rabidabid
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If you want the images in the gallery to be a specific size, you can add this to the gallery tag:
<gallery heights="#px" widths="#px">
Where # equals the pixel size you want. Note that this changes the size of all the images in that particular gallery. |
rabidabid
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| Nice finds. I remember seeing in the readme for the fan translation on romhacking.net, the guy mentioned the Sayo-chan tile and names for two possibly unused stages. It's good to see those have finally been unearthed. |
rabidabid
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So, uh... how could I go about posting little Japanese text over big Japanese text?
For example, this is how text is displayed in the game:
And here's an excerpt of unused text from the ROM:
今でこそ#RBS(ほろ)滅#RBE()んじまってがァ
#RBS(かみ)神#RBE()サマ達が#RBS(く)暮#RBE()してた国でよォ
I think, for example, in the beginning, the ほろ is supposed to go above the 滅. |
rabidabid
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I did a little bit of research on OGG converting recently. This page says "Most users agree -q 5 achieves transparency, if the source is the original or lossless." Transparency being the ability to distinguish between the OGG and the original lossless file, I guess. And if you're converting a WAV file recorded from an emulator, yeah, it's lossless.
But chip music doesn't really need a large bitrate to sound high quality. I haven't tested it out, but maybe even q2 would suffice. But anything above q5 is probably overkill as far as site streaming goes.
Also that page is a little outdated I think. It mentions aoTuV being the recommended encoder, but most of its optimizations get merged into (the much more common) oggenc2 apparently? I don't know what Audacity uses though.
I wrote a how-to on the SNESMusic forums about using foobar2000 to convert game music. Maybe that might be helpful. I should probably edit it with bitrate recommendations come to think of it. |
rabidabid
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On the subject of Robocop vs. Terminator, there's also a crash screen. I saw a video of it a while ago on YouTube but can't find it anymore. They loaded a savestate from a different game to get it to appear (Syd of Valis?).
I searched and found this thread about it on GameFAQs though. I guess they just entered the 54 lives code twice?
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/586429-robocop-versus-the-terminator/42746888
I tried the savestate method and got a couple different screens:
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rabidabid
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I always thought River City Ransom's easter egg screen was pretty awesome.
Pachi Com's enormous rant?
HyperZone's partially implemented 3D mode?
Mario in the Sega-developed Astal?
Both Mario and Sonic in Mega Turrican?
NES Galaxian's jukebox thing?
El Viento's enormous test level I spent a long time assembling a map of?  |
rabidabid
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I translated the Morse code in the intro to the NES version of 1943 a little while ago. Video. (The same message plays twice.)
It basically goes like this:
-.-. --.- -.. . -.-. .- .--. -.-. --- -- -.. -. ... -.-
CQ DE CAPCOM DN SK
Calling any station. This is CAPCOM. Down and out.
Just thought it was kinda neat. Dunno if it's really page-worthy though. |
rabidabid
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Those were actually hidden. And I made those pages.
But I guess it can count as a hidden message if it has to be decoded. |
rabidabid
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In the Japanese version of Castlequest, there are spaceships and fish hidden in the overscan area of the title screen. |
rabidabid
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Oh yeah, that was on Johnny Undaunted's old Nekketsu page. The image is broken though.
This image of Kunio is very similar to Kunio's sprite in the intro of the Arcade version of Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball Bu. My guess is that it was supposed to be use for the title screen. I couldn't find the whole image before (only the face), but thanks to NinjaBoyNeo, I now have the full body.
Arcade version, for reference. |
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| Well, there is a villain(ish) character actually named Colonel. You face him after defeating 4 Mavericks, and a character portrait of him does appear on the stage select screen when he's challenging you. But it just appears on its own, not nestled with the other Maverick portraits where it's a stage you can select. It's also a good bit larger than the other Maverick portraits. |
rabidabid
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Yeah I got a couple big boxes of them from when I was a kid. I started digitizing some of the TV recordings a few months ago, but got a bit held up. I was thinking of uploading old commercials and bumpers and stuff to YouTube maybe.
