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Atariboy

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  1. I've played at this point approximately 75% of the 7800's commercial NTSC library and have never found an issue. I've not dabbled with PAL 7800 games yet with the core. I don't think that I've had any prototypes like Sirius fired up yet nor any demos. Every hack I've tried has worked fine. Homebrew is the one weak link that I've found so far, but I've had far more successes than failures. Taking a stab at estimating how many homebrews I've tried to play on the Pocket, I'd say approximately 30 including most of the big names such as Baby Pac-Man. The vast majority like Scramble have worked perfectly. I've had one or two that load up to black screens, the new Mario Bros. homebrew throws an error message about rom size, and a couple of other homebrews have loaded but have messed up audio (every rom that I try of Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest for instance has completely broken audio). The core is great for the commercial library (at least on the NTSC side of the pond), but it doesn't quite seem up to the task for some of the most advanced homebrews like Bentley Bear. Hopefully one of these days when Kevtris has a moment to catch his breath, he'll issue an update for this excellent core to resolve these problems (and if Kevtris ever happens to read this, it would be great if we could map the 7800's right joystick directions to the ABXY buttons on the Pocket to enable proper twin-stick controls in 7800 Robotron).
  2. Sounds like you're better off with the stock version with substitute SNES F-Zero music in the place of the music that originally was streamed from a satellite to players. My impression from the video is that the music is done by way of MSU-1, but that the music is faithful to what the game originally featured. I assume it's simply since it's easy and expedient to go this route where as coding for the SNES sound hardware is far more challenging. A reasonable compromise in my opinion. Sucks for some like myself (neither my Super Nt's jailbreak or the SNES core on the Pocket do MSU-1, which are my two main methods of playing SNES rom files that I've downloaded). But if you own a SD2SNES/FX Pak Pro or are enjoying it on a MSU-1 capable emulator like more recent editions of SNES9X, I don't see the issue here. Sure it's a bit of an unfaithful shortcut for the purists since it's not the SNES audio hardware doing the work, but the experience that you're seeing and hearing is going to be as faithful as they're able to achieve. And if we're picky, the music originally was streamed anyways rather than done locally from the Super Famicom's sound chip. And such purists probably don't want to touch this in the first place since it's a recreation rather than a dump of the original code (which if it survives, is either lost on a forgotten Satellaview memory pack that has yet to fall into the right hands, or is locked up in Nintendo's archive where it's probably never going to be seen again).
  3. I really doubt that they're going to ship these out without the corresponding cores being ready to go. If they do go that route, it will be interesting to see how it's received. I can't imagine people would be pleased to have received hardware that's going to remain useless until an undetermined point in the future.
  4. In December when they announced the latest delay, they said late February.
  5. Search for "Analogue Nt Mini Noir Jailbreak 2021-07-09" in Google and you should see a relevant Internet Archive search result. It has prepared romsets for a lot of the cores. The Spiritualized cores on the Pocket are ports of the Noir cores and share similar standards like what file extension should be used for a particular game, making it plug & play for the 2600 and such. Incidentally it also includes Intellivision, if you're like me and didn't have any luck converting roms to the format that Kevtris uses for his Intellivision core on the Noir and Pocket (I'll still have to figure that out one of these days though for some homebrew roms that I have that aren't included in that romset).
  6. The game still stinks even in hacked SA-1 form, sadly. There's essentially no vehicle physics. With the Origins hack of the SA-1 hack that restores the pace of the arcade game (so that it doesn't feel like you're trying to fly a supersonic jet fighter inside of a gymnasium), you can basically do an entire lap with the accelerator to the floorboard. For a game that's all about the realistic physics model, you're left with a game that's no longer a game. For an example of how broken it is, you can launch off a ramp at a speed that's safe for landing and if you keep the accelerator floored, you'll accelerate in mid-air and crash upon landing. The game is that broken on SNES. The patch both in straight "supersonic" SA-1 form and the Origins version also introduces new issues. The tachometer is all screwed up, the canned 360 spin of your car goes in super fast motion that's quite comical to see, graphical glitches appear every time in particular spots on each circuit that make it appear as if the road disappeared or that you're airborne when you actually aren't, etc. It's just a very broken game and while the SA-1 is a fine technical achievement, someone needs to dig deep under the game's hood if it's ever to be rescued from the SNES rubbish pile. 16-bit console fans are much better off sticking with the very playable Sega Genesis ports of Hard and Race Drivin'. They feature a great physics model that does the arcade games justice while also doing a great job of replicating the arcade's graphics within the constraints of Sega's hardware. The frame rate in both isn't so hot and it's going to turn off 99% of those that try it these days as they quickly run off the course at the first corner, crash, and write the game off as a choppy mess. But stick with it and suddenly the choppiness isn't so noticeable and it becomes all about making the fastest laps you can. I'd love to know how many hours I've put into both of them on the Analogue Pocket over the last year or so (which is where I finally came to respect the Genesis conversion of each game, with the Pocket's small screen no doubt helping me get past their choppiness). And the Game Boy conversion of Race Drivin' also is excellent and well worth playing for the connoisseurs of old racing games on consoles, computers, and handheld systems from decades gone by.
