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    Main » Emulation » 32X CRAShTEST: the mushroom of doom strikes back!
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    Posted on 19-03-18, 04:10 (revision 3)
    Dinosaur

    Post: #207 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
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    Before my DSL dies (again), here is it, in its glorious pure HTML form (this time free of MSOHTML bloat!):

    http://mi.tsdx.net.ve/32Xbench/
    Website is now dead, archived copy here: http://web.archive.org/web/20190512182447/http://mi.tsdx.net.ve/32Xbench/test_en.htm


    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YAtq4knigW74p8dA1PBZhCx_JBG9TXlrvi-ylQKatuM/edit?usp=sharing

    Yes, that's a Google Docs link. Turns out that it's far easier to force YOU -the reader- to download Google's shitpile of Javascripts rather than dealing with Excel's proprietary HTML junk or LibreOffice HTML export artifacts - by default it produces nothing resembling a spreadsheet; if you install Writer2XHTML, the results are far better but the resulting HTML requires A LOT of cleanup due to redundant CSS junk that it's a PITA to deal with on such a document. Plus, clown computing is useful for once (also, yay backups~)


    First things first: system specs!

    All emulators (sans MAME) were tested on my good ol' Inspiron 6400 (T7200@2Ghz, Mobility Radeon X1400, Debian Jessie/oldstable). In the case of MAME, due to bandwidth/time constraints (I'm not going to compile the behemoth known as everything-and-the-kitchensync MAME), and the fact MAME is more CPU intensive than anything else (except maybe for Exodus and Higan), I used my Asus K53SD (i5-2450M@2.5~3.1GHz, Intel HD3000, Debian Stretch/Stable) to run whatever version of MAME was on the Debian Stable repos - in the case of Stretch, it's 0.182, which is quite ancient (it's from early 2017!). Buster/Sid does have a current version, but it's a moot point in any case: there has been no updates to the 32X cores since then (except for a lone update for audio emulation in 0.202 that most likely has no impact on the results)

    You may notice I've restricted myself to testing emulators available to Linux - as I've said, Windows stopped being my go-to place for my emulation needs well over a decade ago. This is only of significance in the case of Kega Fusion, since its final release (3.64) was never released for non-Windows targets. But you aren't missing anything of value, unless if you actually care about quality PWM DMA audio (a feature used by exactly ZERO commercial games).


    Anyway, on to the challengers!

    - Kega Fusion 3.63x, which is the final Linux release (the PWM DMA fixes on 3.64 have little impact on the final grade, if any)

    - PicoDrive 1.93, and that's because orbea bugged notaz hard enough to make him tarball a release :D I did have to apply a patch to get it to build with OpenGL so I can actually resize the window.

    - Gens/GS r7: my custom build deviations are documented here: fixes for GTK+ deprecations, and Chilly Willy's PWM DMA audio fixes (the stock r7 binaries would get a minimal negative impact on the final grade due to this, but nothing important if you don't care about homebrew. GerbilSoft did merged those on his Git repo, but it's unknown if the sources there are buildable as-is)

    - MAME 0.182: I've just said why this old version - I'm not upgrading to Buster anytime soon just for ONE program I most likely won't be using ever again! Commandline used for reference: mame 32x -w -video opengl -gl_glsl


    Tested media:

    - Every single commercial cartridge game, including regional variants. 49 carts in total. Notably absent from the test is the PAL version of Motherbase, which surprisingly remains undumped as of today, March 17, 2019. If it ever gets dumped and said dump find its way to the Internets, I'll update the test accordingly

    - Every single SegaCD 32X game, all 6 of them, 11 discs in total, almost 7 gigabytes of pure suck. The Digital Pictures logo is like the Anti Quality Seal of Turdiness, and I don't even get why Sega bothered with its lame DRM attempt with Fahrenheit (you need the regular SCD disc to "unlock" the 32X disc, making the whole ordeal needlessly cumbersome)

    - The infamous Mars Check Program. Apparently it DOES run just fine on production consoles, despite what the popular legends say.

    - A single demo, the Ecco Cinepak demo. I've ignored the rest of the SDK demos as they're pretty much forgettable.

