NES2PCE

Discuss technical or other issues relating to programming the Nintendo Entertainment System, Famicom, or compatible systems. See the NESdev wiki for more information.

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dobbo2k
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2018 7:09 am

NES2PCE

Post by dobbo2k »

A developer (website here: https://pcedev.wordpress.com/) worked on a method to convert NES Roms to PC-Engine format. I think it was some sort of wrapper/emulation layer but I don't know the technical details. He released a handful of conversions including Megaman 2, SMB1, Duck Tales 2 and Castlevania. These aren't on his website anymore although you can find the ROMs elsewhere online.

As a homebrew developer who owns both a NES and PC-Engine, I would like to convert my NES games to PCE format. So my question is: Does anyone have the NES2PCE code? I'm guessing it must have been shared or been made available at some point..? Thanks in advance.
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Kasumi
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Re: NES2PCE

Post by Kasumi »

Archive.org can be a cool resource for exploring removed links and such.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110716023 ... and-links/

I verified that the Megaman 1 and SMB1 download works on that particular date. They include source code.

You can see other files here: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ww ... t/nes2pce/* (You have to wait a bit for it to load the list)

It doesn't seem like anything has been shared that's too useful to do this automatically, but perhaps this source could help you plan a similar process.
dobbo2k
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Re: NES2PCE

Post by dobbo2k »

That's great, thanks for your help!
dobbo2k
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue May 15, 2018 7:09 am

Re: NES2PCE

Post by dobbo2k »

It looks like the actual NES rom for the game (SMB, Megaman) has been dumped to a BIN file. This is then used by the assembler, along with other assembly code, to create the PC engine rom.

I want to try and use the existing code to get one of my games to work. I used the "Nes Mapper Reader / Rom Fixer / Rom Splitter v2.0" utility to remove the 16 byte nes header from a mapper 0 version of my game and then put it in place of SMB.BIN (super mario bros) and ran the assembler. This created a .PCE file but unfortunately it doesn't run in the emulator, so I guess there's not a simple way to do this. I don't know assembly language, so I don't think there's much more I can do. Ah well.
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Dwedit
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Re: NES2PCE

Post by Dwedit »

Static Recompilation is some amazing stuff. Just look at the Corn N64 emulator, which played Mario 64 on a Pentium II.
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ccovell
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Re: NES2PCE

Post by ccovell »

The NES2PCE source code merely uses the original NES file as a binary that it overlays modifications on top of. The programmer (you) still has to search for all graphic, sound, and mapper writes in the original NES ROM and hook in PCE graphics (etc) routine calls, some of which are probably provided in the source code.
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Nioreh
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Re: NES2PCE

Post by Nioreh »

Dwedit wrote:Static Recompilation is some amazing stuff. Just look at the Corn N64 emulator, which played Mario 64 on a Pentium II.
No need for static recompilation. I played Mario 64 on UltraHLE on my P166 MMX and voodoo1 back in the 90s. Not full framerate, but I played through it.
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Dwedit
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Re: NES2PCE

Post by Dwedit »

That's the difference, corn WAS full framerate.
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Charizard700
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Re: NES2PCE

Post by Charizard700 »

The PCE version SMB was created by Image. This was created based on the NES PAL version of SMB SMB. It seems that volunteers have created patches based on the newly improved SMB NES NTSC version.

[FDS Conversion] All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. (ANNSMB) MMC3 Port. and disassembly
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