Sound Card Replicas - Attack of the Hardware Clones

Since 2005, vintage computing PC hardware, especially the hardware focused on games has increasingly risen in price.  Not too long ago, you could buy an Adlib card for $30.  Now they can go for five times that. Some of these cards are sufficiently simple that single hobbyists can design a PCB and create a board that works like the original, and in some cases even better than the original.  Here are the efforts to reproduce distinctive sound cards from various vintage computer sources.

Ad Lib Music Synthesizer Card Clone :

There was nothing proprietary about the Ad Lib MSC card, the OPL2 YM-3812 sound chip and its YM3014 DAC were readily available from Yamaha.  The rest of the board was populated with standard logic chips, a pre-amplifier and an amplifier.  Ad Lib Inc. scratched off the part number of the Yamaha chips, but once their identity was known, anyone with some spare time and a multimeter could design a clone PCB.  Several clones were made back-in-the-day, but they are now as hard to find as a genuine Ad Lib Inc. made card. In 2012, VCF forum contributor Sergey Malinov did just that, he designed a smaller 8-bit ISA card and it works just like the original.  It also sounds like the original because he used the original amplifier circuit.  It even has a volume dial.  The 1987 revision of the real Adlib card used a 1/4" phono jack, but the later 1990 Adlib revision and this board use a 3/8" mini-jack.  You can find all the information you need, and a link to the board design, here :

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?33100-ISA-OPL2-Card

Another individual has also cloned the Ad Lib card, but this individual sought not just to recreate the functionality but to recreate the board itself, including the Ad Lib logo.  True Ad Lib cards are valuable, but this design has the potential to defraud a collector given how close it is :

http://tubetime.us/

Roland MIF-IPC-A Clones :

A Roland Midi Processing Unit (MPU) 401 was originally contained in a small metal box.  It was designed to connect with any 8-bit or better home computer which could provide the addressing and data lines and IRQ it required.  Roland sold interface cards for various computers, including the Apple II, Commodore 64 (cartridge) and IBM PC.  All the electronics necessary for the interface was contained in the external box including a microcontroller, ROM and RAM, a bus interface chip and DIN connectors for MIDI cables. Replicating the MPU-401 circuitry would be no mean feat.  The interface cards consisted only of a few standard logic chips to route the necessary signals from the computer.

The MPU-401 boxes are often found without an interface card, and without an interface card they are useless.  Roland originally offered the MIF-IPC interface card for IBM PCs and XTs.  The original MIF-IPC card proved unreliable in AT and faster machines, so Roland issued the cost-reduced MIF-IPC-A, which works in any PC.  It consists of four standard logic chips and a DB-25 connector on an 8-bit ISA card.  Two cards were made, one from a U.S./German source (Bryce) and another from a Dutch source (n1mr0d), have been made.  The details are here :

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38048

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?57231-Cloning-an-MIF-ISA-Card

I am not sure whether the U.S./German clone is currently available, but it allows you to easily change the IRQ and the I/O address lines.  The Dutch clone is currently available on ebay and allows for easier changing of the I/O port.

James Pearce from VCF and lo-tech.co.uk has designed a clone card called the MIF-IPC-B.  This card can be built cheaply as it uses only through-hole parts.  It adds useful features to the MIF-IPC-A design, namely selectable IRQ and I/O port selections.  It is also compatible in an IBM PC/XT's Slot 8.  It fixes the design flaw on the MIF-IPC-A card that leaves unused gates on the 74LS04 floating.  It even replicates the logic differences between the MIF-IPC/IF-MIDI and the MIF-IPC-A cards, although I have never read or experienced anything to suggest that the MIF-IPC-A is unreliable in an IBM PC or XT.  Still, the  :

https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/product/mif-ipc-b-pcb/

Music Quest PC MIDI Card Clone :

There has been an even more promising development on the MPU-401 clone front.  Recently (as of September, 2015) VOGONS user Keropi made a full clone of the Music Quest PC MIDI 100% compatible MPU-401 card.  This card contains all the essential intelligent MIDI capabilities of the Roland MPU-401, but does not require a breakout box.  In other words, unlike the MIF-IPC-A clones, you do not need to supply anything to connect it to your MT-32 or other MIDI module.  All circuitry is on the card, only an DE-9 to MIDI adapter is required for MIDI In and MIDI Out.  The adapter is included with the card.  The clone is fully compatible with games requiring intelligent (normal) MPU-401 capabilities.  Details here :

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=43875&hilit=mpu+401+clone

Innovation SSI-2001 Clone :

I have already discussed this remarkable board elsewhere.  I own one and can heartily recommend it, assuming batches are still being made : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/01/sid-and-dos-unlikely-but-true-bedfellows.html

You can probably get a card with an 8580 SID, but if you want a 6581 you will have to provide it yourself. Information on how to obtain a card can be found here :

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=27045

Creative Game Blaster Clone Prototype :

All the clones that have been made available for purchase or replication have been discussed above.  For my next discussions, I will identify cards which have had working prototypes made.  The principal difficulty in implementing a Game Blaster clone is that for a long time, the CT-1302 chip on the real board acted like a black box.  Now that we know what it does and that all it really does is implement a simple autodetection scheme, the scheme has been replicated with standard logic chips.  A work in progress Russian clone has come up with some very impressive results so far :

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?47363-Creative-Music-System-(CMS)-Game-Blaster-compatible-replica

True Game Blaster cards sell for $200-$300 these days, but are desirable especially for the nine or so games that require a true Game Blaster card.

I should also mention here for completeness sake the successful efforts to replicate the PAL of the Sound Blaster 2.0 to allow for Game Blaster functionality.  The details can be found here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2012/10/all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about.html

Gravis Ultrasound Plug-N-Play (GUS PnP) Clone Discussion :

This is a very ambitious project because the main AMD/Interwave chip is a surface mount chip with many pins and small spacing between them.  While the Interwave chip does not require RAM to function, its GUS emulation does not work without at least 512KB of RAM.  The more advanced features of the Interwave chip can utilize up to 16MB of RAM.  The real GUS PnP only supported 8MB of RAM, but that was more than sufficient for GUS Classic compatibility.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=42431

As of this writing, the prototype is still in the paper stage, so I do not deem it a real prototype until someone gets a real custom board working.  The Interwave-based GUS PnP can play virtually all classic GUS-supporting games, although you may need a utility or special driver for some.  This card should be able to offer the same level of compatibility.  On the other hand, the advanced GUS PNP features went unsupported in DOS and the card was treated somewhat generically by Windows 95 outside Gravis' applications.  GUS cards of any sort have always been pricey and hard to find, so this board should be welcomed by many gamers and fans of old-skool demos that used the GUS.

Tandy 1000 3-Voice Sound Card Discussion :

The idea behind this board is to implement a Tandy 3-voice sound chip at I/O C0-C7 for 8-bit XT systems and and probably 1E0-1E7 for 16-bit AT systems.  Unfortunately, AT systems have a 2nd DMA controller at C0-C7, so the chip may not work there.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=42521

Games must write directly to the I/O ports to make sound come out of this chip.  Some games will refuse to play Tandy music or sound effects unless they detect a Tandy through its BIOS signature or its unique graphics adapter.  This card will not work with every game, but it will work with many, many classics that do not care about the BIOS signature or the graphics.  James Pearce has committed to making a prototype, but none has yet been completed.  Unfortunately, the DAC added in the Tandy 1000 TL and SL and later computers used a Tandy-proprietary PSSJ chip, so without a source for those this board will be stuck with a TI SN76489 (the extra feature of the TI SN 76496 is not required).  The NCR 7496 clone is preferable for Tandy 1000s but is virtually impossible to source.

Covox Sound Master Clone Discussion :

This is the discussion I support the most because it is the only one of these projects for which I do not own the original card or a reasonable substitute.  Like the Innovation SSI-2001, there are only two original cards known to still exist.  Cloning this card is more difficult than the Innovation for two reasons.  First, the main sound chip is more difficult to source.  Second, this card has a PAL chip on it that needs to be decoded.  Decoding PAL chips has been done before, but it requires a lot of work and a fair amount of deduction.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=40512

A Good Retro Display - 19" Sylvania CRT

The System and its TV (no, there is not an ultra-rare Stadium Events in my NES)

Today, most people see CRTs are little more than space-hogging junk that they have to pay a fee to get taken away.  During a move, I happened to acquire a 19" TV and found it was excellent for classic video game consoles.  In this post I will give my opinion as to why it is so great.