    - Four protos: X-Men, Soulstar X, Virtua Hamster, and a very recent dump, the ill-fated 32X version of Pinocchio (which was close to RTM before getting the axe)

    - 11 pieces of homebrew, including two Sonic ROM hacks (which reportedly do not work properly on the real thing as you would expect, hence why they're only worth 0.5% of the final grade), every relevant demo/port by Chilly Willy (seriously, this dude is a freakin' god of the mushroom! He even made the ONLY KNOWN SCD32X DEMO, which is awesome beyond all belief considering what abomination is being targeted), and 3 music file format players by mic (which are really nice so you should check them out). I've restricted myself to the most impressive pieces of homebrew out there (and considering the console we're dealing with, that's a quite low bar to clear), so simple things like Hello World, spinning cubes, and anime chicks made in BASIC compilers are not welcome to the party.


    Evaluation criteria:

    - Remember those Euro computer magazines from the late '90s/early '00s? Then the layout of my test tables will be familiar to you (I particularly stole it from a Spanish magazine, which was actually an international edition of a German magazine edited by Axel Springer, hence why a D -3/10- is a pass; fortunately no emulator fails THAT hard). Every result contributes with a percentage of the final grade. Commercial ROMs contribute with 1.5% of the final grade, while everything else is 1% (except for the two Sonic ROM hacks that won't run on hardware, and the Mars Check Program which is the most "expensive" test so its worth slightly more). And yes, I got all that very wrong on the first versions of my test! Hopefully I've rectified calculations properly this time...

    - There is a 3% devoted to overall quality (performance, A/V quality), which is highly subjective by nature (even more so if you consider I don't have the real hardware as a reference - I'm just testing a bunch of pirate junk of which I'm not aware of its true behavior on console), so basically its impact on the final grade is minimal.

    - There are a couple games I managed to get running through the debuggers on MAME/Gens (namely: NBA Jam Tournament Edition and that handegg game), and that's only because I had noticed that years ago when I did the first version of this test. Yes, they're playable (when they run, and it's no coincidence that those two in particular have EEPROM saves, which don't seem to be supported on those emulators)... but barely, hence why the low grades there. I've tried the same path with all other ROMs that refused to run on those two emulators (mostly stuck at a infinite loop), but without luck.

    - ROM hangs represent a 5-point penalty for that test at the very least, depending at which phase the game does hang (if the game is unbootable, it's an automatic zero). If the emulator crashes, that's another 2-point penalty (I should give an automatic zero, considering crashes/segfaults are never allowable - in this era that could even be considered a security flaw!)

    - The Mars Check Program has an unique way to calculate the grade for that test: first I check how many tests the emulator under testing manages to run (a complete run will run all 161 of 'em), and based on how many tests it runs before hanging (if it does not finish), I obtain a base grade (for example, if ROM hangs at test 80, that would be 49,68% of tests completed, for a base grade of 4,97). Then, this ROM does count errors (failed tests). Each error is a 0,1 point deduction (if the check program says you've failed 50 tests, you've already lost 5 points there!). If the test hangs before completion, that's another 1 point deduction. And if your emulator crashes (as PicoDrive does), you lose another 2 points. Only Fusion gets a flawless pass here! While this check program has its flaws, it's the best we get that can somewhat stress the hardware.

    - See those [x0] notes on the results for some ROMs/emulators? These are screenshot tags, and since I couldn't do something better, you can lookup for those specific tags on this album they're now clickable so you can open said screenshots on a new tab, to get a visual representation of specific emulation bugs that can be seen on the gameplay.

    Now, onto the results!

    The short version:

    - If all you care are about commercial ROMs, just stick to Fusion, and pray for your distro to never break support for 32-bit x86 applications.
    - If you are masochist enough to descend into the sewer pit known as "SegaCD 32X"... you will be fine with PicoDrive, and that's just because it can run the ONLY commercial game that Fusion can't: Surgical Strike. Or better yet: don't waste your time; all those games SUCK RANCID DONKEY BALLS.
    - For homebrew, both PicoDrive and Fusion are good choices. Be aware that if you want good PWM DMA audio (required for ANYTHING wrote by Chilly Willy, including his Wolfenstein 3D ports) without resorting to Wine, your only option is PicoDrive.
    - Don't bother with Gens or MAME, unless if you absolutely need a debugger.
    - Recommended BIOS for multi-disc games: us_scd1_9210.bin (f4f315adcef9b8feb0364c21ab7f0eaf5457f3ed) or us_scd2_9306.bin (328a3228c29fba244b9db2055adc1ec4f7a87e6b). Expect trouble with all others!


