Powerpak - certain NTSC games on PAL Nes don't work... Ahh Cobra Triangle... another Nes game infamous for being difficult to emulate.. What mapper is Cobra Triangle? I tried it with my new Powerpak cart and it displays corrupt graphics and crashes. I guess powerpak will never be able to emulate cobra triangle...just one of those obscure games with a rarely used mapper I guess. BTW does anyone know where an official compatibility list for the powerpak lies? Thanks!
It's ANROM aka mapper 7. Same as Battletoads. The game shouls work fine. Check to be sure your ROM has a clean/valid header. If it's incorrect it will fail on the PowerPAK, unlike emulators like Nestopia which have a huge database to correct these issues for you.
Thanks MottZilla, I suppose I could do that and check it out. Know a decent tool that checks batches of nes roms for valid headers?
Haven't done that kind of stuff since I prepared some NES roms for the PSX about five years ago, but if I remember correctly RomCenter can make batch checks for wrong headers. Don't remember if you need a database to make it work, in that case I think you can check Cowering's GoodTools website for it.
Thanks guys. Okay, I used romcenter and loaded the no-intro nes dat file. I scanned my collection of roms (including cobra triangle) and romcenter reported that all roms contained bad file names - and that was the only issue, nothing else was reported as corrupt in the headers. I repaired them anyway and i'll test it out when I get home. There's another thing going on which I think I should ask about: When i got my hands on a new powerpak I immediately put kalle's save state mapper on it, which only works for (and replaces the mapper files in the powerpak folder) NROM, CNROM, UxROM, AxROM, MMC1, MMC3. But this shouldn't affect "mapper 7" roms (battletoads and cobra triangle) right? I mean, it left the mapper 7 file alone when i copied over the save state mappers, so i expect compatibility should be unchanged.. Anyway, i believe cobra triangle is a problem game. Yes, it works in nesticle but there are many emulators which don't support it.
Okay, I have tested everything and have more to report. First, I removed the save state mappers, formatted the CF card and put the powerpak folder back on with the latest version mappers. Then, I put the "fixed" roms back on the card. Started up the NES and the powerpak and tried a cobra triangle again, plus some other games which i'll list the problems below. Cobra Triangle: Still has corrupted graphics after the start screen when you begin the game. Palette is all out of wack, can't distinguish the boats, water and terrain. Battletoads: Fails to start the first level after the intro. Palette is corrupted during the intro. Double Dragon I: Flickers like crazy during the intro of the first level. Zelda II: Status bar on the top flickers, scrolls left or right and doesn't remain still during the gameplay. Power Blade I: During the levels the screen wobbles up and down continuously. That's about it. I'm just bringing these issues up to see if anyone else knows what is wrong. I used romcenter on these roms and apparently they have been "fixed", but the only problem found was their file names. Appreciate the help guys, thanks! EDIT: My NES console is PAL and its model/version is NESE-001(AUS). The ROMS I am running are all U/NTSC.
Haha your answer seems pretty obvious doesn't it? I'll try that. But I was only playing NTSC games because I assumed with the powerpak it didn't matter.. Will post my progress after I test
Thanks Calpis, my PAL roms work. Glad to resolve this, I was starting to think the powerpak was faulty. Pity that a 50/60hz mod doesn't exist for the nes console, the games are pretty slow
Seconded. It is apparently possible to mod a PAL NES to 60Hz (can't remember the exact details but I think it involves swapping the CPU, which makes little sense - pretty sure there's details in a thread at GameSX if you're curious), but buying a console-only NES from the States will be the solution. The console itself should be practically free, but shipping it won't.
It makes all sense because: PAL color carrier is 4.43361875 MHz and NTSC is 3.579545 MHz. Main crystal is 6x the color carrier so NTSC will be 21.47727 and PAL will be 26.60171. Because of that, the CPU sound hardware will be different from NTSC on PAL CPU chips. So, the main clock is feed to both PPU and CPU chips at same time then divided internally for operation. :thumbsup: Hopefully that explains for you why both CPU and PPU are needed to be replaced. On the next Generation (SNES) Nintendo and Ricoh (chip designers) used engineering tricks to be able to use the same CPU and PPU chips on both region systems while making up for the different clock frequencies.
Awesome info there, thanks. Guess the genesis also had uniform cpu and ppu chips over all regions but used different clock frequencies..it's so much better like this, helps us living in PAL regions to do easy mods *BTW - I'm sorry for misleading anyone who reads this thread who is lured by the "Powerpak compat list" in the subject heading :banghead:. I should change it.. *