The TV set in question is the Sylvania 19" SRT2119A Color Television.  This TV set is bare-bones and obviously intended for a bedroom, not a living room. The SRT2113A is its otherwise-identical 13" version.  It uses black matte plastic throughout, has six buttons on the front (power, 2x channel and volume, menu), a headphone jack and a mono speaker.  It also has a mono-composite AV input on the front and a coaxial RF screw for an antenna or a cable wire in the back.  The tube is curved but the viewable shape is fairly squarish.  If you look behind the back, you can see a fairly deep conical protrusion out the back that encloses the neck of the picture tube.  

The included remote is very basic, containing only 22 buttons.  One of those buttons is the aptly named TV/GAME button, which switches from the coaxial RF connection (TV) to the composite AV connection (GAME).  This remote is not really replaceable with a generic universal TV remote, I tried using my cable remote for all the Sylvania/Funai codes I could find and it did not work.  Unfortunately, the remote is the only way to operate the TV/GAME input switch.  Replacement remotes are available online, as is the Owner's Manual.  

The menus are easy to navigate.  When menu is pressed, the channel buttons select options and the volume buttons change the option.  The standard picture selection options are available, brightness, tint, contrast and color.  Sharpness is mysteriously absent.  The "GAME MODE" acts to remember a particular set of settings.  Many video games may benefit from boosting the brightness signal whereas TV or Cable programs and DVDs/VCRs may look washed out.  

The TV set also supports Spanish menu choices, V-chip, closed captioning and a sleep timer.  It will shut itself off if it detects no valid video signal (except when set to display the composite AV input) after 15 minutes and will also mute the numbered channels when they are displaying static.  It will tune itself to VHF channels 2-13 and UHF channels 14-69.  It is also "cable ready", so it will tune itself to the standard 125 cable channels.  Included in these cable channels is coverage in the frequency spectrum corresponding to Japanese channels 1 & 2, which RF only Japanese consoles use.  An original Famicom will be received on this TV, but you have to add the appropriate channels, 95 and 96 manually.  Channel 96 looks much sharper than 95, probably because of the foreign RF US signals (from the Famicom's perspective). Also, it is best to turn the TV off or the input to GAME when switching RF input channels.  Otherwise you may only see Black and White graphics and hear horrible and loud white noise.  

Opening the tube can be done very easily.  Remove the screws and then the chassis pulls right off.  The circuit board is very streamlined, so streamlined in fact that I could find no potentiometers to adjust.  Nor could I find adjustment potentiometers for the color guns on the tube's neck.  The only adjustments can be made to the flyback transformer, but there is no need to do that typically.  The main PCB can be pulled out from the tube housing for easy servicing. 

The speaker does its job adequately within its limits.  The headphone jack supports mono output only.  There is an audible and annoying buzz when this TV is turned on and nothing is coming from the speaker.  This may be due to the budget nature of this set or an aging filtering capacitor that should be replaced.   

If I may digress for a moment, back in the late 1980s, Nintendo partnered with Sharp to manufacture a TV set with a built-in Famicom and later a built-in NES.  This is the Sharp C1 TV, and it had a 19" viewable screen.  It was highly regarded for its picture quality because it used an internal composite connection.  This was unusual at the time, most NESes were hooked up using the included RF switchbox.  TVs with composite AV inputs were far from ubiquitous in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Screenshots taken for magazines often would point their camera to one of these Sharp screens because of the improved picture quality (Sharp lived up to its name here), especially in Japan where the original standalone Famicom was RF only.  Essentially for the time the Sharp TV was as close to the canonical NES or Famicom display as you could get.  The Sylvania TV can produce a similarly bright and sharp picture though its composite connector. Newer CRT TVs like the Sylvania may be a better and certainly a cheaper option compared to the Sharp because CRTs tend to age poorly.

One of the Sharp's excellent but rarely mentioned qualities was its very squarish picture viewing area.  TVs have gradually evolved from spherical viewing areas to rectangular viewing areas.  The earliest TVs were like looking through a porthole, then a porthole with a straight top and bottom and then gradually sets gave more defined corners, flatter tubes and finally the perfect right angle corners of late model CRTs, computer monitors and LCDs.  Because the corners of the Sharp TV were relatively straight instead of curved as seen on many TV sets, you could see more video material in the corners.  Some games like Castlevania use those corners, which will be totally or partially masked off in TVs with more rounded features.  This Sylvania TV does almost as good a job as the Sharp TV in showing you the full NES image, the corners are just a bit more rounded.

Not all CRTs are best for classic gaming consoles.  I have read that some late CRTs with HD (1080i at best) support convert 240p material into 480i.  These widescreen HD CRTs may not work with light guns.  I have a Toshiba with a flat tube and it has some very odd distortion with classic consoles.  Often on the edges you can see the bleed from the border color, which should not be visible.  Due to the odd geometry (these tubes are not truly flat) the border often can be seen on the bottom portion of the screen, making the screen image look trapezoidal.  Perhaps because of the odd geometry or its 3 line digital comb filter, this Toshiba TV has trouble with games that rely on precise CRT timing.  Micro Machines is an excellent example of this issue, but many other Codemasters/Camerica games can exhibit bendy rasters..  Both in the menus and in game the raster will get bendy at places.  On the Sylvania TV, the raster is perfectly stable.  In addition, the baseball game on the Quatro Sports cart and the Linus Spacehead game on the Quatro Adventure cart show a vertical rolling screen on my Toshiba TV at times but a stable screen on my Sylvania.

The Sylvania display has its limits.  It only supports mono sound, so systems with stereo sound support, which includes all fourth generation and later consoles, will not show their true aural potential.  Consoles that can support more advanced video output modes, such as RGB, S-Video and Component Video, will not look their best.  Finally, 19" is not everyone's idea of an ideal size.  High end CRTs generally came in sizes up to 36" and sometimes even 40".  People with fond memories of large screen classic gaming will need to look for something larger.

In addition to the utter failure of the Zapper or R.O.B. or anything else that relies on the specific optical properties of a CRT screen working with an LCD screen, RF and composite video game signals look terrible on LCD screens.  Even a Framemeister cannot really do much here, the source of the signal is just too compromised.  The NES's signal is especially unsuited to the perfect digital flat-screens of today.  It's video signal is a bit gritty and what should be straight vertical lines come across as rather ragged with a three-line stairstep pattern. The lack of razor-sharp definition in a CRT can hide some of these flaws and turn others into an asset (dithering).

The final good thing about the Sylvania and TVs like it is that the can often be acquired for cheap to nothing.  People are only too happy to give these TVs away.  Thrift stores generally sell them for $5 or less.  You can find them if you are willing to dumpster dive or take TVs left on the side of the street.  I know of no other way you can get great image quality with full compatibility for classic video game systems so cheaply.

Fun with the Framemeister

If you want to run your classic consoles on a modern flat screen HD TV, you probably will not like what you see if you connect the console's video output directly to the TV.  In fact, if you have a 4K TV like mine, you may not see anything at all!  Classic consoles were designed to display on CRTs, but if you do not have a CRT, you need this :

This is the Micomsoft XRGB-mini Framemeister.  As the photo indicates, it is an upscaler.  It is designed to upscale the video image of classic consoles from 240p and 480i/p to HD resolutions like 720p and 1080p.  It and the other products Micomsoft produces are unique because they are the only video scalers designed to work with classic video game consoles.  This comes at a steep price, the unit retails for just over $300 USD.  A friend lent me a unit to test, so here I will give my impressions of the unit.

The Framemeister outputs only via HDMI with a standard cable.  It has multiple inputs, composite video, S-video, analog RGB, D-Terminal (carries component video, adapters available to use RCA-style component cables) and two HDMI.  In addition to the buttons, it comes with a remote that makes selecting options from the on-screen menu much easier.  The Framemeister requires you to select the input you are going to use, and the remote has a button for each input.  If you do not select the correct signal, you will see nothing.  

Micomsoft a Japanese company, and while the company's page is not English-friendly, there is a large amount of information out there to help the new user out on various forums.  The firmware is upgradeable with a micro-SD card.  In addition, the micro-SD card can store the user's image settings, but the unit itself will remember stored settings.

With analog video, RGB (15.75kHz horizontal scan rate, 240p) the Framemeister provides the best possible output quality available today.  Alternatively, component video also provides nearly identical video output quality but also supports 480p whereas RGB is limited to 480i.  A third alternative is VGA, which is essentially 480p or better RGB (31.5kHz horizontal scan rate).  Below this tier is S-Video, then comes composite video and finally RF modulation.  