    Emulator recaps:

    - Kega Fusion: The undisputed king of 32X emulation, the only one to get a perfect 10 on the commercial ROM section (basically: if it was officially released, Fusion will run it just fine), and it only lost its crown of perfection because Surgical Strike took over two decades to get ripped. You simply can't get wrong with Fusion if you actually care about the 32X. However, the clock is running out for this legend: as a proprietary binary blob, it's unlikely you will be able to run it as-is on future distros (or even in some current ones!), and it seems Snake dropped off the radar for good. If you're at Windowsland, you will be fine... until MS decides it's time to drop x86-32 for good (which WILL happen someday, maybe sooner than you think!)

    - PicoDrive: A relatively late newcomer to the 32X scene, yet it shows some strong compatiblity that far surpasses everything ever made... except for Fusion. Yes, it's still a bit rough around the edges, a few games still give it trouble, and there are at least two unplayable ROMs on it (one is a handegg game which we can forget, and the other is Motherbase/Parasquad), but on the CD-ROM and homebrew departments, it gets a clean pass, which is no small feat. Plus, it's the only one actively developed (or so it looks), so you should have it as a plan B in your arsenal. And it's the only one you can use on ARM toys, and as a bonus, it's also available as a libretro core so you can play it on the libretro-enabled frontend of your choice. Its default standalone UI is quite useable too. Unfortunately, during testing this emulator exhibited intermittent controller issues (6-button pads getting detected as 3-button pads, inputs not working at times with some games, ghost devices plugged to Player 2 socket), although it was not that hard to deal with those, it was still an annoyance (hence the quarter-point penalty on the final grade)

    - Gens/GS: Remember Gens? It wasn't the first 32X emulator (that was retroDrive), but it certainly was the first one to embrace the open source road. Too bad this didn't any favors for its emulation cores, although of all of its endless forks, we got Gens/GS, which probably is the most important one. The one where improvements were attempted to address some mistakes of its past. Gens Next Generation, if you will... or maybe not, since the improvements didn't reached that far. Still, Gens served us well all those years, but it's time to hang up the gloves, to check in for the last time, to leave the building straight to the retirement home for broken emulators, where it can die peacefully. Seriously, it's time to. You won't get that far with a 32X emulator that has zero support for CDROM games, and that gets its guts seriously upset when a ROM crashes/hangs. Upset enough to either exhibit random behaviors (like skipping title screens on WWF Raw and 36 Great Holes), or to outright refuse to run anything else until a restart (of the emulator, not your computer!). Farewell, my great friend...

    - MAME: Oh boy, the 900-pound gorilla of the arcade emulation land ate the 900-pound gorilla of the home computer emulation park. The results are not glorious: a bunch of half-assed cores that don't get that far. Maybe it will work enough to run a BIOS ROM, or the most simple/popular software titles. Or it will be like the 32X core, where you get results so bad that it rivals Gens at times at the lower end of the scale (and that's not a compliment!) Plus, it's MAME, the least user-friendly emulator ever made, where even simple things like selecting a video mode, setting up firmware ROMs, or loading a game quickly become painful experiences for the typical gamer that only wants a point-and-click solution. At least they're nice enough to warn you that said cores are unusable and that you should not blame anyone else but yourself for wasting your time. On top of that, even if your game runs (and doesn't cause the emulator to segfault!), it's not fun to experience random slowdowns on a i5 box, or nearly unlistenable audio full of pops and crackles while the actual volume levels are almost mute! Guys, ROMaholics of the world: just don't!


