Putting PAL SNES games on NTSC donors

[icemanxp300]

Just curious if there are any problems with this. I put a PAL game on a NTSC cart today. Rom plays on snes9x just fine and once on the cart the game appears to play fine as well. The problem I seen was on the menu screen not all the menu choices highlight properly as they do is snes9x.

While you can choose any option, the problem is you have to count how many times you pushed down "or up" to know what selection you are on. Only the first two choices highlight to let you know where you are. The other 3 choices do not highlight, however once you select one of them and go back to previous menu that choice stays highlighted until you select a different menu choice.

Will this game encounter other problems later on? It appears to function just fine other than the menu glitch. Graphics appear to be fine and everything.


I should mention this was a snes game.... if snes9x didn't give it away

[qwertymodo]

I think you might need a PAL CIC, or it won't boot.

[lidnariq]

You should try testing things in bsnes (/higan/lsnes) instead of snes9x; snes9x and zsnes are infamously inaccurate.

[icemanxp300]

I think you might need a PAL CIC, or it won't boot.

It boots just fine. Everything works fine except the menu selection highlights weird. So far that is the only problem I have encountered. I was just curious if it might give problems later in the game.

[Ice Man]

Games that check $213F register won't boot if the region/CIC does not match!

[icemanxp300]

So I was wondering if the problem with this game not showing stuff properly can be a 50hz problem.

I have tested the rom in Higan and it works properly.

In the menu selection at the beginning (worms is the game) the menu highlights fine in emulator but on real hardware, the pal rom put on an ntsc donor played on an ntsc system does not highlight properly. You can press the arrows down and while the menu's will work it always looks like you are on the same menu when you are not. Game Start is always highlighted even though other selections should be highlighted.

I believe this is a similar problem during game changing weapons.

Could this be a 50hz problem? Can you change the coding of the game to 60hz or does this require a hard mod inside your system? Or do you think this is a different problem completely.

[Joe]

I have tested the rom in Higan and it works properly.

Was Higan configured for NTSC emulation? It runs PAL games in PAL mode unless you specify otherwise.

[icemanxp300]

I have tested the rom in Higan and it works properly.

Was Higan configured for NTSC emulation? It runs PAL games in PAL mode unless you specify otherwise.

It was not configured and honestly I went through everything and seen nothing that shows me to run in a different mode. It is Higan v094 64 bit. All it has is super famicom.

I'm going to get a 2.2k resistor tomorrow and do a quick 50/60 mod on my snes. Very simple, I'm going to just skip the toggle switch and just run 26 on ppu1 and 30 on ppu2 to the resistor and then O on the regulator (lifting the ppu pins of course) and see if the game works as it should.

That way I can tell if that is the problem. From my research it does not appear you can easily change the coding of the rom unfortunately. I was hoping for something simple like genesis does for region checking, like changing region to U in a hex editor by swapping 45 to 55.

Unfortunately I believe the entire games has been coded to run at the lower speed and changing all that is over my head.

[icemanxp300]

I figured I would update this in case anyone is following. I did the 50/60 hz mod and it didn't work. The game was just like diagonal wavy lines and the title screen came in wavy and offset for a seconds then went back to the lines.

I am assuming it is because I put the game on an NTSC donor that has an NTSC cic chip on it, which from my understanding the cic is the main reason for this mod (from what I had have read anyhow).

So while the menus work and the weapons work they just don't highlight. I did find that if you pause the game when you un-pause it will show the weapon selection you are on so that does help.

It would be nice to get this stuff displayed correctly though.

[Ice Man]

It actually would be nice to know which game you're trying to make.

[icemanxp300]

Worms.

[Ice Man]

Should work fine in NTSC.

It's a simple 2MB LoROM board (SHVC-1A0N-XX).

I'd like to see your wiring for that.

[icemanxp300]

No wires. Uses an adapter board I have for m27c160 in which the traces are in the thread under this one.

[Ice Man]

Make sure it's correct then.

Might as well post the pinout used and pictures.