The RGB input uses a mini-DIN 9 connector, and Micomsoft provides a mini-DIN 9 to JP-21 adapter with the Framemeister unit.  Higher end European TVs had a SCART connector to accept an RGB signal and Japanese TVs used a physically identical but electrically incompatible JP-21 connector to do the same.  Micomsoft ships a Japanese JP-21 adapter, but there are European SCART adapters.  If you are using the Japanese SNES RGB cable, you need the JP-21 adapter, and if you use the European SNES RGB cable, you need a SCART adapter.  

The Framemeister can do a superb job upscaling RGB video to HDTVs.  It does not seem to matter if your RGB output is using composite sync or composite video for the sync signals, the device supports both.  In fact, you can approach the picture quality that you would get if you were displaying the output from an emulator on the screen.  The unit can output to standard HDMI resolutions like 720p, 1080i or 1080p.  I obviously recommend using a progressive resolution where possible.  It also supports DVI computer monitor resolutions if the display is DVI capable (and most are).  Here is the table in English of all the options available :

http://www.micomsoft.co.jp/XRGB-mini_Ver200_OSD_E.pdf

With S-Video, my SNES looked almost as good as the RGB output.  With composite video the image was nowhere near the quality of either.  Composite video is far, far more easier on the eyes on a CRT than any LCD, even as upscaled by the Framemeister.  I do not have a D-Terminal to Component adapter, but my HDTVs still support component input, so I cannot tell whether the Framemeister would be an improvement.  However, I doubt my TVs support 240p over component video, which is technically outside the standard.

Other than image quality, the other reason to consider a Framemeister is to decrease the lag involved in upscaling and processing the low-resolution console video to HD video.  At a 60Hz refresh rate, a console is generating frames every 16.66 milliseconds. It has been stated that the Framemeister adds 1 frame or 20 milliseconds of lag compared to the unprocessed output (i.e. being connected to a CRT).   TVs upscale and process all video to its native resolution before displaying it, so in this regard the Framemesiter is superior to just about any TV.  LCD TVs tend to have input processing delays of tens of milliseconds, and some sets can go over 100 milliseconds.  While one to three frames of lag may be imperceptible, how about five or ten?  By outputting to the panel's native resolution, one major source of lag is eliminated.   

I took some photos of the screen with my camera to give some idea of the differing picture quality between the inputs of the Framemeister and my TV's native input scaling.  My TV is an HDTV from 2008 that supports 1080p and has an S-Video and Composite input.  The SNES and the PC Engine Duo are the only RGB-capable consoles for which I have RGB cables.  The SNES almost always outputs 256 horizontal pixels.  The Turbo Duo usually outputs 256 horizontal pixels but many games use a 288, 320 or 336 horizontal pixel mode.  Here are the photos :

TurboGrafx-16 Bonk's Adventure - Composite Video Native TV Scaling

TurboGrafx-16 Bonk's Adventure - Composite Video Framemeister Scaling

TurboGrafx-16 Bonk's Adventure - RGB Video Framemeister Scaling

SNES Super Mario World - Composite Video Native TV Scaling

SNES Super Mario World - Composite Video Framemeister Scaling

SNES mini Super Mario World - RGB Video Framemeister Scaling

SNES Super Mario World - RGB Video Framemeister Scaling

SNES Super Mario World - S-Video Native TV Scaling

SNES Super Mario World - S-Video Framemeister Scaling

TurboGrafx-16 Ys Book I & II Composite Video Framemeister Scaling

TurboGrafx-16 Ys Book I & II RGB Video Framemeister Scaling

TurboGrafx-16 Ys Book I & II Composite Video Native TV Scaling

When it comes to SNES video quality there are generally the early consoles, which have one CPU and two PPU and APU chips, and the later consoles, which have a combined CPU and PPU chip and a single APU chip.  The latter are known as the 1-chip SNES, and were introduced in the last batches of the original SNES case.  When Nintendo released the SNES mini (a.k.a. SNESjr., SNS-101), this 1-chip design was always used. While the original case 1-chip SNESes still include RGB and S-Video output, the SNESjr. lacks the lines and circuitry for both.  The capability is still present in the video encoder, but requires an amplifier between the encoder and the Multi AV output pins.   Considering the tendencies of SNES consoles to exhibit the white line issue, using an amplifier is probably a good idea if you are going for the ultimate in image quality.  

The Framemeister is a jack-off-all-trades device.  For the NES, it is a great choice if you have a NESRGB mod.  The mod board costs about $70, more if you have a Top Loader or a Famicom.  Installing it is no small task because you have to desolder the PPU without destroying it or the pads and traces on the NES or Famicom PCB.  Of course, if you want to shell out the big $$$, you can get a Super 8-bit or someone to mod it for you.  However, for the most lag free and lossless video and audio, there is an HDMI kit that is nearly complete from Kevtris and GameTech.  This kit has lag that will be measured in scanlines, not frames.  HDMI kits may give the best video quality available, being tweaked to specific consoles, but a Framemeister will be cheaper than modding multiple consoles and supports just about any console or home computer that outputs a pure RGB analog signal.  It is probably the best overall choice if you don't have or want a CRT.

One important thing to note is that the HD resolutions of choice, 720p and 1080p, are not necessarily ideal for retro consoles if you want razor sharp pixels or to have all pixels the same size.  There are very few large 720p panels, and many of them may actually be 768 pixel panels that stretch everything.  Many of the best panels are plasmas, which you should not use with video games due to burn-in.  720 lines is an excellent resolution for NTSC retro consoles, all of which output 240 lines, even if some of those lines only show a border color.  1080 is not an ideal resolution.  Some pixels will take up more lines than others.  The best solution is to output a 960 line image and put up with borders.  Many TVs will simply stretch everything.  The Framemeister does not seem to allow for total user control over the horizontal and vertical scaling.  

SNES Flash Carts : SD2SNES vs. SNES PowerPak

Like most retro game consoles, the SNES has been blessed with a few flash carts.  The first great flash cart was the SNES PowerPak, released in 2009.  The second great flash cart is the Super Everdrive, released in 2010.  The third great flash cart is the SD2SNES, released in 2012.  All cartridges are expensive at $145.00, $79.00 and $195.00, respectively, but support hundreds of SNES games via compact flash (PowerPak) or SD card (SD2SNES).  In this post, I will talk about the pros and cons of each.

SNES PowerPak

The SNES PowerPak is the oldest cartridge, released in 2009, and it loads games via Compact Flash. Compact Flash cards are becoming increasingly hard to find and the connector is made up of 44 thin pins that can bend and break.  The default menu for the SNES PowerPak looks almost exactly like the NES PowerPak, although the font is thinner and ugly. The official combined NES and SNES PowerPak mappers (1.35b) from bunnyboy were last updated in October, 2010.  The PowerPak can be upgraded with a DSP-1 chip from a real SNES cartridge to play games supporting that chip like Super Mario Kart and (sometimes) Pilotwings.

The SNES PowerPak is RAM based, allowing for very fast loading of games.  CF card support can be a tad finicky, so you may need to turn the DMA mode off if games are not loading.  This makes loading games a little slower, but still faster than a flash memory-based cart like the Super Everdrive.  CF cards must be formatted for FAT16 or FAT32, which generally allows card support for up to 32GB in size.  Originally the SNES PowerPak did not work on an SNES mini/jr., but that problem has long been solved with newer mappers.

The menu allows for only about 28 characters on each line, which is not sufficient for long filenames.  The firmware of the SNES PowerPak is not designed to be user upgradeable.  The SNES does support high resolution interlaced modes, and a NESDEV forum contributor named Ramsis made custom firmware and mappers that double the number of characters per line for the menu as well as allow for color backgrounds whereas the official background was always black.  This requires a firmware update, which ideally should be performed by a flash programmer.  Sometimes the flash chip in the PowerPak is soldered instead of socketed, making that option unfeasible for most.  Ramsis's firmware can be updated by the PowerPak itself if you are willing to risk a slight possibility of bricking the device.  I did it with mine and had no problems.  The current stable version is v3.00 and includes an SPC player for playing back SNES chiptunes.  Although the firmware requires v1.02 of the original firmware, I was able to update my card with v1.01 firmware.

The SNES PowerPak does not sort ROMs or directories, you need a file sort utility like File Sort for Windows.  It does support up to five Game Genie codes and you can load them from a text file.  It does not support automatic save file creation for battery backed games and you must push reset before turning off the system to keep your save game.  There are no save state mappers for the SNES PowerPak.  Save states may not really be possible with the SNES because the cartridge may not be able to save the state of the SPC-700 audio coprocessor.