    REMINDER: This is a "crashtest", that is, "can I have the expectation to run whatever game I want to play on my emulator of choice?". In no way a "Playable" result implies that the game can actually be completed, as this is pretty much impossible to test unless if you have unlimited time and nothing else to do with your life! For most meanings of "playable", it just means I can run the ROM, beat the first level/boss/match/whatever, or play for at least 10 minutes without triggering anything nasty. Plus, without a real hardware reference to draw comparisons, you should interpret these test results as merely informative, not as an authoritative reference! Normal people is far more likely to finish a season on NBA Jam, all missions on Metal Head, or even a full file at Chaotix, rather than getting a 100% at Tempo, Sangokushi 4, or -please have mercy- Slam City! And in some games, it's simply not feasible due to game bugs, considering that some of the library was rushed to market in a heavily unpolished state: the best example would be DOOM. Just like this test, which was rushed in... what, 3 weeks?

    Feedback welcome~!

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-03-18, 05:37 (revision 1)

    Post: #64 of 166
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 1323 days
    Last view: 999 days
    Posted by tomman

    Emulator recaps:

    - Kega Fusion: The undisputed king of 32X emulation, the only one to get a perfect 10 on the commercial ROM section (basically: if it was officially released, Fusion will run it just fine), and it only lost its crown of perfection because Surgical Strike took over two decades to get ripped. You simply can't get wrong with Fusion if you actually care about the 32X. However, the clock is running out for this legend: as a proprietary binary blob, it's unlikely you will be able to run it as-is on future distros (or even in some current ones!), and it seems Snake dropped off the radar for good. If you're at Windowsland, you will be fine... until MS decides it's time to drop x86-32 for good (which WILL happen someday, maybe sooner than you think!)

    - PicoDrive: A relatively late newcomer to the 32X scene, yet it shows some strong compatiblity that far surpasses everything ever made... except for Fusion. Yes, it's still a bit rough around the edges, a few games still give it trouble, and there are at least two unplayable ROMs on it (one is a handegg game which we can forget, and the other is Motherbase/Parasquad), but on the CD-ROM and homebrew departments, it gets a clean pass, which is no small feat. Plus, it's the only one actively developed (or so it looks), so you should have it as a plan B in your arsenal. And it's the only one you can use on ARM toys, and as a bonus, it's also available as a libretro core so you can play it on the libretro-enabled frontend of your choice. Its default standalone UI is quite useable too. Unfortunately, during testing this emulator exhibited intermittent controller issues (6-button pads getting detected as 3-button pads, inputs not working at times with some games, ghost devices plugged to Player 2 socket), although it was not that hard to deal with those, it was still an annoyance (hence the quarter-point penalty on the final grade)


    It's too bad Kega Fusion is/was closed source

    PicoDrive for me is hit or miss. Games like Virtua Racing 32x works fine but something like Virtua Fighter just hangs right after the player load screen. And Virtua Fighter 32x is actually a pretty decent port of the arcade. Virtua Racing 32x otoh...well, it beats the Megadrive/Genesis port at least.
    Posted on 19-03-18, 10:21
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #90 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

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    Posted by tomman
    Before my DSL dies (again), here is it:

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YAtq4knigW74p8dA1PBZhCx_JBG9TXlrvi-ylQKatuM/edit?usp=sharing

    Yes, that's a Google Docs link. Turns out that it's far easier to force YOU -the reader- to download Google's shitpile of Javascripts rather than dealing with Excel's proprietary HTML junk or LibreOffice HTML export artifacts - by default it produces nothing resembling a spreadsheet; if you install Writer2XHTML, the results are far better but the resulting HTML requires A LOT of cleanup due to redundant CSS junk that it's a PITA to deal with on such a document. Plus, clown computing is useful for once (also, yay backups~)

    Export to CSV, then convert that to HTML.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-03-18, 11:40
    Dinosaur

    Post: #208 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
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    Posted by Broseph
    It's too bad Kega Fusion is/was closed source

    PicoDrive for me is hit or miss. Games like Virtua Racing 32x works fine but something like Virtua Fighter just hangs right after the player load screen. And Virtua Fighter 32x is actually a pretty decent port of the arcade. Virtua Racing 32x otoh...well, it beats the Megadrive/Genesis port at least.


    In my testing, PicoDrive ran Virtua Fighter just fine (I'm not good at fighting games overall, so I just endured like the first 3 fighters), with the only broken thing being the win animations you get after finishing with each fighter: you're supposed to get a fancy animation with "WINNER" on top, but instead all you get is a mostly static frame with a corrupted model of the winner.

