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Nintendo Switch

An answer to the literal question: individual PPU reads/writes are the same speed as any other read/write on this CPU. It's probably worth saying so, just because there are lots of platforms (modern and old) where video memory access is slower. As others have pointed out, you have a bandwidth proble...

if a game that uses Mapper 2 is 16K or less, is it functionally an NROM, since you won't need to use the '161 for mapping anything? Yes, that should in theory act the same as NES-128k, since $C000-FFFF is fixed to the last bank already. Wait, really? So, there are emulation consoles that can't run ...

mapper241, mapper177, mapper178, mapper15, mapper227 All of these are obscure mappers, though. If you're worried about an emulator that doesn't support NROM + CHR-RAM, you're probably also worried about that same emulator not supporting obscure mappers. (E.g. the PowerPak doesn't support any of tho...

I don't know which emulators do or do not emulate mapper 0 with CHR-RAM, though you can sidestep the problem pretty easily? An NROM + CHR-RAM game could be converted to mapper 2 (extremely common and always with CHR-RAM) with just a couple lines of code. The wiki seems to recommend mapper 34, which ...

I'm noticing in Mesen occasionally it presses right unexpectedly. Especially on the DNA spending screen, this means it automatically adds points to stat you have selected without asking. This usually indicates a conflict between DPCM samples and the controller read. The "classic" way to solve this i...

Since it’s not a mapper and will be avaiable on ”all” mappers and a game would work even if the expansion is not there. Adding mappers for it feels like a wrong way to go. For this reason, it sounds like it has no need to be in the iNES header at all? This would be an emulator option, not part of a...

Is VRAM arranged the same way on both versions of SMB3? I doubt it, considering the weird height of NES name tables. But that's the kind of thing that's expected to change between ports anyway, while the game logic has a much better chance of being reused. I mean, are the tiles and sprite patterns ...

Oh dear. "After noticing that you could cause a bug in the saves from Dragon Quest III by increasing the temperature of the cartridge and start at level 99 at a specific temperature, a player has made a speedrun of the game with his console resting on a hot plate." https://twitter.com/VGDensetsu/sta...

Yes that's exactly what the mentioned drivers are.

You'll have to define the word "replayer", because I don't know what you mean if that driver isn't already exactly what you're asking for.

Feature request to all NES tracker coders in the future: Provide a replayer source so people actually can use their music in anything else than a pure .NSF/such. It would also be nice if the RAM needed by the replayer is "relocatable" aswell (not requires a specific memory address but just any spec...

If the music was made in Famitracker, that has its own "driver" source that you can put in an NES ROM with the exported data to play the music. It's great for if you just want a demo. The reason people don't use that one so much in games is that it doesn't have SFX and it's a bit "heavy" with featur...

Naively converting PCM to DPCM is fairly simple: for each sample, if the current DPCM output level is more than the desired PCM, put a 0, else put a 1. (If you wanted to "mix" DPCM, you'd essentially be doing something equivalent to converting the DPCM to PCM and approximately following the desired ...

I remembered where I put them, and I'm hoping I can offer them in good faith without being accused of some sort of superiority complex, but here's the thread where I posted those MMC5 findings specifically, the test ROMs used, and recordings made using them. (See swap_tests.zip) http://forums.nesdev...