The PowerPak does not support any special chips via its FPGA, so no Super FX 1 or 2, the SA-1, CX-4, OBC-1, S-RTC, ST010, ST011, ST018, SDD-1 or SPC7110 support.  Forget about anything that would require Satellaview or Super Game Boy hardware.  The controller chip simply does not have enough logic to emulate any of these chips.  In theory it does support the DSP-2, 3 or 4, but you would have to take the appropriate chip out of a cartridge and install it in the SNES PowerPak.  As only one game uses each chip, this is impracticable, you might as well just save the cartridge.

I have had trouble with a few games, even as of the latest mappers, official or Ramsis.  Ys III: Wanderers from Ys and Secret of Evermore will run but not save a valid save file or load from one.  This is because they use unusual areas of the memory map to write their save game information and the PowerPak does not support this.  The Super EverDrive has the same issue with Ys III but apparently not with Secret of Evermore.  I have often had trouble with Pilotwings, regardless of version it frequently just does not want to load.  Using a small (256MB or so) CF card helps.  My main CF card is 4GB.

Even though the original ROM uses the S-DD1 compression chip, the SNES PowerPak or SD2SNES will run a hacked version Star Ocean.  Start with the original Japanese ROM.  This ROM can be translated into English with the DeJap translation.  Then use the Star Ocean no S-DD1/96Mbit hack to decompress the ROM.  Finally, change the following bytes in the hacked ROM with a hex editor :

000081D5 from 32 to 31
000081D6 from 45 to 02
00A081D5 from 32 to 31
00A081D6 from 45 to 02

This will tell the flash cart that the game has a battery backed save feature, otherwise you won't be able to save games.  This appears to be necessary only for the SNES PowerPak.

SD2SNES

The SD2SNES by ikari loads games by an SD, SDHC or SDXC card.  It addresses several weaknesses of the SNES PowerPak.  First, it has a battery on the cartridge for holding the contents of save memory.  This means you will not lose your save game if you forget to press reset before turning the game off.  However, because some games use their save memory as work memory, the SD2SNES will only save every 15-20 seconds for those games.  If the red (write) LED is constantly on, then you should wait or hold the reset button until all three LEDs are on before turning off the power.

Another improvement over the Super Everdrive is that the cart will automatically create new files for battery backed up save games.  The .srm extension is used for SNES save game files whether on the SNES PowerPak or SD2SNES or Super Everdrive, and it is just a memory dump of the emulated cartridge RAM.  The SD2SNES now saves .srm files to a common \SAVE folder just like the SNES PowerPak.

Second, the SD2SNES has sufficient power to emulate several of the enhancement chips.  It currently supports DSP1, 2, 3 & 4, OBC-1, Cx4, ST-010, S-RTC, OBC1 and a portion of the Satellaview.  It supports a real time clock even outside special chip support, so your SNES can tell you the correct time when you are using the menu and show accurate timestamps for modified files.  For certain chips, the following ROMs are required as of the latest firmware : dsp1.bin, dsp1b.bin, dsp2.bin, dsp3.bin, dsp4.bin, st0010.bin.  They used to be used by bsnes, but at some point bsnes/higan required the .rom files, which go from first byte to last instead of last to first, or the other way around.  The BS-X BIOS will also be required for running Bandai Satellaview games.  Excluding the Satellaview games, there are 57 licensed SNES cartridges that the SD2SNES cannot yet replace, most using the SA-1 or Super FX chips.  Support for at least the latter may come.  Sufami Turbo games will not work either.

Third, the SD2SNES will sort files and directories automatically if you set the appropriate option in the menu.  It loads games extremely quickly and will load games up to 16MB in size.  The SD card can be formatted for FAT16 or FAT32, and 64GB cards are supported.  You will need a third party partitioning tool if you are using modern Windows, which only formats FAT32 partitions up to 32GB.  Almost all SNES games are no more than 4MB.  The menu uses a high resolution mode to allow for longer file names.  If you leave the cursor on a file name, the complete name will scroll across the screen.  You can also see the CPU/PPU1/PPU2 revision in the main menu.

The latest official firmware is 0.1.7b.  This firmware officially adds cheat support.  There are in-game button combinations or hooks that will allow you to reset the game, return to the SD2SNES menu, kill the in-game cheat routines temporarily or permanently.  In the official release there are menu items to disable this.  I had to kill the in-game cheat routines in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past otherwise the top of the screen would flicker when accessing the inventory.  The Super Star Wars games would not allow a proper pause with the cheat routines enabled.  There is an SPC player implemented in the SD2SNES firmware and it supports up to 6 Game Genie (ROM) cheat codes and 24 Pro Action Replay (RAM) cheat codes loaded from a text file.

I had no trouble loading a saved game in Ys III: Wanderers from Ys or Secret of Evermore and did not have trouble with Pilotwings as I did on my SNES PowerPak.  It also can automatically patch NTSC games to run on PAL consoles and vice versa to avoid the dreaded "Your game is not intended for this region" screens.  This allows you to run an unmodified Terranigma ROM, which was only released in English in PAL territories, without breaking out your hex editor or having to install a CIC bypass switch.

The boundary pushing feature of the SD2SNES is its support for the MSU-1 coprocessor.  The MSU-1 was originally implemented in software in bsnes/higan, and th SD2SNES includes a hardware version.  It essentially gives you access to 4GB (yes, I mean Gigabytes) of data for a ROM file.

The MSU-1 can play CD-Audio quality audio or Full Motion Video.  Several games like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger and Mega Man X & X3 and Rock n' Roll Racing have been modified to play high quality versions of their original music.  Using these MSU-1 game hacks is pretty easy.  Once you patch the main ROM, you convert wav files into the pcm format and name your ROM file .msu and your audio files .pcm and stick them in the same folder.  Essentially this would give you a taste of what the SNES CD Addon would have sounded like had it been released.

In addition to the hacks, the LaserDisc game Road Blaster (a.k.a. Road Avengers) has been ported to run on the MSU-1 as Super Road Blaster.  This game weighs in at a hefty 790MB.  Like all Laserdisc games it relies on timed input from the player at designated points while the video plays.  I have played the port and the game is pretty responsive to the controller for a LaserDisc game.

One very important feature of the SD2SNES is that it does not degrade the video quality like the SNES PowerPak.  Similar to the jailbar issue of the NES PowerPak, the SNES PowerPak will severely amplify the white line of the SNES console.  It will also show more prominent jailbars with certain color patterns.  The opening screens for Final Fantasy III are excellent examples where almost all SNES consoles will show jailbars.  The SD2SNES does not seem to display any more interference than a regular cartridge.  It also may draw less power than the SNES PowerPak.

Currently, the SD2SNES can play nine games that the Super Everdrive cannot play.  While the SD2SNES is expensive, consider that a Mega Man X3 cartridge alone goes for almost its price.  You can play Mega Man X2 and X3 with this cartridge and will save on having to buy the originals.

Finally, the SD2SNES loads ROMs more quickly than the SNES EverDrive.  Loading a large game like Star Ocean took about 3 seconds.  Most SNES games are 4MB or less, so they will load instantaneously.  The Super EverDrive is no slouch here either if the game has already been written to the flash,  but the near instant loading times of the SD2SNES are really something to behold.

Super Everdrive

Finally a few words about the Super Everdrive, the produce developed by krikzz.  Krikzz also manufactures and sells the SD2SNES, but at a much higher price point.  The Super Everdrive is kind of like an SD2SNES Lite.  It supports SD cards up to 32GB.  The current version is the v2, which has a battery for retaining save games. The v2 also has support for an optional DSP module that can support DSP1-4.  The v1 required harvesting DSP1 chips from real cartridges.

The menu is pretty basic just like every other Krikzz product except for the EverDrive 64.  It does not use a high definition resolution mode.  It will automatically sort files and folders, but the operation will be slower as a result.  It supports eight Game Genie codes.  The cart will automatically create new files for battery backed up save games.  The maximum supported ROM size is 7MB, so it will not be able to play the uncompressed Star Ocean ROM, which is 12MB.

Other than the menu and the ROM size, the only real issue with this vs. the SNES PowerPak is the loading time for the games.  The SNES PowerPak and SD2SNES load games to RAM, the Super Everdrive loads games to flash memory.  Flash memory must be erased before it can be rewritten, and writing to flash memory takes a lot longer than writing to RAM.  Fortunately, the game previously written can be instantly booted like Krikzz's other products.  Writing a 512KB game like Super Mario World takes about 8 seconds.  Super Metroid, a 3MB game, took 34 seconds. This is according to Krikzz's demo video.

