Everdrive GBA X5 - Classic NES Series games

[cirdanlunae]

For some reason, I am unable to get the Classic NES Series games to work on my Everdrive GBA X5. All of them have the same problem: L and R work on the menu, but I can't get anything else to work. I have verified my ROMs on No-Intro's Datomatic site, and they are clean dumps.

I've seen older posts here on the forums talking about using the No-Intro dumps, but it seems like that's not working for me. From what I'm seeing, the 4MB dumps were what worked. It seems now that the No-Intro dumps are 1MB, which is what the older posts said didn't work. Here's the post I'm referring to: https://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=5724.0

Should I use a non-verified dump for these games instead of the verified No-Intro versions? Or is there a fix I don't know about.

(Notes on a rom I'm using. Super Mario Bros: checksum is 97e977d6bb8b2e45a5ad6952dd9a5481, which matches up with Datomatic: https://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=show_record&n=1494&s=23)

[lee4]

(Notes on a rom I'm using. Super Mario Bros: checksum is MD5: 97e977d6bb8b2e45a5ad6952dd9a5481, which matches up with Datomatic: https://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=show_record&n=1494&s=23)

that 1MB version

you need use 4MB 
MD5: 23B2EFCD1FAB512D615F99A2D1A11D00

[cirdanlunae]

(Notes on a rom I'm using. Super Mario Bros: checksum is MD5: 97e977d6bb8b2e45a5ad6952dd9a5481, which matches up with Datomatic: https://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=show_record&n=1494&s=23)

that 1MB version

you need use 4MB 
MD5: 23B2EFCD1FAB512D615F99A2D1A11D00

Okay. According to the No-Intro entry, that's an overdump. Is there a reason an overdump works but the verified dump doesn't?

[nuu]

The database says "dump as originally provided (excluded file) was overdumped (repeating data)". My no-intro roms from 2018 are all 4MB and they work fine in my X5. Maybe no-intro are mistaken?

The NES Classic games are known to take advanced measures against piracy so they didn't work in emulators for a long time. But I don't think this is a problem for the Everdrive.

[cirdanlunae]

The database says "dump as originally provided (excluded file) was overdumped (repeating data)". My no-intro roms from 2018 are all 4MB and they work fine in my X5. Maybe no-intro are mistaken?

The NES Classic games are known to take advanced measures against piracy so they didn't work in emulators for a long time. But I don't think this is a problem for the Everdrive.

From what I gather, No-Intro recently made the 1MB the verified rom, as recently as October 2020 from what I'm seeing. Maybe there's something about the overdumps that run better on the Everdrive? Strange though.

[Localhorst86]

I think the issue might be copy protection. The NES classic series had excessive Anti Piracy measures and - as far as I understand - the everdrive patches these on the fly. If it does, and if it uses the checksum for identification, the newly verified dumps might not be implemented in the firmware (yet).

[cirdanlunae]

I think the issue might be copy protection. The NES classic series had excessive Anti Piracy measures and - as far as I understand - the everdrive patches these on the fly. If it does, and if it uses the checksum for identification, the newly verified dumps might not be implemented in the firmware (yet).

You know, this would make sense. That would explain why this particular ROM set would be acting up, seeing how it's quite literally the same dump as the others, just without the overdump. Checksum seems to be a great way of implementing that.

[nuu]

I found this: https://forum.no-intro.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4239
It appears the Famicom Mini / NES Classics uses 1MB ROM chips and mirrors it over the whole ROM space (except for the FDS games which do use 4MB ROM chips). Dumping the whole ROM space results in 4 copies of the same 1MB ROM.

If the Everdrive doesn't mirror the 1MB ROM 3 times, it will probably not work correctly if the games sometimes accesses the mirrors to confuse emulators. This would work on the 4MB versions because the ROM "mirrors" are there (though they are physical parts of the ROM and not really mirrors in this case).

The anti-piracy measures are described here: https://mgba.io/2014/12/28/classic-nes/
It mentions mirroring, but only for RAM not ROM. Most of the tricks described here are probably only tripping up inaccurate emulators and not flashcarts, but "Trick #4: Save type masquerading" might make it so saving doesn't work on flashcarts.

My guess is that these games relies on the ROM mirroring to work correctly and the Everdrive doesn't setup the mirroring correctly for these games.

[lee4]

Reason 4 MBytes version works and 1 MBytes doesnt
is Everdrive doesnt hidden unused rom space (32MBytes)

simliar mirror talk on this thread
http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=6844.msg69631#msg69631
http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=6844.msg71330#msg71330

[Richardragon87]

Was their much porpoise for the NES/Famicom classic series on the GBA aside from the exclusive FDS games that I only recall were to name a few, as they seemed to heavily be based off the pocketnes emulation complete with the sleep mode instructions to reactivate the game when it goes off?

To me it seems like the OBJ/Trans modes poketnes uses that would enlarge the sprite and objects but keep the normal screens layout the same size which really messed with my eyes as despite making the sprites bigger than the screen itself which if I recall also enlarged the text on a screen it always seemed unproportionate to me. So much as I just left it as unscaled and angled the camera as so.

Then you had that orange tint to the whole screen too which thankfully didn't exist on pocketnes either, though between playing the FDS exclusive games aside from Kid Icarus and Zelda II's ones I preferred the patch that fanmade NES patch set that just changes the games screens to match the FDS ones instead of having that orange tint they always had... sure you wouldn't have the enhanced audio but at least it was clearable without making eyes hurt.

[nuu]

Was their much porpoise for the NES/Famicom classic series on the GBA aside from the exclusive FDS games that I only recall were to name a few, as they seemed to heavily be based off the pocketnes emulation complete with the sleep mode instructions to reactivate the game when it goes off?

No, Nintendo made their own Famicom/NES emulator for this series and the North American e-Reader. I think Konami and Capcom used Pocketnes in some of their games though.

Reason 4 MBytes version works and 1 MBytes doesnt
is Everdrive doesnt hidden unused rom space (32MBytes)

simliar mirror talk on this thread
http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=6844.msg69631#msg69631
http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=6844.msg71330#msg71330

Sure the problem is probably a badly mapped ROM image. But since the 4MB version works, it doesn't seem that this particular problem is related to accessing areas outside the 4MB space used by these games. But that's always a potential problem as can be seen in Rockman EXE 5, so the Everdrive should always only map as much ROM space as the real cartridge maps (and mirror everything the same way as the real cartridge), or games might not perform correctly.