Oh, you mean the error messages themselves. Here's a gallery I've prepared just for you and this thread. Of a bunch of them.Originally Posted by davidbrit2
Oh, you mean the error messages themselves. Here's a gallery I've prepared just for you and this thread. Of a bunch of them.
check out my classic gaming review site: http://satoshimatrix.wordpress.com/
I thought the GB model you are playing on was set by the value in A as the boot ROM transfers control to the cart ROM (presumably GB games would store this to RAM later to access it when it needs to check the console used).
Also, 0143 is a ROM address, so I'm fairly sure it can only specify which hardware it was MEANT to run on, not what it is CURRENTLY running on.
Maybe an Action Replay/GameShark (RAM patcher) could be used if you knew which address was used.
801-43F-E6A seems to be the Game Genie code for that but it doesn't work. Still getting the warning screen.
There are some variants as far as shape goes for those four general categories. The GBC saw several rumble cartridges for instance although they follow the clear plastic rule.
Someone earlier in the thread was puzzled why their clear cartridge was GBC only. So I suppose it didn't hurt to go over the different types.
All black GB/GBC cross compatible cartridges had Super Game Boy modes?
No. As I said in my last post, some black cart games do have SGB support, and others don't. The only way to know which ones do and which don't is either to look at the back of the game boxes, where the SGB logo appears (except in the US/EU Pokemon game releases, where the logo was removed, but the SGB support IS there in all of them anyway), or otherwise to just test the games yourself or look them up in a list online of games that support the SGB. The carts don't say whether they have SGB support or not.
Basically, Japanese dual-mode games are much more likely to have SGB support than Western ones, because the SGB was more successful there than here. Some Western games do have it, but a lot of the ones without SGB support are Western. Examples of some dual-mode GB/C games which have SGB support include Dragon Warrior 1 + 2, both Dragon Warrior Monsters games, Power Quest, Tetris DX, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX, Survival Kids, Quest for Camelot, Bomberman Pocket, Pokemon Red/Blue/Pinball/Gold/Silver, and others. Many more, particularly from Western third parties, don't, including some that you might think might like R-Type DX, and lots of stuff like Roadsters, Oddworld Adventures 2, etc etc etc.
The black/clear plastic rule, you mean. Remember that there are a few black-cart rumble games like Pokemon Pinball. Oddly enough there's only one rumble cart shape, so all rumble carts, black or clear, have the notch for the original GB... so they're the easiest color-only carts to test (and see the error messages of) on an original GB.There are some variants as far as shape goes for those four general categories. The GBC saw several rumble cartridges for instance although they follow the clear plastic rule.
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons & Oracle of Ages each have shops that are only accessible when the game is put in a GBA and one collectible ring per just for playing the games on a GBA.
There is also one nonstandard black plastic game that has an infrared port (complete with it's own watch battery case, because the damn thing required an extra battery to run the game) built into it. There are only two games that have it, to the best of my knowledge: Robopon: Sun Version and Robopon: Moon Version (which was never released in the USA).
There also were also black carts released before the GBC. Japanese Pocket Bomberman was 1997.
Lum fan.
Japan got three versions of Robopon (while the US got just one). The last was Star version.
I'd have to look into it a bit more, like I said earlier, it's been several years since I really messed with this stuff. I do remember that there's a register you poll to get what device it's running on, and you use that do decide if you're going to show a "GBC Only" screen, have special shops, or whatever. Another option would be to hack the rom to bypass the startup screen and try it on an emulator.
- Edit
OK, so I found some more tech docs and it looks like SparTonberry was right, 0x143 is programmed on the ROM cart itself to identify what the system it's mean for is. $80 is GBC and $00 is GB.
As for where info is stored that the game uses to tell which system it's running on, that's going to be a bit trickier. That data is stored in the A-register on startup(I'm not sure a game genie can "alter" this and you wouldn't want to anyways).
0x01 = Original GB or Super GB
0xFF = Pocket GB or Super GB 2
0x11 = Color GB
(Also, bit 0 of the B-Register determines if it's a GBC or GBA)
The first thing a program is likely to do is store the value in the A-register in some RAM location, at which point a Game Genie can easily be used...the problem is that each and every game will likely store it in a different location so you would have to look at a ROM dump of the game to figure it out. Not impossible but a bit harder than I was hoping for.
Last edited by jb143; 03-14-2013 at 12:34 PM.
"Game programmers are generally lazy individuals. That's right. It's true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since the dawn of computer games, game programmers have looked for shortcuts to coolness." Kurt Arnlund - Game programmer for Activision, Accolade...
No, the Japanese Pocket Bomberman release is a grey-cart, original GB version of the game.
Does that Advanced ring actually do anything?
Huh, Robopon has a custom cart, with battery compartment? How odd, I never knew that... why does the game need a battery compartment in the cart? And why does it have an IR sensor in the cart? Just make it a GBC game and use the GBC's built in IR sensor...There is also one nonstandard black plastic game that has an infrared port (complete with it's own watch battery case, because the damn thing required an extra battery to run the game) built into it. There are only two games that have it, to the best of my knowledge: Robopon: Sun Version and Robopon: Moon Version (which was never released in the USA).
Last edited by A Black Falcon; 03-14-2013 at 05:28 PM.
I've been messing around with it using both Mega Man Xtreme 2 and Crystalis as a test. I've been tracing the games under both Game Boy Color mode and regular Game Boy and then comparing the instruction logs to see where they divert. I used a hex editor to make whatever changes were necessary to force the games back on track and successfully bypassed the warning screen. Problem is that it doesn't help much since both games just lock up. At some point they just stop cold with no indication in the logs for why.
