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Estpolis Denki II prototype released

 
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Evan



Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 948

PostPosted: Sat Jul 13, 2013 9:34 am    Post subject: Estpolis Denki II prototype released Reply with quote

This is a pretty major release, as the prototype is very different from the final version. Unfortunately, someone tried dumping this using an EPROM reader and damaged it, so it isn't perfect. Through some hacking efforts, most of the game was revealed to be intact, so I guess it isn't too bad.
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Xkeeper



Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Posts: 327
Location: Henderson, NV

PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 6:17 pm    Post subject: Re: Estpolis Denki II prototype released Reply with quote

Evan wrote:
This is a pretty major release, as the prototype is very different from the final version. Unfortunately, someone tried dumping this using an EPROM reader and damaged it, so it isn't perfect. Through some hacking efforts, most of the game was revealed to be intact, so I guess it isn't too bad.


It was described to me as "Basically like Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout", so it certainly could be worse.


What's disappointing is that he made it sound like he was copying large swaths of the release ROMs into it to make it work, when it seems like all that was done was a much smaller set of bytes; I feel kind of bad about ripping on him in private if that's the case. :(
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Evan



Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 948

PostPosted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 10:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I assume the damage is restricted to the first chip, and that it only was minor damage. The sections with graphics tiles don't really look damaged, compared to the equivalent sections in the final game. I imagine if he gave the ROM image to an experienced ROM hacker from the get go, it would have been repaired quite quickly, but instead he just took pictures of the debugger and had the hackers guess what was wrong. I mean, it is his business if he doesn't want to release the ROM image, but I seriously think he believed that dumping it a second time would somehow make it work properly, and afterwards that he would have the ability to completely fix it.
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KingMike



Joined: 04 Nov 2003
Posts: 898

PostPosted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 2:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Of course it would've been better if the first guy had released his "bad" dump in the first place (whether wrong size or bad checksum or whatever). :P
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BMF54123
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Staff


Joined: 28 Aug 2003
Posts: 743
Location: Henderson, NV

PostPosted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 3:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

To clarify a bit: aside from the missing SNES header, only five bytes need to be fixed to make the game run, and all of them follow some kind of pattern (according to trevormacro):

0x000000: 0x00 -> 0x78 Startup crash fix
0x004000: 0x02 -> 0xFA Sound fix
0x004400: 0x02 -> 0x03 Sound fix
0x006600: 0x00 -> 0x51 Sailing ship bug fix
0x016600: 0x01 -> 0x69 Crash after intro fix

All of the other "fixes" he made to the ROM were to correct bugs or insert missing data that was likely never there in the first place. The problem was that he didn't make this terribly clear, which led people to believe the ROM was far more toasted than it really was.

The Bugs Bunny proto was damaged in a similar manner, though in that case it wasn't always limited to one byte. I wonder if the original owner of that game made a similar mistake?
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