Jul -- The Cutting Room Floor: NES and SMS Roms

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Posted on 10-01-19 02:01:35 PM

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044 05.10.2337

It's pretty much a game-by-game basis. Some changes are noticed and documented just by playing the game (graphical changes, for example), while others might be figured out after comparing the bytecode in the roms against each other, for mechanics tweaks or debug menu codes and such. For the people who contribute to TCRF, the articles are made after they look into the revisions and prototypes themselves and document it. If an article for a game hasn't been made, and revisions do exist, it just means nobody's looked into it yet, or at least haven't uploaded their findings.

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Mr.Tickles
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Posted on 10-01-19 05:54:22 PM

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Originally posted by NSSFan
Hi Guys,

Im new here and i have an important question i have a complete library of NES and SMS Roms and many of these games have multiple revisions like Rev 1 or Rev 2 and there are also games that have separate versions for different regions like Japan, North America and Europe.

I found this website The Cutting Room Floor by accident because i was looking for revision changes betweens roms and it is very helpful but how did you guys find out about all these information changes between roms?

My question is simply how can i find or see what they exactly changed between the revisions of a particular game or what is different between regional versions of a game?

If you have the GoodRoms archive of every NES/SNES rom that ever existed then the naming is not very consistent in that archive.

Generally v1.01 type stuff or revision 1 or 2 is some kind of bug fix that went out with a second printing of cartridges. Since these were read-only memory the companies could only recall and destroy, they couldn't issue 50 gigabyte release-day patches like Fallout 76.

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Posted on 10-10-19 03:18:14 AM

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You can use something like WinMerge to open two ROMs side by side and compare the raw data.

KingMike
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Posted on 10-10-19 02:43:52 PM

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Originally posted by Mr.Tickles

Generally v1.01 type stuff or revision 1 or 2 is some kind of bug fix that went out with a second printing of cartridges. Since these were read-only memory the companies could only recall and destroy, they couldn't issue 50 gigabyte release-day patches like Fallout 76.

I think if they recall a game, it would have to be a REAL serious issue.

I know Howard Philips has responded to the rumor Nintendo destroyed most copies of Stadium Events by saying that doesn't sound very economical? realistic?. Something along those lines.

Something along the lines of the WTC version of Spiderman... uh, 2, was? for the PS1? That was scheduled to release like a week after 9/11 but had to be recalled to print a less timing-sensitive version. That is how extreme a situation a recall would have to be.

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Posted on 11-03-19 05:05:31 PM

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Usually they don't recall unless it's a serious bug; they'll just quietly start manufacturing a new version. Eg Ocarina of Time had 3 versions on cartridge; the earliest is still perfectly playable, but the revisions fix some bugs and change some graphics/music that people were offended by.

Comparing the raw binary can tell you what to look at for changes, but usually that's only a starting point. Unless it's immediately obvious (the changed data is some text or graphic that you can immediately recognize), you'd have to examine the code to find what those changes actually do. Sometimes they don't even do anything!

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