[!]? [o1]?

[szndrlvy]

What do [!] and [o1] mean to stella?

 

Are these used merely to indicate different releases of the same title?

 

-==[szandor]==-

[Nukey Shay]

Symbol rundown...

 

(U) United States release

(E) Europe release

(J) Japan release

(###) Checksum

(##k) ROM Size

(M#) Multilanguage (# of Languages)

[!] Verified Good Dump

[a] Alternate

Bad Dump

[f] Fixed

[h] Hack

[o] Overdump

[p] Pirate

[t] Trained

[T] Translation

[x] Bad Checksum

ZZZ_ Unclassified

[NE146]

It's all part of GoodTools naming conventions in their attempt to catalog every single known dump of rom known to mankind

 

In a nutshell though [!] is the good one which you should probably stick to. [o], [o1], [o2] are overdumps which basically have extra data in them that does nothing. What does this all mean? Well... nothing really. But here they all are:

 

               ..................

...............: STANDARD CODES ::...............

:                                               :

:   [a] Alternate        [p] Pirate             :

:   [b] Bad Dump         [t] Trained            :

:   [f] Fixed            [T] Translation        :

:   [h] Hack             (-) Unknown Year       :

:   [o] Overdump         [!] Verified Good Dump :

:  (M#) Multilanguage (# of Languages)          :

: (###) Checksum       (??k) ROM Size           :

:  ZZZ_ Unclassified   (Unl) Unlicensed  :

:...............................................:





               .................

................: SPECIAL CODES ::...............

:                                               :

: .-----Gameboy-----.  .----Super Nintendo----. :

: [  [C] Color      ]  [ (BS) BS ROMs         ] :

: [  [S] Super      ]  [ (ST) Sufami Turbo    ] :

: [ [BF] Bung Fix   ]  [ (NP) Nintendo Power  ] :

: `-----------------'  `----------------------' :

:                      .--------Atari---------. :

: .-----Genesis-----.  [ (PAL) Euro Version   ] :

: [ (1) Japan       ]  `----------------------' :

: [ (4) USA         ]  .---------GBA----------. :

: [ (5) NTSC Only   ]  [ [hI??] Intro hacks   ] :

: [ (8) PAL Only    ]  `----------------------' :

: [ (B) non USA     ]  .--------Coleco--------. :

: [ [c] Checksum    ]  [ (Adam) ADAM Version  ] :

: [ [x] Bad Checksum]  `----------------------' :

: [ [R-] Countries  ]                           :

: `-----------------'                           :

:                      .--------NES/FC--------. :

: .--NeoGeo Pocket--.  [ (PC10) PlayChoice 10 ] :

: [ [M] Mono Only   ]  [   (VS) Versus        ] :

: `-----------------'  [ [hFFE] FFE Copier fmt] :

:                      `----------------------' :

:...............................................:





               .................

................: COUNTRY CODES ::...............

:                                               :

:   (1) Japan & Korea      (4) USA & BrazilNTSC :

:   (A) Australia          (J) Japan            :

:   (B) non USA (Genesis)  (K) Korea            :

:   (C) China             (NL) Netherlands      :

:   (E) Europe            (PD) Public Domain    :

:   (F) France             (S) Spain            :

:   (F) World (Genesis)                         :

:  (FC) French Canadian   (SW) Sweden           :

:  (FN) Finland            (U) USA              :

:   (G) Germany           (UK) England          :

:  (GR) Greece           (Unk) Unknown Country  :

:  (HK) Hong Kong          (I) Italy  :

:  (H)  Holland          (Unl) Unlicensed       :

:...............................................:





            .......................

.............: STANDARD CODE NOTES ::............

