Super Mario RPG + PAR

[AstroCreep]

I'm new to the forums first off I hope this is post in the right section of the forums. So I have a copy of Super Mario RPG and a Pro Action Replay 2. I got the PAR 2 from ebay which is working fine and the SMRPG from Digital Press :) My super nintendo is from my childhood and I also have a top loader (am I describing it right?) bought it for the heck of it. My problem is SMRPG will not load on either system with the PAR 2 ,the game itself works fine I cleaned it even had a friend open it up and clean it. The PAR 2 works fine as well used it on other games , when I put SMRPG on the PAR 2 then load it I get a black screen. When I load it again turn the switch down to activate the parameters on the PAR2 it works then when I try to boot the game up it goes black again :(

Anyone know whats going on? how to fix this? Thanks in advanced and sorry again if this topic is in the wrong place

[Aussie2B]

You know how Super Mario RPG has those extra tabs on the circuit board with more pins that a lot of other SNES games don't have? Well, does the Pro Action Replay 2 support those? A lot of third-party pass-through devices don't. Even if they have slots for the extra tabs that allow the game to be inserted into the pass-through device, sometimes those slots are just empty, with no connectors to carry the data from the cart's contacts to the system. If the game isn't being read in full, it's not going to work. In such a case, there's nothing that can be done but to find a pass-through device that DOES support the extra tabs or just insert the cart directly into the system.

[WulfeLuer]

You know how Super Mario RPG has those extra tabs on the circuit board with more pins that a lot of other SNES games don't have? Well, does the Pro Action Replay 2 support those? A lot of third-party pass-through devices don't. Even if they have slots for the extra tabs that allow the game to be inserted into the pass-through device, sometimes those slots are just empty, with no connectors to carry the data from the cart's contacts to the system. If the game isn't being read in full, it's not going to work. In such a case, there's nothing that can be done but to find a pass-through device that DOES support the extra tabs or just insert the cart directly into the system.

He's right. SMRPG's cartridge was made with some extra hardware. While it was mostly for enhanced capabilities (especially DEM GRAPHICS), it also pulled double duty for copy protection. I don't have the background to give you the details, but as Aussie said the usual giveaway is the extra tabs.

[Tanooki]

SMRPG used the SA1 chip. If I recall correctly it was a differently clocked copy of the SNES CPU itself, and along with that it also had a bit of storage where a 1/4 of the game itself was embedded on it while the other was on the traditional storage as a copy protection knockout. I think there was some added other little memory addressing perks and things, but that's the main bit of it. Both the Kirby platformers also used it so that would be a wash as well.