If anyone wants to check it out, Crystalis is easy. Change 28 to 20 at memory address 0158, or Game Genie code 201-58F-4CA.
Last edited by TonyTheTiger; 03-14-2013 at 07:36 PM.
Last I checked, I don't think so. At least, the kids over at GFAQs hadn't found that it did anything yet, but that was when the GBA was new. Something might have been discovered by now.
Edit: Seems that it does nothing and I was wrong about the availability. The special shop and ring are only in Ages.
The infrared port sensor on the GBC can only talk to other GBC units, that something the programmers couldn't get around. So, for the specific thing they were trying to do, they had to build in a second one (I remain that this was the entire reason for Robopon existing. Wanna show off some new tech and make sure everyone sees it? Make a Pokemon ripoff.). The extra piece of equipment required an extra battery to work. Both the game and the manual warns that a loss of power in that battery will erase the save file and make the game unplayable.
The function of the unit was so that the game could pick up random signals from most types of TV remotes. No, seriously. Chests are opened by aiming the game at a TV remote (or pretty much any type of remote, I've read that the Wiimote sort of works). The game decodes the signal from the remote and that determines what's in the chest. It's also how some Robopon evolve and a way to jumble stats.
Cartridge for the interested:
Last edited by JSoup; 03-14-2013 at 07:58 PM.
Sort of. It's only internally a grey-cart original GB version.
The exterior is in fact black.
Lum fan.
Strange. Maybe it was one of those special color games before black was given a specific purpose.
I mean like how the Donkey Kong Land games are yellow and the original Tamagotchi is white (well, at least the Japanese version. I got a cart in a lot of random games.)
Moderate success with Dragon Warrior III.
Game Genie: 281-54F-6EA
The game technically works. Music, sound effects, the controls seem to function, etc. Of course this is what you're looking at the whole time:
Not exactly what I'd call playable. But it's progress.
That's pretty cool that you were able to get it to work. That's more or less what I was expecting to happen. Does the music sound off pitch at all? or does the game seem to run any slower that you can tell?
I'd be interested in seeing what happens on games that use high color modes. I'm pretty sure the Tomb Raider games do for the cut scenes.
"Game programmers are generally lazy individuals. That's right. It's true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since the dawn of computer games, game programmers have looked for shortcuts to coolness." Kurt Arnlund - Game programmer for Activision, Accolade...
How weird... it's not a GB/GBC game in Japan though, it's B&W only (with Super Game Boy support of course).Sort of. It's only internally a grey-cart original GB version.
The exterior is in fact black.
I'm pretty sure that the US release of Tamagochi is on a standard grey cart... but yeah, it has to be something like that, for the Japanese version of Pocket Bomberman. The game released in Japan a while before the GBC, so they wouldn't have had that black = GBC rule yet, I assume.
Yeah I believe the US Pocket Bomberman is GBC only.
PAL for sure had both the B&W release, and GBC.
Lum fan.
It's a GBC game but it's not GBC only.
It came out in Japan in 1997 for the original Gameboy and was later a launch title for the GBC in North America for 1998. I suspect the Japanese cart is black because it supports the GB KISS peripheral. There aren't many GB KISS compatible games but the ones I know about are all in black cases, like Nectaris GB and Robopon. Robopon also had built-in speaker and battery-powered clock which is why the cart is bigger than the other GB KISS games. These games all had built-in IR ports, Robopon is the only GB KISS game to be released in North America.
Some games definitely slow down. When they do it usually means a crash is imminent. Some games work better than others but none of them seem fully stable. I tried Donkey Kong Country and all I could get was the Rare logo music which then trailed off into a sound that I can only describe as Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff. Then it completely locks up and I can't force it past that point.
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is probably the biggest success so far. It does eventually slow to a crawl and brings forth the inevitable crash but I can actually play the game for a bit and it's pretty interesting, mostly because the stage is messed up in ways that aren't just visual. Everyone knows how stage 1-1 starts off, right? Well, apparently under these conditions jumping straight up at the outset causes Mario to bang against a block that by all accounts shouldn't be there. And I'm pretty sure I'm getting killed by things that aren't the first goomba.
Game Genie: 281-52F-6EA
Mega Man Xtreme 2 works perfectly fine up until you actually try to play. The second "Ready" appears the game crashes. Oddly enough, this Game Genie code doubles as an unlock for the hidden modes which are perfectly accessible although suffer from the aforementioned "crashes like a bitch" issue.
Game Genie: 201-57F-4CA
Tomb Raider, same deal. It's suuuuper garbled and the music sounds like Satan's chalkboard but it works right up until the game actually starts. Then nada.
Game Genie: 900-8EF-083 + 000-8FF-91E
I tried a few other games like Street Fighter Alpha and Zelda: Oracle of Ages. Nothing especially unique. Alpha reliably crashes at the character select screen and Zelda has slowdown + crashing issues. I'm noticing enough of a pattern to feel confident that I can get any game in the library to actually start. But it's a crapshoot how far in you can go before it inevitably kicks it. If it doesn't crash right away it probably will by the time you navigate the menus and actually start playing. I've tried to dig deeper to ward off the more consistent crashes but to no avail. If I find what looks like the problem and fix it the same issue just pops up again. Maybe they're happening because I'm not making the codes right. I'm open to suggestions. But it doesn't really matter much. Even without the crashes not a single game was remotely playable. Some fare better than others but it's the difference between a fucking mess and a complete fucking mess.
I think this is the extent to which "playing a Game Boy Color game on a regular Game Boy" will take us. Any greater attempt to make these games work is venturing into outright romhacking territory, which isn't in the scope of the question at hand and certainly not something that we're going to do with a Game Genie. If there are any games that people are dying to see or think might fare better I'll give them a shot.
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