So... I have a very complete snes collection thanks to the everdrive (I'm a player first and collector second) But of course there are a couple of games that are a no go on my pal snes such as Mario RPG and star ocean... I have no interest in buying a $100+ repro cart (or a US snes and a genuine copy ) and figure that emu is my best bet to complete my tour of 16bit rpgs What would you guys play these games on?
Emulator ? Snes9x, zsnes will do just fine. You can also play first two star ocean games on PSP but i'm not a huge fan of new character arts though. Or maybe those games can be hacked to play on PAL SNES. Oh... wait a second, you said everdrive, not SD2 SNES ? Then it's a no go indeed. Just stick with one of those two emulators then.
A US SNES doesnt cost too much and you have no problems anymore in future with SA-1 Games. So in other words if this your opinion please use your emulator ^^
You can also pick up a Super Famicom copy of the game for quite cheap (often less then $10 for cart alone) and replace the ROM chip with the English version if need be. You'll need a Super Famicom or a modded US SNES to play the game obviously.
I'd get a region mod installed, then find someone to replace the Japanese version rom chips. Using ANY flash cart or repro by itself you'll be stuck playing these games some 16% slower at 50hz.
You could get a jap one, put english roms on it and a pal cic. But you will still be playing it slow and squashed
Use zsnes, nestopia, Fusion for SNES, NES and Megadrive. I have a cheap SNES USB controller, getting a cheap USB NES controller too. 30,000 games, try before you buy!
I should step back and ask does anyone know of a better/cheaper place to buy repro carts. I can see that a star ocean donor cart would only set me back ~$20-$30 at the moment which is acceptable if I can get the cart modded for cheap. Anyone got experience here?
Yes, buy a suitable donar cart (i.e the SFC version), then buy the chip and TSOP adapter, burn the replacement ROM to it, then swap out MASKROM in the game cart. The easiest way to do this is buyicnow.com, they not only sell the correct chips (such as a 29F032) but they also sell them pre-soldered to the TSOP adapter and they can burn the ROM to the chip for you.
easy to say but much harder to actually do!.... my soldering skills are like a 4/10 and this really requires a 9/10 skill level and probably proper tools would help too rather than a rough 40w iron of indeterminate brand from the hardware store. can you do this? if so how much, I am in Brisbane to and will order a Star ocean cart now!
Just to point out, Mario RPG and Star ocean do not use DIP chips and the tsop boards are not appropriate.
It's quite easy, the chip is a good 5cm long, and you can easily do it with a plain-jane cheap soldering iron (I did). You will need a solder sucker though. As Bad_Ad pointed out, Star Ocean doesn't use a DIP chip, so making a reproduction cart of that game is a little more challenging. You still only need to swap out one of the chips, though the soldering and de-soldering process isn't as easy.
Just put an order in for a 29L3211 eprom chip with the intent of making a Super Mario RPG reproduction cart. The process for making a Star Ocean reproduction is suppose to be the same, but you leave one of the eproms in place and only burn half the ROM to the replacement chip. This will give me the hands-on experience to do a Star Ocean reproduction cart if you're interested Spence.
