Mario RPG 2 64DD?

The sequel to Mario RPG (before it was revealed much later as Paper Mario) was originally supposed to be one of the DD's flagship titles, and I was wondering if there is any record of the game being shown in playable form on the DD.

I'm pretty sure that their isn't, considering that the game was never shown in playable form before being re-worked as a cartridge game and released as Paper Mario (at least not to my knowledge). I'm sure that this was just another one of those games that was announced as a DD title early on, but never actually shown running on one.

 

it was, early screenshots of the game are a bit different from the released version.

While it wasnt playable, the shots are from the DD version.

 

Yeah, the game did look a lot different early on. Paper Mario turned out great, but something about the old look was appealing as well.

I'm guessing the release of this game was so much later simply because the game was moved to cartridge once Nintendo knew the DD wasn't going to take off.

Thanks for the info Barc0de.

 

it was indeed held back and not rushed because they hoped it would be a killer app for the DD. Eventually, Mario Story was released and it turned out to be very nice. I don't know if the envisioned game was larger or had better audio, but I m sure some compromises must have taken place in the transfer.

That said, in my experience 64DD games cannot use the expansion pak for higher resolutions etc unlike later expansion-pak compatible releases, since the DD needed the extra ram to operate

 

Correct, the 64dd cannot use the expansion pack for higher resolution's, it can however use the expansion pack along with it's 32bit co processor to have extremely more detailed textures as was the case with majora's mask, which despite all rumours to the contary was begun as a disk based title.

Also the super mario rpg2 was playable on the 64dd at some point or another, and was moved over to cartridge at a ery late stage and had to cut several of it's features to accomadate being ona cartridge.

There will be some blue disk playable code somewhere inside NCL, but it's highly unlikely that it will ever get leaked, unless someone from intelligent systems does so.

 

do you know for fact which features were left out?

the 32bit coprocessor? The expansion pak doesnt have a coprocessor last time I checked - the DD does.

 

Would it happen to be these, specifically?

 

yeap, those are the screenshots. notice the use of more 3D perspectives etc , as well as more detailed "paper mario" (down right, early image)

also keep in mind that compression techniques were improved over time and gamepak prices fell so larger gamepaks weren't as much an issue.

 

There's no reason 64DD games can't have "high resolution" graphics, you just need to dedicate another megabyte of RAM to the framebuffer.

What is this coprocessor you speak of? Sounds like total BS, are you sure it's not just a microcontroller ie drive controller?

 

I wish I didn't get rid of an old Egm i had that had pictures of "Mario RPG 2" that i can't find on line.

 

The 32 bit coprocessor was in the 64dd, and if you read the way i worded it, it makes sense. I said the 64dd cannot use the expanision pack for high res graphics but IT(the 64DD) can use the expansion pack and it's(the 64dd's) 32 bit co processor to create far more deatiled environment's and texture's, due to the disk space and the way the add on was set up in general.

Don't get me wrong though, the coprocessor, has nothing to do with extra horsepower in the way, the two saturn processors work, or the 32x, or dual cpu computers, Atari jaguar etc,etc.. It just helped with the way the 64dd works and made it an extremely efficient and unique add on, and improved upon the way that games would work under the disk system.

The features cut from the cartridge version, are the real time clock features, the game would operate on a day and night basis, in 24 hour clock mode, ie, if you played it in the day, it would be daytime, and if you played it at night it would be nighttime. This featue was kinda like the zelda system, in that enemies would be harder and more present at night, and some enemies would only show themselves at night, and some features of the game were time specific.

The game also had to drop all of it's writability features from the 64dd version, and this was a huge aspect of the game, including seveal features, of which i will get more info from for you guys from someone who has detailed knowledge of the disk version, I have forgot all the details he told me a couple of years back. This was the primary reason that the game took so long to be reengineered for cartridge, and was nearly cancelled,along with Mother 3, as the reverse engineering , stripping of features was causing coding hell, and lots of development resources, but as it was a mario title and the gamecube was still a year away, a huge amount of resources were shifted to the project in order to get it working on the cartridge format.

Alot of people speculate that this was at the expense of Mother 3's development as the coders working on Mario rpg 2 DD/ Mario story were far more advanced in development with 3d hardware, and nintendo felt the Mario title offered the prospect of better worldwide sales, as it was widely known that Mother 3 would never be translated.

Overall though, the cartridge version while nice, was not the vision the team had started out with and is a stripped down game, it's also noteworthy that the story had to be shortened to accomodate the cart too.