:                                               :

: [a] This is simply an alternate version of a  :

:     ROM. Many games have been re-released to  :

:     fix bugs or even to eliminate Game Genie  :

:     codes (Yes, Nintendo hates that device).  :

:             -------------------               :

: [b] A bad dump often occurs with an older     :

:     game or a faulty dumper (bad connection). :

:     Another common source of [b] ROMs is a    :

:     corrupted upload to a release FTP.        :

:             -------------------               :

: [f] A fixed game has been altered in some way :

:     so that it will run better on a copier    :

:     or emulator.                              :

:             -------------------               :

: [h] Something in this ROM is not quite as it  :

:     should be. Often a hacked ROM simply has  :

:     a changed header or has been enabled to   :

:     run in different regions. Other times it  :

:     could be a release group intro, or just   :

:     some kind of cheating or funny hack.      :

:             -------------------               :

: [o] An overdumped ROM image has more data     :

:     than is actually in the cart. The extra   :

:     information means nothing and is removed  :

:     from the true image.                      :

:             -------------------               :

: [t] A trainer is special code which executes  :

:     before the game is begun. It allows you   :

:     to access cheats from a menu.             :

:             -------------------               :

: [!] Verified good dump. Thank God for these!  :

:...............................................:





            ......................

.............: SPECIAL CODE NOTES ::.............

:                                               :

: **** SNES ****                                :

: (BS) These Japanese ROMs were distributed     :

:      through a satellite system in Japan      :

:      known as the Broadcast Satellaview.      :

:      They were transmitted along with a TV    :

:      show which was connected to the game in  :

:      some way. These games were only playable :

:      during the show, and thus stop after an  :

:      hour, and many were timed so that only   :

:      certain time periods were playable.      :

:             -------------------               :

: (ST) The Sufami Turbo device allowed two      :

:      GameBoy sized carts to be plugged into   :

:      the SNES. Certain carts combined into    :

:      new games much like the Sonic & Knuckles :

:      lock-on technology by Sega.              :

:             -------------------               :

: (NP) Nintendo Power has been known to release :

:      games only available to its subscribers. :

:      Most of these ROMs are Japanese, as this :

:      practice occured mainly in Japan.        :

:             -------------------               :

:                                               :

: **** Genesis ****                             :

:  (1) Carts with this code will run on both    :

:      Japanese and Korean machines.            :

:             -------------------               :

:  (4) While this code is technically the same  :

:      as a (U) code, it is a newer header      :

:      format and represents that the cart will :

:      run on USA and Brazil NTSC machines.     :

:             -------------------               :

:  (B) This country code indicates that the     :

:      cart will run on any non US machine.     :

:             -------------------               :

:  [c] This code represents a cart with known   :

:      faulty checksum routines.                :

:             -------------------               :

:                                               :

: **** GameBoy ****                             :

: [BF] Bung released a programmable cartridge   :

:      compatable with the GameBoy which could  :

:      hold any data you wished to play.        :

:      However, many games do not function on   :

:      Bung v1.0 carts and have to be 'fixed.'  :

:             -------------------               :

:                                               :

: **** Nintendo ****                            :

: PC10 The PlayChoice 10 was an arcade unit     :

:      which played exact copies of NES games   :

:      in an arcade cabinet. The machines had a :

:      choice of 10 games to choose from and    :

:      ran for about 3 minutes on 25 cents.     :

:             -------------------               :

:                                               :

:   VS The Versus system ran on similar hard-   :

:      ware to the PC10 machines, but simply    :

:      allowed you to play against each other.  :

:...............................................:

[+stephena]

What do [!] and [o1] mean to stella?

 

Are these used merely to indicate different releases of the same title?

 

-==[szandor]==-

 

They don't actually mean anything to Stella. As a poster above mentioned, they are named that way because of the Good2600 tools.

 

Stella doesn't actually know (or care) how a file is named.

 

Steve

[Bruce Tomlin]

[o1] overdumps and [b1] bad dumps are for the insane people who have to have every cataloged dump, even when they aren't good dumps. :-)

 

(Yeah, I have a couple of complete goodtools sets with those, and even asked for them as fills because I was missing a dozen of 'em for Game Gear from having the complete set.)

[Ze_ro]

Please don't propagate [o] and roms when good dumps exist. They are effectively digital garbage and just serve to waste hard drive space and bandwidth. If I'm not mistaken, the GoodXXXX tools have options for ignoring bad roms, so there's no reason to keep these around, even for so-called "complete" sets.

 

If you already had a copy of a CD, and you found another one lying in the middle of the street that was cracked in half, would you take it? Of course not. So why would you keep a broken copy of a rom that you already have?