There was one tape I liked that had a bunch of Christmas cartoon specials on it. It had some common stuff like Charlie Brown and Rudolph, and not-so-common stuff like... The Christmas Tree Town? And then I have tapes dedicated to single shows like Animaniacs, Dexter's Lab, Sonic, and Mega Man. And then there's tapes with just random episodes of random shows. Some neat stuff I like going back to once in a long while for nostalgia's sake or something. |
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| Oh yeah, I made a thread about those codes here a long time ago. Apparently they're searchable in the game's code? At least with the first game. |
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| I just use pngout. You can just drag and drop the file onto the .exe and it'll optimize it automatically. |
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Solatorobo
 (there's also another one of these with an _06)
 (this just looks unfinished, but there's a tiny bit of text there)
 |
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| Depends what file format the audio is stored in. Try poking around with jPSXdec. I think I managed to listen to MML2's audio files with that. |
rabidabid
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So here's something curious I discovered a couple years ago and am only now getting around to posting about. Bangai-O Spirits for the DS seems to have a bunch of unused levels in it.
The Japanese version of the game has 160 playable stages, but has 195 files in the "stage" folder. The (slightly reworked) US version has 167 playable stages (8 added, 1 removed) and 213 files in the folder.
Here's a comparison of the files in both folders (Japanese on left, international on right). I'm thinking those "_ply" files added to the international version are replay files, which also can't be viewed in the final game. Also the game crashes when you try to load them as a stage. So I dunno what to do with those or how to work with them.
Anyway I managed to boot into some stages. At a glance, it seems a bunch of unused stages are seemingly clones of existing stages, but that's just going by the map screen. I haven't actually gone in and compared like enemy layouts or something. But here's a few neat things.
This is "v_jump_stg" (if I remember right). It looks like an early, unfinished version of one of the official DLC stages offered by Treasure on their site. I know there's a few more V Jump stages in there, so there may be other DLC stages too.
This is "test_stg" which seems to look the same as the final tutorial stage. The name here is different from the one that tutorial stage has in the Japanese version though. A translation might be helpful.
 
Here's a completely unused stage based on Galaga. They even got the score panel! The file name is "charaga" and the stage name is キャラが. There are a handful of stages in the game based off classic games (like Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros.) so this one would have been right at home. But it might have been removed for being too easy or simplistic. (You basically just gotta charge your EX shot and the cannons should be destroyed in a single blast).
Anyway I got these to appear by swapping file names. But it's a little tedious, especially for 200+ stages. I could maybe use a stage modifier code. Something that replaces a stage in the stage select with a different one. But it's not that bad and I'm totally willing to power through it. I already looked through the first ~20 files this way.
Also if these stages can be made selectable, they can potentially be loaded into the game's stage editor, saved a a custom stage, then offered for download through the game's sound load feature. Well, sound files from the US version can't be loaded into the Japanese version though (but the opposite will work). But players would be able to download and play them without any hacking involved. So that would be pretty neat.
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rabidabid
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Okay well I slogged my way through all 200+ files...
Most of the unused stages seem to be early/alternative versions of existing stages. But there are a few unique ones.
matenrou_stg ( まてんろう )
This one's kinda tricky cause you gotta wind your way thru the beginning and blow up 3 target buildings and pass thru the gate before the explosive trail catches up and blocks the exit. But there are also explosives behind all the buildings which slow you down and you seriously can't make a mistake.
 
nakai30_BlackSquare
nakai31_BlockWorld
(No names for these)
posurassyu_stg ( ぽすらっしゅ )
You basically gotta take out room after room full of enemies before the explosive trail ends up blocking your exit.
Also I dug up this unused "mario" themed background and, uh... hmm... |
rabidabid
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I have no idea what it is or why it's there. Sure is creepy though.
The background looks really basic so it must've been scrapped early or made as an in-joke. I mean there is a Super Mario Bros. themed stage, but I dunno. Having a unique background for a single stage would be kinda odd... or maybe they didn't wanna draw too many similarities. |
rabidabid
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So a few days ago I was attempting to map the stages that use the placeholder tiles. Though I didn't get all that far since the whole levels can't be seen due to lack of mobility. But from what I could put together the level layouts seem nearly identical to the final versions.
As a preview, here's what I got for Spike Rosered so far, since it's the most complete. But the secret room near the end with the armor part can't be reached so I wasn't able to finish it. The platform with the heart piece was moved slightly and the boss room was extended a bit.
I guess it'd be helpful if there were some debugging features like in the Rockman 8 protos (specifically the free movement one). |