I will get more info for you guys, as I know someone who has intimate knowledge of the disk version, and know's for a fact that it was nearly complete for DD and on blue disk. It's actually rumoured to be in the hand's of the original owner of the blue disks that CoreyCorey2000 is in hold of now.

There is rumoured to be about seventeen to twenty leaked blue disks that all contain nintendo game based code or playable games, this collector seems very reluctant to come forward and share his collection though, which staets to me, he is still associated with either nintendo or one of their subsidaries.

 

Is there any chance that one of those blue disk contains Ura Zelda???

 

not a chance, I know the man and we ve had very open talks on various subjects. He has sold off all of his stuff and I had quite a few first dibs on them, including corey's disks back in the day, way before corey got them.

Not to brag, but I m in the fortunate position that when it comes to DD and related materials I get contacted by quite a few people before anyone else, for evaluation and information on the given materials each time. There's virtually no serious DD-related transaction or development (emulation etc) that I m not informed about. (thanks to all the guys out there of course!)

Kammedo can verify this statement.

 

I cannot wait to chat to you barcode, send me a pm and lets get a time organised that both suits our time differences.

I think I am thinking corey go the disks off someone else now then, because I know for a fact, that someone out there has playable intelligent systems blue disks.

We really need to chat bro!!I cannot wait to exchange info with you.

 

I m on msn as we speak, but you appear to be offline. We can talk right now if you wish =)

 

Great explanation, much appreciated. :nod:

 

By all means, as far as my knowledge goes (=having opened my DD Drive) the only processor that is on it is one from Hitachi, which could be used barely for Disk processing. Also, the interface chip looks like it has some kind of executing functions, but I want to check that deeper before I say anything.

 

The 64DD can't do anything, the program loaded by the IPL controls everything, including the framebuffer size and the registers to make the display interlaced/"high res". Also a program can use the expansion pak for whatever it wants, it's entirely general purpose RAM decoded right next to the work RAM, so I don't know what in the world you guys are talking about.

These two statements completely contradict each other. How is the drive specially set up? The fact is the 64DD doesn't do anything except load memory to/from disk and provide functions in it's ROM that a program can link to. Saying it can "create" or "enhance" anything is a huge fallacy. There's nothing a 64DD game can have that a 512M cartridge can't with the benefit of speed.

It's a co-processor in the same vein as a CDROM controller, it just abstracts the mechanical operation of the drive from the game. I'd guess the only reason it's there is because it was cheaper than interfacing entirely with logic.

 

up to 30 odd MBs of re-writable memoire more generally : optional access to accessories such as the mic, capture card etc.

More specifically however about the ins and outs of the DD:

the N64 treats both slots more or less the same, in an equal "gamepak" fashion for the most part, since they share the same bus essentially. Any interrupt-based logic is handled at a seperate, higher level, through the IPL and with the aid of the Drive's components.

The DD burst-copies stuff into RAM at intervals hence the only added processing circuit possibly found (empirically and theoretically up to now) is some sort of ASIC that manages the upshoot of data - not a processor per se.

The drive provides a font-table, a wave-table and means to read the ALPS magnetic drive. The purpose of the drive is not to enhance processing abilities, unlike the SEGA CD for example or the SNES CD add-on. It is what it's called, a simple drive. Keep in mind that only DD-enabled titles (combo and stand-alone) are able to draw on the drives tables and again this is handled thru the IPL and should be seen as the static part that can be shared by all compatible software (sort of like copy pasting OS from one gamepak to another)

Each N64 games carries its own "OS" and IPL. 64DD games however all share the same, namely the DDROM. The DDROM allows for the standard nintendo file system at a high level, as well as other file systems at a lower level (I wonder who the fuck designed the DS with lib callbacks)

It seems (ie I can't cofirm yet) that constraints on higher resolutions are placed by the IPL (DDROM) and not by the drive's design per se. Hence the suggestion - in practice, even the Artist and Randnet disks that could improve their GUI do not use the higher resolutions found in some gamepak games.

On the subject of Majora's Mask - this game runs in a higher resolution than OoT, relying on the Expansion Pak to do so. That said, late N64 games such as CBFD and Banjo Tooie, as well as Pokemon Stadium GS can also achieve more clarity without the aid of an expansion pak - but this is mostly due to the fact of using modified and improved microcode.

 

Nintendo could have easily made R/W ROMs too (considering the ROMs are some sort of NAND a la DS carts), just at a higher cost..

Edit: also Mario no Photopie had access to 1Gbit of NAND memory, though it's probably about as slow as the 64DD.