More Computer Adventure Game Console Ports - NES and SMS

Home consoles of the third generation, such as the NES ans SMS, were sufficiently popular that computer game makers wanted to get a piece of that action.  While a very successful computer game may sell 100,000 copies across several incompatible computer platforms, a successful cartridge-based game could easily sell five times that number.  That would more than make up for the increase in cost of manufacturing cartridges versus writing to floppy disks.

The adventure game genre was extremely important in the 1980s, one of the prestige computer game genres along with role playing games, flight simulators and turn based wargames.  Most of the adventure games of the 1980s were text-based and used keyboards for input.  This is not well-suited to consoles of the third generation, which generally lacked keyboards.  Some games were beginning to use mice, a peripheral that would only come to consoles in the fourth generation.  Third generation consoles used D-pads and joysticks for the most part.  

Maniac Mansion

 The gold standard for adventure game ports for the third generation undoubtedly was the NES version of Maniac Mansion.  LucasArts developed Maniac Mansion for NES in close conjunction with Realtime Associates and it was published by Jaleco.  Despite the heavy censoring hand of Nintendo of America, the published cartridge does justice to the original Commodore 64 game and works very well as a NES game.  Play the prototype version and you can bypass almost all the censorship.  LucasArts did a great job stuffing the entire game into a 256KB cartridge.  This was by far the best showing LucasArts made for the NES.  Its other games' simply failed to meet the high standard of this port. 

The C64 used a joystick to move the cursor, it was the PC port that added mouse support.  Compared to the original, the NES input was not a real step down.  The low resolution PC port has a rather coarse mouse granularity which makes it a bit less than a perfect input device.  Graphically the game falls in between the low (160x200) and high (320x200) resolution computer versions.  The characters are very recognizable, the backgrounds are generally distinct and the objects can be made out, if a bit small.  Sound wise, the original had little music but what it did have was well done on the NES's 2A03 APU.  LucasArts made the good move of giving each character a portable CD player they could use to turn on or off the character's individual theme songs. They did a great job with these pieces.  It also wisely cut down on the number of verbs to eliminate Fix, What is and Unlock.  

Most importantly, Maniac Mansion had a battery backed save system, even if it only supported one save game at a time.  The C64 and Apple II versions of Maniac Mansion also supported one save, but that was per disk.  

Maniac Mansion was also ported to the Famicom by Jaleco before LucasArts released its version.  The Japanese version looks completely different from the US/European version.  Unfortunately, the Japanese version uses a ludicrously long 83-character password system with the 46 core Japanese hiragana characters and English letters A-T.  The screen does not scroll in this version, just like the Apple II version.  More space is taken up by the various menus, leaving the backgrounds and sprites smaller and less detailed than the US/European version.  The main theme was retained, but there is new background music in the game.  In isolation, it is not a bad port, but it pales in comparison to the LucasArts-led effort.

Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Uninvited

Also of note, the NES ports of the ICOM Simulations MacVenture games, Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Uninvited also had battery backed saves.  These games were originally published for the B&W Apple Macintosh computers.  The Macintosh popularized the graphical user interface and multiple "windows", and native-Macintosh games generally used the high resolution to use implement the game using multiple windows.  The ICOM games, using the MacVenture engine, are no exception.  When ported to other computers, these windows were generally retained.  The windows had the benefit of being repositioned anywhere on the screen.  Some of the windows, like the inventory window, could be resized.  

The NES versions of these games were ported by the Japanese company Kemco/Seika.  K/S was never a top-tier NES developer and these games may be the best representatives of its cartridge output on the NES. These games used a small main graphics window and little animation, making those graphics easy to redraw for the NES.    They consolidated the command window and the description window so that the descriptions would appear when you do something, otherwise you would see the commands, exits and the functions to save.  

Instead of using an icon-based inventory, K/S used a text-based inventory.  The windows in the NES games cannot be resized, making an alternative necessary.  Otherwise, inventory objects would quickly overlap each other.  However, K/S could have used a simple scrollable inventory window like the DOS and C64 versions.  By using text, K/S did not have to draw the graphics for those items.  While it makes inventory management a bit simpler, it can be time consuming to go through multiple pages of item listings.  

While the PC versions are generally silent, the NES versions have music throughout.  The music in these ports is generally appropriate but somewhat simplistic.   There was also some censoring going on, as the descriptions of when you die are sometimes less graphic in the NES versions compared to the Mac originals

King's Quest V

King's Quest V was released in 1990 for MS-DOS.  It came in a 256 color version or a converted 16 color version and used 320x200 resolution graphics.  It also supported Adlib FM Synthesis and Roland MT-32 LA Synthesis.  The 256 color floppy version takes 8.64MB of hard drive space and the 16 color version 5.05MB.  It also is intended to work with a mouse on a PC with 640KB of RAM and a 16-bit 80286 running at 10MHz or better.

Sierra thought it was a good idea to port this popular PC game to the NES.  The port was done by the Hungarian company Novotrade, more famous for its Ecco the Dolphin series.  The game was distributed by Konami.  The NES KQ5 cartridge had only 512KB of ROM and an extra 8KB of RAM.  It is no joke to say that porting this game to the NES would prove very challenging.  The NES had an 8-bit 6502-based CPU running at 1.79MHz, 2KB of RAM and 5 PSG-style audio channels.  Graphically, the NES PPU could support a 256x240 resolution (no more than 224 lines were generally used) with no more than 25 colors on display from an effective palette of 54 colors.  The NES uses a 8x8 tile-based graphical display with sprites.  There were substantial limitations on the colors used for the background tiles and sprites.

The PC graphics adapters generally had no limitations on what colors could be used at what locations on the screen.  As bitmapped displays, they did not need to breakup images into tiles.  When Sierra was making KQ5, it turned to artists to make real art with paint and canvas which Sierra scanned and converted to 320x200x256 color images.  Its previous games had relied to no small extent on computer-drawn line art.  Sierra's use of hand-drawn images is one reason why the PC version of KQ5 still looks good today.  At the time it was a revelation.  

The NES shows KQ5's graphics in a 224x208 resolution, leaving borders on all four sides of the screen. Even though these are visible on a TV screen, it is generally not a distraction.  However, what is distracting is the background graphics.  Since the NES uses tile-based graphics, tiles are frequently reused to save space in the ROM.  In KQ5's case, this reuse is often noticeable because the tiles just do not seem to match up as you would expect them to match up.  The result is rather ugly looking and can make images hard to make out without staring at them.  Also, there is a substantial lack of color in the backgrounds with simple red, blue, green, yellow and brown predominating.  Some of the talking head portraits, like King Graham's, are very ugly.  All-in-all, this makes for an ugly game compared to the 256 color or even the 16 color PC versions.  

Much of the music from the PC version is included, and while the music is recognizable, the style is not well-suited to the NES APU.  A lot of ambient background animation and sound effects are lost, giving the world of Serenia a rather empty, lifeless feel.  

The saving system uses a combination of temporary saves and passwords.  The temporary saving feature works similar to the saving on home computers.  You enter a name for your save game and can reload it if you die.  You can also load a game from the menu.  It can hold up to twenty file saves at a time.

Permanent saving is done with a 15 character password, consisting of letters, numbers, space and -.  As far as NES passwords go, there are far, far worse password systems.  However, the need for passwords would have been averted if Sierra or Konami had ponied up the extra quarter per cartridge for a save battery.  The hardware is all there in the cartridge to store the saves permanently except for the battery.  

This port did tone down some of the difficulty and unfairness of the PC original.  You cannot walk into the river that runs by the Pie Shop, Inn or Town.  The maze-like desert area has been made smaller.  It also cut out some of the more unnecessary elements like being able to enter Crispin's house after the game starts.  However, most of the text dialogue is intact and unchanged.  

The worst part about this port is the truly awful way they implemented the icon interface.  In the PC version, everything is controlled by the mouse icons.  If you want to change the icon, you either right click to select the icon or you move the cursor to the top of the screen and select the icon you want.  The NES version did have the bright idea of using the D-pad to control Graham directly due to the less-than-idea method of using the D-Pad to control a cursor, but that is where the inspiration ended.  

