nesdev.com

I used the information I found on the NES Cart db to assign the Bandai games based on what was on the board and the latest information on the wiki. Ditto for Sunsoft.

This page describes how Nantettatte's add-ons and the speech chips work in MAME (MESS) :

https://mamedev.emulab.it/etabeta/2013/ ... -nes-side/

and the Bandai expansion carts here :

https://mamedev.emulab.it/etabeta/2014/02/

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Nerdly Pleasures - My Vintage Video Game & Computing Blog

Etabeta's writeups were from research shared with us by naruko on the forum here.
q.v. mappers 16, 153, 157, 159 and mapper 188.

I'm not entirely convinced that his choice to use multiple slots is correct for the Datach—after all, the internal 256B EEPROM is the only possibly shared data between multiple games, and we believe only one game uses that EEPROM.

From a file comparison, I see how the base Nantettate and Karaoke Studio ROMs differ from their expansion ROMs. Extra PRG-ROM is tacked onto the expansion ROMs, 128KB for Karaoke and 16KB for Nantettate. Essentially they are a Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic 1/2/3 situation. So :

Mapper 188
Karaoke Studio (Japan) - 128KB PRG-ROM
Karaoke Studio Senyou Cassette Vol. 1 (Japan) - 256KB PRG-ROM
Karaoke Studio Senyou Cassette Vol. 2 (Japan) - 256KB PRG-ROM

Mapper 68
Nantettatte!! Baseball (Japan) - 128KB PRG-ROM, 128KB CHR-ROM
Nantettatte!! Baseball Ko-Game Set '91 Kaimakuban (Japan) - 144KB PRG-ROM, 128KB CHR-ROM
Nantettatte!! Baseball Ko-Game Set OB All Star Hen (Japan) - 144KB PRG-ROM, 128KB CHR-ROM

The expanded Nantettatte ROMs were somehow designated Mapper 4, changing them to 68 got them to work in Nestopia. But the first time they start, all three Nantettatte ROMs will give you an error message in Japanese. When Nestopia makes a sav file and you restart, they will all work fine.

I thought I read somewhere that in the Nantettatte expansion carts was a custom security IC in addition to a ROM chip.

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Nerdly Pleasures - My Vintage Video Game & Computing Blog

There is. Nestopia transparently adds the security IC when PRG is greater than 128 KiB:


About two years ago, rdanbrook added support for signalling via submapper 1 also.

This header was replicated with:

Seems about right.

I have become more ambitious and decided to identify all Famicom licensed 3rd Party games with non-Nintendo mappers. I have also included Nintendo's mappers and variant that never showed up outside of Japan. Finally, I have noted any game that is or was once assigned a NES 2.0 mapper. Here is the spreadsheet.

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Nerdly Pleasures - My Vintage Video Game & Computing Blog

The Nantettatte!! expansions add no extra RAM, but I believe they do reuse the SRAM in the base cartridge.

Yes, they do, and moreover, save data isn't compatible between the expansions (or between any expansion and the unexpanded game). If you insert a different expansion cartridge than the one you last saved a game with, a warning screen pops up and you have to choose to delete the save data or turn the Famicom off and change the expansion cartridge to the one matching the save data.

So that is what the message meant! That would explain the Nestopia behavior.

Anyway, I decided to keep the expansion carts distinct from the main cart to reflect what kind of hardware was in each physical object.

I could not find out which of the Datach games uses the EEPROM inside the unit. I know of the one game with its own EEPROM, Battle Rush. Emulating the barcode reader is required to make many of the games work. The Dragon Ball Z game was the pack-in and I think it is the game that uses the internal EEPROM.

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Nerdly Pleasures - My Vintage Video Game & Computing Blog

Revised the spreadsheet based on new usage information of the VRC2 submappers and to fix the error regarding the Nantettatte expansions. I have also indicated where a game uses internal battery backed memory for saving (Namco 163, MMC6).

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Nerdly Pleasures - My Vintage Video Game & Computing Blog

Konami Wai Wai World should also be submapper 3 (it's in fact the only Konami game which specifically has to be emulated with VRC2 and not VRC4 or it'll misbehave)

I'm not sure how canonical that list is given its use of mapper 16 submappers, which are listed as deprecated. There certainly is no need for a submapper to denote the EEPROM size, as the PRG-NVRAM field holds that information. The only mapper 16 submapper information that I would consider useful is whether the IC is an FCG-1 or LZ93 type, as they may (or may not) differ in whether the IRQ counter value is latched or not.

Fixed Konami Wai Wai World, which was an oversight. All VRC2 games have a submapper 3 assignment. I also added a few other observations like chip variations where known.

I am aware that many of these submappers may be deemed redundant or unnecessary for emulation, but the point of the spreadsheet is to identify any NES 2.0 header usage, even if the usage is no longer necessary. Kevin Horton's Analgoue Nt Mini's flash cart functionality may use his Bandai assignments, so they are included. I included the "main IC" as well.



Update to include the arrangement information for Konami VRC2/4 games.

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Nerdly Pleasures - My Vintage Video Game & Computing Blog

Many updates and corrections in the attached spreadsheet.

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Nerdly Pleasures - My Vintage Video Game & Computing Blog