 

After downloading a whole GoodXXXX set over BitTorrent or off the newsgroups or wherever, do yourself a favor and just "del *[o*" and "del *[b*" to get rid of this nonsense and save yourself a little hard drive space. Heck, I usually consider anything other than [!]'s and [T]'s as being worthless.

 

--Zero

[NE146]

Heck, I usually consider anything other than [!]'s and [T]'s as being worthless.

 

Actually I like keeping the [A]s (alternates) as they sometimes have some cool variations.

 

Take regular old Gameboy Tetris. You have the [!] and the [A] version. They have completely different default background music! See, now that's something I'd like to have a copy of. Admittedly sometimes it's hard to tell the differences between alternate versions, but oftentimes as well it's pretty blatant and worth keeping around.

[Nukey Shay]

Unfortunately, the alternate versions of 2600 games are often due to one or a few unused bytes that differ as a result of the dumping process...and do not affect gameplay in any way. For all practical purpose, they are duplicates of the good dump.

 

Do any [T]ranslation files even exist for the 2600??

[Ze_ro]

Actually I like keeping the [A]s (alternates) as they sometimes have some cool variations.

Perhaps... but I hardly ever play any of the roms I have anyways, let alone play them enough to appreciate the alternate versions.

 

Do any [T]ranslation files even exist for the 2600??

Ha, I doubt it. There are only a handful of 2600 games that have much text in them to make a translation worthwhile. Not to mention that the vast majority of [T]'s are exceptional Japan-only releases that have been translated to english. Unless some devoted europeans or japanese decide it's worthwhile to translate Stellar Track, I don't see it happening.

 

There ARE plenty of worthwhile NES and SNES [T] roms out there though.

 

--Zero

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Unfortunately, the alternate versions of 2600 games are often due to one or a few unused bytes that differ as a result of the dumping process...and do not affect gameplay in any way.  For all practical purpose, they are duplicates of the good dump.

Yup, most differences occur when trying to read from the bankswitching hotspots. These addresses are well known, so any

differences there are completely irrelevant.

 

Maybe I should write a program that helps eliminating them...

[KAZ]

Thanks for answering the question about what [!] etc. mean. I always wondered that myself.

 

I'm one of those insanely obsessive people who need completion and precision on everything, but I agree with a previous post about the fact that people shouldn't keep bad dumps around, especially if there is a good dump of the same exact game.

 

Here's what I don't understand about people who do wish to have all the bad dumps that have ever been made.

 

Suppose I decide to dump a rom from super mario brothers for the nes, but it is not done flawlessly. How is it determined by "the powers that be" to include this in the collection of bad dumps out there for this game?

 

On the other hand, if the only copy of a game is a bad dump, then it is fine to have...which also raises a funny question:

 

If a bad dump of say Contra was the only one to exist for 5 years, until in the year 1995 there finally was a good dump made of it, would it be important (for historical purposes) to keep the bad dump copy around?

 

By this idea, then any bad dumps that were to come AFTER this really flawless dump should be considered worthless. And those before should be considered important. Right?

 

And who determines how close to flawless a dump is? And does data degrade at different rates on different people's computers, so that 100 people would all have slightly different variations in the rom source over 10 years? Hmm

 

Of course I'm making this ultra complicated (and nitpicky) sounding, cause it's fun for a discussion.

[szndrlvy]

I, too, would like to understand what constitutes a good dump. Is there an explanation of this somewhere?

[NE146]

Good dumps = working

 

Bad dumps = doesn't work

[KAZ]

That's not true, NE1.

 

To prove it, I just loaded three bad dumps of Aladdin (not because I like the game necessarily) for the Sega Genesis into Kega Fusion.

 

I downloaded them from Suprnova in two huge 7-zip archives, and all of the roms have designations on them. The Aladdin files look like this:

 

Aladdin (U) [b1]

Aladdin (U) [b2]

Aladdin (U) [b3]

 

I also have one that says

 

Aladdin (U) [!]

 

When I load the b2 one into Fusion, I see this message

 

WARNING: Checksum Incorrect

 

But clearly they ALL work, and are definitely playable. I see no distinguishing features with them and the "perfect" rom dump with the [!]