The NES version's controls work like this.  Select makes the icon button appear, start pauses the same, B will allow you to use cycle through the Look, Talk and Action icon, and A will allow you to carry out an action from the icon bar.  The icon bar will allow you to replace D-pad movement with cursor movement via the Quick Travel icon.  This is very confusing from a PC player's perspective.  It leads to a constant struggle to figure out how to select an item from your inventory and how to get rid of the icon bar.  

There is only one cursor, an arrow.  Why Novotrade could not have implemented a look, talk, action and item cursor is beyond me.  Had they have done so, the menu system could have been simplified.  Why couldn't select be used to make the icon bar disappear?  I agree that B to cycle through/cancel and A to confirm is appropriate, but the implementation needed more work.  Ultimately, it is the controls that drive the final nail into this port's coffin.

King's Quest - Quest for the Crown

If you think that the King's Quest series could not have been further sullied on consoles, think again.  Prior to Sierra's dalliance with Nintendo, it teamed up with Parker Bros. to release the original King's Quest for the Sega Master System.  This port was done by Microsmiths,  whose only real claim to fame was the golf simulator Mean 18.  

King's Quest - Quest for the Crown for the Sega Master System comes on a 128KB cartridge.  Despite having less than half the space of a floppy disk, Microsmiths was able to cram just about everything from the PC version into the SMS version.  Saving and restoring a game is done via a 31-character password with A-Z and 1-6 being used.  If you encounter one of the many cheap deaths, you have to input this monstrosity.  Sega did have a 128KB cartridge with battery backed save RAM, but Sierra and Parker Bros. did not want to pay the premium.  

There are new dangers in this version.  If you go to close to the hole with the dagger, you will fall in and die.  Falling off the tree with the golden egg is always fatal.  When you enter the woodcutter's house, you appear on the screen just above a deadly hole.  Some puzzles are handled differently.  You should push the rock in the usual PC way.  You can deal with the witch even if she is at home when you enter her house.  The stairs up the mountain and in the leprechaun's cave are far more deadly than the beanstalk.  Oftentimes you will start on a screen near a fatal area.  Monster pathfinding, however, is comically poor thanks in part to all the obstacles on the screen.  115 points seems to be the maximum for this version vs. 158 points for the computer versions.

Because there is no keyboard, which this game originally used, you have a menu which is opened by pressing Button 1.  This menu will show a selection of verbs in one column and nouns in another column..  Pairing the two and pressing Button 1 again will lead to an action.  The menu will only give potentially valid options based on the room and the items in your inventory.  This eliminates much of the "guess what the designer wanted you to type" aspect of adventure games with text parsers.  Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on how wedded you are to text parsers, but King's Quest's parser was always rather terse.  The 2 button brings up another menu that lets you duck, swim, climb, look about and jump as well as allowing you to view your inventory, pause the game, see your password and set the movement speed to fast or slow.  

Graphically, things are pretty nondescript.  The backgrounds use the same tiles over and over, so there are screens that look nearly identical.  This can make figuring out where you are confusing.  There is also sometimes an issue about your character overlapping solid boundaries.  It can also be tough to discern exactly where your character is walking.  The graphics are not bad, but they lack the charm of the blocky sprites and line-drawn backgrounds of the PC version.  Sound-wise there is little more sound than in the PC hard disk-installable version.

Larry and the Long Look For A Luscious Lover

I do not discuss homebrew releases often on this blog, but it is not because I am always indifferent to them. In 2014, a homebrew developer called Khan Games (Khan is not a direct reference the Mongol title but short for the programmer, Kevin Hanley, so its pronounced K-Han with a long "a") released a port of the original Sierra AGI version of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Longue Lizards for the NES.  They renamed the game to Larry and the Long Look for a Luscious Lover probably because the name Leisure Suit Larry is trademarked and Khan did not want to attract too much attention.  Like King's Quest above, the developer had to deal with the fact that the NES is controlled by a gamepad, not a keyboard (and the Famicom Keyboard does not count here).  I only played the demo but I washed a full playthrough on Youtube, so I can give impressions on what I have played and seen.


Larry is controlled by the D-pad and moves quite quickly across the screen.  The save/restore/restart menu is brought up by the select button, the inventory selection screen with the start button.  Button B uses the selected inventory item and Button A is a context sensitive button.  Button A is used to open doors, talk to people, take items, etc.  It is a very simple scheme but it does pare down the game to its bare essence.


As far as the port goes, some of the dialogue has been adjusted and areas like the alleyways, which only cause death, are not in the game.  As you can see in the attached screenshot, the graphics are plainer than the AGI version and there are fewer animated characters on the screen.  You can still die, for example, by walking into the street or having sex with the prostitute without protection.  The bar has been renamed from Lefty's to Tusky's.  In the casino, Blackjack has been changed to Roulette.


The game comes on a generous 512KB cartridge.  The cartridge has a 512KB of flash memory and 16KB of that is used to store a saved game.  Only one save game is supported, compared to twelve saves per directory for the PC version. The mapper 2 hardware this game uses is very common outside the flash saving.

The graphics have been taken from the AGI version, but the detail has been reduced.  There is much more in terms of music, but the Larry Theme is not present.  The music would not be out of place in a game like Bubble Bath Babes or Peek-a-boo Poker.  The closeups of the various girls you meet are also not present.  One last thing I must mention is that inside the box is a mail-in order form for Khan's port of E.T. on a NES cartridge.  The mail in order form is the only way to buy his E.T., so many collectors were unhappy that they had to open their sealed Larry box to buy the new game.  Just buy two!

Turbo Duo - Issues and Solutions

The Japanese PC Engine console was released as the TurboGrafx-16 in the US in 1989.  Conceived as a competitor to the NES and the Sega Genesis, it flourished in Japan, floundered in the US and barely had a presence in Europe.  However, it has many great arcade ports, fun platformers and lots of Shoot-em-ups.

Using HuCards

The TurboGrafx-16 can be a very expensive system to collect games for.  Japanese systems use HuCards for the games on ROM.  HuCards are slightly thicker than a credit card and have exposed contacts which get inserted into the card slot on a Turbo system.  Some US material called them TurboChips.  Japanese and US HuCard games are functionally identical but not pin compatible, requiring a region mod or a converter PCB to use cards for the other system.

However, it  is surprisingly easy to play games on any NEC system these days if you don't want to engage in the pricey journey to collect HuCards.  A Turbo Everdrive from Krikzz will play any official, licensed game (with one exception, see below). The Everdrive has a switch to select the console's region and an SD slot to load ROMs. The current card is flash based and loading a new game requires rewriting the old game.  The currently written game can be selected instantly by pressing the select button.  Writing a large 1MB game like Bonk's Big Adventure only takes about 11 seconds. There will be a newer, RAM based version released in the near future that will make loading faster and end worries about reaching the write limit of the flash media. However, the media should be rated for at least 10,000 write cycles, so if you flashed a new game every day it would take you at least 27 years to exhaust the memory.

The Everdrive can also be used as a CD System Card 2.0 replacement by loading the ROM.  It does not have the extra RAM needed for Super CD System 3.0 Card support or an Arcade Card.  It will work with the game Populous only in the Turbo/PC Engine Duo console line because that game came with extra RAM that is duplicated in the CD systems.  However, you can include the Super CD System ROMs so you can play CD games with an Everdrive installed in your Turbo Duo.  You can also load the US ROM in case you forget what the save RAM options are if you have a Japanese system.

One other irksome issue with regions is that the PC Engine uses a different gamepad connector from the TurboGrafx-16.  All Japanese consoles uses a mini-DIN-8 connector while TurboGrafx 16s use a DIN-8 connector. The US Turbo Duo also uses the min-DIN connector.  The controllers and multitaps themselves are otherwise compatible and there are converters available.  Japanese controllers and multitaps are often easier to find than their US equivalents.

A final issue is that the original PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 were RF only.  The TurboGrafx-16 required a Turbo Booster or the TurboGrafx CD add-on for stereo composite AV output .  The PC Engine usually did the same through the PC Engine CD.  As I mentioned in my RF blog entry, Japanese RF channels are not the same as US RF channels.  NEC later released the Core Grafx and Core Grafx II consoles which replaced RF with stereo AV output.  There is also the PC Engine Shuttle which supports stereo AV but has no expansion port for a CD add-on.

Using CD Backups

The TurboGrafx CD was the first CD-based console add-on.  It came with the CD unit, a Docking station and a CD System Card (2.0).  All three pieces are required to make it work with the TurboGrafx-16, and it makes the system look like a large, black inverted-T.  The system could be upgraded to play Super CD-ROM games with a Super System Card (3.0).  These are hard to come by for the US console.

