etabeta's playground

While progressing in the preparation of a NES software list in xml format, I have spent some time reviewing old mapper code and fixing a few mistakes I found. The results can be seen below. Notice that, as soon as I finish moving the mapper code to use the new code I added for the software list, most of these fixes will be also available when running iNES and UNIF files.

A warning: keep reading until the bottom of the news, because I left the most important contribution at the end 🙂

== Old News ==

First of all, let me recap here some of the news already reported on MESS forum last week: I have added support for protected CNROM games (usually assigned to mapper 185). This means that Mighty Bomb Jack & Seicross (Jpn)

Bird Week & Spy vs Spy (Jpn)

and the educational Sansuu 1, 2, 3 Nen games are all finally playable (more screens here). Then, I fixed some graphics problems in Dragon Warrior 4 and SD Keiji (snap before and after can be seen here). Moreover, I have added support for the Famicom and Subor keyboards controller, making usable both Famicom BASIC carts and various Russian & Chinese Educational carts (details and some snaps here).

== Latest News ==

Last weekend, I was able to do some more progresses. I fixed a silly regression in a few MMC1 games (introduced by my rewrites added last October). As a result the following games now run again (they showed only a grey screen between 0.134 and 0.138):

Then, I fixed some problems in the Camerica boards, and now a few games like Linus Spacehead’s Cosmic Crusade are playable

and I ported a few fixes for CONY boards from FCEUMM (thanks a lot Cah4e3), fixing various glitches and making playable (?) a bunch more of pirate fighting games

I also fixed the PRG bank handling of Action 52 and now the menu can be accessed and all the 52 terrible games can be played in MESS (not sure it can be called a progress 😉 )

and I have greatly simplified Konami VRC emulation, making all the games playable (a few of them were previously, using the wrong lines for PRG/CHR switch, like the Japanese versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 & 2 [1])

Thanks to bootgod notes, I fixed our Famicom Jump II emulation, and the game is now fully playable

I also attempted to implement emulation of RacerMate Challenge 2, but I need more info on the hardware before MESS can do more than showing this (very preliminary) screen:

Last, but not least at all, Mariusz Wojcieszek has contributed a FUNDAMENTAL fix to MMC1 emulation which makes playable (for the first time in MESS) AD&D Hillsfar, Bill & Ted Excellent Adventure, Cosmic Wars, Rocket Ranger, Sesame Street 123 and Snow Brothers (both US and Jpn versions, while the European one was already fine)

Thanks a lot Mariusz!

== Additional update ==

During lunch break, today, I finally managed to implement emulation of the Nanjing pirate board! This means that some of the ~60 games using it are now playable in MESS. This is an interesting board, since it has been used for ports of SNES / GBC / PC games. Some snaps

Final Fantasy VII

Diablo

Harvest Moon

Chrono Trigger

Not all the games are playable (e.g. Chrono Trigger resets soon after the second snap I posted), but it is a first step in the emulation of this new board.

[1] which corresponds, as the screens show, to the 2nd and 3rd US/Euro games, since the first one had a different title in Japan…