Gradius 2 VRC4 questoins
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- SatoshiMatrix
- Posts: 287
- Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:38 pm
Hey guys, I wanted to revive this thread because I just saw retrozone now has an NES reproduction copy of Gradius II for sale.
http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.ph ... cts_id=112
How is this possible? Have they cloned the VRC4 somehow or this a port to some other mapper? I'm very eager to learn more about this. I would love to own Gradius II in physical format.
http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.ph ... cts_id=112
How is this possible? Have they cloned the VRC4 somehow or this a port to some other mapper? I'm very eager to learn more about this. I would love to own Gradius II in physical format.
It's just a CPLD with the PowerPAK VRC4 fuse-map/verilog/whatever on it. So yes it's "cloned". If you want to own it on a cartridge, go ahead and buy it. It's nothing amazing (technically). It's nice certainly, but not surprising at all. Kid Dracula which also uses VRC4 is also available at RetroZone now and I recommend that game too.
- SatoshiMatrix
- Posts: 287
- Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:38 pm
You seem to be missing what I said. The PowerPAK lead to the development of the cloned hardware behavior of the VRC4. RetroZone (bunnyboy) can certainly take this information and put it on an appropriate CPLD, think of it as a programmable mapper chip. And ofcourse he has designed PCBs so thus making a game like Gradius II or Kid Dracula is not an issue.
However if you mean a cheap repro that people make by hacking up old game cartridges, that doesn't work for VRC4 since only Japanese games have that mapper. And those carts are more expensive and to use them in a NES you then need the converter.
Price wise the Gradius II on RetroZone is fairly competitive. Someone making a repro out of a converter and original famicom cart probably won't be able to do much better on price. The quality should be good.
But you say you already have the Famicom cartridge, so as he said you are better off playing it on a Famicom system or through a converter. If you wanted you could always put it into a NES cartridge yourself if you can make a nice label up.
However if you mean a cheap repro that people make by hacking up old game cartridges, that doesn't work for VRC4 since only Japanese games have that mapper. And those carts are more expensive and to use them in a NES you then need the converter.
Price wise the Gradius II on RetroZone is fairly competitive. Someone making a repro out of a converter and original famicom cart probably won't be able to do much better on price. The quality should be good.
But you say you already have the Famicom cartridge, so as he said you are better off playing it on a Famicom system or through a converter. If you wanted you could always put it into a NES cartridge yourself if you can make a nice label up.
- SatoshiMatrix
- Posts: 287
- Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:38 pm
bunnyboy, is there any performance difference between the new NES reproduction and the Famicom VRC4 original? For instance, slowdown, flicker, artifacting etc? Gradius II is one of the more impressive games for the Famicom.
Also I'm assuming this version is based on the original Famicom release and not the Graidus II AC rom hack that greatly improves it? To be honest that's the version I'd like to see. If you'd like I can email you a fully patched rom to take a look at if you are unaware of what I'm talking about.
Also I'm assuming this version is based on the original Famicom release and not the Graidus II AC rom hack that greatly improves it? To be honest that's the version I'd like to see. If you'd like I can email you a fully patched rom to take a look at if you are unaware of what I'm talking about.
People have trouble getting that patch to work because they don't know that they need to patch it with this patch first:SatoshiMatrix wrote:Also I'm assuming this version is based on the original Famicom release and not the Graidus II AC rom hack that greatly improves it? To be honest that's the version I'd like to see. If you'd like I can email you a fully patched rom to take a look at if you are unaware of what I'm talking about.
http://www.geocities.jp/gx587/ips/fc_gr ... rev022.zip
Afterward, find and use the patch found on this blog:
http://messatu.wordpress.com/
and it should work.
Nestopia 1.40 won't play it but FCEUX and Nestopia 1.37 will.
- SatoshiMatrix
- Posts: 287
- Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:38 pm
This is not a good sign if the ultimate goal is to put the game on a cart. Not that Nestopia is the ultimate almighty emulator or anything (it's pretty good though, from my own personal tests it has almost always behaved the most like the actual hardware), but if the original game works on it and the patched one doesn't, this is a sign that something is wrong. Even if it works on hardware, it might be just unstable enough to break under certain circumstances.RLError wrote:Nestopia 1.40 won't play it
- SatoshiMatrix
- Posts: 287
- Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2010 8:38 pm
Yes it certainly does work on the Powerpak. The Gradius II AC graphics hack isn't as pronounced as the Gradius 1 hack that vastly improves the Famicom Gradius visually and structurally, but I still wholeheartedly recommend checking it out. The differences are all cosmetic, using new sprites, tilesets and color pallets that are much more similar to the arcade version of Gradius II.