How Is Your SNES Gaming Going?

[Gunstar Green]

why is star ocean larger than N64 games?! I never knew SNES games could be so big , wasn't it super expensive to store so much data back then on chips?

It's 48 megabits not megabytes.

That makes Star Ocean 6 megabytes. Still bigger than some N64 games that were only 4 megabytes (the same as Chrono Trigger) but much smaller than stuff like Ocarina of Time which was 32 megabytes. For a quick comparison with a launch title, Super Mario 64 was 8 megabytes or 64 megabits.

Star Ocean also came out a month after the N64 so while impressive for the Super Famicom, and indeed the largest commercially released cartridge on the Super Famicom along with Tales of Phantasia, it wasn't insanely huge for its time.

[Ziggy]

The number one reason I'm interested in the Powerpak, honestly, is that red cartridge shell. It looks so cool. Hell, all of those shells at Retrozone are cool. I just wish the guy behind it did more SNES stuff though. Shame there's little of it there now.

Yeah, I didn't wanna go into more details, since I'm doing a write up and all, but props go to him for the shell. I don't really like or hate the way it looks, but it's made especially for the flash cart. Where as other flash carts have to rob the shell from a real game. Although, he does rob DSP-1 chips for his flash cart, so there's that.

It is a shame he doesn't do more SNES stuff. He has said that he's not really interested in the SNES, and the NES is his real interest. It was nice to see his Star Ocean repro, made from all new parts, where as other "repros" have to use donor carts. From what I gather tho, it didn't sell well so he stopped carrying it. Shame.

It's 48 megabits not megabytes.

That makes Star Ocean 6 megabytes. Still bigger than some N64 games that were only 4 megabytes (the same as Chrono Trigger) but much smaller than stuff like Ocarina of Time which was 32 megabytes. For a quick comparison with a launch title, Super Mario 64 was 8 megabytes or 64 megabits.

Star Ocean also came out a month after the N64 so while impressive for the Super Famicom, and indeed the largest commercially released cartridge on the Super Famicom along with Tales of Phantasia, it wasn't insanely huge for its time.

Yeah, 1MB (megabyte) = 8Mb (megabits).

The official ROM for Star Ocean was 48Mb, but it's graphics were compressed. The cart used the S-DD1 chip, which is a decompressor. Uncompressed, the ROM becomes 96Mb (12MB) which, yeah, is large for a SNES game.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Star Ocean was pretty damn ambitious, as was Tales of Phantasia. I still remember Nintendo Power teasing me with both games, which never got localized.

[Ziggy]

It's definitely a damn shame we didn't get Star Ocean. For a lot of SNES RGPs that didn't make it out of Japan, I can kinda understand. Star Ocean just baffles me tho. Perhaps the cost of a cart (because of the memory used and S-DD1 needed) was heavily considered. It's an excellent game tho. I liked it a lot for it's SciFi plot.

[Gunstar Green]

Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong but I think Star Ocean was something like ¥8500 when it was released. I can't seem to find any solid sources on this but it wouldn't surprise me.

So the cost of the game combined with how late it was in the life of the SNES probably had a lot to do with the lack of a localization.

You've got to sort of admire Wolf Team and since we're talking about Star Ocean, their spun off company tri-Ace. Not everything they did worked but when they had an original idea in their heads they were committed to seeing it through.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Thankfully both games eventually had official English versions - Phantasia on GBA, and Star Ocean on PSP. I still prefer both on Super Famicom tho.

[Ziggy]

So I've been playing Treasure Hunter G, as I've said, but I've also been playing a hack of SMW...

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/58/

It's a hack that replaces pretty much all the graphics in the game. It's kinda fun to play. Even tho the levels are unchanged, some times it feels like a new game.

I've found the following hacks to freeze and lockup on real hardware...

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/66/
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/65/

Which kinda sucks, because they seem like very well done hacks.

After I'm done playing the SMW graphics hack, I wanna try this one:

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1682/

edit: Damn, 3 for 3 today. Toad's World doesn't work right on real hardware.


Good news tho, I finally tried out DKC Boss Blitz and it works great on real hardware!

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1117/

There's one for DKC2 also: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1118/

Although I haven't been able to find the right ROM for that patch.

[Ziggy]

Check this out: http://sadowl.com/snes.html

[SNESdrunk]

Check this out: http://sadowl.com/snes.html

The only one I don't recognize is #27

[ninjainspandex]

Check this out: http://sadowl.com/snes.html

The only one I don't recognize is #27

Desert Strike

I couldn't figure #10, #22, and #23