In 1992, the TurboGrafx-16 and TurboGrafx CD were released in a combined unit called the Turbo Duo. Japan's version is called the PC Engine Duo.  The Turbo Duo plays US HuCard games but uses the controller ports from the Japanese consoles.  It also uses a 5-pin DIN AV output connector which supplies composite video only and stereo audio.  Finally it has a stereo mini-jack for headphone output.  The Japanese version is identical except for the color of the buttons and the support for Japanese HuCards.

NEC later released the white PC Engine Duo-R which removed the headphone jack and the lock switch for the CD cover.  Finally, the PC Engine Duo-RX was slightly cosmetically different from the Duo-R but included a six-button gamepad.  Only a few Japanese games like Street Fighter II - Championship Edition supported the 6-button pad.

Any of the Duo consoles are expensive ($250-$350) to acquire, but playing backups of the CD-ROM games are cheap.  The original Duos will almost certainly need to have the capacitors replaced. The Duo R and RX have a reputation for being more reliable. The lens assembly may also need to be replaced.  However, you are really getting the full NEC console experience with one of these systems and it can play a ton of great games.

In burning CD backups, however, you have a challenge.  Turbo CD games rarely look like standard CD-ROMs.  Except for a very few CDs with only a data track, all CD games are mixed mode games with data and audio tracks.  For these games, the first track is always an audio track intended to warn the user not to play the CD in a CD player.  The second track is always a data track (and the reason for the warning), and for some of the simpler CDs, they only have one data track.  CDs with more complex mastering also have a second data track as the last track on the CD.

There is nothing inherently non-standard about mixed mode CDs.  Many, many MS-DOS CD games used a data track and one or more CD audio tracks.  Most Sega CD, Neo Geo CD, Jaguar CD, 3D0 and some Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation games used mixed mode CDs.  However, for the MS-DOS CDs, Sega CDs and Sony games, their CDs always have just one data track and it is always the first track.  One or more audio tracks follow.  Turbo CDs, even those with only a data track, are not readable in a PC except as an audio CD.

A good backup uses high quality media.  I have read good things about Taiyo Yuden CDs, and I have also used Sony SUPREMAS CD-Rs with some success.  Ideally these CDs should be burnt as slowly as your burner can burn them. However there are several caveats to this.  First, modern CD-Rs were designed to be burnt at 16x speeds or better, as are modern burners.  Second, if you use a really old burner it may not support the ideal settings for burning Turbo CDs.  The ideal setting is to use a CUE sheet (either with a BIN or ISO and WAV) in the Disk at Once mode.  Really old burners may not support Disk at Once or may balk at the nutty mixture of audio and data tracks some of these images have.

Compared to playing with original pressed discs, the CD motor may exhibit more noise and the load times may be longer.  Load times for pressed media are often very quick.  It takes virtually no time for even a 1x CD-ROM unit like the one in a Turbo console to switch and audio track.  Additionally, there is only so much RAM to fill in a Turbo system (8KB CPU RAM + 64KB Video RAM + 64KB ADPCM RAM + 64KB CD-ROM RAM + 192KB Super System Card RAM).  A 1x CD-ROM transfers at 150KB per second, so load times should be fairly reasonable.  When you get to Arcade Card games, which add another 2MB of RAM, things might take longer.

Here is a list of all US released CD games by their type :

Two Data Tracks US CD Games
Buster Bros.
Fighting Street
J. B. Harold Murder Club
Jack Nicklaus Turbo Golf
Last Alert

Two Data Tracks US Super CD Games
Bonk III - Bonk's Big Adventure
Cotton - Fantastic Night Dreams
Dragon Slayer - The Legend of Heroes
Dungeon Explorer II
Dungeon Master - Theron's Quest
Fantasy Star Soldier
Forgotten Worlds
Godzilla
John Madden Duo CD Football
Loom
Lords of Thunder
Might and Magic III - Isles of Terra
Prince of Persia
Riot Zone
Shadow of the Beast
Sim Earth - The Living Planet
Super Air Zonk

Interleaved Data and Audio Tracks US CD Games
Cosmic Fantasy II
Magical Dinosaur Tour
Valis III

Two Data Tracks US Super CD Games
3 in 1 DUO Demo CD
4 in 1 Super CD

Single Data Track US CD Games
Exile
Final Zone II
It Came from the Desert
Lords of the Rising Sun
Splash Lake
Valis II
Vasteel
Ys Book I & II
Ys III - Wanderers from Ys

Single Data Track US CD/Super CD Hybrid Games
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Volume II
Syd Mead's Terra Forming

Single Data Track US Super CD Games
Beyond Shadowgate
Camp California
Dynastic Hero, The
Exile II - Wicked Phenomenon
Implode
Meteor Blaster DX
Shape Shifter (98 Tracks!)

Data Only US CD Games
Addams Family, The
Bikini Girls
Hawiian Island Girls
Local Girls of Hawaii, The
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

http://www.necstasy.net/ can inform you of the proper CUE sheets for every CD game, US or Japanese.

Even if you have a Turbo Duo, you should still keep the BIOS images for the Super System Card on your Turbo Everdrive.  You can load the BIOS image into the Turbo Duo to play CD games without having to remove the Everdrive.

Getting into a PC Engine Duo requires using a T10 Torx Security bit, a Turbo Duo requires a 4.5mm gamebit, which is also used with the SNES and N64 consoles and Genesis cartridges.  Inside the CD systems are five potentiometers marked VR101-105.  You can use a small screwdriver to adjust these if the drive is not spinning or CD audio is not playing.

Video Output

Unfortunately, no Turbo console outputs anything better than composite video.  Despite their limited 512-color palette, the Turbo consoles could put out some very colorful images and do not generally look their best with composite.  Fortunately, Hu6260 GPU outputs all the signals needed for RGB and S-Video.  There are many mods, and all require obtaining these signals from the chip itself or the expansion connector.  The PC Engine Duo I have been testing has an RGB mod from a Japanese seller called doujindance.  His mod is passive and very small.  The 5-pin AV DIN is replaced with an 8-pin DIN, with the extra lines being wired to R, G and B.  Sync is taken from the composite video pin.  This mod retains compatibility with existing composite video cables.  Other mods convert RGB to component video.

RGB looks quite superior to composite video, especially in games that use 320 horizontal pixels rather than the more common 256 horizontal pixels.  However, with the RGB amplifier in my system, one can see jailbars in the image that are not present through the composite output.  Jailbars are alternating patterns of light and dark across the screen and they are quite obvious in some games but not in others.  Bonk's Adventure is a game where they are immediately noticeable.

Save Game Backups

HuCards typically used passwords for saving, but a few Japanese supported the Tennoke 2 Backup Unit.  This device plugged into the back of a PC Engine's expansion port.  The Turbo Duo implements 2KB for game memory saving.  Many Turbo CD games only require a fraction of this memory, but some may require most or all of it. Multiple saves can be stored in the system, but there is no real way to transfer saves off the internal memory.  This 2KB SRAM chip is not battery back but instead is kept energized by a large capacitor (I have read the Duo-R has a lot more RAM).  The SRAM will completely drain the capacitor in approximately two weeks if the console is not turned on in that time.  NEC made the Tennokoe Hu-Card to backup saves from the unit.  This device appears to use flash memory, so you don't have to worry about the battery dying.  The current Turbo Everdrive does not support backing up the internal memory, but the next one may).

SCUMM Console Ports - Turbo Duo Loom vs. Sega CD Monkey Island

LucasArts was established by computer game programmers, but by 1990 they were becoming increasingly involved into consoles.  Having the Star Wars and Indiana Jones licenses practically demanded home console games using the licenses.  Except for the port of Maniac Mansion for the NES, LucasArts produced or licensed nothing of note until the SNES.

LucasArts was interested in porting its highly acclaimed adventure games series, using the SCUMM engine, to consoles.  Their adventure games were relatively large by cartridge standards, but the new CD-ROM add-ons for the Sega Genesis and Turbo Grafx 16 could easily contain their adventure games and allow for 16-bit CD Audio.  LucasArts commissioned a port of Loom for the Turbo Duo and a port of The Secret of Monkey Island for the Sega CD.

Loom

Loom - Turbo Super CD Title Screen

Loom for the Turbo systems was intended to run on a Turbo Duo or its equivalent : a Turbo Grafx 16 with the TurboGrafx CD and a Super System Card.  It will also run on the Japanese equivalents.