 

It is one reason that I have wondered about those designations for a long time.

 

Now it isn't like I'm losing sleep over this really nitpicky issue, but the bad dumps often are playable.

 

I tried another one, Alien Soldier for Genesis. The first bad dump did not work, only showed a big red screen but the second bad dump loaded up.

 

I can test others, but my point is made I think.

[Ze_ro]

If a bad dump of say Contra was the only one to exist for 5 years, until in the year 1995 there finally was a good dump made of it, would it be important (for historical purposes) to keep the bad dump copy around?

Why would it be considered historical? It's still garbage data. I don't see any reason to develop an attachment to it. We don't tear down old buildings because of their heritage... but what heritage is there in an incorrect dump of Contra?

 

Face it. The data is useless. Just get rid of it.

 

But clearly they ALL work, and are definitely playable. I see no distinguishing features with them and the "perfect" rom dump with the [!]

Did you play the entire game all the way through? The "bad" part of the game might affect something that doesn't happen until the very end of the game, or it may cause a slight graphical glitch that you may never see unless you pay close attention. Or, more likely, it's just a ROM that has a broken header or some other slight difference that may never cause a noticable difference.

 

Besides, even if all three of those bad Aladdin ROMS do indeed work correctly the entire way through, what's the point of keeping four copies of a game when you have one that is verified?

 

Incidentally, I recently downloaded a "complete" PC-Engine rom set in preparation for an upcoming TG-16 emulator for the Dreamcast, and after I deleted all the bad dumps and hacks, the amount of space taken up dropped from ~500MB to ~211MB. And after sorting through a recent NES flood to alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo, I can only imagine that there were at least 500MB of bad roms in there. In fact, there were no less than 13 bad dumps and 3 overdumps for Skate or Die 2. Ridiculous.

 

--Zero

[KAZ]

You make great points I don't need that many Aladdin carts, certainly.

 

I wish I had a device to dump roms for myself. Where do I find such a thing anyway? I've been quite amused being able to make isos out of Playstation games, for some reason it is just plain fun to "dump" my own games so to speak.

 

The nagging question, that I don't expect an answer to, how do "they" determine what is to be included in a "full rom" package?

 

"All nes roms" means what exactly? Is it the fact that only 3 people in the whole country have the technology to dump roms, like snes or nes games?

 

So is it because there are so few sources for the roms initially?

 

So Mr. S from Colorado makes a bad dump, and submits it

But Mr. Z from Nevada makes a dump of the same game, and submits it at the same time. So then the person at the end of the line (rom guru guy) gets these roms, and simply puts them into a collection.

 

Then someguy comes along and does a "goodtools" on the set?

 

Is this how the process works?

[Nukey Shay]

What do you mean? The plethora of bad dumps in the early days led to the creation of Good Tools (so that people could easily identify which roms they had that were less-than-perfect dumps).

 

The nagging question, that I don't expect an answer to, how do "they" determine what is to be included in a "full rom" package?

The only way that there is...by checking the contents of a rom file against what DOES exist on the physical Rom chip itself. A 1:1 match is a good dump. Any deviation is a bad dump.

 

 

"All nes roms" means what exactly? Is it the fact that only 3 people in the whole country have the technology to dump roms, like snes or nes games?

Nah...in the early days, there were thousands of people dumping games on their own. Either using homemade equipment, or commercial "game copiers". Because so many people were doing it on their own led to all of these bad dumps that we still have floating around today (especially since so many "1337 4@xx0r5" thought it was uber-kewl to hack in their own messages into the headers and such). So then emulators advanced to the point that they could take advantage of how the original info was supposed to be used - bang...suddenly you have a bunch of games that won't work due to messed up headers and bad checksums. Other games were intentionally made bad to get around hardware that had not been fully emulated yet (like the mode 7 chip). Once Good Tools identifies a rom as being bad, you can delete it with a clear conscience (provided you can find the [!] rom to take it's place). All they do is waste space on your HD.

