending. HAH. Silly pirates.
Bishoujo Control (Beautiful Woman Control)-possible pirate hack of something, but I don't know what. Original? Hopefully someone can tell me. This is one of those odd porn FDS games. You are a penis and you shoot sperm at all kinds of shit. Bras, Bi, Shou and Jo Kanji, spitting mouths, blah blah. Hard game...very tough. If someone wants to hack the tiles to show us what we're missing out on, go for it, cuz I ain't gonna play this through.
So, being pirates images, can I post a link for a zip of these?
Oh, so the disks arrived earlier than expected. The people in the post office lied to me.
rbudrick wrote:
Copy Master 1-1-MOSTLY BLANK IMAGE...
I'm not sure about it, maybe the data were lost, or they could also be programmes only usable by a certain kind of game copiers. As far as I remember, different "brands" of game copiers might need different disks to run the same game. For example, for a game using a more complicated mapper, the disks for Game Doctors may not work on a Game Converter, and some of their software might have some "copy protection" on them. I remember that there were copying programmes that took advantage of the RAM in a game copier so to eliminate the need for swapping disks and I think these programmes would only work on the kind of game copiers they were designed for.
In reality, I might have just wiped clean these disks for use as data disks. It's odd that I didn't cross out the labels though.
Quote:
Disk Raider Copy 3 Drawing Office. Yeah, that's what it says on screen. WTF? Can anyone explain this?
Drawing Office? Even I don't have any idea.
Quote:
Disk Raider Venus 1987 V3.0 BY JiM FOK. Again, that's what it says on screen.
Disk Raider Venus 1987 V MC BY JiM FOK. It doesn't say this on screen. Just kidding!
I wonder whether they're just all the same thing with the title hacked, or they're really different revisions.
Quote:
Hammer Editor... I think Gilbert gave me 3 disks of this, but hex compares showed them to all be identical.
Hmmm. I'm not sure, but as these software weren't licensed in the first place it's possible that the original company also "licensed" (or released it itself) a translated version to other places (probably only here...) where the FDS was common. Seeing how even Hacker International itself also imported and exported stuff to and from Japan the editor could also be a homebrew which began as English and then translated to Japanese. Anyway, it's quite possibly just a hack. As for the multiple copies, it could be just because of its functionality as a tool, which made it "too important to lose", so I made backup copies in case a disk was damaged.
Quote:
Disk Raider (Pastel title screen-genericish disk labeled MAGIC COPY). Perhaps this was some hacked version of Disk Raider sold as something called Magic Copy? Or maybe Magic Copy was on the disk and was overwritten by this? Who knows.
Maybe it's just a reused disk, without the label text crossed out I think.
Quote:
SUper Mario Bros. 2.5...
Heh. Interesting. I expect it's something like this anyway.
Quote:
Doki Doki Panic hack with SMB1 Mario and possibly Power Rangers-Copy Protected. I dumped this one, but only the actual disk will play, not the image...seems the pirates took advantage of NOJ's copy protection to keep folks from copying their pirate hack...
Hmmm. Could it be just the simple "number of files" protection? Some games had more files than a certain byte indicated and so some copying programmes might failed in copying the extra files rendering the backup useless. I think this is a well known trick though, so it should have been taken care of already. Anyway, this is just nothing worthy of preserving I think.
Quote:
Bishoujo Control (Beautiful Woman Control)...
This is one of those unlicensed games (oh I think it's on that unlabelled disk? ) that were released by Hacker or other companies (some were possibly aliases of Hacker). These games were actually usually original but I think this game was dumped already. I don't know whether my disk was hacked though.
Joined: 26 Aug 2003 Posts: 1600 Location: beneath enemy scrotum
Posted: Sun Dec 12, 2010 4:16 pm Post subject:
rbudrick wrote:
Bishoujo Control (Beautiful Woman Control)-possible pirate hack of something, but I don't know what. Original? Hopefully someone can tell me. This is one of those odd porn FDS games. You are a penis and you shoot sperm at all kinds of shit. Bras, Bi, Shou and Jo Kanji, spitting mouths, blah blah. Hard game...very tough. If someone wants to hack the tiles to show us what we're missing out on, go for it, cuz I ain't gonna play this through.
I'm sure Lugnut wrote a most fascinating review of this game, but the closest I could come to finding it is this backup on archive.org.
I'm perfectly okay with it, as there is nothing personal in it... err... apart from that "fun" shooter maybe (I think it's been dumped anyway, so there is nothing special).
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), so the investment in an extra monitor was worth it as it could be used to output both signals from an Apple and a Famicom (so I used this method also).