The Turbo port is  graphically in between the 16 color floppy and the other (mostly) 256-color CD-ROM versions.  If I had to give a hierarchy of ports based solely on the graphics, it would go something like this :

Loom IBM PC 16-color floppy

• Atari ST 16-color floppy
• Amiga 16-color floppy
• Macintosh 16-color floppy

Loom 256-color FM-Towns CD 

Loom 256-color IBM PC CD

Loom 16/256-color Turbo CD

The Turbo CD and FM-Towns CD have similar CD-Audio tracks, which are used for music.  The first set of FM-Towns arrangements (first nine audio tracks) are used for the Turbo CD music.  Musically, this may be the best version, as the FM-Towns also uses second set of music tracks.  The second set sounds more like a synthesizer than the first set and in my opinion is inferior.  Unfortunately, the FM-Towns version plays the first set, then the second set and keeps repeating the second set.  

Loom Turbo Super CD 16 Color Original Background

What is odd is the graphics used on Turbo Loom.  Both the FM-Towns and the IBM PC have full 256-color graphics above the distaff.  Turbo Loom uses a mixture of backgrounds (including portraits) from the 16 and 256 color IBM PC releases.

Consider the sources of the closeups :

Bobbin Threadbare - 16 Color
Hetchel - 256 Color
Elder Atropos - 256 Color
Hetchel as Cynget - 16 Color
Master Goodmold - 256 Color
Fleece Firmflanks - 16 Color
The Dragon - 16 Color
Rusty Nailbender - 256 Color
Master Stoke - 16 Color
Dragon finds Rusty - 256 Color
Bishop Mandible - 16 Color
Cobb - 256 Color
Rusty as a Ghost - 256 Color
Lady Cygna Threadbare - 16 Color
Chaos - 256 Color

Generally, most of Loom island is taken from the 16-color version, with notable exceptions of the Dock, the Loom Sanctuary and Lady Cygna's gravestone closeup.  Crystalguard is entirely 16-color.  The beach, the Shepherd's forest and meadow are taken from the 256 color version, except for the interior of Fleece's hut. The exterior of the Dragon's volcano and its lair are 256 color, as is the Forge and the plain surrounding it. Bishop Mandible's cathedral and the Outside is 16-color except for the very end of the game.

Loom Turbo CD - 256 Color Original Background

The characters are always 256 color, as are most of the animated objects.  The distaff portion of the screen is 16 color regardless of version (although the FM-Towns version has a distaff that does not use the EGA palette).

Why did LucasArts take roughly 50/50 from each version when the Turbo Duo was capable of almost 256 colors (but only a 512 color palette)?  Storage was not an issue with a CD game.  One theory is that the remaining 256 color graphics were not available in time for the Turbo port, so LucasArts had to make do with whatever 256 color art was available at the time.  I am not satisfied with this theory because the FM Towns 256 color version, done in-house by LucasArts, was ready by April, 1991.  The PC CD version was ready by June of 1992.  The Japanese PC Engine Duo version was released in September of 1992 and the US Turbo Duo version followed in December.  I can see no reason why all the 256 color artwork would not have been available for the Turbo port.

An alternative view is the 256 color graphics that they did not use either did not look very good once the color depth had been reduced or they did not look good on a composite monitor.  No NEC console, whether Japanese or US, supported better than composite video at the time Loom was being ported.  What may have looked good through an RGB monitor on the development hardware may have looked like crap on composite.

In instances where the 16 color graphics are being used, the Turbo through a composite monitor looks scarcely better than a Tandy 1000 outputting the 16 color IBM PC floppy graphics to a composite monitor. I recently made a post extolling the underrated virtues of composite video on the SNES and Genesis, but this game was designed on a PC and looks best through a lossless analog connection.  In other words, it looks best on an RGB modded Turbo Duo.  Unfortunately, no NEC console in the TurboGrafx line, not even the SuperGrafx, has native RGB support.

On the PC and other versions, the main graphics window uses 320x136 pixels. The Turbo uses 338x136, but the cursor is limited to the right-most 320 pixels.  Virtually all this horizontal resolution can amazingly be squeezed into the viewable screen of a CRT.  If a screen is non-scrolling, then there will be a noticeable black border on the left side of the screen.  The same is also true of the leftmost side of a scrolling screen.  Vertically, the game does not appear to use any of the vertical space above the main graphics window, but the cursor will descend to line 240 and perhaps line 242, which is the absolute vertical limit of 240p.

Even though the PC Engine did have a mouse available for it, Loom does not support it.  However, it does have some neat options.  It can change the text speed, it can turn the sound effect and music, or just the music, off, and also has a sound test that allows you to listen to any of the CD audio tracks.  The Overture (from Swan Lake) is not otherwise heard in the game.  It also has an option to limit the animation to improve speed, but Loom is not an animation-heavy game (The Secret of Monkey Island is much more animated), so this option would not often be useful.

The saving system is non-intuitive.  Loom will save a game to the backup RAM of the CD unit.  However, it really only saves a checkpoint, the first being when after you reach the beach leading to the Shepherd's forest and Crystalguard.  So if you save prior to leaving Loom Island, you will load back to the very beginning before you acquire your distaff.  You can lose a lot of progress this way because the save points seem quite spread out.  Button I skips cutscenes, perhaps for this reason.

The Secret of Monkey Island

The Secret of Monkey Island Sega CD

The Secret of Monkey Island for the Sega CD is based on the IBM PC CD-ROM version, reducing the on-screen number of colors from 256 colors to a maximum of 64 colors, similar to the Amiga.  The actual game's hierarchy is less complicated :

The Secret of Monkey Island 16-color floppy

• Atari ST 16-color floppy

The Secret of Monkey Island 256-color floppy

• Amiga 32-color floppy

The Secret of Monkey Island 256-color IBM PC CD-ROM

• FM-Towns 256-color CD-ROM (uses 16-color inventory icons, Japanese and English available)
• Sega CD 64-color CD-ROM
• Macintosh 256-color CD-ROM (has graphical filtering option) 

The Sega CD does not use the save RAM inside the CD unit, instead it gives a 4-digit passcode to restore a game.  It is rather amazing that LucasArts could fit all the information needed to restore a game in essentially four bytes.  This passcodes will only restore your game if you have made a substantial achievement like completing one of the three trials.  Your inventory may not be exactly as you had left it, nor may your character be where you left him and the dialogue options may be reset (which is terrible for the sword fighting trial), but you will not get stuck because you don't have an object you need.  You may have to acquire some items again unfortunately.  Button C is used to skip dialogue, and this was probably implemented for this reason.

The Secret of Monkey Island Sega CD SCUMM Bar

Interestingly, this port has support for the Sega Mega Mouse peripheral, making it function much more closely to the computer versions.  This is not mentioned in the US manual or on the US box, but there is a symbol for it on the Japanese box.  The mouse support is present on both the Japanese and US versions of the game.  The game was not released in Europe.

The gameplay itself is not too bad, but it will slow down if there is a lot of animation on the screen.  Scrolling is also jerky when there is a lot of animation on the screen.  When you are selecting dialogue, the cursor disappears, even if you are using a mouse.  The only option of is to change the text speed.  The dialogue options are sometimes redone for this version to decrease the number of dialogue choices that use a second line.

The Secret of Monkey Island Sega CD Portrait

The graphics are dark, especially the backgrounds on Melee Island.  The backgrounds are those used from the Amiga version, 256-colors reduced to 32-colors, but the Sega color palette appears much darker than the Amiga palette.  I guess LucasArts believed that people would simply turn the brightness of their TV up if they felt the screen was too dark.  On the other hand, the character, object and inventory graphics have been converted from the 256 colors of the PC CD version.  The CD audio is more or less identical to the PC CD version and plays the music as it does in the PC CD version.  One positive thing to note is that the Genesis Model 1 and 2 always support RGB output, so the graphics can look pretty nice.

The load times are rather annoying.  There are load times for every time you enter into a new screen, begin dialogue, acquire an item and other characters move on the screen.  Much of this is due to the limited RAM available for the Sega CD.  The average 1992 PC would have had 4-8MB of RAM while the Sega Genesis and CD combined have 832KB.

So, Which is Better?

This is a hard decision, because I cannot honestly recommend either port.  Both have klunky saving and loading, and both have graphical issues.  The Secret of Monkey Island is too dark (but can be improved with RGB), Loom is too inconsistent.  Audio-wise, both are excellent.  There are noticeable slowdowns early in SoMI and lots of CD load times.  It is the load times that kill the Sega CD port.  Loom is a much simpler game and was better suited to the 8/16-bit consoles of the 4th Generation.