[NE146]

By the way kaz, if you ever really want to find out, you could grill Cowering himself who made those things in the first place. He usually pops up in #retrogamers on EFNet

 

a recent NES flood to alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo, I can only imagine that there were at least 500MB of bad roms in there. In fact, there were no less than 13 bad dumps and 3 overdumps for Skate or Die 2. Ridiculous.

 

Thanks for the hint Zero I had to update my NES collection (to get the cool translations you had mentioned) and sure enough there was that flood. I snagged all 10k+ roms in there.

[Artlover]

Incidentally, I recently downloaded a "complete" PC-Engine rom set in preparation for an upcoming TG-16 emulator for the Dreamcast, and after I deleted all the bad dumps and hacks, the amount of space taken up dropped from ~500MB to ~211MB. And after sorting through a recent NES flood to alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo, I can only imagine that there were at least 500MB of bad roms in there.

 

I think the size/space issue is subjective.

 

Personaly, both in regards to downloading and hd space I have never given any consideration to filesize, nor will I.

 

Heck, I download those floods every time I see them, just incase there maybe a rom or two there that I missed the during the first 18 floods I downloaded. What's 500 megs...not even a full cd.

 

I know I don't speak for everyone. But when you have a nice fast 5mb+/sec broadband connection, multipul cd/dvd burners and over 1 Tera of local HD space, it's a non-issue.

[NE146]

I know I don't speak for everyone. But when you have a nice fast 5mb+/sec broadband connection, multipul cd/dvd burners and over 1 Tera of local HD space, it's a non-issue.      

 

Yeah I agree there. Especially in this day of digital-plenty. I just see it this way:

 

How much effort do you really want to spend sorting through grains in a thimble of sand...

 

.. that you're going to dump in a 50 gallon barrel anyway.

[Great Hierophant]

A few notes. Many games do not have a verified good dump, [!], so one should use as a default rom, the one that just says (U) with nothing else. Many US NES only has a fraction of its ROMs verified. 5200, 7800, Lynx, Jaguar and PC Engine ROMs have few to no [!]s. A game may have a [!] but not play in an emulator because the header is bad or its in a format unsupported by the emulator. Later systems are much better about verifying their dumps. Cowering can make mistakes too.

[JB]

A game may have a [!] but not play in an emulator because the header is bad or its in a format unsupported by the emulator.  

NES games are horrible about headers. I'm of the opinion that GoodNES's lack of header support renders it totally useless.

 

Cowering can make mistakes too.

Yes. Check out his NP designation. And while less inaccurate, teh BS designation.

[Great Hierophant]

NES games are horrible about headers. I'm of the opinion that GoodNES's lack of header support renders it totally useless.

 

There is the UNIF format, which designates ROMs by the type of board they use and is infallible if three things are correct:

The ROM uses that board,

The board type configuration is correct (amounts of PRG ROM, CHR ROM, S-RAM, CHR RAM, W-RAM and memory mapper hardware.)

The Battery (8k, 32k, 1k or none) and Mirroring (Horizontal, Vertical, One-Screen, Four-Screen, MMC select) is correct.

 

The iNES format is garbage unsuited to the sublties of accurate NES emulation. Good emulators should not support it. While the information exists to accurately identify the mappers all NES games use, the situation for Famicom ROMs is not so great because of all the non-Nintendo boards and mappers. Let iNES be used entirely for pirate crap.

[JB]

NES games are horrible about headers. I'm of the opinion that GoodNES's lack of header support renders it totally useless.

 

There is the UNIF format, which designates ROMs by the type of board they use and is infallible if three things are correct:

The ROM uses that board,

The board type configuration is correct (amounts of PRG ROM, CHR ROM, S-RAM, CHR RAM, W-RAM and memory mapper hardware.)

The Battery (8k, 32k, 1k or none) and Mirroring (Horizontal, Vertical, One-Screen, Four-Screen, MMC select) is correct.

 

The iNES format is garbage unsuited to the sublties of accurate NES emulation. Good emulators should not support it. While the information exists to accurately identify the mappers all NES games use, the situation for Famicom ROMs is not so great because of all the non-Nintendo boards and mappers. Let iNES be used entirely for pirate crap.

I don't tink GoodNES supports ANY form of header.