  7. The Pocket's 7800 core only works with 7800 games. It's only the MiSTer where it's highly recommended to use the 7800 core these days for 2600 games. And I don't see any reason why you can't use that spreadsheet to identify what bankswitching scheme is in use by a particular game and then reference the readme file for the Pocket's 2600 core to see what you should rename the extension to in order to get it working on the Pocket's 2600 core (although I'd suggest a different route and track down the Nt Mini Noir romset off the Internet Archive, which will have the work already done that's needed for the Pocket's 2600 core). What I simply meant with my reply is that if Game A doesn't work on the MiSTer's 2600 core (or these days the far superior 7800 core that includes 2600 support), one shouldn't infer that it's going to be incompatible with the Pocket's core. They're different developers, different code, etc. The Pocket core is based off the Kevtris Nt Mini and Noir 2600 cores and isn't related to any MiSTer project and as a result their limitations, bugs, and such aren't going to be fully shared. Thus a compatibility list for the MiSTer core isn't going to necessarily mean that the situation is going to be the same for Game A on the Pocket's 2600 core. That said, there's certainly some commonality there on what they don't support like the ARM based Melody hardware not being replicated in any current FPGA core (which eliminates most of the amazing work published by Champ Games, unfortunately).
  8. The Pocket's core is completely unrelated to that one. And if that's for the old 2600 core on MiSTer, it's now obsolete with the far superior 7800 core having superseded it for 2600 gaming.
  9. If it's a new bankswitching scheme that came out since the October 2022 release of the Pocket core, it's going to be problematic. But if they're not doing anything particularly special, I suspect they just need a file extension rename (Kovi Kovi in the competition is for instance using the E7 banking scheme and wouldn't of worked on the Pocket core unless you changed the extension to .MN). *.ACT - Activision 8K FE banking *.PB - Parker Bros. E0 mapping *.TV - Tigervision 3F mapping *.TVR - Tigervision 3E (with RAM) mapping *.MN - M-network E7 mapping *.CV - Commavid extra RAM *.EB - Econobanking *.EF - EF Bankswitching *.EFR - EF with RAM *.UA - UA bankswitching *.X07 - X07 bankswitching *.SB - Superbanking That last bankswitching scheme in particular seems to be getting taken advantage of by several newer homebrews like Circus Convoy and won't work as a .bin or .a26 on the Pocket core, only as a .sd. Other games don't need a special extension. 4k games like the Armor Ambush Reloaded homebrew for instance don't require a special extension
  10. That's unfortunate. Melody enhanced games will never work so if any of them are, that's to be expected. But it has played every commercial rom that I've ever tossed at it (well over 100 unique titles at this point, I bet). You do need to change certain file extensions though so that the core knows what bankswitching scheme is in use. I've not put much time into the many great homebrews with the Pocket's 2600 core, but I've not encountered issues in the handful that I have played on it like Juno First.
  11. I have an account and it didn't do me any good. Apparently only members of the group are allowed to view anything.
  12. While I can't help with your missed inputs (sounds like something's wrong with your particular system), there's absolutely no ambiguity if you're forcing a particular mode. The check box is either filled in if you're selected to force a different mode (such as if you want to play a GBC rom by way of the GBA core) or it isn't. There's no in-between or guesswork involved.
  13. Do the Spiritualized GB/GBC cores (or the new cores from budude2) come with the official Nintendo bios files when using the popular auto updaters? Or does the end user have to supply that and select it (like on the Mega Sg for instance)?
  14. Yes. It's no coincidence that openFPGA launched with the full slate of Nt Mini Noir cores and a GBA core. Analogue has wanted to distance themselves from SD rom loading and such. So such features have become unofficial and released anonymously after the original Nt Mini and its core store.
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