    As for the 32X Virtua Fighter being a decent arcade port, that's because Sega's AM2 did the port themselves, which makes sense. In the case of Virtua Racing, it seems the home console ports were done by a different team.

    Fun fact: the Japanese version of Virtua Racing has SRAM backup save (for record times?). The export versions lost that feature (most likely as a cost cutting measure). But hey, at least they did changed the main menu colors (which were quite unreadable on the JP original), and the "VIIIIIIRTUA RACING!" chant (the JP one is lazy as hell).

    Other 32X games supporting backup saves:
    - 36 Great Holes (SRAM)
    - Chaotix (SRAM)
    - World Series Baseball '95 (SRAM)
    - Sangokushi 4 (SRAM)
    - NBA JAM Tournament Edition (EEPROM)
    - NFL Quarterback Club (EEPROM)

    (read "SRAM" as "battery-backup save RAM", not "Static RAM").
    Apparently SRAM emulation is a tough one for older/less capable emulators: Gens only supports SRAM for Chaotix, and curiously enough, JP Virtua Racing. On all other games all you get are deadlocks due to the broken handling of SRAM. In the case of the two EEPROM sportsball games you can force them to run with patch codes or through the debugger, but there is no point to do so if you intend to play their respective season modes. MAME is even worse, as it doesn't even bother emulating SRAM when running 32X games (I did tried a lone Genesis game - a vanilla Sonic 1 ROM... for which MAME dutifully created a zero-filled NVRAM file!). Chaotix will run, but forget about recording your progress (game won't crash, at least) - for all others, it's glitches/crashes all the way, baby!

    The National Handegg League game does make PicoDrive crash, but not due to EEPROM emulation issues (as its NBA counterpart works just fine: both games were developed by Iguana and published by Acclaim, and do seem to exhibit the same kind of problems on emulators that don't bother properly emulating the EEPROM savetype); apparently it dies due to something triggering a bug on PicoDrive's SH2 dynarec core.

    Speaking about EEPROM saves:
    tomman@tomman-lp-c2:~/.picodrive/srm$ hexdump -C NBA\ Jam\ Tournament\ Edition\ \(World\).srm 
    00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 53 6e 61 6b 65 20 31 39 |........Snake 19|
    00000010 39 35 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |95..............|
    00000020 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff |................|
    *
    000000e0 ff ff bf 48 b3 24 49 20 4c 6f 76 65 20 45 6d 6d |...H.$I Love Emm|
    000000f0 61 20 57 61 64 72 6f 70 |a Wadrop|
    000000f8

    Never change, Snake~!
    (Where in the world are you? The mushrooms of doom are claiming for your glorious comeback from the dead!)

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-03-18, 22:16
    Custom title here

    Post: #332 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Posted by tomman

    (read "SRAM" as "battery-backup save RAM", not "Static RAM").

    In fairness, battery-backed RAMs are usually static RAMs due to the lower power draw.




    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-18, 22:55

    Post: #67 of 166
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 1323 days
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    Posted by tomman


    In my testing, PicoDrive ran Virtua Fighter just fine (I'm not good at fighting games overall, so I just endured like the first 3 fighters), with the only broken thing being the win animations you get after finishing with each fighter: you're supposed to get a fancy animation with "WINNER" on top, but instead all you get is a mostly static frame with a corrupted model of the winner.

    As for the 32X Virtua Fighter being a decent arcade port, that's because Sega's AM2 did the port themselves, which makes sense. In the case of Virtua Racing, it seems the home console ports were done by a different team.

    Fun fact: the Japanese version of Virtua Racing has SRAM backup save (for record times?). The export versions lost that feature (most likely as a cost cutting measure). But hey, at least they did changed the main menu colors (which were quite unreadable on the JP original), and the "VIIIIIIRTUA RACING!" chant (the JP one is lazy as hell).


    Just got Virtua Fighter 32x it to work.

    I was/am using the libretro port of PicoDrive and didn't noticed before there's a dynamic recompiler on/off option (it was on by default). Turning it off solved the crash issue.
    Posted on 19-03-19, 00:01
    Post: #16 of 36
    Since: 12-21-18

    Last post: 969 days
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    Posted by tomman

    Fun fact: the Japanese version of Virtua Racing has SRAM backup save (for record times?). The export versions lost that feature (most likely as a cost cutting measure). But hey, at least they did changed the main menu colors (which were quite unreadable on the JP original), and the "VIIIIIIRTUA RACING!" chant (the JP one is lazy as hell).


    You'd think for a game that reportedly retailed for $99US at launch, a couple more bucks for RAM and a battery wouldn't have broke them. :P
    Posted on 19-03-19, 00:32
    Custom title here

    Post: #335 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Posted by KingMike
    Posted by tomman

    Fun fact: the Japanese version of Virtua Racing has SRAM backup save (for record times?). The export versions lost that feature (most likely as a cost cutting measure). But hey, at least they did changed the main menu colors (which were quite unreadable on the JP original), and the "VIIIIIIRTUA RACING!" chant (the JP one is lazy as hell).


    You'd think for a game that reportedly retailed for $99US at launch, a couple more bucks for RAM and a battery wouldn't have broke them. :P
    Hundred bucks was for the Genesis version, not the 32x version. The coprocessor jacked the price up.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-19, 03:05
    Dinosaur

    Post: #211 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Managed to find a way to take the junk that Excel 2003 tries to pass as "HTML" (thanks to HTML Tidy and this C# snippet), and now I've updated the ol' plain HTML version on my site.

    Still required some massaging on a editor, mainly to simplify some of the resulting CSS mess and to properly add the links to the bug screenshots this time. Most likely this won't pass the HTML5 validation and will make those Silly Valley VC kids to weep because I'm not using hundreds of megabytes of Javascripts, but the 32X is a suitable punishment for that :D



    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-03-19, 03:28
    Full mod

    Post: #166 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Looks like you've got the MAME and GENS logos switched at the top of their respective columns.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-19, 12:30
    Dinosaur

    Post: #212 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Posted by Screwtape
    Looks like you've got the MAME and GENS logos switched at the top of their respective columns.


    D'OH!

    Fixed, thanks!

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-03-19, 13:04
    Custom title here

    Post: #336 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Posted by tomman


    D'OH!





    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-22, 19:48 (revision 3)
    Dinosaur

    Post: #216 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

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    Found this interesting place with 32X game reviews, cheats, and other stuff:

    http://rq87.flyingomelette.com/RQ/32X/1.html

    Important information regarding region locked software: http://www.segakore.fr/index.php/2013/11/30/modify-your-mega-drive-genesis-32x-pal-ntsc?page=3

    Also, I just realized that there are other undumped Euro 32X releases: they're all CD games (yuck!), basically all of them except for Fahrenheit (this combo release never went outside 'murica) and Surgical Strike (which ended being a Brazilian exclusive for whatever reason, after a last minute cancellation at USA). Europe did got all of the Digital Pictures Full Motion Vomit releases on the enhanced version, but none of the Sega-made ones. The existing rips are all USA/NTSC releases (remember: unlike ROM carts, all SCD games are region locked). Fun.
    Found rips for those Euro CD games. I'm not testing those ones for now, sorry :P

    Fortunately Japan got spared from the SCD32X disaster, as SoJ was too busy messing up with the Saturn.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-04-22, 23:50
    Post: #19 of 36
    Since: 12-21-18

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    Says byuu:
    You're out of your damned mind if you think higan is ever going to run this 5-CPU, 23-channel, 10-plane, 260K polygons/s abomination.

    I'll give it a couple weeks before the perfectionism in byuu strikes.
    Posted on 19-04-23, 01:05
    Dinosaur

    Post: #266 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

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    You can always add more madness to the mix.

    Let me remind you that cart-based software CAN access the MCD side (Flux, region converter carts, Sonic Winter Adventures, and IIRC there was a CD-enhanced version of Pier Solar). Combined with the mushroom of doom, noone says you can't slap, say, a 21MHz ARM3 CPU on a cart to make a 6-CPU abomination :D

    And if you're MAD ASS CRAZY, you can bring in your favorite FPGA, add some analog/overlay video mixer, and add two or three extra planes and a few spare polygons/s. Once again Sega does what Nintendon't.

    But then, if Higan ever implements this unholy trainwreck of console/accessory "mating", I guess I'll play all four discs of Slam City like a NBA star.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-06-17, 21:35
    Post: #21 of 36
    Since: 12-21-18

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    I've heard the same people that last year(?) made a flash cart replacement for the Turbo CD have announced one for the Sega CD.
    That is, a Genesis flash cart which includes a Sega CD emulator, I believe.
    I think it's been said it does support being added on top of an actual 32X. So... that's getting a step closer to a 32X-CD emulator.

    I had been asking for a Sega CD flash cart replacement but now that I see what it'll actually cost is quite a stinger. 250 euros.
    What's that, like 300 dollars?

    What I wondered is it was possible to somehow put something in the port between a Genesis and Sega CD, like a replacement BIOS to otherwise use the actual SCD hardware but load from flash instead of the CD. Wonder if that would've been cheaper than emulating the entire CD unit itself. (since as I have heard, the TurboCD was largely just a CD reader but the Sega CD had a more significant hardware upgrade)
    Posted on 19-06-17, 23:33
    Dinosaur

    Post: #406 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
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    Something like a GDEMU, perharps?

    However, the idea is sound, as the supply of SCD consoles is quite small and finite. The problem as usual is accuracy, considering that to this date the SCD is not fully emulated. I'm unaware of compatibility lists for emulators released in this decade, and all recent emulation attempts only try to get the Genesis base right (as this is a much more attainable goal). Doing it in hardware... well, good luck to those guys.

    Also, regarding the GDEMU: I don't know how feasible it would be a similar device for the SCD. On the DC, it was quite easy as the GDROM drive was a self-contained unit... except for VA2 motherboards where Sega integrated the GDROM drive brains on the main motherboard. But then the same guy did a similar device for Saturn consoles, and on those the CDROM controller IS integrated on all but the earliest motherboards. So maybe it is doable after all (from what I can remember, the SCD CDROM block is made mostly of off-the-shelf parts)

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-06-22, 19:30
    Post: #9 of 20
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 1498 days
    Last view: 1384 days
    The Mega SD seems pretty neat. It is a FPGA solution which seems accurate. It is even said that some respectable maniacs (FirebrandX and René) have helped its development in order to avoid the same problems they had on the PC Engine extension, which is a solid selling point to me. Kevtris himself ordered one and I did too.

    I had a Mega CD and I LOVED it. Final Fight CD was incredible on it (I never touched the Super Famicom port after this one) and Sonic CD remains my favorite one (wouldn't have been if I had the US version with its horrible butter kusai soundtrack). I played it to death, honestly, even Anet Again, mind you.

    This said, I hoped for a nice solution for the Mega CD and this cart is really answering the prayer. I didn't buy yet a Krikzz cart, so I don't mind the price, since it does replace a Krikzz cart and add the full Mega CD compatibility. And if you bought a Krikzz cart, you can sell it in order to soften the price.

    Now, I just saw their PC Engine extension is sold out, I do hope they will make a new run, maybe a new edition, because I will instant buy it, although in a perfect world, Analogue would finally release their Turbo Nc and Terraonion would release an updated cart for it based on their PC Engine extension.

    BTW, GDEMU could be done on the Mega CD, but since this hardware is being heavily scalped on the market and also the units are very fragile and need a lot of refurbishing care, it wouldn't be worth the effort. And I say that while LOVING the first Mega Drive and the first Mega CD, so cool design...
    Posted on 19-06-23, 15:00
    Dinosaur

    Post: #412 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 3 days
    Last view: 11 hours
    Oh, it also doubles as a Gen/MD flashcart? Now that's some great value for the price.

    Wonder how they took care of the "thou shall not expose 3.3V Flash ROM to 5V bus without safe measures" bit, as even Krikzz himself sometimes misses that part. Aside of that, I would love to see some hardware tests on that thing.

    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-06-23, 15:14
    Post: #11 of 20
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 1498 days
    Last view: 1384 days
    René (or Voultar) did help, so I guess it's fine.
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